by Max Barry

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«12. . .1,1021,1031,1041,1051,1061,1071,108. . .1,2071,208»

Nazbeth wrote:I like it.

I am concerned, though, about the health of the Five. If they’re still in Lurin, wouldn’t radiation poisoning be an issue?

They're a hundred miles south of Lurin at the end of this chapter.

Nazbeth

Children are disappointed to learn that cavemen never had a yabba-dabba-doo time riding dinosaurs to work, knitters are arrested for carrying needles in their bags, standing on a chair to reach a top shelf is seen as evidence of narcissistic personality disorder, and the nation is renowned abroad for its love of blood and guts. Crime is totally unknown. Nazbeth's national animal is the lynx, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Naz: what have you done!?

Nazbeth

What do you think of the slightly redesigned WFE?

Nazbeth

Rahul Raghuraman wrote:Children are disappointed to learn that cavemen never had a yabba-dabba-doo time riding dinosaurs to work, knitters are arrested for carrying needles in their bags, standing on a chair to reach a top shelf is seen as evidence of narcissistic personality disorder, and the nation is renowned abroad for its love of blood and guts. Crime is totally unknown. Nazbeth's national animal is the lynx, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Naz: what have you done!?

I may have accidentally... legalized jousting??

Nazbeth wrote:I may have accidentally... legalized jousting??

Something something presidential elections are jousts?

Nazbeth

Rahul Raghuraman wrote:What do you think of the slightly redesigned WFE?

RIP RBG. Also, it’s nice how the series are separated by author, and furthest year made me laugh a little because it’s a testament to the muddled timeline.

Rahul Raghuraman wrote:Something something presidential elections are jousts?

No, I intentionally legalized jousting, but I misread it and I thought it was more like Renaissance Faires than actually jousting.

Nazbeth wrote:RIP RBG. Also, it’s nice how the series are separated by author, and furthest year made me laugh a little because it’s a testament to the muddled timeline.

Yes.

I think it helps organize the WFE.

Again, it's not muddled; we simply have multiple series in progress.

Nazbeth

Nazbeth wrote:No, I intentionally legalized jousting, but I misread it and I thought it was more like Renaissance Faires than actually jousting.

Well that's certainly not as interesting.

Nazbeth

How is Holydia doing

Rahul Raghuraman, Nazbeth, and Holydia

Richomp wrote:How is Holydia doing

Birds and children's kites are regularly brought down by anti-aircraft fire, the dead fish in the national rivers aren't decomposing because even bacteria can't survive the levels of toxicity, jaywalking is punishable by public flogging, and tourists visiting the nation are harangued for being capitalist pig-dogs.

HOLYDIA IS GREATER THAN EVER IN OUR HISTOREE!!!! ALL PRAISE HOLYFA WHO RODE INTO OUR GLORIOUS COUNTREE ASTRIDE THE HOLY FLIGHT MACHINE WHO SAVED US FROM THE RED DEVILS WHO HAS AN 8 PACK OF TITANIUM AND STEEL!!!!!

Rahul Raghuraman, Nazbeth, and Richomp

OH HOLY GOD HOLYFA, WE GIVE OURSELVES TO THEE, OUR LORD AND SAVIOR ETERNALEEE. YOU SAVED US FROM THE RED DEVILS YOUR EIGHT PACK IS SO GREAT. WE EAT ALL 8 CALORIES, EV-RY-DAAAAAAAAY

Rahul Raghuraman and Nazbeth

Holydians get all their required 8 calories from the water every day

Rahul Raghuraman and Nazbeth

Richomp wrote:OH HOLY GOD HOLYFA, WE GIVE OURSELVES TO THEE, OUR LORD AND SAVIOR ETERNALEEE. YOU SAVED US FROM THE RED DEVILS YOUR EIGHT PACK IS SO GREAT. WE EAT ALL 8 CALORIES, EV-RY-DAAAAAAAAY

You imbecile! what have you done? Now HOLYFA will kill us for using the letter Y in an unholy word!

Nazbeth and Richomp

3:20 P.M. 20th APRIL, 2052. SURVIVORS’ HAVEN.

Deran Leanes took a long moment to consider the words of the fifth survivor Prolif had found that morning. One part of him wanted eagerly to welcome her and integrate her into the End, and felt her lack of love for both Rostenstaphen and Crimtonian Spectre would be quite at home among him and his allies. Another could hardly care less about this Ele Tegiel, and wanted to tell Prolif to dump her back in irradiated Lurin, where the former downer couldn’t bother him anymore. But it was his curious and cautiously expectant side that won out.

“Letting you join us in avenging Lurin is a large favor,” he told Ele, quickly scanning the others for potentially troublesome expressions and finding none. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect something in return to reassure me that you’re fully committed.”
This time, Ele didn’t look for approval before speaking, saying, “Neither do I. In fact, my conversation with Prolif Keltor during the trip here reminds me of something you probably want to know.”

She paused, as if expecting Deran to ask what that something was. Instead, he said nothing, and upon realizing he was intentionally remaining silent, Ele explained. “You know Odil Rostenstaphen ordered the attack on Lurin. If you didn’t before, you know now that his strike wasn’t preemptive. But you don’t know who attacked Rostenstaphen first,” she said, confident and nearly arrogant.

“I don’t tell Prolif everything I know,” Deran countered. “What if I learned who attacked him?”

Ele gave him a harsh glare. “Did you?” she said, her challenge supported by a skeptical look from Prolif that implied Deran was stretching plausibility.

Another long pause from Deran… then he relented. “No,” he conceded. “But you did,” he added, a hint of curiosity slipping into his voice.

Not wanting to push Deran’s limits further, Ele gave up her glare and returned to her typical neutral expression. “Yes,” she confirmed, but continued no further.

After a short silence, Prolif spoke up. “Who was it?” she asked. “The first attacker?”

“Kaltam.”

9:50 A.M. 30th APRIL, 2052. SURVIVORS’ HAVEN.

“They look Kaltamian,” Seivla Tarren commented as she peered over Deran Leanes’s shoulder into the wall-mounted scope she had built earlier that week.

“They are in a typical Home Guard formation,” Deran said, “but the way they carry themselves seems Imperial.”

Carry themselves?” Seivla echoed. “How can you tell from this distance? What are they, four kilometers away from us?”

Deran shook his head slightly, his eyes still narrowed on the scope. “I don’t mean their body language,” he clarified. “I mean literally — the type of vehicle they’re carrying themselves in. Those carriers remind me more of ILACs than anything Kaltam’s army is known to use.”

“ILACs, you say,” Seivla murmured thoughtfully. “You think they’re Imperials posing as Kaltamian army forces?”

“Possibly.” Deran shrugged, peeling his eyes off the scope and turning to the other. “But like you said, those — whoever they are — are still a few kilometers away from us. In any case, I want you to hurry the rest of the team over here. If those scouts — or worse, vanguards for an invasion — pay us a visit, we need to be prepared for any eventuality.”
For a moment, Seivla was motionless, a slight crease on her forehead, as if she was mentally critiquing Deran’s order.

Go!” he demanded, shaking her out of the trance. And as Seivla nodded and turned to leave, Deran returned his focus to the scope. He took the adjustment lever in one hand, slowly oscillating it to adjust his view of the approaching vehicles. Yes, there were five of them, in what Deran was sure was the Kaltam Home Guard’s standard configuration — a Q-formation, with four of the carriers forming a square and the fifth slightly in front of them all, leading the charge. The rounded-box design could also be Kaltamian, but then again, both the Liberlitatians and the Imperials maintained similar models in their land forces.

Similar, but not identical. While he had worked at First Prospect with Elt Henon and many ousted prewar Crimtonian politicians, militarians, and fellow executives, Deran had begun to befriend a former army major named Rissa Zarius. In exchange for Deran’s knowledge of corporate structure and his help in receiving several valuable promotions, she had shared her experiences in the Crimtonian Imperial Sixth Section, the division of Rostenstaphen’s forces focused on military intelligence and offensive espionage operations. In one of their conversations, Rissa had explained to him a noticeable hallmark of Kaltamian or Liberlitatian land vehicles. In addition to the standard left- and right-side treads, they had a smaller central tread that increased adaptability and endurance, albeit sacrificing interchangeability with two-treaded designs.

If those scouts are Kaltamian, Deran thought ruefully, I swear I will be the last thing they ever see.

And as the formation began to come into range of the scope’s accuracy-increasing second lens, Deran focused on the central carrier, whose path was still pointed straight at him. Of course, its outer treads were quickly rolling along the slope; and the inner tread Deran was looking for was, he recognized… not present. And with an abrupt sense of dread, Deran realized two things:

Those five carriers were Imperial, and the Survivors’ Haven had been exposed.

But the four presences behind him — the rest of the End, running to his position — reminded Deran: Not all is lost. This dread may very well be unfounded, and the Empire may have much in common with the End.

Elt had just finished catching his breath when he saw why Deran had asked so urgently for backup. Five troop carriers, seeming to be in either a G or Q-formation, had parked twenty meters in front of the outskirts — really nothing more than a perimeter of wreckage — of the Survivors’ Haven. Judging from the carriers’ design and formation, they were either Liberlitatian, Kaltamian, or Imperial; Deran’s expression suggested it wasn’t the former.

“Good to see you,” Deran said absently as he rose from the crouch he had assumed behind the double scope Seivla had built and rested a hand on his chin.

“Kaltamian or Imperial?” Elt prompted, hoping to shake the other from whatever was so clearly bothering him.

“Imperials,” Deran said after a moment. “Up to fifty of them.”

“What are we going to do about them?”

About them? Nothing.” Deran adopted a conspiratorial smile. “Instead, I think we’re going to talk to them.”

To Elt, it seemed like hours before the Imperial with lieutenant’s rank insignia finished analyzing the five of them from the safety of her vehicle and stepped out of the frontmost Light Assault Carrier to face her audience. In reality, she probably took no more than five minutes.

“I am Lieutenant Jia,” she announced as the carrier’s door closed behind her. “I am part of the most powerful and capable nation in the history of Dauiland.”

Deran stepped forward. “I see you’re Imperial,” he said. “I am Deran. These—” He encompassed the other four members of the End in a broad gesture. “—are my people.”

“I can tell,” she said, then paused and frowned slightly. “You aren’t like the other lowlifes I find around here, are you?”

“Certainly not,” Deran declared, either ignoring or embracing that term. “In fact, I think we are unlike anyone else in the world.”

Jia sighed almost inaudibly, as if thinking she had made a mistake in even coming out to speak with Deran. “And why is that?”

Deran pulled back a step, falling back into line with his allies. He glanced at Elt and Seivla to his left, then at Prolif and Ele to his right. All four of them gave him affirming nods: permission to share their story with Jia with the goal of winning her favor.

“Because,” Deran said as he returned his focus to the Imperial lieutenant, “we are the only survivors of Odil Rostenstaphen’s destruction of Lurin. We also know it was Kaltam that struck Rostenstaphen first. And more importantly, we know what we need to do. We must find all those responsible — whether they served Kaltam or Rostenstaphen — and kill them. We must enact the revenge they deserve.”

Deran paused a moment. “We have no sympathy for Dauiland,” he said, “just as the murderer is despised by the families of those he kills.”

Jia regarded Deran, her expression significantly more respectful than it had been when she challenged his declaration. “Very well,” was all she told him before turning and withdrawing to her carrier.

As the door slid shut behind the Imperial, Seivla spoke up: “Will she believe you?”

“I think so,” Elt said. “If we wanted her to ignore us, we would have hidden when she ordered a sweep of the area. If we wanted her to pity us and give us supplies, Deran wouldn’t have made that speech about our goal of revenge.”

“Jia won’t question my assertion,” Deran agreed. “But she might demand evidence to make sure we’re worth any more of her time.”

“Evidence of what?” Seivla asked.

“Evidence that proves we have the ability to achieve our goal,” Deran said. “That proves we aren’t hiding a lack of ability and power behind a veil of grandeur.”

“Then what can we show her? We don’t exactly have the resources here to construct some elaborate device that’ll impress Jia.”

“Exactly,” Elt cut in. “I get the sense that she knows that, and won’t look for physical evidence. I think she’s going to test us. See what we know, how quickly we can pick up what she says and implies, how we react to the unexpected.”

As if on cue, Jia reemerged from her vehicle and returned to the position she had taken earlier when speaking to Deran. “As it happens,” she said without preamble, “Rostenstaphen and Estamin are quite high on Empress Lebowskii’s lineup.” Jia took on a formal tone, almost like she was reading lines from a script. “Her Majesty understands the damage they have done across this region, and, in her efforts to acclimate the people of Dauiland to her continued presence, wishes to put them in their place: the grave.”

Jia took a small device — similar in appearance to Seivla’s two-tiered scope, but with a smaller lower ring and a thirty centimeter-wide red cube below both focal lenses — into her hand and placed it into the ground a meter in front of her. “Deran,” she said, placing what appeared to be a battery pack next to the device’s base, “meet my master: Colonel Rynas.”
Jia’s device let out a high-pitched warble for a few moments before quieting mid-tone, almost abruptly. As soon as the sound stopped, the upper ring began to emit a translucent red cone — a holographic projection of some kind — that was narrowest at the bottom. The cone grew rapidly up to a height of two meters, then dissolved into a red-tinted human figure.

“I am Rynas,” the figure said proudly, his words much crisper than Deran would have predicted. This must have been some very recent Imperial technology. “My lieutenant tells me you seek revenge against Kaltam and Rostenstaphen’s second regime. I, too, share that directive; it was given to me by the Empress herself.

“So let us form a partnership, Deran,” Rynas said, pronouncing the other’s name like it was an incantation. “I believe it would be to our mutual benefit.”

“You aren’t going to test us?” Deran asked quizzically, not yet believing the Imperial’s words.

“Test you? Of course not.” Rynas dismissed the notion with a wave of the hand. “That implies you might want to trick me; but as I’m certain you know, you would not survive long following any sort of betrayal.”

Rynas’s logic followed, of course; even for someone as distant from the Empire as Deran, its steadfast determination to make an example of traitors was notable. And if Deran and his allies were intent on martyring themselves, they would have been somewhere more relevant to the war than the middle of the Ashes of Crimtonia. “What are your terms?” he asked Rynas.

“You and your four comrades join Imperial Intelligence. I will immediately promote you to mid-tier lieutenants, and you will be sent on several critical missions within and around Imperial land. If you are skilled as you believe yourselves to be, I will keep you in Intelligence. Otherwise, I see no reason to dump you back here in the Crimtonian badlands.

“In exchange for your hard work and dedication, I will ensure many of my agents — including, if I deem it fit, the five of you — work on manipulating and destroying our common enemies. But before I provide anything for you, you must swear loyalty to Empress Lebowskii and the Eternal Empire.”

Nazbeth

#1: Odil Rostenstaphen’s Sixth Section is devoted to military intelligence. This is a real-life reference to the British MI6.

#2: Rissa Zarius was a major in the Crimtonian Imperial army. This is a reference to one of the first posts ever made about the First Crimtonian Civil War, in which General Larus Zarius (said to be a Crimtonian Imperial kingpin) is assassinated.

#2b: When naming a relative of Larus also in Rostenstaphen’s army, I looked into his name and found that it’s a genus of bird in the order Charadriiformes. Rissa is another genus of bird in that order.

#3: Ele Tegiel’s first name can stand for Extinction Level Event, which is what Odil’s attack was for Lurin.

#4: One of the Kaltam Home Guard’s more well-known formations is the Q-formation. This is a reference to former PM Rachel Tiveron going by Q for a few chapters in OES.

Nazbeth

Wow, I really like this one!

Rahul Raghuraman wrote:

#1: Odil Rostenstaphen’s Sixth Section is devoted to military intelligence. This is a real-life reference to the British MI6.

#2: Rissa Zarius was a major in the Crimtonian Imperial army. This is a reference to one of the first posts ever made about the First Crimtonian Civil War, in which General Larus Zarius (said to be a Crimtonian Imperial kingpin) is assassinated.

#2b: When naming a relative of Larus also in Rostenstaphen’s army, I looked into his name and found that it’s a genus of bird in the order Charadriiformes. Rissa is another genus of bird in that order.

#3: Ele Tegiel’s first name can stand for Extinction Level Event, which is what Odil’s attack was for Lurin.

#4: One of the Kaltam Home Guard’s more well-known formations is the Q-formation. This is a reference to former PM Rachel Tiveron going by Q for a few chapters in OES.

1. I did get this one! Mostly because I am secretly fond of James Bond movies.

2. Missed this one for sure. Nice job with continuity! When I first read Zarius, I immediately thought Tarius.

2b. Definitely not.

3. Nor this one. ELE sounds quite sinister.

4. Haha yes! I did get this one. So did Rachel Tiveron invent that formation herself? We still haven’t determined what Q stands for either. When I came up with it I was thinking about Q from James Bond, nothing else. Definitely not QAnon in case you were wondering.

Nazbeth wrote:Wow, I really like this one!

Thanks! Any other QRCCs about this chapter? I know you read the outline, but there has to be lots of new information, right?

Nazbeth

Nazbeth wrote:1. I did get this one! Mostly because I am secretly fond of James Bond movies.

2. Missed this one for sure. Nice job with continuity! When I first read Zarius, I immediately thought Tarius.

2b. Definitely not.

3. Nor this one. ELE sounds quite sinister.

4. Haha yes! I did get this one. So did Rachel Tiveron invent that formation herself? We still haven’t determined what Q stands for either. When I came up with it I was thinking about Q from James Bond, nothing else. Definitely not QAnon in case you were wondering.

1. Secretly?

4. I’ll leave that up to you. It’s a very simple formation — four units forming a box with a fifth in front — but you could relate it to Rachel Tiveron if you want.

4b. I wasn’t wondering that. I thought it was Q because Q comes before R (for Rachel) in the alphabet.

Nazbeth

Also, look for a new Epic card in CS.

Nazbeth

That was an awesome piece of writing, although I thought that the dialogue was slightly formal. I'd think that people would speak more casually. Not as in using a lot of slang, but just being concise with their words. (Except for Deran's speech, because...I mean, you do have to persuade arrogant Imperials by acting arrogant yourself.)

Rahul Raghuraman and Nazbeth

Liberlitatia wrote:That was an awesome piece of writing, although I thought that the dialogue was slightly formal. I'd think that people would speak more casually. Not as in using a lot of slang, but just being concise with their words. (Except for Deran's speech, because...I mean, you do have to persuade arrogant Imperials by acting arrogant yourself.)

1. Thanks! I’m happy you like it. Have you also silently read the other chapters of Origins?

2. That was intentional. It’s to show how different these five people are from normal people: they’re so single-mindedly focused on taking out their anger that they don’t really take the time to develop any kind of relationship with each other beyond “ally” or “associate.” That will change in the future, though.

3. Yes, and another part of it is that acting confidently in front of someone (Jia) who has enough firepower to kill your team could make her think you’re more powerful than you seem.

Nazbeth

Naz, are you here?

Nazbeth

Rahul Raghuraman wrote:Thanks! Any other QRCCs about this chapter? I know you read the outline, but there has to be lots of new information, right?

None at the moment. I really liked all the references, but you knew that already.

«12. . .1,1021,1031,1041,1051,1061,1071,108. . .1,2071,208»

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