The Suns of Liberty (Book 2): Revolution (40 page)

Across the street on a tall balcony, General
Cleeson looked on, overseeing the operation. The presence of a five-star general
spoke to just how important this mission was to everyone involved. The
commanding colonel had stepped aside.

Cleeson was fully in charge.

He was there to make sure there
was no way out for the duo. Cleeson let the enormity of the odds arrayed against
them pile up in their minds.

Ward began to stir. Something about his friend
holding him up. Staying by his side no matter what. Ward's mind started to
clear. He wiped tears from his eyes, glanced up at Revolution, and managed a
weak smile. “Live free or die?”

Revolution just stared straight
ahead, deadly serious. “Live free or die.” Ward stood on his own, the pain
shooting through him. He lifted his helmet over his head, started to slip it
on. It dawned on him at that moment that he had held onto it for dear life
throughout the whole episode. Even through being thrown out of the stadium,
even through the blast that killed Alison.

Why?

Was he that attached to being
Spider Wasp? Maybe he was, or maybe it was something else. The disguise made
him feel he was something he was not. Something different. Something better.

He locked the helmet down on his
shoulders, tested its flexibility, moving his head from side to side, shaking
the cobwebs from his mind. The two marched forward. Ward limped badly, but he
didn't care. He was here to follow his friend—to the grave if that's what it
took. Paul Ward couldn't make that decision, but Spider Wasp could.

The tank guns whirred to life
again, following, aiming. The brigade commander stepped up beside Cleeson with
a megaphone. He put it up to his mouth and shouted at the duo, all being
covered live on WebTV and broadcast across the world. “Drop to the ground and
put your hands up! I'm not gonna warn you again!”

Revolution stopped. He looked up
at them, and then he did something Ward could not believe. Standing in front of
a thousand soldiers ready to kill him, itching to do so, in fact—the Dark
Patriot, the man who had been labeled a terrorist, a murderer, a criminal of
the lowest sort by the very men and women who targeted him now, stood upright
and gave them a salute. He kept his right hand perfectly still. And just stood
there.

For a moment Ward had no idea what
to do. And so he did the only thing he could think to do. He saluted too.

The colonel was thrown by this move. Enough that he
did exactly what he said he wasn't going to do. He repeated his warning. The
duo just stood there.

General Cleeson was about to tell
the colonel to take them into custody when a low rumble bellowed across the
square. It began to build, yet no one could tell what it was. It wasn't
machinery.

It wasn't an explosion.

It wasn't Man-O-War.

Still, it grew in a strange
dissonance of sound, snaking through the avenue, falling into the square. All
heads spun to find its origin. Ward broke his salute. Revolution used his
scanners to search the area but saw nothing that explained it.

And then, the first few people
trickled into the square. They were surprised by the scene. Nothing can prepare
you for the reality of facing off against a thousand soldiers with weapons
aimed. Yet they marched right into the square and stood in front of Revolution
and Ward. They said nothing, but their eyes spoke of their fear. They faced the
soldiers and raised their arms in salute. Human shields. Then...

People flooded the square.

The rumble rolled into the avenue,
covering the street, the sidewalks, even the rooftops. They swarmed like
insects. The riflemen panicked. People were everywhere. Men, women, even
children. Confusion reigned. None of the soldiers knew what to do; there was no
protocol for this. Not on American soil.

Revolution and Ward had become
lost in the sea of faces—nearly everyone dressed in red, white, and blue. They
held banners, they held flags—Old Glory.

Where to aim? The soldiers didn’t
know. So they just aimed straight ahead. Many glanced Cleeson's way to see what
the old war dog would do.

Revolution and Ward were stunned. The crowd kept
swelling. Thousands descended upon the scene, upon the troops. They all
saluted. The soldiers stumbled back. The crowd's numbers were forcing the
troops out of the square.

The tanks re-aimed their guns into
the heart of the crowd.

Flashes of State Street boiled
across Revolution’s mind.

Men, women, young, old, black, white,
rich, and poor, though mostly poor, stood tall and proud. But the fear in their
faces could not be constrained. They all remembered State Street. The fear of
death rolled through the crowd.

And still they came.

A man turned to Revolution. He had
tears streaming down his face. So many in this crowd had lost so much. Lost
loved ones who had disappeared during the Purge. Lost optimism of a real future
for their children. Lost hope. In the Revolution they had at least found a hero
to stand up for them.

Inside the armored shell known as
Spider Wasp, Ward felt his throat tighten, and he started to weep. He couldn't
help it. It was all too much. What does a hero do now? Should they surrender
and spare these people their lives? Should they fight on and try to overtake
the soldiers? How does a hero honor the sacrifices of his followers? Does he
let them die to honor their choice? Does he protect them from his own
influence? Ward imagined Revolution was thinking back to State Street. He knew
he couldn’t get the massacre out of his mind. He’d told Ward he couldn’t let
that happen again.

Ward would never forget what these
people were doing for them, what they were risking. He would think of it every
day for the rest of his life, he told himself. Whether that was only a few more
seconds or thirty years.

And then a chant began from
somewhere in the crowd and built like a wave across their numbers: “USA! USA!
USA!”

Ward thought he should have found
this humorous. The irony ought to have been as thick as mud. Drunks used to
chant this same thing at hockey games when he was a kid. Now, the meaning was
completely different. He felt fresh tears welling in his eyes. The soldiers
felt it too—and were getting more nervous, fidgeting with their weapons. The
situation grew more dangerous by the moment.

And still the chant rose.

The Chairman lounged in front of the screens which
beamed the unfolding spectacle across the world as his own reporters spoke in
excited tones. His hands were on his face, as if he could wrench the image out
of his mind with his own fingers. He’d let them talk him into a mini-purge. The
Man-O-War was supposed to be an overwhelming weapon. It would make his enemies
cower in fear. No one would dare cross the Council again for a long time.
That’s what he’d been told. That’s what he’d believed. It’s why he had allowed
the death of the Minutemen to be broadcast across the Net. Across the world.

The image on his screen now was
infuriating. It was total message loss. Worse than the Man-O-War getting
destroyed, since it had at least taken out that godforsaken glowing
girl-traitor with it—and who had that been anyway? How had he known nothing
about her? No matter. The Council had that technology now. He would make a
glowing hero of his own.

But none of that helped him now.
At some point, one has to know when to end a bad investment and cut your
losses. And sometimes, in a contagion, when the losses are compounding and
spreading from market to market, there is no safe haven. Nowhere to run.
Nowhere that is profitable. Sometimes the best move is just to abandon your
positions, stop dreaming about what you’ll do in the future, and take the hit.
Simply start over. The Chairman jammed the button down, and the speaker clicked
to life. Half measures had only emboldened his opposition. He had just one move
left.

Crush them. Crush them all.

“Cut the feed!” he yelled. “Iron
Fist!”

His screens cut to commercial.
Live feeds on the Web displayed the “Technical Difficulties” page.  

Cleeson couldn't see anything but a mass of faces
in red, white, and blue. For all he knew, the Revolution had escaped again.
“Steady,” he told his colonel.

A voice crackled over Cleeson's
radio. It was the Chairman. “Cleeson, what the fuck are you waiting for? Iron
Fist!”

Cleeson looked out at the
thousands crowding the square and was stunned. He hadn’t expected to face this,
but he knew what he had to do. This just made it harder.

“Open fire,
goddamn
it!”
the Chairman shouted over the radio, rage spilling from his voice. Even over
their crude connection, the insanity in Sage’s mind bled out loud and clear.
Cleeson froze. He stared down at the mass of people chanting the name of his
country. A country he had served for decades. Bled for, killed for. For him the
Council had become his country long ago. They were one and the same. He knew
men had to do what was needed in times of crisis. Sometimes they had to go
against convention, tradition, sometimes even principle. To him that is what
the Council stood for, why he had joined it. Sometimes, to do the right thing,
you had to be willing to do the wrong thing.

Yes, Cleeson knew what he had to
do. He just didn't want to do it. Didn't know if he could live with himself
afterwards. It would be the defining decision of his career. Of his life.

“Cleeson!” the Chairman barked,
bringing the General back down to reality, urging him to do it, to make his
move.

Cleeson looked at his troops.

They were ready. The shock of the
situation was fading for them. They were professionals, ready for the order,
settling in. They could do this. None of them would be proud of their actions
this night. But they followed the orders of the command. And Cleeson was that
command.

He looked out at the throng. He could
see men, women, and children. All weeping, waiting to die. They'd already
prepared themselves. They knew the risks when they came here. Desperate faces,
taking desperate action. It was time for some of his own. All he had to do was
give the command.

He took a deep breath, turned to
his colonel, and gave the fateful order.

CHAPTER
63

“C
olonel,
tell your men to stand down.”

The commander looked at him for a
long few seconds, his jaw slack, the shock on his face. Then a steely resolve
washed over it, and he shouted the order down the line. Soldiers lowered their
weapons all across the square as the order circulated in the slow prescribed
fashion. Cleeson picked up his radio and spoke to Sage for the first time. “I'm
not firing on civilians.” The Chairman screamed something back at him, but
Cleeson held down the mic so he couldn't hear it. “What this country needs
isn't a Freedom Council. It isn't superheroes either. What this country needs
is right out there.” He didn't know if Sage had heard him. He didn't care. He
put down the radio mic and switched the unit off completely. Cleeson gave a nod
to the colonel, and the soldiers began a slow, orderly retreat.

The crowd erupted in a thunderous
cheer.

Revolution watched in stunned
silence. He still kept his scanners trained on the big guns of the tanks. He
was not about to be fooled.

Cleeson stepped to the edge of the
balcony with a bullhorn. And the crowd began to quiet. All across the throng,
silence fell until finally you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. His
words were short, his words were clear. “Boston is yours!”

The crowd erupted again, so loud Ward nearly had to
hold his hands over his ears. He felt his knees weaken, and just when he
thought they might give out he felt the Revolution’s strong arm wrap around him
one more time. And then strangers were hugging them, pounding their shoulders,
shaking their hands. Tears flowed anew. And it occurred to Ward at that moment
that there were no strangers left in the square. 

Down the street, a line of
old-fashioned streetlamps stood tall and proud. Ward saw one of them begin to
glow. Yellow-green. As the crowd in the square cheered, it brightened. And
then—
flash
—the lamp returned to normal. 

Becky Collins soaked in her large bathtub, bubbles
all around her. She closed her tired, red eyes, and new tears streamed down her
cheeks. She'd seen the mêlée, of course. The whole world had. She'd seen Fiona
play the hero.

And she'd also seen her die.

Only a few hours before, she would
have said nothing could have even harmed Fiona. But now, she waited to hear the
official news of what she already knew in her heart. She should probably fly to
Boston. But who would she go see? Who, that wouldn't throw her into a jail cell
for the rest of her life anyway? So she just soaked. And waited.

A small candle lamp, empty and
unlit, rested beside her on the lip of the tub. The lamp began to glow
chartreuse. So bright, Becky opened her eyes. “Fiona?”

The light in the lamp began to
seep out of the glass like a trail of fog. It slid down the edge of the tub and
into the water. The bubbles glowed as it passed underneath. The entire tub was
blazing yellow-green. Electric velvet wrapped around her. She smiled. Becky's
eyes closed again. Fresh tears, this time of joy. “Welcome home.”

EPILOGUE

T
hey
held a memorial service for the fallen heroes of Boston several days later. Dr.
Leslie Gibbons officiated. At the Revolution’s request, the formal ceremony was
held in the Old North Church. The Council would have liked to have stopped
them, but Cleeson ordered the Council Guard out of the city, and the local
officials followed.