From: “Memoirs of the First Born: The Authorised and Annotated Edition with Commentary” by Markus Garzius, edited and annotated by Albert Whitley and Maria Aydenia (1987)—
I remember vividly my shock and excitement when Agende Rodriga finished with her code book and looked up at me, her face now pale enough to satisfy any of the local cretins with their skin-colour obsession. Usually so impressively cool and collected, she stumbled over her words as she explained it to me, me and the others in our small circle of confidantes within the local movement. It had swollen enormously thanks to our efforts, and we were naturally concerned about infiltration; control of information according to the tribal [cell] system seemed appropriate.
The code book, itself in code of course, was hugely intricate in order to extract such specific meaning from merely the words ‘twelve’ and ‘red’. As I understand it (there was no reason for Rodriga to explain it in detail), there were other variables such as what time of the year the Kapud had made his speech, the phase of the moon and so on, which allowed the message to be made more specific. I say specific, but in the end the message turned out to be shockingly general and universal. On the night of Unember [March] 14th, every single Agende, cadre and chapter member in the unliberated parts of Zones 4, 9, 11 and 13 were to enact whatever sabotage they could to undermine the Septens and their henchmen.
Surely there must have been more nuance to it than that which I was unaware of (I realised in hindsight) or else our brave men and women would have also sabotaged the railway lines we needed to capture intact, and so on. Nonetheless, I was shocked at the boldness of the move. Regardless of what the deviationist dribbling morons currently mismanaging Free Humanity may claim, never let it be said that I never doubted the Kapud’s judgement. At that time, I feared it was too high a price to pay. The Kapud was effectively sacrificing all we had on this continent for a moment of advantage. Even a spectacular victory over the Septens would leave us with no-one to direct true believers within the Zones they squatted on. Afterwards, we would no longer have eyes and ears among the Septens, and they could relax in the knowledge that we would have to rebuild our networks from scratch.
Yet, as always, I underestimated the Kapud’s genius. It was not until years later that I was able to watch from afar, with sad amusement, as the Septens tore themselves apart in what they referred to as the ‘Second Black Scare’. Politicians and others made remorseless claims of Sanchezista infiltration in all walks of their government; men and women who had barely heard of the Way lost their jobs and were discredited and ostracised in their community. All the while, none of them dreamed that the Septen-occupied lands were perhaps the most Sanchezista-free part of the globe, where anyone with a record going back more than a decade or so could not possibly be one of our infiltrators, as we had already sacrificed them all. Their own paranoia, the limitations of their petty nationalistically-blinded minds, would hurt the Septens more than our Agendes ever had.
But let us return to happier times. It was clear what the order signified; Celatores would be landing in North America at the same time. None of us were aware that the Septens were planning an attack of their own, simultaneously, on the Pablo Sanchez Canal. Some attribute the timing to the Kapud’s genius, and though I can understand that view, I believe it was a mere coincidence – accountable, of course, to Dyeus’ providence. It is always reassuring to be reminded that one is fighting on the noble side, even if the act of fighting itself will always be repugnant.
Speaking of which. Persephone and I had had a falling out, one which had driven not only her to tears, but me as well. Like other cadre members, she wanted to take up arms (smuggled in over the past few years) and fight to raise the black flag over this land. With the others, I could dismiss them as necessary casualties; like myself, a necessary evil to free this land from the tyranny of an inferior level of civilisation (and barely that, in this case) whose losses would be honoured but not mourned. But I loved Persephone, and I could not bare to think of her one day standing on the gallows beside me, ready to surrender her life for the inexorable crime-sin of murder – no matter how noble the cause. Also, it was still a matter of debate then whether Celatores should be permitted to have children, and if so, whether they should be raised by their families or in Garderista crèches. It was the never-ending argument about whether the urge to raise arms against fellow humans was nature or nurture. For now, the Kapud’s pragmatism had suppressed the argument, but I knew it would return. I could give up a child to the cause, reluctantly, but I did not want Persephone to face that decision.
She did not understand my reasoning, of course, and so those days in Unember were colder between us than the month itself, in this balmy town misnamed Pensacola.[13] I kept my face fixed when I saw her practicing with her old Caputo ’91 rifle, doubtless salvaged from some poor Firstslain casualty of the War of Ascension. Fortunately, though the old lies of that age had been expunged from the Liberated Zones, our ammunition was still compatible with it, and my own superior Pazifikador XVIII could use the same stock. I wished Perse and I were as intercompatible as our weapons were, back then.
To get back to Rodriga’s briefing. We had more specific instructions than most, it seemed; reading between the lines, Pensacola had been targeted as a major descent site. We did not guess, at that point, that it was
the major beachhead target. Later, many have claimed it was my reports, and the intervention of good old Barredus, that led to Pensacola being selected. I have always dismissed such things as mere flattery. Regardless, we prepared our plans. Pensacola’s defences might be old and creaking and poorly maintained, but there was still a detachment of about a hundred Septen regulars here, a minority amid the Zone 11 auxiliaries scattered through the hinterland.[14] They possessed a fort and a small artillery park with a couple of rusting pieces and some better-maintained protcars, which they used for occasional patrols and parades to show off their strength. It was not much, but we knew that in today’s warfare, a small group of soldiers could hold off a much superior force if they were allowed to gain a defensive position. Our task, therefore, was to ensure they could not do so...
*
From: “The Black Twenties” by Errol Mitchell (1973)—
Operatio Libramendum (meaning pendulum) was launched on March 14th 1926, even as Societist infiltrators wrought havoc across the Empire. This was intended both as a distraction to overwhelm Fredericksburg with reports (not helped by the simultaneous Operation Revenge) and a way to break up communications and transport, hampering American efforts to respond to the attack. In stereotyped depictions of the event in film, we usually picture wide-eyed Societist fanatics cutting Lectel cables or Civic Steam lines, blowing up railway tracks, throwing spirit bombs through the windows of armouries, and the like.
Less discussed nowadays, though it was a major target in the Second Black Scare and helped doom the Mentian Party as a distinct entity, was Societist infiltration of the trade union movement. Many strikes had been pre-prepared for the day, ostensibly protesting against factory conditions as the plague continued to spread through them. Conversely, other protests came from groups unwilling to further tolerate the plague quarantine rules that did exist. When the attacks began, the Societists spread a message that Alfarus’ rule meant that Liberated Humans had been able to tolerate quarantine rules in order to focus on saving lives until the plague could be tackled, whereas the Empire had enforced quarantine rules just so lives could be sacrificed elsewhere in war instead. The Celatores’ initial rapid success helped feed the propaganda image that Societist Amigos and Amigas were healthy, rested and easily sweeping aside the tired, plague-ridden, war-weakened Americans.
As planned, Societist forces initially attacked the Spirit Glades, landing some troops to largely make mischief and a noise, as the region was strategically unimportant and not well connected to the rest of East Florida. It was clear the Societists’ hopes were that they could still draw American armies southwards into Florida and trap them there. After the war, many American critics stated that this landing would have been impossible if the Faulkner Ministry had not cancelled the modernisation of the former Fort Blackbeard on the Dry Tortuga Islands, instead having it demolished. Of course, it remains debatable whether a fort designed primarily to combat now-obsolete piracy (despite its ironic name) could have stood up to a modern Meridian force, even one that lacked hiveships and relied on celagii flying from Cuba.[15] A few weeks later, an outrider for this small Societist jungle force would be witnessed by the American rocket pioneer Edith Harrison near Caloosa. Harrison’s experiments had not yet attracted government interest yet, but that was about to change.[16]
Possibly based on information from Markus Garzius, Lugallus Rivarius changed his plans and chose to commit only a single hiveship force (the
Elam’s) to attacking Fort Insulza on Tampa Bay. The Americans fought back hard, using some of the dromes which Gilmore had had redeployed to East Florida, and the Societists had the worse of it. The
Elam had to retreat with significant losses, eventually rejoining the rest of Flodus East after repairs and resupply in Cuba. If the American pilots had managed to sink the
Elam then it might have been enough to tip the scales later. Yet at this time, even after the shock of Rubikon, there is evidence that the pilots were ignoring their orders and deliberately trying to target the accompanying Societist lineship
Pharaoh with steelteeth. (The
Pharaoh was substantially damaged and out of the war for a month, but did not sink). Perhaps it was simply a matter of prestige, though this remains controversial.[17] While the
Elam force was engaging the American dromes, Celatores were landed significantly to the north in what was largely wasteland, being forced to go around the keys and sandbanks blocking off the coastline proper. This force was intended to attack Fort Insulza from the north, but suffered many problems due to the terrain and only succeeded in keeping the Americans’ attention. However, this was also true on a grander scale; the success of the Fort Insulza aeromen and the ongoing attempted siege continued to draw the attention of Fredericksburg in coming days, even as the major attack was breaking out of Pensacola.
Although only two feint attacks were planned, many American writings record three; the third was a mistake, with four Societist Llama flying artillery from the
Lagash mistaking Maubela for Pensacola after flying off course – a common hazard in those days before Photrack.[18] Maubela was considerably better-defended than Pensacola for various reasons involving logistics and politics a decade before, and the Llamas were slaughtered. However, their sacrifice did (unintentionally) further draw American attention farther away from Pensacola, with feints now both to the east and the west of the real landing.
Aero forces from the
Uruk,
Memphis and
Lagash (minus those four Llamas) combined to strike strategic targets around Pensacola as the Celatores went in. Lugallus Mardinus Kasdrus was in command of the primary ground force, and had prepared to give orders to bomb local railway lines in order to buy time to dig in and defend against American reinforcements as more troops arrived. However, he found that the situation was considerably more favourable than he had expected. Not only had the saboteurs done their job across the Empire and Fredericksburg was reeling, drowned in reports of exploding railway stations and blacked-out cities[19] from Drakesland to Hispaniola, but Markus Garzius had also been working the miracles his name is associated with...
*
From: “Memoirs of the First Born: The Authorised and Annotated Edition with Commentary” by Markus Garzius, edited and annotated by Albert Whitley and Maria Aydenia (1987)—
I wiped the blood from my hands and my rifle dispassionately with a handkerchief, and tried not to look at the initials in its corner. Persephone had given this to me, a few weeks and a hundred years ago. Somehow I could not quite bring myself to throw it on the ground, and I stuffed the bloodstained mass into my pocket to become a horrible clotted mess. It was a profound metaphor for the damage I had done to Perse’s life, I thought bleakly. Before I and my murderous heart had come into it, she had been...
No. I was being foolish. Perse was not only a canvas for me to air my own self-doubts and shame on. She had her own life, and before I had arrived, it had been a miserable one. Not only living in a primitive society where humans were judged for the colour of their skin, but in an unstable and uncertain one, where the rules of society could change from city neighbourhood to neighbourhood, shift overnight at the whims of occupiers. What I had realised, both from Perse and her fellow locals, was that the driving spirit of this land was
apathy. They had been stuck in some state of purgatory since their last regime had been toppled and nothing had satisfactorily replaced it. Years later, someone called me a genius for this insight, but it was obvious, and I am sure Rodriga and her comrades had said the same in their messages. The people of this land would not fight to resist us. Nor would they fight for us, not unless we persuaded them we would be better than the Firstslain they still thought of us as. They would keep their heads down and hope the horrors of war did not touch them, a commendable enough impulse.
Thought clearly not simply because I had said so, the plans of the Kapud, Prokapud Dominikus and Lugallus Rivarius had taken this into account. I know that Lugallus Kasdrus was sceptical at first, which I can understand. He thought of this in terms of the War of Ascension, as having to take a beachhead at great cost and then create a cautious defensive line to prevent the opponent forces from throwing us back into the sea. And that probably would have been the case, if he’d been attacking some place that the Septens actually cared about. Here, the local ‘Carolinians’ would shrug and let us take over their railways and send our Celatores many
talcodii afield. All we had to do was neutralise the small number of Septen defenders.
Which I needed to get back to. Reluctantly dismissing thoughts of Perse and her bloodied handkerchief, I shouldered my Pazifikador. Terzus Sutardus still had the sniper rifle with which I had taken the life of Oquendo – cruel necessity – and he was using it with far more skill than I had. Several more of my men instead used
ametralladores, what the locals called ‘minicings’.[20] As we had learned fighting back in Zone 7, such a weapon could allow one man to take down many opponents, if he was skilled with it. Some of the more unsavoury ‘Neighbourly Society’ groups in the region also used them; Rodriga and her comrades had managed to bring a few of them over to our side, and now they fought alongside us.
With the death of the Septen sentry, the blood on Perse’s handkerchief now also pooling on his grey-green uniform bearing its lie of a flag in blue, red and gold on his shoulder, the next stage could commence. A few stars gleamed in the night sky above, though most were banished by the glow of the hissing luftlights on the streets. Only a handful of squares in Pensacola had bright vac-lamps of the sort I had become accustomed to in the urbs of Zone 1. That would change, I was sure, as we progressed their civilisation level, but in the meantime the flickering luftlights helped hide our movements.
Some bright murderer over in Zone 8 had figured out that one could potentially destroy a rather expensive opponent ansukurrus with a cheap and simple glass bottle of spirit with a burning rag in the neck. They called them Fireballs or Firefizzers, a pun on an intoxicating cocktails of the day, while others called them Devil Brews.[21] Our cadre members, unskilled with firearms, had prepared many so we could take out the Septens’ protcars. Yet we now found we could capture them intact, their guards having fled, and the only purpose for the Fireballs was for the spirit in them to be poured into the protcars’ tanks so they could be driven off. The Septens were reeling from the attack even more than we had hoped; though our celagii obviously did not bomb the city itself for fear of harming its people, merely flying low overhead had driven them into a panic. I realised anew that these men were far from the Septens’ best; those had all been sent to die in freezing trenches against Pablus Romanovius’ gang. These were the very dregs of their murderers, sent here to keep them away from others. Some were clearly drunk as we mowed them down, incensed we had interrupted their leisure. Perse had dropped enough hints that many of them saw the locals, especially those with darker skin, as their personal property, to be used for their own enjoyment on a whim. I am not a sufficiently good human to feel regret as my bullets tore them to shreds.
Out in the bay, I heard a distant explosion as one of the less-than-well-maintained forts guarding the entrance [OTL Fort Pickens] succumbed to a shell from one of our lineships. The other [OTL Fort McRee] was silent, so the men I had sent under Segundus Kalvus appeared to have done their work well. I wonder if the handful of Septens manning it had even woken from their sleep before they found their fortification in our hands. Now, nothing lay between the mouth of the bay and our legions landing here. Nothing, except the third fort, the one my men and I were now in the process of taking [OTL Fort Barrancas].
Surprise had been crucial; poorly maintained as it was, these walls could nonetheless have allowed a small Septen force to hold us off for crucial hours, allowing what heavy guns they had to fire on our troopships as they approached. We had to secure them first, and we had. Now it was time to fight our way through the facility before our opponents could rally. Speed; it was the same lesson Lugallus Rivarius would soon go on to teach the Septens. Like a bantamweight boxer repeatedly hitting a much larger opponent in the face; he could not strike a blow heavy enough to knock him out, but he could keep him off-balance until his heavier friend and ally – our reinforcements – could arrive. I smiled at that metaphor; I had been talking to Perse’s salt of the earth friend Beau too much, with his love of boxing. Then the reminder of Perse wiped the smile off my face. I shunted the thought aside once more and focused on my job.
It was a hard fight. Sutardus, whose skills lay in long-distance sniping, was wasted here and was lucky to escape with a minor wound that took him out of the fight. The opponents might have been complacent and caught off-guard, but they were wise enough to use stairwells and narrow corridors as pinch points against us as we sought to take over. I regret that, though it was not my intention, in practice we often ended up using bold and fanatical local cadres as human shields; they would attack frontally and draw the opponents’ attention while we tried to flank them through alternative routes. But they knew this fort far better than we did, and I lost too many friends in that fight. Still, while they were fighting us, they could not be doing anything against Lugallus Kadrus’ men as they landed. We had cut the Lectel lines and I was mostly certain we had managed to destroy the Photel mast by now; those commandeered protcars had been useful. But I could not afford to relax, to say that fine, we could just hole up these Septens until they were forced to surrender. We could not be sure of everything they had in their arsenal, both in terms of literal weapons or in tricks that might still let them alert their nationalistically blinded colleagues elsewhere.
So we pushed on, through that shadowy hell of concrete corridors lit only by flickering, hissing luftlights at best, aware that every door we opened could bring a hail of bullets from the other side, cutting short a precious human life in an instant. We persisted, for we had no choice. After a while, which seemed like years, it felt that our opponents’ morale suddenly collapsed. Perhaps their lookouts had seen signs of our ships and men arriving in the bay in great numbers, and the rumour had been passed down; I did not get to see that glorious sight myself.
It was tempting to cheer as our opponents finally broke and fled, but I knew I had to secure the primerus’ office. While sending my men to pursue the fleeing opponents, I took it on myself and headed off alone. Foolhardy, perhaps, but after all the loud bangs and richochets and blood, I needed time along with my thoughts.
Yet our local cadre friends, of course, had other ideas. I glimpsed them out of the corner of my eye as I searched the shadowy, chaotic fort for the office, heading in random directions, ignoring orders. I knew they had been through a lot, and I did not query them. Occasionally I still heard distant gunshots, and after comparing them to my shaky mental map of the fort, I decided to head in the direction of one particular set.
I knew I was heading in the right direction when I saw, displayed on a wall behind glass, that lying rag of the Septens. The gold stars on the red cross were barely distinguishable in the dim, flickering synthetic twilight, but both stood out from the darker blue background even though the colours were shades of grey-brown. It was as though all the claimed vitality had been leached out of it. It was torn and ragged, too, with a plaque below stating in the debased dialect called English that the rag had been carried by Septen soldiers who had taken this town in the War of Ascension. I paused to reflexively spit on the rag, and it was only then that I realised my mouth was as dry as the grave. Fatigue threatened to hit my body like a wave, but I pushed through, as I had done so many times before in the conflict over in Zone 7. So long as this world was imperfect, so long as Celatores were needed, it was never time to rest.
The sounds of gunshots were growing more intermittent, but I still followed them, now more cautious, rifle in hand. I stepped over several corpses. Most, sadly, were in civilian garb with makeshift black armbands to indicate their allegiance: our poor brave cadres. Occasionally, they had taken one of their opponents with them, and a slovenly Septen lay in a pool of slowly clotting blood, black under the dim lights. As though to foreshadow that world beneath the black flag when no-one would have to shed blood ever again.
I finally entered the office as a cadre member I recognised – his local name was George – collapsed before me, a bullet in his brain. As he fell, it revealed a lone Septen brandishing a revolving pistol. My mind rapidly reconstructed the scene; before him on a desk was a second, discarded pistol, its drum evidently emptied of bullets in making some of the corpses I had seen. Also on the desk was a large metal bin that had been hastily filled with papers and cardboard files, a small container of flammable cleaning fluid, and a cigarette lighter. Evidently the Septen had been planning to destroy important documents before they could fall into our hands, but our cadres, Dyeus bless them, had at least managed to slow him down. With their lives, they had bought time for me to stop him.
Which I would have done, had my trusty Pazifikador not chosen this moment to jam. I looked down in shock, a movement that would probably have been comic under other circumstances. I had failed to sufficiently clean the blood with Perse’s handkerchief, the sort of rookie mistake that I would have yelled at a raw recruit for and put him on latrine duty. It showed how distracted the thought of her had made me. It was about to get me killed.
Reflexively, I immediately sought cover instead, only to find there was very little. I knocked over a small table as a bullet whined over my head, but it provided insufficient protection. “Don’t move!” the Septen cried in a voice made harsh by yelling many orders over the past hour; I suspected mine would sound much the same. He came closer and loomed over me, drawing a bead on my forehead but not firing. A half-gloating, half-terrified grin came over his face. He was a tough man, but running to fat, probably a victim of the same exploitative way of life that had literally and metaphorically corrupted Septen occupation forces across this region.
“Hands up!” As the flickering luftlights hissed to a moment of intensity and cast his face into sharp relief, I realised to my shock that I recognised him. I did not know his name, but his face was one of a few that had been burned into my memory. He was one of the passers-by who had scowled at me for kissing Perse in the street. He hadn’t been wearing his uniform then: why? Was he a spy? Or had he just preferred not to be recognisable when making use of the local drug dens or houses of ill repute?
I raised my hands to shoulder height only, letting my useless rifle swing limply from its strap. My only other weapon was a knife in my belt, and there was little chance of me being able to draw it while he trained that pistol on my head. His past handiwork, on the remains of our poor cadre members littering the floor around us, betrayed that no matter his other failings, he was clearly an excellent shot. “You are in command?” I asked in English, vaguely recognising his dimly-lit rank insignia as that of a major, as the Septens named it.
He laughed harshly. “Damn right I’m in command! Or I should be,” he added sourly. “Looks like you torchies have overrun the place while we were all in our beds with one arm around a whore and the other around a bottle.” Well, at least he realised it.
“Not ‘torchies’,” I corrected him mildly. “We are—”
“Oh yes, I know,” he said, waving the pistol slightly for emphasis without breaking his aim. To my surprise, he switched to broken Novalatina. “Societistas, followers of Sanchus. You should like these place, nobody have known which country it were since I were an boy.”
“You speak the true tongue,” I said, keeping my tone diplomatically neutral to avoid giving away what I thought of his proficiency.
“I speaks it. Always good to keeps your option open, naught?” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “Let me speak you, your way look a lot sensibler since war breaks? Lots-thousands die in mud and disease, for what? Why continue?”
I was surprised. If he really had any level of sympathy with us... “Then why kill all these?” I asked, gesturing at the bodies around me. “Why not join us?”
“You did ask not before you attack,” he explained, leaning on his desk chair, though his gun hand remained firmly trained on me. “Maybe I considers it. Maybe not. You could take not risk, naught? I understands.” He laughed. “What if now I give thisses?” He gestured with his other hand at the documents. “You offers place for me? I know where secret gold reserve buried, too. Need not tell, ah, Lugallus?”
His reflexive appeal to corruption sickened me, but so long as I faced his weapon, I could not risk it. “Hand those over and I give you my word you will be treated with honour,” I said.
The Septen major shrugged, again not shifting his gun hand a fraction of a
susius [fingerbreadth]. “Looks like I has not choose much, eh?”
Then everything happened too fast.
There was a noise at one of the doors. A figure, barely visible in the dim light, burst in. The silhouette was wielding a rifle. Instantly, casually, the Septen turned and fired at them. It was not a headshot – he wasn’t that good – but the figure let out a cry and collapsed a few feet away, momentum carrying him on. A rectangular object flew from his chest area, landing near my overturned table.
Reflexively, my eyes squinted in the dim light to read it. The luftlights flickered bright again and the words on the cover, picked out in gold against the black leather, shone to treacherous life:
UNIDAS PER SOCIEDADIS
AUDORE PABLO SANCHEZ
I had seen this copy of Sanchez’s first great work before. I had seen her devouring it with the eagerness of a child who has just learned to read. I had told her off for carrying it around with her like a talisman, warning her of what might happen if the police or local enforcers found it on her person.
Slowly, with inexorable dread, my eyes leapt to the fallen figure. Face down, but her dark hand flung before her told the story. As did the scream she had let out, only to be cut horribly short.
Persephone.
“Damn n---------r b------h,” the major said dismissively in his own tongue, before switching back to Novalatina. “All right. We do be having deal?”
I stared at him for a long moment. It was probably just as well it was so dim, as otherwise he would probably have seen it in my eyes.
Without another word, I leapt to my feet, curling around one leg to kick
Unity Through Society into the air and roughly in the direction of the major’s face. I had never been so grateful for all the Human Football I had played with the local children in Zone 7. The major let out a reflexive cry and shot, but his instincts betrayed him; his pistol tracked towards the moving object, his lower animal urges telling him that was the threat. And this man had a lot of lower animal urges, I sensed.
The distraction lasted only a moment, but it was enough to let me leap over the table, smack the pistol out of his hand with my left, and simultaneously use my right to pull my knife from my belt. A moment later, I was holding it to his throat as I bent him over backward against the desk. This man might be a crack shot, but he was clearly not in his element when it came to hand-to-hand. Fear showed in his eyes, yet amid the fear was confusion. “What...?” he managed.
“Offer me your gold,” I said in a low, dangerous voice, speaking English. “Offer me your secrets. Offer me everything you have.”
“It’s yours!” he squeezed out. Not the only thing, either; my leg, braced against his, suddenly felt warm and wet. If I could have been more disgusted than I already was.
“I want something else,” I said softly. “I want the precious human life back of that woman you just killed without a thought.”
He stared at me in genuine confusion for a moment. “What, you mean that n---?”
I cut him off, literally, as my blade drew a droplet of blood from his throat. Up close, his eyes were those of a pig. Appropriate.
“You said you would treat me with honour!” he squeaked.
“I keep that promise,” I said, half to myself. It was true, in a sense. Few would dispute the justice of what I was about to do. But not even the most deviationist of the lickspittle braindead morons claiming to represent Sanchezism nowadays would probably concede that it was acceptable for me to make him understand what was happening first, in the way I did. I do not care. I know I am not a good human.
Perhaps, and call me a deviationist myself if you wish, sometimes humanity needs those who are not good humans.
“My name is Markus Garzius,” I told him. “You killed my lover. Her name was Persephone Weeks. Now die, you bastard.”
I rammed the blade into his neck so hard it almost severed his spine.
The body slumped into pooling blood. I conscientiously shoved it off the desk lest the blood spatter the papers its former inhabitant had sought to destroy. We could probably have made more sense of them if he lived. A coward like that would be easy to intimidate into giving away secrets, even if he hadn’t hinted already he’d have done it. As a result, it would take the cryptographers time to understand them, and maybe miss opportunities that might get fellow Celatores killed.
It is easy to play such moral games. I did not care then, I do not care now. All I know is that what I did felt right.
Then, my world was turned upside down again.
I happened to look down at the copy of
Unity Through Society where it had fallen. With sorrow, I picked it up. It was then that I noticed the hole. A bullet had penetrated it, leaving a larger exit hole. Surely the major hadn’t managed to hit it midair when I kicked it as a distraction? He wasn’t
that good a shot?
Behind me, I heard a wheezing gasp. I spun, and saw that dark hand was moving, pushing ineffectually at the floor as its owner tried to raise herself up. Perse looked up at me with pained eyes. “Markus...?” she managed.
I barely remember the next few moments, as I helped her into a nearby chair, fussing over her and mumbling in a confused mix of Novalatina, English and even the local corrupt tongues I’d learned in Zones 7 and 19 over the years. At one point I wasn’t sure if I was kissing her or trying to resuscitate her. [Probable anachronism – editor’s note] “Perse! You’re – how –”
She grinned at me, despite the pain in her eyes. There was wet blood on her chest, but not much of it, and a strange extra strap around it that didn’t belong to her rifle. She pulled her shirt open, revealing a shallow wound. “I think,” she gasped, “broke my collarbone...but that’s all...”
Confusion reigned, until my mind finally made sense of that extra strap. “You...you were carrying around the Book with you?”
“Took the bullet,” she confirmed with a gasp. I realised her earlier scream had been cut short by the force of the impact winding her, nothing more. “Slowed it down...broke the strap...” Hence why the book had fallen at my feet.
I gazed down at the wounded copy of Sanchez’s genius insights, then at my wounded love. “Persephone...I thought you were...I thought we...”
Then the tears welled up. And, as the final bombardment of the remaining Septen positions by our fleet provided better background fireworks than any new year’s celebration could have, over the slain body of the foul divisions that had poisoned this land for so long, we kissed once more.
I never did learn the major's name.
Three days later, we were there in the crowd, Perse with her arm in a sling to protect her healing collarbone, to watch the speech. Today, not only the nationalistically blinded gang regimes but also the deviationists in power over the Liberated Zones foolishly claim that it was not the real Kapud who had come to speak, merely a double. As though
I could be fooled by some imitation? I knew he had travelled here, probably via an ironshark in great secrecy, to show how important our breakthrough was.
I was already overcome with emotion, but then was shocked anew with everyone else when his voice boomed out like that of a god. I learned later that it was the first public demonstration of a new kind of electrical amplification that our scholars had worked on, far superior to the compressed-air variety we all knew. It brought the Kapud’s voice to not all those assembled in Seville Square – Celatores, local loyalists who could now openly assemble, and other locals uncertain of the future – but blasted it across most of the town.
The Kapud spoke in Novalatina, with a translation provided by an aide. It was strange to think that the way most of these locals heard the stirring speech would come from that anonymous assistant, not from the Kapud of Humanity, but such things illustrate just why a single language is needed.
“
People of Zon4Urb38, be not afeared. For longer than any of you have been alive, you have been ruled by those who have lied to you.
They lied that it was necessary to travel here from Zon11Ins1 [Great Britain] because there was insufficient space or wealth there for you. There was; they merely did not wish to share it.
They lied that it was necessary for you to conquer the people who already lived here in Zone 4 and take their land, because there was insufficient for you to share and live together in harmony. There was; but that was too difficult for them. It was so much easier to slaughter thousands and built a colony on a legacy of blood.
They lied that it was necessary for those of darker skin to be stolen from Zone 10 and be brought here against their will, to work the fields from dawn till dusk, their very lives stolen from them as readily as if they were murdered. It was not; your rulers merely wished to make money, money that would never be shared with the rest of you, no matter your skin colour.
They lied that it was necessary for you to divide yourself from your neighbours, to create that lie called Carolina atop that lie called America, for the sake of maintaining that division within you. For what? What did it profit any of you, save those who owned the plantations, to keep some of you enslaved and others overseeing them? You know now that that work could have been done by machines.
They lied that it was necessary for you to fight and die to protect that lie, to sacrifice your children to the cause of a rag on a stick. To sell out to the Meridians, the Firstslain as we name them, and surrender your control to their companies just so you might maintain the division between you. And then, a few years later, the Firstslain changed their minds and eliminated the practice of slavery, as is right and good, for no man should be the property of another. And you learned that slavery was, indeed, not required for prosperity. But what of your sons who now lay mouldering in the grave for no reason other than to defend the lie that it was?
There are many in this world who believe the lie that they live in a nation, a land with its own language and its own flag and its own faith, things that mark their difference from other humans, things that divide them. But no-one, no-one in the world, has seen that falsehood demonstrated as thoroughly, as tragically, as you. The nation called Carolina was built only, solely, on maintaining a division among yourselves. Because you divided yourselves, you were weakened, exploited by others, turned into a laughingstock. All the pride you invested in those young men who had fought and died for you was shown to be hollow, when you saw that no cause is worth dying for, that any cause can vanish like a will-o’-the-wisp a mere handful of years later; while widows and mourning mothers grow old under the summer sun, no-one even remembers the reason why their husbands and sons ever took up arms.
But now the truth is here. I do not know how much you know of what outsiders call Sanchezism or Societism. Whatever you do, cast it aside. Know only that we stand against all division. All humans are humans, and all are of equal worth. Some are suited to different kinds of work than others, and our meritocratic tests will identify this. But all souls are created equal, all deserve family, home and security. All deserve to live in a world secure in the knowledge that war will never come to them, that their children will never be taken from them to fight under a lie of a flag that no-one will remember a century on.
For you, that world begins today. And, as I ask your Amigo Karderus and Amiga Ferrera to help me, I now hoist the last flag you will ever look upon. In time, perhaps, no flag will be needed at all. But so long as this world is divided, look upon the plain black field and the Threefold Eye, the eye that sees only so long as its three supporters are united, and know that this is the beginning of the end of history. For history is nothing more than a record of wars and battles; and in the future, there will be none left to depict.
Peace and prosperity begins now. Publazon Benestarum! For the public good!
As I applauded twice as hard to make up for Perse’s inability to, I shouted at her over the noise. “That should’ve been you up there! That Sally Smith, ‘Amiga Ferrera’ my
trasserus, only joined us a month ago!” Like Perse, she was a dark-skinned woman, while her colleague was a light-skinned man.
“Ricky Carter’s not exactly a longstanding member either,” she said back, struggling to shout without hurting herself. “But they’re the asimcon-friendly ones, I guess.” And, indeed, the bangs of flashes going off, making the Kapud’s tense bodyguards jump as they reflexively feared bomb attacks, would immortalise the moment.
I kissed her. Reflexively, she shied back, glancing around fearfully; we were in a crowd, after all. Then it dawned on her what the laws now were, and she laughed. Then winced, as she hurt herself. “Ow...”
“That’s the last pain you’ll ever have, doing that,” I told her. “And the last fear. Come on. The Kapud may have finished, but we haven’t...”
[13] The average temperature in Pensacola in March is about 17 °C or 62 °F.
[14] I.e. Mexicans, Guatemalans, New Irish, etc. Garzius’ estimate of ‘a hundred’ only means frontline American regulars and not their support crews, and is probably an underestimate even taking that into account.
[15] Fort Blackbeard, built by the Meridians in TTL, is similar to OTL’s Fort Jefferson, which is the third largest fort in the United States but was never finished.
[16] See Part #288.
[17] The Japanese had this problem in the OTL attack on Pearl Harbor, in which pilots would go for unlikely hits on battleships (or what they thought were battleships) while ignoring less prestigious but more strategically important targets.
[18] Of course, in OTL this sort of thing happened regularly in World War II even
after the invention of radar. The phrasing here reflects the fact that in TTL Photrack was invented and popularised in a period of relative peace, so no major wars were fought while it was in its embryonic stages for this to become clear.
[19] In the sense of a communications blackout from Lectel lines being cut and Photel masts being damaged; cities lit with vac-lamps (electric lights) powered from a central station are still the exception rather than the rule. Some Societists may well have sabotaged the luftlight supply network in some cities, but it wasn’t one of their more iconic moves.
[20] Submachine guns. The Novalatina term is the same as the OTL Spanish name for full-size machine guns (Spanish specifies submachine guns as ‘machine pistols’, a term sometimes used in English as well). This is parallel evolution, as the French and Spanish terms for machine guns derive from older pre-existing words for grapeshot cannons and volley guns.
[21] I.e. Molotov cocktails. Zone 8 includes the Polish Front in Europe; the original devisers of the weapon in TTL were Italian. Garzius is giving the local Carolinian/American name for them, but they have different names in different countries. The OTL name caught on because it was a specific black-humour reference by the Finns to Soviet propaganda, from Foreign Minister Molotov, claiming that bombing runs were actually humanitarian aid missions dropping food supplies to starving Finns. Soviet bombs became ‘Molotov bread-baskets’ and the Finns’ petrol bomb was dubbed the Molotov cocktail as ‘the drink to go with his food’. With no such memorable origin story in TTL, everyone has their own name for the weapon, whether a joking one to real cocktails like ‘Devil Brew’ or a straightforward one like ‘spirit bottle bomb’.