Aveyard Victoria - (RQ#0.2) Steel Scars Page 0,2

EYES ON Operation.

-Permission to assess contact viability in NRT granted.

-LAMB will take point on Operation RED WEB, making contact with smuggling and

underground networks in NRT, emphasis on the WHISTLE black market ring. Orders

enclosed, her eyes only. Must dispatch to NRT within week.

-RAM will take point on Operation SHIELDWALL. Orders enclosed, your eyes only. Must

dispatch to Ronto within week.

RISE, RED AS THE DAWN.

Trial is the single largest city on the Lakelander border, its intricately carved walls and towers

looking across Lake Redbone and deep into the heart of the Nortan backcountry. The lake hides a

flooded city, all raided and stripped by nymph divers. Meanwhile, the slave workers of the Lakelands

built Trial on the shores, in mockery of the drowned ruins and the Nortan wilderness.

I used to wonder what kinds of idiots are fighting this Silver war, if they insist on containing the

battlegrounds to the forsaken Choke. The northern border is long and winding, cutting along the river,

mostly forested on both sides, always defended but never attacked. Of course, in the winter, it’s a

brutal land of cold and snow, but what about the late spring and summer? Now? If Norta and the

Lakelands hadn’t been fighting for a century, I would expect an assault on the city at any moment. But

there’s nothing at all, and never will be.

Because the war is not a war at all.

It is an extermination.

Red soldiers conscript, fight, and die in the thousands, year after year. They’re told to fight for

their kings, to defend their country, their families, who would surely be overrun and overthrown if not

for their forced bravery. And the Silvers sit back, moving their toy legions to and fro, trading blows

that never seem to do much of anything. Reds are too small, too restricted, too uneducated to notice.

It’s sickening.

Only one of a thousand reasons I believe in the cause and in the Scarlet Guard. But belief doesn’t

make it easy to take a bullet. Not like the last time I returned to Irabelle, bleeding from the abdomen,

unable to walk without the damned Colonel’s aid. At least then I got a week to rest and heal. Now I

doubt I’ll be here much longer than a few days before they send us back out again.

Irabelle is the only proper Guard base in the region, to my limited knowledge at least. Safe houses

scatter along the river and deeper into the woods, but Irabelle is certainly the beating heart of our

organization. Partly underground and entirely overlooked, most of us would call Irabelle home if we

had to. But most of us have no true home to speak of, none but the Guard and the Reds alongside us.

The structure is much larger than we need, easy for an outsider—or an invader—to get lost in.

Perfect for seeking quiet. Not to mention most of the entrances and halls are rigged with floodgates.

One order from the Colonel and the whole place goes under, drowned like the old world before it. It

makes the place damp and cool in summer, frigid in winter, with walls like sheets of ice. No matter

the season, I like to walk the tunnels, taking a lonely patrol through dim concrete passages forgotten

by anyone but me. After my time on the train, avoiding the Colonel’s accusing, crimson gaze, the cool

air and open tunnel before me feels like the closet brush of freedom I’ll ever know.

My gun spins idly on my finger, a careful balance I’m good at keeping. It’s not loaded. I’m not

stupid. But the lethal weight of it is still pleasing. Norta. The pistol keeps spinning. Their arms laws

are stricter than the Lakelands. Only registered hunters are allowed to carry. And those are few.

Just another obstacle I’m eager to overcome. I’ve never been to Norta, but I assume it’s the same as

the Lakelands. Just as Silver, just as dangerous, just as ignorant. A thousand executioners, a million

to the noose.

I’ve long stopped questioning why this is allowed to continue. I was not raised to accept a

master’s cage, not like so, so many are. What I see as a maddening surrender is the only survival to so

many others. I suppose I have the Colonel to thank for my stubborn belief in freedom. He never let me

think otherwise. He never let me accept what we came from. Not that I’ll ever tell him that. He’s done

too much to ever earn my thanks.

But so have I. That’s fair, I suppose. And don’t I believe in fairness?

Footsteps turn my head, and I slip the gun to my side, careful to keep it hidden. A fellow

Guardsman would not mind the