The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution (25 page)

“You're looking at a
self-sustaining engine,” she said, meaning that the molecules replaced
themselves at the exact rate they were consumed.

Revolution knew exactly what it
was. Renewable organic energy. He couldn't take his eyes off of it. He'd
dreamed of this moment for ten years. Ever since James Scott had proposed the
idea to him. But Scott had never come close to this. Leslie Gibbons might have
just changed the course of the world.

“The next step is to find a way to
scale it.” She was as guarded as ever. Always the scientist in the lab. She
could give the most rousing political speech, but once she entered the lab, the
consummate professional, dispassionate scientist took over. That she could wear
both hats made her invaluable to him. Scaling it, he reminded himself, meant to
be able to produce it on a scale that could be used to power whole buildings,
cities, nations. 

“This is a truly historic
achievement, Leslie. It's what we've waited for. This could change the course
of the war. Scott would have been envious.” He would have. Scott was an
ambitious man. Robotics, super soldiers, T-O4, bioluminescence. But his highest
priority, for as long as Revolution had known him anyway, had always been this
engine. He thought it was the one thing that could turn the tide of this
struggle their way, no matter what else occurred.

Leslie beamed. “It feels good. We
don’t have time to waste, though,” she said, and he knew she was thinking of the
misery going on outside.

“Numbers just came in. We’ve got
five thousand volunteers in Boston alone for the Minutemen. It seems the curfew
has had the opposite effect Sage wanted,” Revolution said. 

“For now,” Leslie warned. “We need
to test this engine. The sooner we can take it public the
better.”   

“You’re right, we can't hold out
forever.”

The field was cold and hard. The yard lines were
old and faded into the grass. A long time had passed since any football had
been played here. Instead, a group of about fifty young men and women in old
sweats exercised as a unit. Lined up in formation, they looked like a military
unit. In a sense, they were. 

Parker Hudson had picked this
field because it was where he learned to play the game. He had skills that
could have led him to become one of the top college athletes in the country.
But that was ten years ago. And that was after the scholarships dried up. So
he'd spent a whole semester on the team. One stinking season! Then he quit to work
two jobs and pay his way through college. Too bad. He had been the nation's top
high school prospect his senior year. A natural leader. Rocket for an arm.
Pinpoint accuracy. A quarterback that had NFL written all over him. That’s what
all the papers had said.

It was a dream that still haunted
him.   

In those years he had found his
way to his second love: the law. He'd worked his way through law school and now
was a practicing attorney. He was the pride of Southie. But all of that was an
illusion. Stories told by family, in the old neighborhood, down at the shop.
There was little money in the kind of law he practiced. Trial lawyers, personal
injury specialists, once one of the most lucrative of fields, was now made all
but extinct by the Council. The only employers or sellers who could be
successfully sued for negligence were those too small to pay out. And in those
cases, he faced pitting one local business against another. One neighbor
against another. That wasn't why he had gone to law school. He wanted to
protect his city against the big boys, like the Council.

So that's what he was doing. He
barked orders at the group like a drill sergeant. Jumping jacks, sit-ups,
plyometrics, whatever it took until his team was exhausted. Parker Hudson was a
Minuteman. In fact, he was the leader of the Minutemen. He'd been a leader
before. But this time he would take his time, do it right. Not let his fear get
in the way of doing what had to be done. Voices of his past kept haunting his
mind...

Announcer: “Hudson drops back
to pass. Here comes the blitz. He's got a man wide open, way downfield. He
heaves it...and overthrows the open receiver. Well, that kid's got a heck of an
arm, but he's just got to learn to be more patient. Sometimes you have to just
stand in there and take the hit.”      

Hudson stopped his team, let them
rest. They stayed in formation, breathing hard from the vigorous workout.
Hudson peered out at them, just average Bostonians wanting to make a
difference. Itching to have a hand in the struggle. He thought about the voices
from his past. “We have to be patient," Hudson said. "As Minutemen,
we also have to be ready on a moment's notice. We won't know when our
opportunity will come until it happens,” he said. Hudson breathed deep. He peered
out at the horizon. Thought of all the hungry families he had visited as he had
recruited for the Minuteman program. Thought about the luminescent engine Dr.
Gibbons had shown him. “But help is on its way.”

He hoped like hell his words were
true. Gibbons has said it wasn’t ready for prime time yet. People were starting
to starve in South Boston now. The Heights were the worst, of course. All his
life he’d thought of being the local hero. The one who’d done good and come
back to make a difference. The guy who would not forget where he came from. All
that seemed egotistical now. He wasn’t the savior of Southie. He would just as
likely oversee its destruction. It was at that very moment he received a ping
on his PDA.

Dr. Gibbons. It was the call for a
meeting. The answer to his prayers, he hoped.

The lack of power meant lack of heat. Lack of heat
in a New England winter meant people died. The first real mission for the
Minutemen was one designed to strengthen their resolve. Leslie and her team
identified a list of Minutemen households without power. She would go down the
list testing the bioluminescent engine. Not only would this advance the
science, but it could save the lives of some of their most important
supporters. Today, they would test it on just one household. The first test, as
it were. Leslie had a hard time not holding her breath the entire time.

Media Corp continued to cover
The
Crisis in South Boston
as one that had been caused by the Suns, but that
argument had collapsed inside Southie itself. The repairs, the curfew, the
quarantine, they all had gone on far too long. Residents openly talked about
the fact that they were being punished. The story seemed to be aimed at the
rest of country now, not South Boston.   

Leslie and Lantern worked the
control panel together. Lantern had helped construct a digital-light pathway
that would beam the energy source across the area. This one single orb had
enough juice to power a quarter of South Boston homes and businesses—if they
could get the power to those homes and businesses. They had been working on
that problem for the past two months.

The focus of all that work, the
bioluminescent engine, pulsated in the chamber. It was floating in midair,
encased in a glass cube that sat on a tall shelf inside the Fire Fly chamber.
Lantern was wearing his helmet and Leslie had dark sunglasses on just in case.
After the miniature sun that was created during the Fiona incident, she was
taking no chances. She'd had ghosts and floaters in her eyes for days
afterwards.

“All right. Let's try it,” Leslie
said.

Lantern spoke into his RDSD.
“Hollis, you ready?”

In a small house seven blocks
away, Ramsey Hollis stood with the Caper family. Donald was the young husband
and a Minuteman. His oldest daughter, Cynthia, was also in training. Hollis
couldn't help thinking about how warm he would have been if he'd had his diving
suit on. He really had no idea why intelligent people would choose to live in a
place that was so goddamn cold!  

“I'm fixin' to freeze my butt
off,” Hollis replied. “That count?”

Hollis eyed the Capers. The family
shivered on the couch behind him. Their breath was visible in the harsh winter
air. A shiver ran down Hunley’s spine. He would never complain about the
weather in Norfolk again
.
 

Back at the chamber, Leslie pressed
the button on the control panel. “Here we go.”

Hollis nodded to the family. “Here
we go.” The Capers held hands.

Beams of light scanned out from
the orb and passed right through the lab wall. The beam shot down the city
streets, seeking out the designated target. In a matter of seconds it found it.
Inside the house it beamed across the room. The beam sought out the home's
electrical box and disappeared inside of it. The box glowed with the energy for
a moment and then faded back to normal. Inside, a small engine of
bioluminescence had been created. It could power any electrical need that the
house could generate and then some. As long as the mini-orb worked, the family
would pay nothing to Imperial Petroleum for their power. The whole procedure lasted
about fifteen seconds.  

The lights flickered on. The sound
of the heater belched to life. The family cheered, realizing what it meant for
them. More than one tear was shed.

Hollis just looked on, grinning. “It’s
workin',” he drawled to Lantern. “We're warmer already.”

Fiona Fletcher opened her eyes. Around her were
white walls. She noticed the EEG monitor and the rest of the medical equipment.
That's when the pain returned. No longer lost in the black void of nothingness.
Now her skin and eyes burned. Not as bad as before, when Leslie had touched
her. But bad enough. She'd traded one hell for another. Using all her strength,
she rose from the bed. Her patient's gown clung to her even thinner frame. She
looked at her emaciated hands. Veiny and pale. Her nails had all been clipped.
Nail polish long since chipped away. How long had she been gone? Days, weeks,
months? She stared at her hands. They began to cool, to soothe. Ice water shot
through the veins. And suddenly they glowed with bioluminescent energy.

The experiment had worked! 

For a second she felt
exhilaration. She had spent so many years working near them. She knew what
success meant to them.
I am the Fire Fly.
 

And then it all came flooding
back. The anger, the betrayal. The memory was like riding a wave. The energy
coursed through her like supercharged steroids. She thought about the
Revolution. He had probably never considered what this power would do to her
emotions. Or to her mind. She felt aggression. Like never before.

And for one person in particular.

The door to the room was closed.
They had left her here alone like a true orphan. Like an animal. She aimed her
hands at the door. Concentrated. Not sure what would happen.

A beam of chartreuse energy seared
out of them. Fiona gasped in surprise. The door burned to oblivion. There was
very little sound. It simply flamed into ash like a sheet of paper. As she
watched it burn her aggression grew. She imagined the door had been the
Revolution. And smiled. She rose from the mattress and stalked out into the
empty hall. She would seek out the man who had tried to kill her and burn him
alive.

CHAPTER
41

T
he
Revolution sighed. This gathering was supposed to be a celebration. The first
team meeting in weeks. The official announcement of the bioluminescent orbs. A
formal introduction of Parker Hudson, leader of the Minutemen. A good day.

Instead it had broken down into
bickering.

“It’s simple,” Leslie said. “The
Minutemen distribute them and we provide the security.”

“Just one problem,” Bailey said.
“How many do we give out and to who?” Bailey bent his head sideways, and his
eyes went wide. “Then there’s that little problem of making your atomic algae
public. We let this genie out of the bottle, we won’t get her back in.” His
eyes dropped. Revolution thought he saw regret flash across Bailey’s face. The
man had so many secrets, so many things to regret. It had to be hard to be John
Bailey.

Revolution peered across from
Leslie at the large, round table. First meeting in weeks and here they were
arguing. It was frustrating. Ward was to his right, Bailey to his left. Next to
Ward was Rachel, then Lantern next to Leslie. On the other side of the table,
next to Bailey, sat Sophia, and then Hollis on the other side of Leslie. Parker
Hudson sat in a row of chairs for visitors off to the side. They were all out
of their uniforms. Except for Revolution, of course. They looked good, dressed
business-casual.

 “Yeah, and have y’all
considered what the Council would do with that power if they had it?” Hollis
drawled. “You might think they’d never use weapons of mass destruction.” He
leaned forward and looked right at Ward. “But, son, you’d be wrong.”

Revolution scanned the room.
Studied the faces. None of them wanted to think about that. They had a
technology that could save the world, and here they were afraid they couldn’t
use it.

“We need wide distribution of the
orbs to test their effectiveness over a long geographic range. It’s that
simple. COR’s already on board. We have authority to do what we want here. We
need
those tests,” said Leslie.

“And at the very least they can
provide some heat to the city. It sucks out there. More than normal. Why the
hell else are we here if not to protect people?” Ward said, trying to contain
his frustration.

“I’m with the professor,” Rachel
said, winking at Ward. Revolution’s 360-degree lenses allowed him to see her
rub her leg against his. Ward’s cheeks flushed, and he scooted his leg away
from her. Rachel smirked an impish grin they all could see. Revolution knew he
was going to have to watch those two. Ward’s relationship with Alison Mitchell
was an asset they could not afford to jeopardize.