Awake

Chapter Forty-Five - The Elite Guard

Kaede surveyed Natalia's selection for her elite soldiers. There were thirty of them, all in their late teens, able-bodied, having come off the better in the recent attack. Kaede knew them all. Natalia had chosen well.

She stood in line with them, shoulder to shoulder with her family, people she'd grown up training with and fighting with and laughing with. There were weapons in her belt. Her eyes glowed. This was what she lived for, for these moments before the fight, when she was beside people she cared about and she knew that she was strong.

Kaede was proud to be chosen for this task. It wasn't surprising – she would have been a fool not to know herself to be one of the better soldiers in the youth corps – but nevertheless it was an honour to be selected for this most important of tasks, to be counted as the best.

  She had seen people's faces when Natalia came round, delivering the news that there was to be a final push and the high command eliminated. People turned pale, white or green, bit their lips, looked away. They were all afraid. Everyone was afraid of what they were about to do.

But not Kaede. She was a killer now and it had felt like nothing at all, instinctive and effortless. It was in her blood. What difference did it make whether she was pointing a gun at commanders or soldiers? There was nothing to fear.

"Soldiers," Natalia said, not loudly but clearly, "today, we are to commit treason in the name of the greater good. We march with the same battle cry as those whose actions drove us down to Subterra in the first place. It would be wrong for us to forget that."

Kaede listened, drinking it in, letting all her inhibitions – though they were few – drop away like dead skin.

"We must do what we can to preserve lives inside there," Natalia continued. "We have questions to ask them, demands to make, and to kill them would deprive us of this chance. But understand that if that comes at the price of victory, you are to shoot to kill and not hold back."

They were orders Kaede liked: straight-forward, uncomplicated, impossible to misread. They were the kind she could follow without thinking, and Kaede loved orders. She loved knowing what she could and couldn't do.

"I will give the command to hold fire," Natalia added. "I expect you to obey."

As one, the contingent of soldiers saluted as a sign of their agreement and their understanding.

 "As it is," Natalia dropped her head and gave a small, very human sigh, "we may all die today. If that is the case, die in the knowledge that you are fighting for a cause we believe in whole-heartedly, die in the knowledge that you were chosen as the best, die certain that we were not gambling your lives lightly. If any of you think you cannot do this, there is no shame in walking away now."

Nobody moved. Of course they didn't. Natalia had chosen those for whom the danger was outweighed by other factors. Nobody here would mind what happened to them. Death was the price you paid for following orders.

"It is an honour," Natalia finished, "an honour and a privilege to fight beside you now. Soldiers...follow me."

She turned and marched and they fell into ranks behind her, filling the corridors, walking in perfect time. Nobody said a word. Nobody made a sound. The hallways were empty ahead of them, all the way up to the field-marshal's office, except for three artillery soldiers who were waiting to blow the doors to smithereens and let them walk in.

Kaede's heart was quite steady in her chest, beating the same rhythm as her footsteps. She kept her eyes straight ahead. From behind cracked-open doors, she was aware of people watching them pass. She didn't look. She didn't have to.