Rise in Revolution (Chapter Nineteen)
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saladloveChapter list: https://tanadin.dreamwidth.org/650.html
World map: http://tanadin.deviantart.com/art/Kaldri
Chapter Nineteen
Downtime
Black Market, Sector IAL. January 19, 2272. Time instance 842N.
“So what, exactly, is the plan?” Emma asked, looking around at the assembled Black Market around her. Tanadin had called a meeting midafternoon, and everyone was assembled, even Tac, who had odd metal contraptions for hands. They looked vaguely like hands, but they were very rough and sharp- she could probably cut someone if she wasn’t careful. “We can’t just sit around in IAL forever.”
“Akrar.” Kyir corrected. “That’s what the region is called. It’s not IAL anymore.”
“Akrar, then.”
“Well, we’re relatively safe for awhile,” Seven began. “They can’t come through the train tunnel and they won’t attack from the air unless they see us as a major threat, as they can’t airlift their heavy units easily, and if they attacked us they’d lose the advantage of their turrets, and if I can get the sector’s anti-air turret back online, they wouldn’t be able to even if they wanted to. What we need to do it get through the mountains at them and strike at SOV, but we also can’t take the tunnel as they have their turrets.”
“Build a new tunnel.” Nine said immediately. “This is a sector of miners, isn’t it? And there are about three or four earth elementals on record, right?”
“Three and one half-elemental.”
“Right. So we could just dig right through the mountain and strike at them that way.”
“That will take a month and a half to two months,” Cap warned. “Even with the full strength of the elementals. The mountains around Akrar are no slackers.”
“We can do it.” Tanadin grinned at those assembled around her.
“This is crazy.” Hawk muttered.
“We started a revolution against the Mainframe! We’ve already done crazy,” Emma told her. “Now it’s time to do insane.”
“I like the sound of this.” Sadie started to jump to her feet, but a shadowy tendril reached out from the darkness and stopped her.
“You’re still wounded.” Geek told her, pushing her back down before the tendril vanished. “Don’t strain yourself.”
“You’re lucky to be alive.” Devan agreed. “Scara only woke up a couple of hours ago, and she’s still exhausted. Don’t get stabbed like that again.”
Sadie grinned sheepishly. “Woops.”
“So we’re building a tunnel. Seven, you’re in charge of getting that started and figuring out where to build it. Nine, help him.”
“Right.”
“The rest of you...I don’t know. Help with the tunnel if you can, get people armed- we have almost no weapons- and...relax, I guess. We have two months.” Tanadin got to her feet. “Meeting adjourned.”
“Wait,” Scott raised a hand momentarily. “There’s something else important to talk about.”
Tanadin sighed. “What’s up?”
Scott jumped to his feet and pointed at her accusingly. “You fuckers played Monopoly without me!”
Laughter bubbled amongst the Black Market until the room was filled with sounds of amusement and hilarity, breaking the tension they had all felt since Scott had been arrested.
“You’re a gem, Scott.” Tanadin giggled. “Never change.”
He grinned. “I can do that. But seriously. What the hell, guys.”
~~~
Emma leaned against the wall of a building, eyes focused on the flag waving gently in the breeze atop its pole. The world flag of Kaldriel flew high above Akrar for the first time, and a slight smile pulled itself across Emma’s face momentarily before it vanished as she remembered what had been lost to put it there.
Several dozen people dead. The thought left her somewhat numb. No one she was close to had been lost, but the reality of the situation was that they had been very, very lucky. Both the nine thousand unit and the control center itself had been damaged, but next time wouldn’t be so easy.
Next time. It was hard to wrap her head around the fact that there would be a next time. Emma was no stranger to violence, but this was something else. The kind of carnage she had seen here was more than she had ever wanted to be exposed to, but she knew it was only the beginning.
Once the tunnel was finished, in two months time, they would attack SOV and attempt to bring it to its knees just as they had IAL. Emma shuddered at the thought, remembering the feeling of driving her knife through that first cyborg’s eye. Of killing two or three one thousand units, taking a couple hits here and there but nothing major. One thousand units, she had discovered, had prediction software that was very easy to fool, at least in comparison to what the other cyborgs were equipped with.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat. She turned around to see Tanadin standing awkwardly several feet away, clearly unsure how to start a conversation.
“Hi,” she tried.
“Hey.” Emma smiled at her. Well that was brilliant.
“I was just...wanting to see if you were okay.” Tanadin cleared her throat again. “A lot of people are pretty shaken after that whole thing yesterday and I’ve been checking on people.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I’m a liar. “Absolutely fine.”
Tanadin raised an eyebrow at her. “You sure about that?”
“...I think so.”
“I don’t.” Tanadin stepped forward to stand next to her. “You’re bothered by something,”
Emma sighed and leaned against the wall again. “I never thought it would come to this.”
“Yeah. I didn’t either. And then, well...it’s not like we planned it. It just kind of...happened.”
“If we have to assign blame, it’s all Seven’s fault.”
Tanadin snorted. “Yeah, sure. Seven’s fault. And whose fault was it that we have him on our side?”
Emma shrugged. “That could’ve been anyone.”
“That was you, you asshole! Remember? You were checking him out and found him so attractive that you asked Kyir to keep him alive?”
“What?! That’s not what happened!” Emma swatted at Tanadin’s arm. “I was not checking him out and that was not why I asked Kyir to save him!”
“But you do admit he’s attractive!”
“I think you do, too!”
Tanadin paused at that, slowly nodding. “Touche. But still. Your fault, not mine.”
“You okayed it.”
“Kyir would have done it anyway. Since when does he listen to me?”
“He follows your plans readily enough.” Emma rolled her eyes. “He listens to you.”
“Barely. And what do you mean my plans? Most of the plans that work are Seven’s! The guy is brilliant.”
“He is,” Emma agreed, perhaps a bit too quickly. Tanadin raised an eyebrow but didn’t press the issue, just gently patting Emma’s arm. Emma swatted at her. “Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it.”
“Thinking what?”
Emma glared at her and Tanadin laughed at her expression.
~~~
The quiet sound of metal sliding across metal creaked through the silence of the room as Tac flexed her makeshift fingers. They were rough and sharp, but they would do. She had difficulty grasping smooth, rounded objects, making most doorknobs a challenge. Still, she supposed she should be glad she had any hands at all. How Kyir had done it, she had no idea, but they certainly worked.
She extended her fingers, creating the sound again. I’ll have to ask him if there’s anything he can do about that. It’s a terrible sound.
She glanced at her sword as it leaned against her bed and picked it up, noting the change in the hilt. Kyir had modified it to fit her new hands, so at least she could fight. If I ever could.
She put the sword back down and shifted positions to lie down in bed. She hadn’t slept well the previous night, and didn’t expect to for a long time. Her dreams had been filled with darkness and blades, the sound of a heavy unit walking towards her, and the agony at the ends of her arms. She shivered and shut her eyes, but why, she never knew.
Tac jerked upright, eyes snapping open, when someone knocked at her door. She calmed her racing heart before trying to ask who was there, but it only came out as a quiet croak. She cleared her throat and was about to try again when Shawn’s voice called from the other side of the door.
“Tac? Are you in there?”
“Yes.” She paused. “Go away.”
“Tac…”
“I don’t want to talk to anyone right now, okay?”
“Tac, please. You can’t sit in there forever- that won’t help you get used to your hands.” He hesitated. “Or to get past this whole thing.”
Tac didn’t grace him with a response. She lay down again and pressed her face into the pillow, ignoring how her glasses dug into her skin.
It was fine. She probably deserved it.
“Tac, you know I have your backup keycard from the front desk, right?”
Shit.
“Don’t come in.”
“Tac.”
“I don’t want to talk to anyone.”
Shawn sighed. “Okay. I won’t. I just wanted to check on you, and tell you…” He hesitated.
What?
“Kyir fixed the jeep.”
Tac sat right up in bed. “He what?”
“He fixed the jeep.” Shawn’s voice was full of barely contained excitement.
“He said he wouldn’t, not after last time!”
“He changed his mind!”
Tac got to her feet and approached the door. “Did you convince him?” She opened it and grinned at Shawn on the other side.
“You could say that.”
“...did you threaten him?”
“I bribed him.”
“With what?”
“That’s a long story. C’mon! We have people to annoy!” Shawn raced off down the hallway, Tac only taking the time to shut her door before following him.
Maybe today wouldn’t be so bad after all.
~~~
Emma paused mid-sentence in her conversation with Tanadin about the people of the Black Market. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“That music.”
Tanadin listened. “Sounds like it’s from somewhere in North Karavia.” She listened closely as it steadily grew louder until her eyes widened. “No. No way.”
“What?”
“Kyir didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” Emma frowned at Tanadin, confused, before what was blaring the music turned the corner and the sound hit her full force.
A remote-controlled jeep the size of a small dog came racing towards them, blasting a kind of North Karavian polka, with Tac and Shawn running along not far behind it. Tac held the remote, grinning widely as she drove it along, and Shawn held the shotgun as he ran along beside her.
“What the hell?” Emma demanded.
Tanadin groaned and didn’t bother trying to answer over the music as the two and their jeep raced by, Shawn waving cheerfully to Tanadin and Emma as they went. Tanadin waited until they were far enough away to speak.
“Great. All we need is a repeat of the jeep incident.”
“Jeep incident?”
“It ended with that thing being destroyed and Shawn in jail for about a month.”
“What th-”
“It’s a long story that I think I’ll let Shawn tell you.” Tanadin glanced at where they had been before they had moved out of sight. “At least Tac’s happy, though. I haven’t seen her smile for a couple of weeks now, and she’s been close to tears since yesterday.” She turned and motioned for Emma to follow. “In any case, I need to have a chat with Kyir. I want to make sure he didn’t put the guns back on that thing.”
“Guns?”
“That jeep is a mistake.” Tanadin shook her head slightly before leading the way up the street and back towards Kyir’s house, the sound of Kethrican polka fading into the distance.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-03 10:30 pm (UTC)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCLOgMfwIXk
Because, as with many things, the jeep is an in joke, and it's great.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-04 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-07 12:18 am (UTC)You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?
Memeing aside, you're welcome! :D
sadie here
Date: 2016-05-18 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-03 10:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-03 10:36 pm (UTC)*lifts head off pillow and looks around groggily* Coffee....I need coffee....
no subject
Date: 2016-05-04 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-04 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-05 11:44 am (UTC)sadie here
Date: 2016-05-04 12:04 pm (UTC)LET THE SHIPS SAIL IN IAL *ahem* I mean akrar. BUT LET THEM SAIL!
Re: sadie here
Date: 2016-05-04 12:07 pm (UTC)“You’re still wounded.” Geek told her, pushing her back down before the tendril vanished. “Don’t strain yourself.”
tentacles geek and sadie all in one scene= horror movie for everyone else
Re: sadie here
Date: 2016-05-04 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-06 12:11 am (UTC)-Scoot
no subject
Date: 2016-05-06 10:07 am (UTC)Anyway, great chapter! I really like all the banter. 10/10. And run from the jeep of doom and insanity!
-the lurkiest lurker