| 11: Four Save The Underground It was a period of darkness. His Divinity Formicus of Sioux ruled the land with an iron fist, founding a new Columnian Empire and sending his troopers to capture the lands of Paralilium and Augusta. He released the population from mind control but imposed harsh martial law. The land was at peace, however, except for roving bands of freedom fighters collectively known as the Underground Army. On the side of the rebels was the Columnian Air Force, the bulk of which had been above the range of the mind control. The gods themselves seemed to mourn the situation, for a gas giant had eclipsed the sun, shrouding the entire world in a permanent darkness. The leaders of the Underground, pursued by an ever-vigilant Columnian military, fought back. Winning the support of the land, they engaged in a terrorist campaign against Imperial military targets at home and abroad. They grabbed effective control of the hinterland for the reign of Lady Protector Loe, provoking Formicus to resettle all citizens in the city of Columnia proper. To fight back, Formicus' empire drew up plans for a terrible new weapon with which to drive the Air Force from the skies and the Underground to the grave. *** Pilliwrest was a new neighborhood created by the resettlement, with drab housing projects shutting out the meager light of the moon. From the hastily-constructed sewers crawled a man dressed in dark clothing with a bandana across his forehead. He looked up, seeing the underside of a truck above him, and pushed aside the manhole cover. Rolling out from under the vehicle, he was followed by three other people, two girls and a guy, all three dressed in similar commando fashion. With the coming of the eclipse, night and day were rendered meaningless and people were bustling the streets at all hours. They traveled mainly to and from the munitions factory, the main source of employment for the people of the Pilliwrest projects. The four were traveling silently, unnoticed in the dark bustle of the crowd. Soon enough, they arrived at the factory, where more soldiers of Formicus' empire watched over the entrance. "Now," commanded the leader, pulling out a silenced handgun and disposing of a guard. Quickly, efficiently, they were eliminated; but some of the incoming workers began to panic. "Forward!" the leader once again commanded, taking a left at the first hallway. They had all memorized the floor plans by heart in preparation for the mission, and knew where their objective lay. As they ran, they passed by the main floor of the factory, where metal was smelted down into the shape of bullets, where they were injected with chemical explosives, and packaged into cartridges. Bullets, fortunes and empires were all recast in that hall, all to the fancy of Formicus. But the guerrillas had little time for such lofty pontifications, for they had just been noticed by security and were being shot at from below. Alarms were being sounded, and the clatter of footsteps from down the hall meant that more trouble was coming. "Colonel, let me hold them off!" demanded a girl with long reddish-brown hair and a serious expression. "You three get to the objective!" "Nothing doing, Albiona!" the colonel rebutted. "We'll make sacrifices when necessary." They ran for an elevator up to the offices just below the ceiling, but were cut off as troopers poured out of the hallway. "Son of a-" cursed the other man. "Pershing, use it!" the colonel commanded. The second girl, who looked through-and-through like a military type, bit the pin off of a grenade and threw it at the oncoming soldiers. The four commandos leapt off the walkway down towards the manufacturing floor below as fire blossomed just above their heads. Pershing and the colonel managed to grab onto a chain hanging from the ceiling; the other two hit the concrete floor. "Shit, he's wounded!" cursed the colonel, watching as the other male commando broke his leg. "We need to get to the office," reminded Pershing. "Hold on tight." With that warning, she kicked off against the wall, and shot a lever on the floor that controlled the chain. They went flying up and backwards then, and as they reached the perihelion of their swing they shot quickly the other way, having less distance to travel with a smaller length of chain. This sent them hurtling through the glass windows of the office as they both let go. "Freaking SCORE," approved the colonel. They then took stock of their surroundings, leafing through desk drawers and checking files for something. "Colonel David, come check this out," Pershing instructed, browsing through a file folder on a desk. "Could this be what Her Ladyship sent us to find?" David turned around and took the files from her, looking at them. He saw blueprints for a thing called a skyship-powered by technomantic engines unfamiliar to him and armed to the teeth with armor typically too heavy for flight and weapons too bulky for practical airborne use. Nonetheless, the anticipated max speed listed was Mach 6. "Oh my Four... they intend to drive us from the skies with this beast. Do they have a scanner in here?" "Yes, here," Pershing pointed out. She quickly scanned the documents, running a cord between the scanner and her cellphone. "Upload the files and send them to headquarters ASAP," commanded Colonel David. This she did. "Ten seconds to file transfer completion," she informed. Three seconds later, however, the door was kicked down and soldiers leveled their guns at him as they rushed into positions in the room. "Surrender and we will spare your lives!" informed the group leader routinely. David looked at Pershing out of the corner of his eye and gave her a devil-may-care grin. "Let's rock." Gunfire erupted across the office. *** "My leg!" screamed the man, who had bright red hair. His leg lay at a sickeningly different angle than it was designed for, and Albiona, who had landed on her feet, was hiding behind one of the smelting vats trading shots with guards on the far walkway. "Hold tight, Bex!" shouted Albiona, firing back. However, right after she said that, the soldiers shot gas at them, and they fell unconscious. *** "Uhhhnnn..." groaned Bex as he woke up in a prison cell far underground. "Welcome to Earthbound," greeted another man, tied up in chains. "You'll find life here to be a living hell." "Where's Al?" "Who's Al? You came in here with a girl." "Yeah, Albiona-we call her Al for short," indicated Bex. "Wait-what happened to the other two?" "Your whole cell was wiped out!?" gasped the man. "I hope not," moaned Bex. "Have you heard anything about Colonel David?" "Oh my Four..." whispered the man. "They got the Colonel?" "I don't know," emphasized Bex. "I don't... know." "Well, if it was the Colonel, he would have gone down fighting," reassured the man. "And... and if it was the Colonel, I'm sure he's jamming at the right hand of the Four in Countdown right now." "All glory to the Four..." mumbled Bex, reciting the ancient doxology of Columnia. They sat there in silence for a moment. "I wonder what happened to Pershing?" pondered Bex. "And-did you see where they took Al?" "They took her to Inquisitions..." lamented the stranger. "That's never good." "Who are you, by the way?" Bex asked. "My apologies, I'm Scott. And you?" "I'm Bex of the 94th Irregular. What was your battalion?" "The 116th Airborne..." Bex stared at Scott's face for a moment, and noted then that he was missing part of his left ear. "Wait a minute, you're Scott leMode, captain of the War Drakes! I KNEW I recognized that face..." "Not so loud-my friend Mick here is trying to sleep." Scott pointed to a snoozing man in a torn-up biker's jacket that had Bomber and Loyalist insignia all over it. "AAAAAAH!" came a particularly loud scream from down the hall. "My Four-Al!" worried Bex. "What are they doing to her!?" "Hopefully you'll never know firsthand;" lamented Scott. *** Albiona was strapped against a table, held down by metal restraints. An officer of the Columnian Empire stood over her. "Where am I?" she asked. "Earthbound." "Who are you?" Al asked. "The new Subcommander." "Who is the Commander?" Al demanded. "You are Prisoner Number Six." Al looked at her hands and saw that, tattooed on her left hand was the number "6". She looked to the Subcommander's hands and saw that they held a lever and were twitching with what could only be called glee. "What do you want?" she asked. "Information." Al suspected as much, however-information about other Underground Army members could help bring down scores of her comrades. "Well, you won't get it!" she decried, in a fit of defiance. The Subcommander smiled wide then. "By hook or by crook, we will." He then threw the switch, and bolts of electricity coursed through her, making her twitch against the restraints. Her head rolled, of its own accord, to the left, and she stared at her hand with the "6" emblazoned on it. It angered her, moreso than even the stench of her own cooking muscles in her nostrils. Torture was sick, humiliating-but they dared rob her of her own name! "I AM NOT A NUMBER!" she declared between screams. This caused the Subcommander to laugh gleefully, and throw the switch even further. "I... AM A FREE WOMAN!" |