Awake

Chapter Thirty-Eight - Preparations for Battle

Jonathan had finished talking and was looking over the ranks of soldiers as if waiting for a reply. There wasn't one. They just stared impassively back at him.

"If anyone has anything to say," Natalia added, "you may speak. You have our permission to say whatever you need and ask whatever you want."

Nobody said anything for a little while but people relaxed slightly, glancing at one another, exchanging looks. It was another of those moments that Miriam had never been a part of, where people held conversations with their eyes before making a decision.

"How do we know all of this is true?" someone called out. "You could be lying to us!"

"Would I lie to you?" Natalia raised an eyebrow. "Never mind about the sleepers. Would I lie to you?"

There was another pause as people considered this. Miriam watched Natalia in admiration. The young woman (girl seemed far too demeaning a term) had a kind of gravitas to her manner and a weight to her certainty that made her power undoubtable. She was the kind of person you could count on to be calm in crisis, strong in pain and brave in the midst of disaster.

"No," the person replied, at last. "You wouldn't lie to us. Not knowingly."

"But what about the fighting?" a very young boy asked. "I mean...you want us in combat?"

"Isn't that what you've trained for?" Nigs questioned, without any sympathy.

"Well, yes," the boy hesitated. "But...I mean...I've never been shot at before."

"Duck," Carmen said, taking one step forward.

The boy had the self-preservation instincts to hit the floor. The gunshot echoed around the room. Carmen lowered her arm, unconcerned.

"Now you have."

There was a shocked, uneasy silence but Miriam would have been a fool not to feel the admiration that came with it.

"I have a question." Kaede stepped out of the crowd. "Once you've taken over the high command, once you've spent our lives on this mission, what exactly do you intend to do? The adults in the sub-dwellings won't just let us run the show."

"We can come to a compromise," Jonathan said, in a tone of voice that betrayed how little he had thought about it.

"Really?" Kaede raised an eyebrow. "I don't think you can. I don't think any one of those adults is going to be happy letting an upstart youth soldier take command of Subterra."

"Are you saying you won't fight for us?" Nigs demanded.

Kaede fixed him with a stare. "No. Because I am a soldier and you, standing up there like some kind of rulers, are my officers and my first loyalty is to you and always will be. But that doesn't mean I think your plans are good ones."

"So you will fight?" Jonathan looked confused. "Or you won't?"

Kaede sighed heavily. "Sandor, I'm a soldier. I follow orders. It's my entire life. If your orders are to die on some fool-hardy mission, or to sacrifice my life on some idealistic bullshit, then that is what I'll do. I live by orders. But I'm advising you, for the sake of all of us, to think about your plans before you put them into action."

"Well, yes," Jonathan looked wrong-footed. "We will. They've only been so rushed lately because we haven't had much time."

"Really?" Kaede countered. "What are you racing against? As far as I can see, you've got the rest of our lives to plan this out. And the more time you spend thinking about it, the longer that's likely to be."