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Here you'll find
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Mount Robillard
23. An Outrage"Osip, could I have a word with you?"Osip stopped in his tracks at the voice from somewhere behind him, and turned around. "Sure, brother. What's up?" "I keep hearing this really strange talk." Orwel crossed his arms on his chest and tilted his head a little. "Really strange and completely insane talk. I wonder if you're aware of it?" "The people here love talking," Osip said breezily. "I'm sure you've noticed. So, what's this particularly insane topic?" "It concerns an all-out attack to the Plains Base." Orwel's tone was ominous. Osip's eyebrows slanted and he looked steadily at his brother. "Oh, that. I've heard it as well." "And? Don't tell me you are actually, really, seriously planning something like that? Not even you can be that crazy!" Orwel shook his head. "I seem to remember hearing you say, while I've been here, that you're not suicidal." "We aren't. None of us is." Osip examined his fingernails. "However, I can't really stop the people from talking." "Meaning that you don't want to," Orwel corrected. He sighed deep. "Osip, I'm sure it's all very well and nice to fantasize, but you're the Commander." "One of them," Osip interjected, and his brother rolled his eyes. "That's beside the point. What I mean that you, as a Commander, ought to make sure your people don't waste time and energy on planning something that can't be implemented!" "Hmm... maybe our ideas of what is possible and what isn't differ slightly from the views of the Union," Osip suggested. "But hey, cool down. All that is just talk. And what harm will it do if the people make plans? Maybe they won't be used as such, but they may be applicable in other situations. I've really noticed, during my time as Commander, that even if someboedy has no experience or knowledge about something, he still may have fresh ideas. People like that look at things in a new way, they ask different questions. They inspire and challenge the jaded experts to break out of what they're used to." "Ooh, what a philosopher you've become!" Orwel snorted. "You just gave yourself away, though. Maybe their plans won't be used... or maybe they will. No use denying any more. You are planning something, all of you." "But what's making you so concerned?" Osip looked at him quizzically. "I mean, you're a Union officer. You of all people should be delirious with joy to hear that we might be thinking of something so foolhardy. Or have I missed something here?" Orwel opened and closed his mouth and averted his eyes. "Maybe I'm just worried about what'll happen to me if you all go and get yourselves killed. I might be stuck here for a good while. Or maybe I'm worried for my kids. They're there, Osip, in the base you're planning to level, for godssakes!" "But we aren't planning to level it," Osip said. Orwel whirled around and fixed him with a dark scowl, and he threw up his arms. "All right... got me there. Okay, just maybe we have been having these crazy talks recently. But I still maintain that we're not suicidal. Hell, if we were, we'd probably have dashed in already!" "I can't imagine what's stopping you," Orwel muttered sarcastically. "I'm sure common sense has absolutely nothing to do with it." "Most likely not," Osip agreed readily. "After all, we've got here a guy who's been essentially involved in no less than three major sabotage hits against the Union in two years. All three against targets that, according to common sense, were invulnerable. And all three missions spectacularly successful, at least from a rebel's point of view." "What are you talking about? There have been no sabotages over the past two years!" "Not here, brother dear. I'm talking about the M-sector, and the two hits against Union factories " "The Wolves of Ashanti!" Orwel snarled. "I should've known that he'd be the mastermind here." "Oh, we don't want to give all credit to Vanya, even though he's undoubtedly brilliant and has extremely valuable experience in that sort of thing. His input will be priceless " "So now it's already will be?" Orwel looked totally exasperated. "You're moving fast, brother dear!" " if we ever get our act together enough to even consider launching such an attack," Osip raised his voice to finish. "All right, all right, so it's all still drenched in uncertainty." Orwel's voice dripped sarcasm. "I just can't understand where this harebrained idea has come from in the first place. The first I heard about it was at that party, but somehow I've just kept hearing about it ever since." "Well, that's where the idea first popped up!" Osip said. "Okay, now you'll say something about drunken ramblings and so forth, and of course you're absolutely right. But still we can't just toss away all fascinating ideas simply because somebody not quite sober has first come up with them. The idea may be brilliant nevertheless, and it's then the task of others to perfect it into something workable." "You just don't understand, do you? The Plains Base is huge. Security there is good. There are thousands of people there. You wouldn't even know what to target!" Osip eyed his clearly agitated brother coolly. "We don't. But of course it would help tremendously to have somebody who could tell us at least something about the layout, and other such pertinent details. So that we wouldn't waste our time trying to annihilate, say, clone barracks, believing them to be aircraft hangars..." Orwel's eyes narrowed and a slow rage turned his face into stone. His nostrils flared. "I'm really beginning to wonder whether snatching me wasn't, after all, a carefully planned thing," he spat. How he hated Osip for his perception, for knowing so fucking exactly how to play him! "It wasn't, and you know it. But I've just realized that perhaps it might be possible to reconcile what you're interested in with what we want to achieve." Osip looked at him intently, completely serious. "I know you consistently sneer at our philosophies, our lofty goals, but I've also detected that you've begun to question the whole cloning program and its justifications. I think you had these sneaking suspicions already well before Arria ever laid eyes on you." Orwel opened his mouth to retort something, but his words were drowned by the loud chiming of an all-base alarm. Osip reacted within a second, starting towards the hangars at top speed, and after a moment's hesitation his brother followed him. The common room was filling rapidly. Loudspeakers blared out information, Base Control was busy filling everybody in about the impending attack, Osip shouted terse questions and whipped his flyboys into action. Orwel's heart was pumping, he found himself inching closer to the screen where the battle scene was beginning to appear. Oh, those familiar formations! He wished he could somehow keep track of the serial numbers, and a chilling thought hit him: what if his young S's were up there now? Rubbish, he assured himself, they're still too young to be put in action. He was here, not out there, to make sure, but they had another guardian and whoever it was, he'd know they were not ready for this yet. He was being ridiculous. Orwel shrugged the gnawing doubt away and forced his lips into a smile at his own silliness. He watched the screen that was beginning to look more interesting with the appearance of the rebel planes that shot out of the chutes and rapidly gained altitude. The attackers were staying very high up, way out of their AD's reach, and a loose group of twitchy gunners were standing close to the door, eagerly waiting to be commanded to their posts. Each pilot quickly confirmed the link to Base, and Orwel felt an icy fist in his gut to hear Shaun's bright and eager voice over the link. Somebody to his left inhaled loudly, and from the corner of his eye he saw the looming shape of Fonzo, face furrowed in worry, staring intently at the screen. Vanya and Corinn flanked him on both sides, for once looking grim and serious. A little further away, Lancer was standing shoulder to shoulder with a frowning Adrien, eyes fixed at the screen, nibbling on his lower lip. Sick with worry, each one of them, but involved in something that for whatever reasons was so important to them that they were willing to brave it. Willing to let their most loved ones to risk their lives for it, too. Orwel felt a sudden tremor. He was a trained Union officer, and yet he was suddenly wondering whether he'd have been able to send his kids out to fight. They'd been bred and raised to fight. Never had any choice, and why should they? After all, they were made for it. Produced, like the aircraft they used. What were they fighting for? Orwel's head was spinning, he fought sudden nausea and turned back towards the screen, focusing on the red dots indicating Union fighters. Scott was doing a superb job, he observed, predicting their movements and relaying the information to his fellow pilots, and once again their strategy was beginning to pay off. Orwel bit his lip in consternation. The Union was careful to study and analyze their opponents' actions after each battle and use the results as feedback to hone the clones' performance, but now he thought he detected some sloppiness in preparation. Not all of the clones were performing at their peak, and he didn't like at all the possible explanations that his mind was whispering. Its volume was just getting so loud that he was hard put to ignore its comments. Some of the rebels were specifically trying to lure the enemy to lower altitudes, so that the AD would have at least the shadow of a hope to target them, and Orwel realized with dark dismay that they were actually falling for the trick. "Gunners, man AD. Standby until cleared." A couple of hoots were heard as the men, headed by a jubilantly grinning Reed, squeezed through the door and disappeared from sight. Lancer spun around as well, waited sensibly until the door-turned-meat-grinder was empty again, and then flashed out of the room in a run. Orwel couldn't tear his eyes away from the dots of light doing their intricate dance on the wall screen. He fought against the urge to yell in frustration. The red dots had superior speed, superior firepower, superior numbers, superior everything, and by all accounts they should have reigned victorious. The operative word being should. Arria, standing in the middle of the Control Room like the true conductor of massive events that he was, turned sharply and his eyebrows jumped to the hairline. Orwel Dahomey was stomping into the room. "What's the matter?" he asked, eyes slightly unfocused under the steady flow of communication flooding to his earphones. "Is there a way I can contact the planes?" Orwel asked. "I remember hearing that Scott actually talked Shaun into landing here that he gave him the command to land. So I'm not very wrong to assume that he had a way to contact one of his enemy?" "He did," Arria admitted cautiously. "Could you do the same thing for me? Put me through, that is?" "What are you getting at?" Arria sounded stern and suspicious, and Orwel took a deep breath. Of course the man had the right to be distrustful, standing in the Control Center during a battle and talking with an officer of the enemy side who wanted to contact one of the enemy fighters. If that wasn't a reason to suspect something, then what was? So there was absolutely no reason for Orwel to take offense or, even worse, blow his top. He counted quickly to ten and tried to sound as calm and convincing as he could. "The S-planes are not performing nearly as well as they should, and I hope I'm wrong but I think it just might be because there's quite a number of young S's. Too young. I'd like to try and check the situation." Arria looked at him for a while, dark eyes hooded, and Orwel's hands twitched. "Arria if you help me with this, I just might be willing to consider helping you with a certain mission you've been planning recently." Arria pressed his mouth in a thin line but nodded. Of course they'd investigated Scott's and Shaun's planes very thoroughly after the battle where Scott had surprised everybody by opening that special-channel communication with a fellow clone. Besides, right now he couldn't afford to waste time on wondering whether or not this was a good idea. After all, it would be only too easy to cut the link at the first sign of anything suspicious. And what if Orwel was going to do something useful? He pointed at a monitoring seat by the consoles. "Sit down there, you'll have your own screen in front of you. I'll put you through to the right channel. But I warn you, Orwel I'm listening." Orwel didn't bother answering, he was in too much of a hurry to plop into the seat and grab the headset. Arria activated the channel they had ascertained to be used by the Union, and set his mind on multitasking in earnest. He needed to keep track of the overall situation, he had to keep tabs on Orwel, and make sure that that the two channels were not linked so that nobody but he would be aware of what was going on. Arria sat on the edge of a desk and his eyes slid nearly closed, watching the fuzzy battle scene that he could see glittering through his lashes, brain methodically sorting through information that was pouring on him from every direction. Orwel fascinated him. The man was such a walking contradiction; a Union officer with doubts, a clone trainer who was genuinely attached to the cannon fodder he'd been working with, a man who very clearly had a strong conscience that he'd been trying to keep quiet for quite some time. He professed to resent his elder brother and everything he stood for, and yet he'd had several long, sometimes extremely profound discussions with Osip: about their goals, their values, their principles. Arria had been a listener to quite a few of those exchanges, and to him it had seemed that many times Orwel had been hard put to maintain his cool, superior attitude towards what he kept calling "rebel follies". He felt the pull of his brother's passionate conviction, felt it badly, and Arria very much hoped that Orwel was fighting a losing battle against that attraction. He liked the man, and not only because Orwel in very many respects resembled his elder brother closely. Such as right now, as he seemed to crouch in his seat, eyes narrowing in concentration. Arria tuned in and the first thing he felt was a wave of disgust as he heard the voice talking to the man. High-pitched, eager, clearly delighted. And sickeningly childlike. Orwel's eyes sought his, Arria nodded and the man returned to talking to the clone. Arria registered in passing that the ID number was well over one hundred, barked some instructions to the pilots, checked the status of the landing chutes, sent a call to the Ney-Spaak twins, returned again to monitoring the events unfolding in the atmosphere. He was running on autopilot, not really thinking what he did, not now. There would be time to analyze later, now he just needed to rely on instinct. "Hey, lover." Arria opened his eyes and blinked a few times at Osip's slightly worried expression. "What?" "Come in already," Osip chided. "You've been zoned out for so long, you ought to start putting yourself back together. The battle's definitely over by now." Arria pushed himself up from where he'd been leaning against the wall, eyes closed, and winced when Osip's hard fingers dug into the tense knots along his spine. "Sorry. It's just that this was tougher than usual, with Orwel sitting here and contacting those S-clones." He pressed into the large palm and sighed. "Had to split my mind into so many parts that it took a while to reassemble. I'm OK now." "Sure?" Osip pulled him into a hug and got a reassuring smile in return. "Right. You're beginning to look like yourself again and not just a defective clone." "Defective?" Arria tried to scowl threateningly but Osip's scent and quiet, deep chuckle dissolved the expression as soon as he tried to form it. "Yeah. Don't they usually come with brain?" Osip rubbed his face on Arria's short hair and ignored the affronted snort. "Talking about which... so my brother sweet-talked another couple of clones to join us, huh?" "Three, to be exact," Arria corrected, and Osip whistled appreciatively. "Which means that now we have a slight problem. We agreed with him that they'd be put in one room to start with, the room being of course the one he's been staying in." "Oh. I see. So we'll have to find him another room to sleep in," Osip concluded. "How do the three fit in the room, by the way? It's not awfully large." "They'll have to, because that's the only surveillance room we have here," Arria sighed. "He tried to get more, he really tried, but ran out of time. Osip, he said..." He was interrupted by the swishing sound of an opening door, and Arria briefly wondered how a fully mechanically operating piece of machinery managed to sound so infuriated as it did when revealing a darkly glowering Captain Orwel Dahomey. The man stormed into the mostly deserted Control Room, threw himself into a vacant chair and banged a fist on the desk turning enraged dark eyes to meet the dumbfounded stares of Osip and Arria. "My kids!" he said, voice dangerously low and throaty. "They bloody well are my kids! Those fucking brainless idiots have already deployed even their batches. Do you understand? They aren't even ten years old yet, for fuck's sake! And those, those bastards have put them to action..." His fists crashed once more on the desk, mouth setting into a grim line. "Osip, Arria," he said through clenched teeth. "Just in case you are intending to go ahead with that absolutely mad plan of yours... count me in."
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