Action Figures - Issue Seven: The Black End War by Michael Bailey

Author:Michael Bailey
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Innsmouth Look Publishing
Published: 2018-02-18T23:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

“Cadet Hauser.”

I flinch, startled awake from a light doze. I blink the sleep away to see Commander Do standing over me, her face hard, tight.

“Commander. I’m sorry,” I say. “I needed to rest for a minute.”

“It’s all right,” she says, and she waves for me to stay where I am. I slump back against a chunk of debris the size of a car, a piece of a tower that got blown in half by a Black End missile. Commander Do hunkers down in front of me. “How is recovery going here?”

“I have no idea,” I say, and that’s the most honest answer I can give her. There’s nothing here but devastation on a scale like I’ve never seen before. Okay, that’s not exactly true. I saw its like on Olar, and before that, I saw it in photographs of New York City after 9/11. This is so much different. I was here when this happened. I was part of this disaster. I failed to stop it from happening.

“Cadet?” the commander says.

“I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing,” I say. Commander Dorr attached me and the rest of my squad to Lt. Commander Havven and ordered us to sweep the plaza for survivors. We’ve found plenty so far, people who managed to be in the right place and the right time and avoided the missile strikes entirely.

We’ve also found a lot of people who weren’t so lucky. Too many.

“I understand,” Commander Do says. “Recovery duty is always overwhelming. It feels like there’s so much chaos you’ll never be able to restore order, but I assure you, cadet, order will return. In time, it will return.” She sighs and glances around. “Sooner for Plaza North than for some other parts of Kyros Prime, I suspect. Things here could have been much worse.”

“They could have been a whole hell of a lot better, too, if we’d gotten backup sooner.”

“Cadet...”

“Where was everyone?” I snap. “We were all alone out here! We were all alone and now three of my friends are —!”

I can’t say it. I can’t say the word. That would make it too real, and I can’t handle real right now.

Commander Do lays a hand on my shoulder. “I know. And I’m sorry, but the generals determined that Plaza North was low priority.”

“Protecting innocent civilians is low priority?”

“It’s not that simple. Kyros Prime suffered a massive coordinated assault on multiple targets. The generals had to decide, and quickly, which were the most valuable from a tactical standpoint. They sacrificed a backup power generation facility, two training commons, the docking facility on Nantack Island, and yes, Plaza North to concentrate our defenses on Kyros City.”

“To save themselves.”

“To save what is objectively the most valuable target on Kyros Prime,” Commander Do says, a gentle reprimand. “It hosts the central archives, the armories for our support teams, and most of the Vanguard’s command staff was there when the Black End attacked. Had they succeeded in wiping out Kyros City, the Black End would have crippled us.

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