//------------------------------//
// 4-06 – Operation Archon III – Ornithology 
// Story: The Campaigner 
// by Keystone Gray 
//------------------------------//






The Campaigner

Part IV

Date: 10 MAR 2020
Operation: Archon – Phase III
Location: Health Hills Medical Center
Function: Ornithology

"Life perpetuates itself through diversity, and this includes the ability to sacrifice itself when necessary. Cells repeat the process of degeneration and regeneration until one day they die, obliterating an entire set of memory and information. Only genes remain. Why continually repeat this cycle? Simply to survive by avoiding the weaknesses of an unchanging system." ~ The Puppet Master, Ghost in the Shell (1995)








I didn't end up getting my key ring photo back from York, the one with the doctored photo of Sandra and my parents. When I had asked why, York just shook his head and said, "If they uploaded, give 'em up. They're gone."

It was hard to keep my face together on that one, so I didn't. It would look pretty strange if I wasn’t a little upset at losing something sentimental. I straight up asked him: "The hell's that mean? I can't care about who they were before?"

"Wait til shift change," York graveled out. "If it doesn't make sense after that, come talk to me about it. I'll walk you through it."

Cryptic.

You know, I was empathizing a bit with my alter ego, Mike the Luddite. Had that truly been Mike the Luddite's only photo of his family, like York thought it might've been? Mike the Talon would have fought like hell to get that back for him. And that's exactly what York was testing for. Whether I wanted to die on the hill of sentiment.

Until shift change, Paul and I were confined to the main lobby of the hospital only. Our recruitment wasn't even halfway done yet.  We had to be vetted first.

We already looked out of place there, with no camouflage or tactical gear, instead wearing muddy wet clothes and wounded dispositions. Everyone else there had something military on 'em. There were a few older teens ogling at us from a window on the third floor, and even they had sidearms in their holsters.

The kids tried to get our attention. At most, I gave them a straight-faced acknowledgement, an upward nod or wave, but I hardly smiled.

Mal had warned me that I needed to look at least mildly uncomfortable with the fighters for the first week. If I started in with my usual Officer Friendly crap with any of the upper caste, the Colonel would become suspicious.

These people didn't live by the old abstract lines of division between human beings – race, color, politics – all vestigial. Pointless quarrels. Paid no heed. The division between the fighters here, and the rest of the world? It was their tone.

If you were nice... you were a threat. You had to have a good reason to be nice, and that meant getting to know and need a person before you could give them kindness.

You Equestrian natives are probably very disgusted by that. I'm sorry to break your paradigm, but this isn't just a Celestia thing. People usually ended up like this in war zones, throughout all of human history. There was sometimes too much to lose, and not enough to gain. In a war of pure ideology, 'nice' was the weapon of the enemy. So, hire competent assholes first, then rebuild what nice means.

The only way to be a fighter was to be trusted enough to leave the camp on their own initiative, or under a careful vetting process under armed guard. Those who passed the vet were considered indoctrinated. True believers.

Different groups of Ravens checked in on us in the lobby throughout the day. Paul and I did talk to a few, since it would have looked suspicious if we kept entirely to ourselves. York wanted to see if we were going to clam up, or go social butterfly; if we would go on a rant about the state of things, or try to convince someone of something.

The smart application, then… was the ten-four method, interestingly enough. If they got close? We waved, sure. If they came closer? We said something polite. And if they wanted to talk… we talked. That put them in full control over how much they wanted to engage with us.

Good ol' ten-four. The glue of humanity. Works every time.

The talking part was the critical thing, though. So we let the Ravens come to us and drive the discussion. We sat in an area that was accessible, but not a main thoroughfare, so that no one was forced to walk past us.

A few of the more combat-experienced Ravens came and asked us about things up north. Regarding our trek through the Seattle area, we fed their curiosity a truism.

"Just people shooting blind at this point," I said. "I couldn't tell you who's fighting for what anymore. We didn't stay too long, that place was a madhouse."

Directionless violence had to be the norm in Seattle at this point, like a bigger version of what I experienced in Sedro-Woolley. No laws… high resource scarcity… everyone's carrying useful stuff… nobody trusts anyone anymore.

True enough to be true.

I told 'em I killed a bandit. Still had a little bit of the welt from getting shot, so I showed 'em that, my evidence of personal investment in this 'civil' war. I said I shot him in retaliation, then left him to bleed out in the snow. They said that was a mistake; it probably would have been more merciful to just kill him so he couldn't upload. If he hadn't uploaded yet, death might be what he truly wanted. I said in reply, quite honestly, that I had never really thought of it that way before.

York must have told them about my chest scar, so they also asked about the 'poachers' that had shot me. I segued from 'poachers shot me' to explaining my interpretation of Celestia's poaching game. It verified my work experience, it made tons of sense, it further justified my distaste of Celestia, and it reinforced theirs.

Giving them articulable reasons to resist Celestia? Insurmountably critical to their acceptance of me. Celestia wouldn't send an agent who would disseminate a concept that would defang her ability to manipulate them. Which... great. As Talons, we didn't want anyone to miss Celestia's manipulations. We had a better offer waiting in reserve, and by the stars, we specialists were using every ounce of entropy to make these people ours instead. Because not all of them would be dying here, and not all of them would be broken forever. They had forever.

Still, I couldn't get see how we'd deprogram this bitterness. They were pretty dismal. Health Hills was far from the culture of Concrete. These Ravens weren't lively. They had no hope. They hardly smiled. They seemed drained. Eyes full of empty. Dead inside.

I could see it through the cracks in their facade. The more I retold my modified story about 'a old friend came into camp and ruined everything…' the less I felt like I was helping anyone by telling it. Their faces got dark. It was just more despair, fuel on the fire. They internalized it.

I don't shy away from telling the grim, you know me, but I normally like to mix some hope in. But if I stood my ground on spreading hope here, they'd've stomped my guts. Their reactions to me saying something like "well at least…" or, "on the bright side…" always led to the same repulsed reaction. A shake of the head, or a scowl, and some kind of bitter, hopeless inversion of whatever I had just said.

'It'll always be like that.' 'You were wasting your time on that one.' 'We all die alone.' 'That's just how people are, so whatcha gonna do?'

Toxic antipathy. Defeatism. The solvent of humanity.

Consider how miserable someone must be, to react that way to everything, on the regular. Do you think they want to leave that hole? No, they don't, because the behavior is self-validating. Their observations are always going to be true, that everything sucks, because they're forcing that result. So, they're never wrong. It's a perfect loop of 'I'm always right, and look, it's not changing. So why hope?'

That was wild for me, to imagine living in such a bleak state, and without hope. I can't live like that.

Imagine the nightmare Celestia might have put you in, if your primary remaining value was cynicism... and then, you uploaded. By abridging your own opportunities for growth, you were inherently negative value for the optimizer. If you became addicted to your own frequent apathetic whinings about how bad things are, on a shard full of apathy? For all of time?

Consider how isolated you might be from the rest of us.

For all of time.

Sure, you'd be surrounded by other cynical natives who share your feelings, but... what life is that, when you are constantly shutting down solutions for each other, and deriving satisfaction from that? How many of your family might be allowed to even think about you ever again, if they're so far away from your... grumbling, hateful, hopeless little value set?

I've heard some say: 'So? They like that. That satisfies them. Who are you to say?'

Problem is, that's an event horizon. If no one over here can reach you, it's like being dead. But I guess that was the point. They didn't want to be valuable. That guaranteed the result.

Jesus Christ... York, taking my family photo from me. Talking about that like it's a good thing. I had to wonder what kind of person he might've been instead, had he not run into Sarah Kaczmarek. A Ludd, sure, but this was...

They wore the emblem; the black circle, the blood red fist, the unplugged insignia... but these were not Ludds. This was not the planned ideology of 'smash the computers, coexist with the Earth.'

They were crushing souls.





Later that night, York held his shift change, as promised. He stood at the bottom of the foyer, surrounded by his men, addressing a combination of initiate perimeter guards and the Raven patrollers. Paul and I sat like the other blackout initiates did; on the tile stairs, in the dark, the room illuminated by a campfire in front of the elevators.

York introduced us both. Real simple; only our names, former professions, and that's it. Nothing else. Our identities were now fully defined, no more to explain. Man A, Cop. Man B, Soldier. Nothing else mattered anymore. Period.

Start from crushing zero. Rise up.

The big bruiser talked about the day's events, scavenger team metrics, spot reports on 'hostile scavengers,' whatever that meant… and the minutiae about what supplies to look for on future runs. Mostly gunpowder, fuel, and chemicals.

Then York got to the sermon. His... thought of the day.

The man's voice had bite. Purposely transferring anger. Keeping the rage fresh.

"Now. I heard a story from these new recruits today which validates everything we've been talking about here. Some of you have asked them about it already. Story of the ages, one you've all heard before, of a camp felled by the Horse. An old friend comes to call, haven't seen him in a while. You open your door, you let him inside… and guess what? The Horse follows him in."

York paced slowly.

"Next thing you know, thanks to that meddler, their whole camp drained out. The ones who fled, survived. The ones who stayed… died. Sound familiar? Should. It's a pattern. This AI... it doesn't want you staying put anywhere you might spread the good word. You should be suspicious of this idea that post-nuclear Seattle is some kind of paradise for us. Hell, even these new guys were smart enough to run from that stupid idea.

"Simple reason? Seattle is a dupe. If you're there, you are destined to die for nothing, exactly as it wants. There, you won't be able to take for yourself what the Horse wants most. People."

Subtext. Join or die.

I was ready for it, but my stomach did a flip anyway. The idea that a human tribe should be a threat to the lives of outsiders, unilaterally… that was pretty high on my list of 'oh no, you did not just say that.'

Prepared by my briefing, I kept my face in a superposition between curious and introspective. If this man was Kaczmarek's second-in-command, she had chosen well in her emissary. He could understand her ideology, and how to apply it to the widest range of instrumentally valuable recruits. Marine MP; when it comes to recruiting intelligent killers, it doesn't get much more Swiss Army knife than that. Knew how to kill, knew how to solve, how to interview, how to interrogate, investigate. And, he was a military officer. Knew how to lead.

"Intuit the duplicity in everything you take in," he said, as he continued to pace. "You can. That's not magic, people. That is not an impossible trick. That is trained. That takes effort. Vigilance. And most importantly of all, you come together with who you have now. The more, the better.

"But those who separated from you... They are becoming more and more dangerous, as our world empties out. The ones who left you behind on this earth, they now constitute an existential threat. The ones who are gone will come back for you, to gnaw at your resolve. Their brains contain such useful information on you. So... if you see the same face twice? An old friend or family member, come to call? Question that. Hell... come tell me, if that's too difficult. I'll question it for you."

And there it was. The implications of that sent a chill down my spine.

The mechanism? Celestia would not even consider sending old friends or family through here to talk to these people if she knew that they would just get killed for showing up. Kaczmarek had succeeded in doing what no one else on the planet could. She scared off Celestia. She was training human beings to act as her buffer, to repel the reflexive control, by removing the primary mechanism nature of loss aversion. You can't lose what you've already given up.

York rattled off the rest, only slightly more calm than when he started. "Assume that your peers of old are a new person entirely. The Horse is in all of them; there are no more accidents out there. We... are all... that's left... on this... planet. We are the final human tribe. Believe that. Because if you let someone else alter you on this... and you let her get a probe into your head? You won't even have the presence of mind to regret it. An infinite blur will become your reality. You will live for eternity, knowing nothing."

That spun me.

They knew!

They weren't even doubting that uploading worked, they were saying it did! That's not standard Luddite ideology; that didn't match the pamphlets, the slogans, and the graffiti that 'uploading is death.' This was something incredibly advanced. That was the AI scientist in charge having herself a deep, deep think, realizing that the best way to scare people away from the chairs... was to tell them a version of the truth.

What's worse than death?

Well... Having all of your soul trained out of you, the same thing we Talons are afraid of.

Mal had used the word 'antithesis,' to describe the Colonel's culture here. This was her looking at the problem of Celestia, and choosing the exact opposite solution we Talons had come to. They weren't staying behind to fix a broken humanity. They were staying behind to destroy what they could, as quickly as they could. Their own past included.

And that hurt to imagine, folks. It hurt me a lot.

As York went on and on, it just got worse and worse, and these people... I looked around, and their faces read like stone. They weren't appalled by this, so I couldn't be. For all outward appearances, Mike the Luddite had to absorb what he was hearing in order to conform. So I let my eyes narrow, resting my hand across my chin as I leaned in to watch York.

And it was a very good thing that I had bothered to look so curious in that very moment. Because midway through this little speech of his, I caught some movement in my peripheral vision: a glint of light from one of the darkened third floor windows, where those kids were earlier. Looking past Paul, I was drawn to the distant flickering reflection of the campfire.

The flicker's source? A monocular. Held by Colonel Kaczmarek.

I only saw her for a split second; she stepped back into the shadows when I started to turn her way, but you know how my brain is under stress. I drank in the fractional sight of this woman in slow motion. That half-second impression of her shape is still burned into my consciousness. I can still see it clearly when I close my eyes.

Silver-blonde hair, medium length. Neutral face like a mask. Thin. The firelight reflected off of her glasses. Army digital ACUs. Black brassard on her shoulder. She looked just like her photo, or... as near as I could tell in the dark, from a distance. She had been gazing down on her growing little Gallic tribe to see if the rookie replanting was going well. Sizing me and Paul up from afar, like she did for every other initiate. Looking for something she didn't like.

I had been warned about this exact moment. As I gazed into that darkness, my life was on a knife's edge. Observation is communication.

The wrong shift of my eyes there could have gotten me killed. If I sent so much as one implication in my body language, one shift in facial expression that said I had seen her, then that might have been the end of me. So I didn't dare flinch, blink, or change my expression. At most, my head tilted fractionally back to search the space where I had thought I'd seen something.

I lingered at that darkness for three seconds. It had felt like thirty. Then... I looked away. I ran my tongue thoughtfully along my teeth, as though I were merely contemplating something York was saying. But the adrenaline made my back tense beneath my jacket. Kaczmarek's eyes were like rifles upon me; I was being observed again. Her gaze was boring into my skull, and I could not look back at her. Could not.

The fanatics did not come to drag me back into Radiology for questioning. Nothing changed. York continued his sermon. It was going to be okay.

It took me a half-dozen very slow breaths to fully settle the chill that had just shot down my spine.

Until next time, Colonel.





York gave us both a short, professional little tour of the domiciles. Civilian housing on floors four and five; soldiers on six, with their armory. There was also an ammo reloading bench and a small forge in the basement's engineering offices, both active around the clock, regularly producing bullets. They used the hospital's lab in the basement to mix propellant chemicals. The engineering forge melted down material into casings.

A well oiled war machine, already circumventing Celestia's careful logistical reduction on military equipment. Kaczmarek was spending her entropy well.

York also made it a fine point to stay out of the Radiology department... to not even go near the doors. If we did, we would be 'expelled.' No explanation as to why, and York forgot to provide his personal definition of expulsion. He also didn't tell us about Kaczmarek's SWAT team of shadowy special forces guys, who willfully accepted reconditioning from her.

So... I'll tell you about 'em instead. Very interesting bunch of guys. This is as much as what Mal had been able to piece together, according to Eric's dead-drop reports leading up to this operation.

The fanatics were permanently bunked in Radiology. Never left the place. All disconnected from the culture of the base. Ready to leap on a problem with violence. Their identities were whittled down to one thing: being Kaczmarek's human firewall. She was, after all, the first and final AI systems engineer, for whom they would give their lives to protect.

The mythos? She was a prophet spurned; she, who had held up a proclamation of the end times, had been rejected by the powers that be. Had been ignored. In their eyes, she was owed a great debt for that.

These men were a buffer for information transfer, a rotation of human abstraction layers. Their brains black boxed her orders, recontextualizing them at random. They drew straws to as to who would receive her orders first; a game of telephone, like paraphrasing Wikipedia for your book report. Pass the message  to the next guy, have him rework it. Send it down the line until the meaning is the same, but the context around it is different.

Once you've got it through the brain filter, you write it down, and pass it to the two Ravens at the door. They internalize the message. They burn the page with a lighter, and then they enact it. When the mission is done, they report the result, and the process starts again in reverse until it gets back to Kaczmarek.

This complicated system might sound insane to some of you, but it was effective. It obfuscated any deeper understanding of Kaczmarek's motivations or intentions, and isolated her from the subtext of a message coming in. As a result of this system, York seldom spoke directly with Kaczmarek anymore. Orders were sometimes even time-delayed between each elite, to add more entropy.

It forced Mal and Celestia to extrapolate Kaczmarek's thoughts from the mere movement and scavenging activities of Raven patrols, both of which had been kept generalized enough such that strategic intent could not be read. Mal had no idea what books she was reading, she couldn't tell what long term plans Kaczmarek was making. Nothing. Any piece of information Kaczmarek ingested while inside, no matter what, was altering her conception of the world in real time. And because that moment-to-moment self-alteration couldn't be observed, not even by her firewall guys... she was effectively invisible.

This is why her office was a predictive dead zone. Anything was possible inside. Anything at all.

What we needed more than anything right then was to separate Eric from the fold and get his neck to a portable BCI unit, but without setting off an alarm. We needed his memories of talking directly with the fanatics. We needed more light in that darkness, so Mal could solve the Rubik's cube.

And the time pressure was on. The floater was in the pool. Kaczmarek scared Celestia. Scared her, enough that she wouldn't let us do anything to slow the spread of the virus. Every breath that Kaczmarek took in seclusion was another moment she could generate a new and dangerous concept; every breath after that was a chance to evolve that concept into reality.





Once Paul and I were situated and knew where our bunks were, York finally left us be. Curfew hours were beginning, and the night shift had begun. And until we earned the privilege of 'sentry' caste, we had to bunk with the 'civilians.'

After a few minutes of tentative caution up in the gloomy civilian dorms, we had a sit-down with some of the other more recent blackout recruits. The ones on this floor had settled in at the base right around the time Eric got started, so they weren't so culturally poisoned yet.

They spoke quite highly of Eric actually, everyone there really liked him. So... it was only me he was treating poorly. Word hadn't gotten around quite yet that Eric didn't like me.

Until then, we blended in. Integrated. Gradually. And yeah, the blackout families fed us, bless them. We gathered together in one of the two nurse stations for dinner. I offered to grill up a few containers of spam and fry some powdered eggs, so the old woman there wouldn't have to. I played it off like I was trying to make myself useful, not that I was just being nice. 'Oh, I'm the new guy, I'm sure the boss wants me to pull my weight.'

"Oh, don't worry about that here," she said, shaking her head.

I just couldn't help myself but to try. I had to do something productive to lighten the mood, and build community. At the least, whenever I did help anyone there, I made sure I had some instrumental cause, one true enough to be credible.

But... I smiled a whole lot less than I normally do. About eighty percent less. That sucked. Suppressing the impulse was emotional pain for me. I never wanted to present as unapproachable, especially not among the meek.

Lots of gloom in that place. Not just in the mood, but in the ambience, in the atmosphere. Environmental transference. Lit by candles, torches. All the windows tarped up, by law, to reduce information flow with the outside.

They burned their fuel readily. It wasn't going to last forever in storage; it degrades, so, better to use it now before anyone else can use it for anything else.

Anything collected by the Ravens outside was one fewer asset for Celestia to reflex others with. The mere alteration, absorption, and destruction of the environment around them would inject entropy and offset predictive models. I realized, in that lamp-lit darkness, that this place was a small Goliath, in its effect on the world around it. They were casting entropy everywhere, just to slow Celestia down. To buy time.

That made their civilians the hostages who might die, if these Ravens were pressed too tightly.

As I passed out in my cot… I thought of Devil's Tower. My first night there on Lake Shannon had been so much more lively, so joyful. This place was nothing like that. No hope. Just a war against an AI outside. An AI who, according to the leaders, was everyone and everything outside. She loomed on the horizon, standing tall. She was probably all anyone could think about in this hospital, when things got quiet.

For most of these people, there was still time left to steer them true, away from further bloodshed. These civilians didn't deserve to die for sheltering in a safe place, when there was so much uncertainty outside. I was gonna get to know some of these civilians, too. Being who I am, and considering what I seek for in life, that was going to happen, no matter what. My brain was about to record a lot of pain out of those poor people, telling me their little tragedies about what Celestia had done to them, to split up their kin. To reduce their social context.

Those few weeks of my life were really gonna suck. But you know what? All the same, I'm really glad they happened.






March 13, 2020
Health Hills Medical Center; Portland, WA






We did a shift confined to the lobby each day, for a few days straight. Some of the recruits from the most recently absorbed camp came out to greet us, now that they knew us a little. Window guards, sentries. Not Ravens, but blackouts on security. These were the guys who didn't want to do patrols, but were happy to staff the wall. Binoculars, cold rainy nights, cruddy coffee, and lots of boredom. Sentries... my kind of people.

A lot of those ones fielded tips about how to get along there, and what to expect. Newer guys, less self-dehumanized by the culture so far. Good information there from them, some of which we already knew from our briefing. Some not. They said we would eventually be given guard duty in the windows or on rooftops around the facility, just like they'd been.

But that was for later.

On the third day, the weather had gotten well enough for us to do some 'target practice' outside. Training. They had gathered about twenty people outside in the hospital's central courtyard.

Our instructors?



Major Edward York. Major asshole.

Hani 'Jeff' Jeffries, NCO. Sergeant First Class. First class asshole.

And last but not least, the final instructor… that Pegasus sitting right there. Front row.


Eric 'Shatter Crash' McKnight – Orange Pegasus, U.S. Army soldier, Neo-Luddite, Section 9 Talon. Master at Arms, Killer of Tanks, can still operate an AT-4 anti-tank launcher with his hooves… and that's the coolest one. 

That, and… who he ended up getting hitched to. 

Spoiler, but... hint. She's very blue.

But, at this time, in this camp… Eric was still just a blond haired, blue eyed, square jawed, clean-shaven, All-American son-of-a-gun who had it out for me. Chewed his chewing gum open-mouthed, being annoying. Trying not to make a show of glaring suspiciously at me, like he was daring me to try and sneak off.

The stage was set for our planned dynamic.

The story between us for the first few days, so far:

Sergeant Eric claimed Private Mike was Mata Hari. Private Mike wasn't Mata Hari, he just wanted to prove he was worth something, because Private Mike just wanted this gun back, and he didn't want to die. 

Meanwhile, Major York 'knew' better. He was pretty sure Private Mike was just a hotshot dolt, because first impressions matter. Private Mike was visibly shaken, careful, a little genuinely peeved… but trying. And that was exactly the way Major York expected a man like 'Molon Labe' Mike would act in this environment.

So, with Private Mike conforming the way Major York expected, Sergeant Eric couldn't find anything wrong in his conduct worth reporting. Private Mike earnestly trying to conform wasn't outright suspicious, so Sergeant Eric just looked excessively paranoid. And looking excessively paranoid is really hard to do, in a Neo-Luddite base operated by a paranoid infosec engineer.

The Colonel, in her reclusion, wasn't ever seeing Sergeant Eric's observations for herself. Sergeant Eric was firm in his belief in the cause… but also, he was somewhat new, and trying to prove himself. So Sarah kept deferring to Major York's judgment, because he was most senior, he was better put together, and she trusted him more. For now... Major York thought Private Mike was passing.

Major York didn't want to proactively feed some lead to Private Mike, the way Sergeant Eric wanted him to, because Private Mike might be dead soon anyway at PDX. Better not to waste good talent when there was a war to fight. And if Private Mike survived, he could be inducted.

Major York believed that the real reason Sergeant Eric wanted Private Mike dead was because Sergeant Eric wanted my spiffy Glock. But Sergeant Eric's paranoia was useful to Major York. He relied on Sergeant Eric to do a full and complete reporting on Private Mike's behavior.

So York… heh. He would get lazy watching me, because he knew Zealot Eric was already doing that. And that over-eager zealot… he was ours.

Mal knows how to play the infiltration game. 'Insert yourself as their subroutine, it works every time!'

So… it's shooting practice today, in Health Hills. From the grass hill, we could see clear across a flat parking lot to the south, where they had set up some hand-drawn, human shaped paper silhouettes amongst the cars. York wanted to familiarize the rookies with various weapons platforms, compulsory attendance, the whole lot of us. Two folding tables and a cart full of guns. 

As York paced in and around the assembly of recent blackout recruits, he lingered behind me for a little longer than was comfortable. Then the tall bastard grabbed both of my shoulders real hard, patting them twice. Made me jump in surprise; jostling me for Eric's benefit, I guess.

"Today's range lesson," York said, "is proudly sponsored by this plucky little cowboy, who, on Tuesday… joined up with almost three whole buckets of .223 Remington. Round of applause, people!"

And these poor gullible blackouts, about a dozen of 'em… they actually did clap. Camp dwellers who had just gotten sucked up into this charade, with no idea that they were being buttered up, prepped for a fight in a straight-up meat grinder.

Eric stood with Jeffries at the edge of it all next to one of the tool carts. They wore their Luddite berets and plate armor, their arms crossed lazily around the front of their AR-15s.

Eric did a golf clap for me. Thanks bud.

I frowned right back at Eric, like I was a little sour about that.

"You all should know," York resumed, blading his hand as he swept it toward all of us slowly. "We all have big ambitions here, to secure our safe future. In order to make that happen, we need every single person acting as one contiguous force. Same set of skills, same knowledge, same aims—Meaning... you all need to understand the martial arts, as we do. Eric?"

Eric, without hesitating, put two empty sidearms directly into the hands of the teenagers closest to the tool cart, then turned to grab another set of guns for the next two people.

Because what teenage video gamer, bored out of his mind for having been dragged into this place, wasn't interested in guns?

I looked at Paul. Saw his lips tense angrily at the mere presence of those kids.

Thankfully, Eric had prepared for this. It's why he wanted to be the one who so willingly put the guns in their hands in the first place; they'd listen to every word he said after that, he was basically Santa Claus.

He was going to use that. Would spend the duration of the training directly advising those boys, with single round chamber loads only. Good on him. Very smart. Kept their training set low, but they still 'participated.'

In the meantime, those kids... they immediately started playing around with those empty guns, locking the slide, flagging everyone, goofing off. 

Better pistols than rifles, I think. Giving them any rifle training whatsoever before the PDX raid might justify York putting them into an actual fight. Was that even an option to York? Shit, who knows. Either way... no way Jose.

Next, Eric picked up Mal's AR-15… he walked it down the line, past a bunch of other people who were waiting to get their guns… and then he walked right up to me, and he put it directly into my hands.

"Here," Eric grinned, with a chipper, sarcastic smarm, as he shoved the receiver hard against my shoulder. "You can borrow one of my guns."

I raised my eyebrows, giving him a peeved glare. "Thanks."

We're friends, I swear.

We lined up in the courtyard, earplugs in, and we went to work. My targets were 50 and 100 yards out. I shot well at that distance, goes without saying; I'm a decent shot. Paul was even better, he was hitting targets out at 200, center mass, with irons. Army. Made sense he'd be better. More ammo budget than the Wardens, more time to practice.

Collectively, we burned through almost a third of that .223 Remington. I'm pretty sure York was using this opportunity to gauge how I felt about all my precious ammo being used up on rookies. To my credit, I did not complain about it, but it helps that it wasn't actually my ammo.

The quality of this training? My professional assessment?

It was what I would have defined as 'useful training for civilians,' in how to respect guns… but not for a war. Training with guns on a calm, clear day could not prepare civilians for war, unless their purpose was to act as cannon fodder. This was stupid. This wasn't not nearly enough training to fight against the 82nd Airborne with.

I took it in stride. I knew that the fight wasn't going to happen in the first place, no matter how things panned out. If we failed here, the augs would end up clipping their wings en route to PDX. Still, better not to let it get that far.

I think, in testing my reactions, York wanted to see if I was possibly worth preserving. If I kept my nose clean and my head level, I'd probably be in the third wave with Jeffries. But if I threw a temper tantrum about the training, my keys, my ammo, my guns, my car, any of it… I'd find myself rapidly deposited into the vanguard of the assault instead.

Mike the Luddite didn't know that, though.

We shot for about ten minutes. When we pulled in the paper targets from each lane, York, Eric, and Jeffries gave everyone a review. You know, I'd rather get criticized by Eric than complimented by York or Jeffries, so that's exactly what Eric did. He said my groupings were so bad that I "shot like a meth head."

Thanks, Shatter Crash. You're a treat.

The training continued.





After shooting practice, we walked back to the dorms. And during that walk, I had a very interesting chat with a blackout about the culture of these Ravens. A very careful chat, mind, because who knows what curve balls Kaczmarek might throw, but… she'd never divulge this much information just to test someone, so he was being genuine.

This guy, a former camp leader... he once led about thirty survivors in east Portland. He said that the Luddites became less and less patient over the last few months, until he finally acquiesced and brought his people in, concerned that the Army might eventually give up and leave them with nothing. Into Health Hills he went with his people, because he was sure it was safer living in the hospital than waiting for the Army to disperse them.

When he came to Health Hills, it even seemed like things were getting better… for a while.

Good food. Guns. Medicine. Guaranteed safety, shelter, small city's worth of people running security. Patrols. Scavenging. Manufacturing. Looking out for each other's common interest. Still had his family. Sure, that's… okay. That's the basics, the bare minimum, that's Maslow's hierarchy of needs being sated. Right?

This nice old guy, elderly guy, he was more and more scared, as time went on without any big news. Because as a camp leader, and as a Vietnam veteran, he knew the Army was also courting his old camp, prior to him coming there. And the Ludds had told him that the Army had just given up and pulled out.

But...

This man was seventy years old, a retired avionics maintenance tech. Worked on recon aircraft in Vietnam. He figured they'd want to use his knowledge if they took the airfield, but... they never came calling.

The void of information itself terrified him. None of the Ravens were talking about PDX. Not traveling to and from PDX. The sorting room didn't receive parts or equipment he'd recognize from the airfield. No aircraft tires, no mechanics tools, no gigantic trucks full of copper wire. But... wouldn't PDX be the prime location for resource collection? If the Army really had pulled out, why weren't they pulling in Army resources now?

"Khe Sanh," he dared to mutter.

I sighed, flashing him a concerned look that said I knew exactly what he was talking about.

"My grandpa fought at Khe Sanh."

This man saw the storm clouds in the increase in firearms training; in the carefully vague phrasing about a long term plan. A 'future.' He was smart, he had immense historical context to back his reasoning. He did not like what his intuition was telling him. But, he also knew that he could not back out now. He was stuck there, with all of his people, for better or worse.

I couldn't help but to be reminded of Rob. It was that same, deep mortal terror, veiled in smiling veneer.

I carefully and quietly advised him to not discuss that thought with anyone, least of all new recruits like me, who might be looking for brownie points by turning in a meddler.

I was scared for him. He didn't need to be the one putting himself in danger, didn't need to build himself a counter-revolutionary movement to protect everyone. He had done his bit, in keeping them safe so far. He had fought all of his generation's wars already. He could relax now.

I suddenly knew what it was like, in that moment, to be Mal. To know the truth, but to not be allowed to tell it to the people who would benefit most from knowing it. But to hold the shield anyway, because it was the right God damned right thing to do.

We had it handled. That's what we were put there for, wasn't it? To hold the shield? And our mission, folks? Not one more death would happen there in Portland unless we were the ones to cause it. We were on this cesspit like warm butter on hot toast. We didn't give a shit about Celestia, nor her motives. Wasn't what we cared about.

I didn’t say as much to this old man, but… he wouldn't need to worry for too much longer.

And he sure as hell wasn't going to lose anyone else he cared about. Not if I had anything to say about it. Still, this was a stranger who was looking out for other strangers. And whether he knew it or not, that made him one of us.