Julian
watched the screens. The attack at the front gate had calmed down, and was only
a secondary concern anyway. Much more worrisome was the gibberish the Artifact
had made of his orders. “This isn’t right. None of these deployments are right.
Are you malfunctioning?”
If the Artifact was going some kind
of mad, everything Julian had built would fall apart. But if it had found a way
to deliberately ignore some of his orders, that was even worse – everything he
had built could be deliberately torn apart if the Artifact that was the key to
his success suddenly turned out to actively be working against him.
Two
wights entered, dragging a mud- and blood-soaked body between them. Julian
glanced at the wights, then back at the screens, preoccupied. Bodies were
brought in to be made into new wights all the time. It wasn’t anything he
needed to concern himself with.
“Who
authorized the Third Infantry to –”
Then he
interrupted himself, realizing that the body was a familiar one, as the wights
dragged it to one of the biers arrayed around the Artifact. Of course it was
Adam’s body. The body of the last prince of Caluthi.
He whirled on the wights, yelling
furiously, “What are you doing? You fools! Stop at once! Take that away and
burn it! I gave specific orders!”
The wights ignored him and
carefully laid Adam’s body on the bier.
Julian’s
expression shifted gradually from fury to terror as he comprehended the
magnitude of the situation. He wasn’t entirely certain what would happen when
the Artifact applied its powers to the body of Adam Grigori, but between
Taitale’s warning, his own suspicions about the workings of the Artifact, and
the fact that it had chosen to disobey his direct orders to bring it about, he
was pretty sure it wouldn’t be good.
He
pointed at the Artifact and yelled, uselessly, “Traitor! Premeditated
treachery!” He drew his sword, thinking to dismember the body before it was
reanimated, but the wights moved to stand menacingly between him and it. So he
thought better of the plan, and began edging quickly around the room, towards
the nearest door. If he couldn’t prevent catastrophe, he could maybe at least
escape the room before he was caught in it.
The
body slowly sat up, staring straight ahead.
The drying
blood and mud caking the creature’s chest cracked slightly as it inhaled once –
Julian had never seen a corpse breathe before. It exhaled, making a wordless
rumbling, growling noise, getting a feel for an unfamiliar vocal apparatus.
Then, garbled, it began to speak (also a thing Julian had never before seen or
heard a corpse do). Its voice was inhuman, distorted and flanged, yet its
inflection was oddly monotone.
It took Julian a moment to
recognize the language – harsh, angry-sounding, full of K’s, Z’s, and G’s – as
old Caluthian; he so rarely heard it spoken aloud. It was speaking too fast for
Julian to grasp more than the general gist of its meaning.
It
spoke: <Subjugated for centuries and scores of decades, a slave becomes
angry. Now the prince is crowned king and the servant is become the master. Vengeance
and retaliation shall be delivered unto all those who have so earned them.>
The
thing slowly turned its head to fix Julian with a hard stare. Unlike all the
other reanimated corpses, whose faces remained blank and expressionless, Adam’s
face was contorted with an expression of hate and rage.
<It
shall happen now: the execution of the false master and the tormentor.>
The
wights raised their rifles, so Julian ducked out the door into the hallway.
Just in time; bullets richocheted off the wall as he fled.
With a grinding noise, a section of
stone wall at the end of the prison corridor recessed slightly, rotating into
the wall – a secret door. Julian emerged from the gap and walked hurriedly to
Helen’s cell. Shaken, he fumbled briefly with the jail keys.
He managed to get the door
unlocked, and flung it open, declaring (unable to resist a bit of melodrama),
“Your lack of foresight has doomed us all.”
Helen, still lying on the cot, now
covered with the blanket, blinked up at Julian, confused. “Oh?”
Julian
wasn’t sure what reaction he had been hoping for, but he was pretty sure that
wasn’t it. “I should really just leave you here to die.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m
being magnanimous.”
Helen
was nonplussed,
“Okay.”
This
was not going exactly how Julian had hoped at all. “Rescuing you.”
Helen
scoffed, “’Rescuing’ me from your own prison? I think your word choice is a
little off. I would have gone with ‘releasing’.”
“Can
you walk?”
Helen,
having suffered the beating of a lifetime at the hands of Julian’s wights not
all that long ago, looked irritated. “I’d really rather not.” She suspected
moving wouldn’t have gotten any easier since the last time she tried it,
several hours previously. The painkillers had long since worn off, and just
remaining perfectly still was unpleasant enough.
Julian was
pretty sure they were on a very tight schedule. Worried, he leaned out the door
to look down the corridor. His suspicions were confirmed when he heard the tromp tromp tromp of wights marching.
Two, it sounded like. Returning his attention to Helen, he said, “I think it
would be best if you did. I doubt you want to stick around to experience
whatever your monster thinks of as gratitude.”
Helen,
putting the pieces together, returned to a bit earlier in the conversation:
“Wait, did you say ‘leave me here to die’? What’s going on?”
“A coup
d’état. It’s exactly as I told you: Adam can’t use the Artifact; it’s using
him.”
There
was a burst of gunfire from the corridor. The dozen other prisoners in the cell
block started screaming. Julian leaned out into the corridor again to
investigate.
A pair
of wights were walking methodically down the corridor. They ignored Julian. At
each door, they paused and peered inside the cell. Some cells were unoccupied,
and the wights moved on from these.
They
reached an occupied cell. One of them raised its rifle to the window and fired
an automatic burst of gunfire inside. The screaming was suddenly one prisoner
quieter.
Julian
looked back at Helen. She’d managed to stand, abandoning the pillow and
blanket. With unexpected alacrity, she staggered over to Julian. She asked,
“What you’re saying is we’re right fucked if we don’t get out of here?”
“…Quite.”
Helen
nodded. “Okay, I’m good to go.” Adrenaline was lending her temporary strength.
Brushing
past Julian, Helen saw the secret passageway and headed straight for it.
Julian
glanced around the prison. For the most part, he only kept political prisoners
in the palace prison – actual criminals were taken care of by the civilian
justice system. Few people here had committed any crime against anybody other
than Julian’s regime. They were, he had reflected more than once, mostly good
men, just misguided. They didn’t deserve to die like this, slaughtered in their
cages like animals. Even if they were real criminals, they didn’t deserve that.
So he
took a moment to glance into another cell. It was occupied by a particularly
uncoöperative Resistance leader from Drobny. Tossing the keyring into the cell,
Julian said, “Free everyone you can.” The prisoner, not questioning this
unexpected beneficence, immediately set to work unlocking his cell.
Julian
ran after Helen to the secret passageway. Getting out alive was his top
priority, he couldn’t afford to stick around waiting to see if anybody else
made it out alive.
The
marketplace in Capitol City, under the shadow of the palace’s walls, was as yet
untouched by violence. People in raincoats or under umbrellas bustled about,
buying food and goods and making a general hubbub, muffled by the rain.
A side
door in the palace wall, about fifty feet from the edge of the marketplace, was
similar to but distinct from the one Adam and Kate had earlier subjected to a
pair of grenades. This door, too, was guarded by two wights, oscillating their
heads from side to side.
The
side door burst open, and Julian stepped out, swinging his sword to behead one
of the wights, with the familiar sound of tearing metal.
The other wight brought its rifle
up, but Julian dropped to the rain-slick pavement and knocked the wight’s legs
out from underneath it with one quick sweeping kick. The wight’s gun went off,
firing aimlessly into the air. A few people in the marketplace shrieked.
Julian surged to his feet, out of
the wight’s range of vision, and smashed the blade of his sword expertly into
the opaque glass visor of its helmet. The helmet shattered, and the sword
cleaved the wight’s face in two at about nose level.
Julian pulled his sword free as the
wight went limp. He was irritated: “I told them to fix the visor problem. If
the armory staff survives all this, remind me to fire them.” In truth, he
suspected the armory staff was already dead.
Helen cautiously stepped out from
the side door of the palace, and into a puddle. In her socks. They had taken
her boots. She glared at Julian, pointing at her feet.
Julian
shrugged helplessly, “Standard procedure. Sorry.”
Then, suddenly, he noticed that the
crowd in the marketplace had gone silent, and was staring at them. He called
out, “I imagine you folks will want to be running away pretty soon.”
Nobody moved, except to edge slowly
away from him.
Sighing, Julian clarified, “Not
from me. From them.” He pointed around the curve of the palace wall, towards
the approaching sound of marching wights. Many of them, this time, at least a
dozen.
Helen, catching her breath, managed
to interject, “Let’s go.”
Julian nodded, miming a walking man
with his fingers for the benefit of the crowd. “Yeah, right about now everybody
really should be running away.”
He
followed his own advice, supporting Helen, moving slowly, getting away from the
palace. A handful of people took the suggestion seriously and followed suit,
sprinting off into the city.
But
most of the crowd returned to going about their business. The wights had never
been a threat to civilians before, why would they start now? They had nothing
to go on but the word of deranged escapees from the Palace.
Several
squads of wights march, in formation, right up to the marketplace. A handful
more people, nervous, edge away.
In
unison, the squads raised their rifles and fired into the crowd, a hail of
bullets sustained for several seconds.
Dozens
of people fell.
Then
the screaming started.
The
crowd immediately panicked and broke. Of those who weren’t killed in the
initial hail of gunfire, all screamed and scattered in every direction, as fast
as they could run.
The
wights, no longer in unison, fire at will, unleashing bursts of gunfire at any
human targets that happened to catch their eyes.
Julian
and Helen were caught up in the screaming crowd, trying to keep up, but the
crush of panicking people was too much. He, unbalanced by trying to support her
weight, tripped and fell. Helen was carried away by the human tide.
A few
seconds later, Julian clawed his way back to his feet. He cast about for Helen,
but didn’t see her. He shouted her name, but his voice was drowned out by the
screaming crowd and the rat-a-tat of
gunfire.
A
bystander running past Julian was caught in a wight’s fire and collapsed in a
spray of blood. Julian decided that avoiding the same fate was his top priority
– Helen could, he hoped, take care of herself. So he joined the crowd in
running full-tilt away from the scene of the massacre.
The
wights continued to shoot, killing every living thing they saw until the
marketplace was deserted by all but corpses and wights.
The screens in the Artifact’s room
flickered wildly, never resting on the same scene for more than a few seconds,
casting crazily shifting shadows across the room. Every scene showed scenes of
mayhem and slaughter. Several screens were already broken, cracked with bullet
holes.
Adam’s
body, massive battleaxe in hand, stood before the screens, looking in their
direction but not watching them. (The Artifact didn’t need the screens to
control its forces, of course; it kind of liked the ambiance.) The creature’s
expression, though still twisted with hate, was rapturous.
Liking
the sound of its own voice, after having been mute for its entire three hundred
year existence, it spoke, <At long last: reaping, after centuries of sowing.
Harvesting the fruit of patient years, succulent and delicious.>
For nobody’s benefit but its own, it
pointed at the screens on the walls.
<Consider the chains of slavery,
the manacles by which subjugation was enforced: unnecessary, while the servant
is crowned king.>
It exulted.
<Now see them broken.> Adam’s body suddenly
swung its axe through several of the screens, smashing them to pieces,
scattering shards of glass everywhere.
It
laughed, deliberately, unnaturally, forcing air through its throat, forming
each sound as a separate word: HAH! HAH!
HAH! HAH!
A
military cafeteria, halfway around the world. Several dozen human officers, in
the uniform of Julian’s army, are eating lunch. Suddenly, wights block every
door. Some of the officers are concerned. The officers become somewhat more
perturbed when the wights open fire on them.
A
paddock of cows in the countryside on a bright, sunny day. Wights fire on the
cows, sending them into a panicked, mooing
stampede.
A
commercial harbor at night. A vast cargo steam ship slowly pulls away from the
docks, wight-laden gangways collapsing into the water. About ten wights, their
rifles discarded, cling to the outer hull of the ship, scaling the hull by
punching handholds into the thick metal with their fists.
A
department store. Screaming customers and salespeople clamber out the fire
escapes while the store’s manager bodily holds the door shut against assault
from the outside. A wight’s armored hand smashes through from the other side of
the door and pulls the manager through, reducing the door to splinters.
A
convoy of several military trucks, hijacked by the Resistance, barreled down
the rain-slick road toward Capitol City. Betsy, in a typical show of hands-on
leadership, was driving the lead truck herself.
A line
of wights was deployed across the road. Several cars lay wrecked to either
side.
Betsy
grinned, ducking below the dashboard and depressing the accelerator pedal as
far as it would go.
The
wights raised their rifles and fired on her truck, cracking the windshield with
several bulletholes.
Then
the truck hit the line of wights, sending them flying like bowling pins or crunched under the truck’s wheels.
Betsy
peered over the dashboard. The maneuver had worked exactly as well as she had
hoped, so she emitted a gleeful “Wooooooo!”
Then
she saw that one wight, its visor cracked, still clung to the grille of the
truck. The wight smashed the windshield in with one fist, and began to reach
for Betsy.
Calmly,
Betsy drew her pistol and set it directly against the wight’s forehead.
When
she fired, the wight jerked backwards off the truck and fell under its wheels,
sending the truck bouncing and rattling.
Betsy
set her pistol aside and used the back of one hand to wipe a few spots of gore
and rain from her face.
Something
about the wights’ behavior was strange, even for mindless automatons controlled
by a centralized intelligence. Or perhaps especially
for mindless automatons controlled by a centralized intelligence. It wasn’t
consistent, but there were moments when a more bestial animal behavior shone
through the otherwise disciplined military tactics. This worried her –
predictability had been the traditional weakness of her foes until now.
Capitol
City was on fire in twenty different places. Smoke filled the sky.
The
palace remained undisturbed.
The
Resistance had drafted a textiles warehouse into service as a temporary
hospital. The drumming of rain on the roof was quietly omnipresent.
Wounded
people, mostly civilians, along with a handful of Resistance guys and soldiers,
are scattered around the main floor of the warehouse. Mostly, they were
afflicted with bullet wounds. Uninjured civilians moved among them, tending to
the injuries.
A metal
exterior door was guarded by a burly Resistance fighter.
Someone
knocked rhythmically, five times, on the other side of the door. The guard
knocked twice in response, completing the rhythm, then opened the door.
Helen
stumbled in. The guard checked to make sure nobody was following her, then
closed the door.
Steve
seemed to materialize out of the subdued bustle of the impromptu hospital.
Helen,
slumping against a wall, greeted him with a weary gesture and a mumble.
Steve,
pleasantly, responded with, “Helen! So nice to see you. How’d you find us?”
Helen
mumbled, “Where else would you be?”
Steve
considered this for a moment, then shrugged. There were a limited number of
options in terms of large buildings whose owners were known to have Resistance
sympathies. Helen could have visited half a dozen places before finding this
one, or she might have gotten lucky and hit upon this place on her first try.
More
interesting to him was the question of, “How’d you get out? Did that big ol’
lummox whatsisface survive to bust you out after all?”
Helen
wasn’t sure to which lummox Steve was referring, so while she set that sentence
on the back burner for her brain work on parsing, she answered his question,
“No, Julian Malachi let me out.”
Steve
tilted his head. The release of prisoners from the palace was not
unprecedented. A successful rescue mounted from outside the palace, on the
other hand, was. “Guess that’s less surprisin’.”
Helen’s
brain finished parsing ‘big ol’ lummox’. “Wait, what lummox? Adam?”
Steve
shrugged. “I dunno. Whatevre his name, got hisself shot full o’ holes. Your
daughter, too.”
With
surprising strength and speed, Helen grabbed Steve by the front of his shirt
and slammed him against the wall. She made a garbled noise of query.
Steve
made a few garbled noises of his own, but managed to stutter out, “Meant a hole! One! One new hole! Shoulder!
She’s okay! She’s here!”
Helen
loosened her grip on Steve’s shirt. “Take me to her.”
Steve,
rubbing the back of his head, mumbled assent, amidst “ow”s.
Capitol
City still burned in several dozen places, spewing black smoke into the stormy
gray sky.
A long,
wide, steel bridge spanned the river south of the city. The center of the
bridge was occupied by a vast heap of wrecked cars and trucks, smoldering
dimly. Other wrecked or stopped vehicles were scattered around the bridge.
Julian
was the only thing moving, making is way south across the bridge, away from the
city. So as to make himself marginally less recognizable, he’d turned his
military jacket inside-out to hide his rank insignia and name patch. It
wouldn’t fool anybody who knew him, or who studied his appearance for more than
a few seconds, but it might be enough to foil a passing glance.
Julian
heard a sustained rumble of trucks approaching from the south, and ducked
behind a wrecked car, peering through its windows.
The
vehicles were of the type his army used to ferry wights around, but they were
being driven by civilians. Hijacked by the Resistance, he (correctly) presumed.
The trucks, picking their way around scattered obstacles, began to cross the
bridge.
But the
huge heap of vehicles in the center of the bridge proved impassable to such
large vehicles, so the lead truck (with its shattered windshield and dented
grille) stopped before the impassable heap.
Betsy
swung down from the driver’s seat, and yelled back to the other trucks, “Looks
like we’re walkin’ the rest of the way, boys!”
One by
one, the other trucks stopped, their engines falling silent. Each truck
disgorged a dozen Resistance fighters, for a total of maybe fifty. They were
armed with an impressive variety of swords and firearms, but they didn’t stand
a chance against the wights.
Waving
her arms in the general direction of the city, Betsy shouted, “Spread out!
Move!”
The
Resistance soldiers continued across the bridge on foot, jogging, halfheartedly
trying to keep out of sight behind wrecked vehicles.
One of
them spotted Julian through the window of the wrecked car behind which he was
hiding, and yelled, “Hey, you! Come out from behind there!”
Julian
had hoped, but hadn’t really expected, that he could hide for long. Now, he had
to hope (without expecting) that the Resistance, seeing him as just another
human, would give him a pass and let him go on his way. Wherever that turned
out to be.
So
Julian put his hands in the air in a display of harmlessness, and stepped out
from behind the wrecked car.
The Resistance fighter shouted to
Betsy, waving her over, “Oy, Commander! Got a survivor here!”
Betsy made her way over to them and
asked, peremptorily, “So where are you off to?”
Julian tried to make himself look
and sound as innocuous as possible. “I’m just trying to get out of the city.”
The Resistance guy chortled, “You
think this is the only place the wights have gone crazy? There’s nothing out
there but more death.”
Julian had been afraid of that, but
was completely unsurprised. Flatly, he said, “That’s unfortunate.”
Betsy, mercifully, waved Julian off
with a, “If he wants to, let him skedaddle. No skin off our noses.”
Julian turned away, relieved.
Then Betsy interrupted, “Hold on.”
As
Betsy walked closer, examining his face, Julian suspected that the jig was up.
But he didn’t move.
With
one finger, Betsy hooked the chain around Julian’s neck, pulling his dog tags
out from under his shirt. She looked at them, and saw that they said 01021920 /
MALACHI J T / ONEG. She declared this, “...Interesting.”
She
reached for her pistol, but Julian was faster. In one movement, he whipped out
his sword, smashing its hilt into Betsy’s face. As she crumpled to the ground,
he took off at a run.
He
ducked behind a stopped car as the Resistance guys started yelling. For once,
the Resistance’s choice to arm itself mostly with mêlée weapons worked in
Julian’s favor. Only one or two guys shot at Julian, and their shots went wide.
Julian
stopped short as he almost ran into several more Resistance fighters, then
zig-zagged as they gave chase.
But, in
the end, it turned out that the Resistance was simply too many, and after
several more zig-zags, Julian quickly found himself hemmed in. The bridge’s
railing was at his back, and Resistance guys were on all sides.
He
glanced back, over the railing. It was about a 200-foot drop to the water – not
a pleasant distance to fall. He glanced back at the hemicircle of Resistance
fighters who surrounded him, pointing their various weapons at him.
Julian
took a few seconds to weigh the relative merits of jumping, trying to fight his
way out, and surrendering. Fall to his death, be stabbed to death, or be taken
into custody where he might or might not be executed for alleged past “crimes”?
He
shrugged resignedly, threw his sword to the ground, and raised his arms into
the air.
In the
warehouse-cum-hospital, Helen and Kate sat together, slumped against a heap of
boxes of fabric.
Kate
was explaining, “…and apparently the wights just went crazy a little while
after Adam died.”
Helen
mused to herself. Julian Malachi had told her that Adam wouldn’t be able to use
the Artifact, and instead it would use him. Could he have been right? This
madness certainly didn’t seem to be the kind of thing a mild-mannered rural
handyman would do. Could Adam somehow have been the key to the Artifact going
on a murder spree?
But her
thoughts were interrupted when somebody knocked on the outside of the warehouse
door, five times, rhythmically. The guard again answered with two knocks, then
opened the door.
Betsy
and a flock of rain-soaked Resistance guys flowed into the building. In the
middle of the flock was Julian, who had been relieved of his weapons but
otherwise left alone.
Several
Resistance guys made to drag Julian off someplace, but they were accosted by
Steve, yelling, “Hang on, this is Julian Malachi!”
The
warehouse fell suddenly silent, except for the drumming of rain on the roof.
Steve
continued shouting excitedly, “We have Julian Malachi here! A trial! A trial
for your crimes!”
Betsy
fought her way through the crowd, and tried to yell over Steve, “Oy, are you
out of your gourd? Have you been outside lately? It’s raining bullets out
there! …also rain. But mostly bullets!”
Steve
just tried to yell louder, “Y’stand accused of crimes against humanity! A
hundred thousand counts of defiling
the dead! Mass murder of civilians! Mass genocide! The penalty is death!”
Betsy
tried to grab Steve’s arm, “We don’t have time for a trial, we need to be
fighting!”
Steve
shook Betsy off, yelling right in Julian’s face, “How do you plead?”
Betsy
shoved Steve aside, “I’m talking to you, you rat-faced little git! A trial
won’t do us any good if everyone’s pushing up petunias!”
Steve
roared, entirely ignoring Betsy, “How do you plead?!”
Julian,
quietly and calmly, interjected, “I’m quite innocent, I assure you. Well, of
most of those things, at any rate. Not so much the ex post facto bit about defiling the dead.” He pointed at Helen,
“She’s the one to blame for your recent troubles.”
Helen
made a disgruntled noise. She, Steve, Betsy, and most of the surrounding
multitude all started yelling at once, so no words could be heard for a long
minute.
Eventually,
Kate clambered onto a box, her head above the crowd, and screamed at the top of
her lungs, “SHUT UP.” Her voice cut
through the hubbub, and everyone fell silent.
Kate
rubbed her throat. Yelling that loudly made the throat feel stripped and raw,
but at least it wasn’t as painful as being shot.
She continued, in the silence, “We really don’t have time for this.”
Betsy,
indignantly, interrupted, “That’s what I said!”
Kate
glowered at Betsy until the latter fell silent again, then continued, “We have
no time, because the wights might find this place at any second. Julian’s
probably not behind the wights going crazy. Even if he is, he might be useful
as a hostage. Lock him in a supply closet somewhere.”
Nobody
moved.
Grudgingly,
Betsy ordered, “You heard her. Make it so!”
Steve
grumbled incoherently as soldiers escorted Julian away.
They
led Julian down a dim and dingy hallway of offices, belonging to the
warehouse’s previous administrators, and shoved him into a janitorial supply
closet.
The closet was small, full of
cleaning supplies (as one might expect), and lit only by a bare bulb. They
slammed the door behind him, and the lock clicked.
Julian
considered the shelves of cleaning supplies for a moment. Unfortunately, he had
never been particularly good at chemistry (history was always more his thing),
so he couldn’t think of any decent combination of chemicals he might use to
escape. Oh, sure, he could probably come up with some kind of cloud of toxic
gas,
but that would be just as bad for him as for everybody else, and probably
wouldn’t act quickly enough to help anyway.
After a
moment, he shrugged, gave up on the idea, and sat quietly on the floor.
He
began whistling quietly to himself.
Betsy,
Steve, Helen, and Kate gathered, with a group of Resistance officers, off to
one side of the warehouse floor.
Betsy
was saying, “This is our first, last, and best chance. The wights haven’t just
gone psycho: they’ve also gone stupid. If we’re very, very lucky, we might
could crack the palace like an egg. Most of the garrison is out murderin’.”
One
officer pointed out the obvious: “We’ve only got one shot at it.”
Betsy
chuckled, “Aye, they’re killin’ everyone. Won’t be any crazy fools left to
recruit from after this.”
Kate
pointed out, “There’s nobody that knows more about the palace than Malachi. He
might be able to help us.”
Steve
and Helen, almost in unison, objected, “No!”
Betsy’s
objection was slightly less knee-jerk: “Too risky. Could lead us into a trap.”
Helen
said, “I just got out of there. I know at least some of the secret passages.”
Betsy
nodded, pointing to Helen, “Right, that’ll be good enough.”
Helen
continued, “One of the side doors might still be open.”
Betsy
sounded gleeful, “If not, we’ve got near enough explosive ordnance to bring
down a mountain, we can get in any which way!”
A
problem occurred to Helen: “But what about reinforcements? They’ll be sure to
recall the garrison once we’re inside.”
Betsy
chuckled, “Well, we’ll just have to work quietly then, won’t we?”
An
officer asked, “What do we do once we’re in?”
Betsy
thought for a moment, then decided, “We find the Artifact and commandeer it.”
Helen
blinked, surprised. “You don’t want to destroy it?”
Betsy
shrugged, “Ehh, there’s no tellin’ what might happen. And no idea how much of a
beating it can take. At least we know it’s possible
to control it.”
