The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution (19 page)

CHAPTER
32

R
evolution,
Ward, and Leslie stood at Fiona's bedside. She was attached to a bevy of
electrodes and monitors. Leslie held a chart. She and Ward scanned it. “She's
entered a coma, and her vitals appear to be weakening,” Ward said.

Leslie patted Revolution's
shoulder as she and Ward exited the room. “I'm sorry.”

Revolution sat beside the bed; he
slowly placed his hand over Fiona's. He sat there for some time. No one noticed
how long. Mostly they wanted to give him privacy. Either that or they were
afraid he’d throw
them
in the chamber and turn it on...

Either way, when Fiona fell into
that coma and effectively disappeared from the compound, so did the General. No
one would see the Revolution for the rest of the day. Presumably, after he left
Fiona’s bedside, he locked himself in his quarters deep underground. No one,
not even Leslie, dared to disturb him. News that might have otherwise required
his attention was diverted to Leslie. At some point early the next morning, he
brought Blinky the cat into Fiona’s room. After a thorough inspection of the
new digs, the feline had settled in between Fiona’s legs on the bed. She wormed
herself into her standard sleeping spot and curled into a snoozing little ball.

In the afternoon, Leslie
approached Ward with an idea. Ward helped her write up a proposal, and Leslie
appealed for help from the highest authorities of the insurgency—the Congress
of the Revolution, or COR. She promised to tell Ward more about them when the
time was right, but the important thing was that COR approved their plan one
day later.

Ward and Leslie entered Fiona's room. Revolution
was there. They all just stood in silence for several minutes. Ward had tried to
conceal his horror at the whole situation. Revolution was clearly not concerned
with the Hippocratic oath. So
he wasn't a doctor in his past life. This
lent more clout to the idea that he was from a military background. No medical
person would even think about doing what he'd done—and then Ward remembered the
Tuskegee experiments from the twentieth century. For forty years,
African-American men with syphilis had been given what they thought was free
health care from the US Public Health Agency. Instead, the syphilis was never
treated or even disclosed to the patients. It was actually a study on the
progression of
untreated
syphilis.

No, he had to admit this incident
didn't rule out a scientist or a medical background. And despite being covered
in metal, the Revolution’s body language cried out his regret and his worry for
this girl. His eyes were the only part of him that was visible through the
armor. They were pools of sadness. It was the only time Ward could recall him
showing any emotion at all.

Finally, Leslie broke the
silence.   

“General—”

“She isn't going to get any
better, is she?” Revolution sounded more human, more defeated than Ward had
ever heard him. Even Leslie seemed to note the tone in his voice.

She took in a deep breath. “We
still don't know. She may.” She spoke it like a scientist.

“She may not,” he said.

Revolution turned to them. “I bet
it all on the Fire Fly. They'll realize there is no ultimate weapon sooner or
later. They'll trace that rumor right to our door. We’ll have no defense. I
won’t be enough.”

So, does he regret what he did,
or does he regret what it may do to the movement?
Ward thought to himself.
The man in the metal was hard to read. Ward spoke up. “We may have a solution.”

“You're probably not going to like
it,” Leslie added. 

It took them a mere seventy-two hours to set it up.
They contacted Blake Lane through the convoluted channels they had established
years ago. The editor had made the deal. It was no small feat. Lane had to know
it would mean the end of her cherished
Common Sense
. But she was a woman
on a mission, too. And she was far too tenacious to let the failure of her
paper stop her from being a great journalist. Or a great citizen. Sometimes to
be one, you had to be the other as well. So she played her role without a
moment's hesitation.

At six o’clock on a Tuesday night,
as millions of families were sitting down for dinner, it happened. The
primetime webcasts of Internet television began as always. Most folks surfed
the Net through voice commands—one of the great innovations of the last several
decades. News, sitcoms, reruns, search engines, videos of cats, dogs, kids, and
game shows all blinked to life at the sound of a voice.

And then the Net was hacked. Big
time.

All across the country the image
of the Revolution seated in front of a camera took up the screens. Later they
would find out that sixty-five percent of all systems were affected.
Rebroadcasts of the speech would catch the other thirty-five before the
Chairman decided no one could run the footage anymore.

The Revolution read from a
teleprompter inside his helmet as the words scrolled across his eyesight,
though that was impossible to tell from the outside. His only backdrop was Old
Glory. His words were slow, calm, resolute.
“Tonight, I come to you from the
studios of the newspaper
Common Sense
, who have agreed to broadcast this
over their secure server. After this message is sent, they will be no more. The
Council will shut them down. It is what they do. I come to you tonight to ask
you, the American people, to join me in calling on our leaders, our true
leaders—the president, the Congress, and the Supreme Court—to make their voices
heard once again.

“And to those leaders: Do you
now see the error of your ways? Has the State Street Massacre opened your eyes?
Corporations are not people, nor should they drown out the voice of the people
or their elected leaders. Like the monarchs of the past, wealth has corrupted
this government. I ask you to find a new road.”

Revolution paused for a moment,
hoping his words would sink in, then continued.
“We have heard this call
before.”
He leaned forward. His voice took on the commanding tone he could
call forth when he wanted, as he prepared to quote the Founding Fathers.

“The cause of America is the
cause of all humankind. Governments are instituted among the people, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people, it
is their duty, to alter or to abolish it, and too provide new guards for their
future security.”

In the streets of Boston, hundreds
of destitute working class, thin and hungry, gathered to watch on digital
billboards. The Revolution was reaching a fever pitch now as his speech
concluded. Even through the camera he knew his message was connecting. He'd
done these enough times, he could feel it.

“The sun never shined on a
cause of greater worth. The Union must be preserved, the Republic restored, the
Sun of Liberty must rise again,”
he concluded. And with that, an image of
Old Glory filled the screen for several seconds before regular programming
resumed.

As it turned out, the Chairman
decided not to shut down
Common Sense
. The Revolution had won that
battle. By announcing that's what the Chairman would do, he made Sage feel that
he couldn't actually shut them down. Even though he wanted to. He'd have to
wait to take his revenge out on Blake Lane.

In the streets of all major
cities, thousands of people crowded around the giant flickering billboards to
watch the broadcast. The Revolution had done things like this before, but never
on such a massive scale. They watched in stunned silence. After it was over,
the streets of Boston were eerily quiet. Then someone yelled out: “Down with
the Council!”  By this time, a team of reporters had gathered to cover the
crowds live. Media Corp reporters called them a
mob
. They caught the
image and broadcasted it around the country. Before the Chairman could get to
them and force them off the air, the crowd had broken into a chant:
“Rev-o-lu-tion! Rev-o-lu-tion! Rev-o-lu-tion!”

The Chairman didn't allow that to
be rebroadcast either.

The effect of the speech was unpredictable. Leslie
had hoped it would throw the Council off balance and give them more time to
figure out what to do about Fiona, the rumor, and all the rest of it. Instead,
it caused something else...

Paint sprays out on a random brick wall at
night: “The Suns of Liberty will rise again.” The video of the incident goes viral
on the net, and word of it begins to spread. The phrase is repeated across
social media platforms at breakneck speed in the next two hours. In four hours
the message is spray-painted on walls all across the country. It becomes a
rallying cry. Then it becomes something more...

In the days that passed local militias calling
themselves “The Suns of Liberty” sprang up all across the country. Reports of
violence and terrorism soon followed. Authorities began appealing for
calm. 

The reports poured into Media Corp
outlets from every corner of the nation.
Eighty hours
after the
broadcast, the main lobby of the Freedom Council’s towering headquarters in New
York City,
Freedom Rise
, was bombed. A local Suns of Liberty militia
took credit.

One hundred hours
after the
broadcast, in Los Angeles, a row of Media Corp satellite dishes were wiped out
in a series of explosions. Again, a Suns of Liberty group was held responsible.

Two hundred and sixteen hours
after the broadcast, in Houston, a field of Imperial Petroleum oil barrels were
set ablaze. The Suns of Liberty of Texas claimed responsibility.

The impact of the attacks
was
predictable. The National Guard was mobilized in every state. The Council Guard
were deployed to every major industrial asset owned by Council corporations.
The military was put on high alert. Even the CIA and FBI were given domestic
spying tasks. Under Council rule, the CIA had a new division, called SHADOW,
devoted entirely to domestic surveillance. In short, the authorities were in panic
mode about the attacks. As it turned out, they weren't the only ones.

A black SUV arrived to take Ward to the compound.
He no longer needed to be blindfolded. He'd gotten used to the extra turns they
took whisking him to their headquarters. And finally he'd been allowed to learn
the route and the address. But he had told no one, not even Alison. He was on
strict orders. Revolution didn't trust anyone, but Ward did it to minimize her
own danger. She hadn't liked not knowing where he was being taken, but said she
understood. Nothing would be more important to the Council than the location of
the Resistance stronghold. There was an emergency procedure that would allow
him to tell her. Or more precisely, for her to be told, but Ward did not want
to think about that scenario. It wasn’t a pretty one.

These security measures had become
old hat for Ward, but on this day there was something extra.
Someone
extra. In the passenger seat in front of him sat an odd-looking guy. He wore a
leather bomber jacket, brown pants, and a dark T-shirt underneath. On his head
he had on a helmet that was a cross between that of a fighter pilot and a
motorcycle rider. It only covered his face to his nose. His mouth was visible
under the dark reflective face shield. That was enough to notice that he was an
attractive man. He looked more than a little strange in the close confines of
the car. And he was completely wrapped up in whatever he was doing. No one ever
spoke to Ward on these drives, but this guy didn't even look up. The driver at
least nodded to him.

Mr. Leather Jacket held a small
device in his hand that scrolled some kind of digital readout. Ward couldn't
make it out. At one point in the drive it beamed a three-dimensional holograph
onto the man's side of the windshield, and he seemed to study it intently,
though from Ward's vantage point he couldn't tell what it was. Maybe a map of
some kind. Its eerie aqua-blue glow filled the SUV’s cabin.

After a while Ward guessed that
the man was monitoring the surrounding areas to be doubly sure no one was
following them.
The Suns of Liberty attacks must have really made them all
very paranoid
, he thought. It did make sense to Ward that a feasible target
for any retaliation by the Council might be Boston.

When they arrived, the driver
sprang out and opened his door, as was the custom. But as Ward strode for the
compound, Leather Jacket stopped him with a hand to the chest. Without a word,
he stepped back from Ward about a foot and ran the small device up and down,
scanning his person. Satisfied, Leather Jacket waved him on. Ward watched the
man out of the corner of his eye as he entered the building. He was scanning
the area with the small device the whole time. He never looked Ward's way
again.

CHAPTER
33

T
he
attacks his words had inspired were not welcome news to the Revolution. Ward
figured he was in some trouble when he'd gotten the encrypted call to attend an
urgent meeting on the matter. When he arrived inside, he found the meeting was
only between himself, Revolution, and Leslie. As the meeting began, Revolution,
as Ward feared, started scolding them.

“This was not my intention,”
Revolution said sharply as he paced across the situation room. Ward and Leslie
sat at the big table, watching him. “How long before there's collateral damage?
How long before a child is killed? There are a million things that could go
wrong. The Council will make sure it comes right back to us.”

Silence hung in the air.

“It's working, though,” Ward said
finally. “Alison says these groups have the Council reeling.”

“They have us reeling, too,”
Revolution sneered.

Leslie shot Ward a look that
seemed to say,
Just let him vent
. She spoke up quickly, Ward realized,
to take the pressure off him. “We wanted to throw the Council off balance and
they have been,” Leslie said. “Council knows they're not in control of these
groups.”

“Neither are we,” Revolution said.
“We created a diversion by starting a fire. But now that fire rages out of
control.”

They were all silent for a long moment.
Revolution just stared at the wall, his back to them. Ward and Leslie exchanged
quick glances with each other, but neither spoke. Since the Fiona incident,
Revolution had started showing more emotion. Ward wondered if that was a good
thing.

Finally, Leslie swiveled her chair
toward Revolution. She grinned a sly smile. “Maybe we get control.”

Revolution said nothing, but his
entire attention fell her way. She cocked her head in thought as she rose and
took her turn pacing.

“What if we provoked the Council,
made them come here?” She turned toward Ward as if to explain. “We've always
spread out our influence. The hero movement just happened, thanks to the
General here, but we’ve always used it to our advantage. Recruited the best and
the brightest when we could and kept them distributed across the country. Local
contacts, if you will.”

She turned back toward the
Revolution. “What if we combined them? What if we formed one single strike
force made up of our best people? Paul and Lantern are already here. And what
if we called this group
The Suns of Liberty?
We could claim these
attacks were all their doing.” She shot them a wide smile. “All
our
doing.”

“How would that help? The media’s
calling them terrorists,” Revolution pointed out.

“So far, what they've done hasn't
killed anyone. So far, we like what they've done. It’s what they
might
do we’re worried about.”  

“Wait. Who are these other
assets
?”
Ward interjected, suddenly confused.

Revolution didn't answer either of
them immediately. He just stood there in silence. Then he turned toward Ward.
“Well, you met one of them today. In fact, he’s on his way right now to give us
a report,” Revolution said. 

“War is coming, sooner or later”
Leslie said. “That’s what Lantern’s going to tell us. I’m sure of it. I think
State Street has forced Sage’s hand. Once they realize there is no weapon,
they’ll start mobilizing for real. These militia attacks have bought us some
time, but it won’t last forever. We’re going to need the kind of publicity
these militias have gotten. If we initiate the Minuteman program, we could
redirect these militia groups to join the Minutemen. We’re going to need foot
soldiers eventually anyway. And we can redirect any
suspicion
to the
Minutemen if any militia actions go south in the meantime.”

“Wait, I've got you now,” Ward
said. “The Minutemen were volunteers for the Revolutionary Army against the
British. Seventeen-seventy-six and all that. You're talking about calling up
volunteers for a similar type of force.”

“Seventeen-seventy-
four
actually, but yes,” Revolution said. “A program of volunteers that we’ve been
working on for a while now. Not unlike the original Minutemen.” Then he turned
to Leslie. “Only as a last resort. We need the Minutemen to trust us.”

Ward wondered why, if he was so
big on trust, Revolution had failed to trust Fiona. Or maybe he had learned his
lesson? Somehow he doubted it. Revolution seemed like a man whose mind was made
up.

“True. They'll be a coup,
propaganda-wise,” Leslie said, like she was thinking out loud.   “But
if these Suns groups do something we don’t like, we can more easily disavow
them if we are the Suns of Liberty, too. We'll have a claim to the name. As it
is, these militias are out of our control, but also part of the movement. It
could be lose-lose for us if something goes wrong.” She glanced at both of
them. “We need to claim the name.”

Revolution thought for a moment.
No one said anything. Ward was confused again, but he kept quiet.

“Paul can cover the air,”
Revolution said finally. “We need sea, especially for the harbor. We need
intel. And I will need someone with logistical experience for the field.” 
Leslie nodded as if they were sharing some secret language. Ward could tell
they knew each other well enough to anticipate the thoughts of the other. But
it was like he was no longer in the room.

“We're short on firepower,” Leslie
said. “We can't count on...” She stopped herself. Ward wondered if she was
thinking of Fiona. Instead, she said, “San Francisco maybe?”

“Maybe.”

Ward had no idea what that meant.

“You’re right. We should fortify
Boston anyway. Once they trace the rumor, they'll find us. Bringing all the
assets here under one roof makes sense now,” Revolution said.

Ward wondered if the Council
traced that rumor to whatever source had placed it originally, would they also
find Alison? The thought filled him with dread.

Just then someone stepped to the
doorway. He was handsome with short, black hair and a stylishly scruffy five
o'clock shadow. He seemed to be waiting for an answer. Leslie motioned for him
to come in. “Paul Ward,” she said, “meet one of our other assets.” Ward rose to
shake his hand. The first thing he recognized was the strange helmet the man
held at his side. Then he noticed the coat. He was Mr. Leather Jacket from the car
ride.

“Hi. Paul Ward. Nice to meet you.
I'm the guy they call Spider Wasp.”

Finally, Leather Jacket spoke to
him, just barely.

“I know.”

He wasn't rude. Just
matter-of-fact.

“This is Diego Alvarez, but we
call him Lantern,” Revolution said. “Even in here.” Lantern nodded slightly as
Revolution introduced him. Ward thought he was either shy, distracted, or just
disinterested. He couldn’t tell which. “We
only
use call signs outside
these walls,” Revolution added. “So, you’re Paul in here, but You’re Spider
Wasp out there. But as far as the rest of the world knows, Diego Alvarez died a
long time ago, and we want to keep it that way. So, he’s Lantern all the time.
”

“I won't say a word,” Ward said.
“Especially on long car rides.”
Rim shot!

Lantern zipped Ward a polite half
grin.
Between Revolution and this Lantern guy, a lot of good jokes are going
to go to waste
, Ward thought.

“What did you find?” Revolution
asked.

Lantern’s face fell grim. “Worse
than we thought, sir. Mobilization at every base along the Eastern Seaboard.
Guard stations too.”

“The Council
and
the
military?” Leslie seemed shocked by this.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It’s an invasion,” Revolution
said flatly. “So much for the militia’s buying us time.”

“It looks preparatory, sir,” Lantern
said. “Could be a month from now, could be six months. Not immediate.”

“That’s your judgment?” Revolution
asked.

“That’s my
observation
.
Yes, sir.”

Ward wondered why Lantern had felt
the need to make the distinction.

The room fell quiet. 

Leslie scribbled something. She
looked up and said, “Here are the others I think we should pull in.” Leslie
slid a handwritten list across the table to them. The words on the list meant
nothing to Ward:

Saratoga

Helius

Hunley

Stealth

Revolution studied the list then
nodded. “Agreed. If we do this, we'll need them quick. I don’t want to take any
chances,” he said, glancing back toward Lantern.

“Hollis is in the Black Sea doing
salvage,” Leslie reminded
him.         

“He
was
. He's back in
Norfolk,” Revolution said. Leslie nodded and seemed relieved.

“The Director’s a hard call, I
admit,” Leslie said. “We lose more with him than any of the others.”

“I think it’s time. But let’s let
him make that call. It would give the Council quite the headache to have him
come in from the cold, though,” Revolution said.

“More code names? Who are they?
Folks from the hero movement?” Ward asked.
Helius.
That sounded
familiar. He racked his memory. It was coming back to him. A vigilante. From
the West Coast, he thought. Wanted for murder, if he recalled.

No one said anything. Ward turned
to the newcomer. “Okay. What does
Lantern
mean then?”

Lantern glanced over at the
Revolution, who nodded to him. Lantern pulled out his little device again. He
punched a few buttons, and the aqua-blue 3-D display beamed back to life. This
time the holograph just floated in midair a foot in front of him. Ward could
tell the small image was shifting and moving, but just as in the car, he
couldn't make it out. It looked like Lantern was fast-forwarding through a
movie. After a few moments it stopped. Lantern hit another button, and the
entire image exploded in size, filling up the room. To Ward's shock, they were
all standing in a life-size digital replica of his own workroom. Lantern
pointed to a fuzzy blob on the digital image of his work desk, which Ward just
happened to be standing right in front of.

“Look there,” Lantern said.

The fuzzy image slowly cleared.
Clean, precise lines materialized. Ward recognized it immediately. It was the
morning paper he had been reading prior to coming to the meeting. To his shock,
even the headlines on the paper sharpened into focus. And then the bylines of
the reporters. Then the small type of the stories. The photos were blurrier,
but legible. 

“Lantern has a real-time satellite
uplink to just about every structure in Boston. He's a light in the darkness,”
Leslie said, smiling.