Chapter 1045: The Answer is Faith (Patreon)

A cloud of luminescent butterflies washed the broken streets in blue and orange. Dead vampires were scattered where they’d fallen in the attempt to flee, leeches consuming what remained of their life force. Jason walked along a wide boulevard, shrouded in a void filled with shining stars and distant nebulas. Behind him, a giant toppled like a massive tree, the butterflies covering it making up the leaves.

Thadwick approached from the other direction, a few dozen energy vampires in a crowd behind him. He stopped in front of Jason, who likewise came to a halt. Thadwick looked past him to the destruction in his wake.

“You went and got your people fast.”

“I was motivated,” Thadwick said absently, looking past Jason to the desolate fate of his former army and the corrupted giant. “I never had a chance, did I?”

“You were never meant to. Umber wanted you to slow me down, keep his brother here longer, but he couldn’t push it too far. He wouldn’t have gotten me here without his parent’s intervention, and the Reaper has its own needs. Umber isn’t foolish enough to interfere with that. Your weapons are a threat, but the danger is never really the weapon but the hand holding it. Yours is far from the first vampire army I’ve fought. The most you really could have done was interfere when I had other things needing my attention.”

“What will you do with us when this is over?”

“I have places where vampires can be safe, but what do you want me to do?”

“I’ll acknowledge that most vampires are too far gone for anything but killing, but not all. On Pallimustus, we were seeking out the ones trying to hold onto their decency. I’d like to go back to that.”

“That’s a hard road, Thadwick.”

“Someone recently told me that the right choice often is.”

Within his dark hood, Jason grinned, letting out a chuckle.

***

 On the bridge of his airborne flagship, Grand Marshall Mills listened with eyes closed as his adjutant summarised the latest raft of reports.

“In summary, sir, we’ve been pushed back on almost all fronts. It’s not hard-confirmed, but our analysts have a very high confidence that the Knowledge forces have compromised the Grid. We’ve been using it for scouting, coms and transferring intangible magical resources, all of which has seen escalating disruption. We believe that the enemy is likely going to seize full control once they’re certain we are aware of their sabotage.”

“We’ve known they were actively trying for a while. Any progress on a way to lock them out?”

“No, sir. We believe that the enemy has brought over natural array specialists to help them with the grid. The only one of those we had was Farrah Hurin, and she’s sealed in Asano’s personal universe. She did teach the theory during her time here, but we have no one close to her level of expertise. Or that of the people Knowledge brought over.”

Michael sighed as he rubbed a chin that should have been shaved two days ago.

“We surmised this would happen eventually, even before the war began. The problem with fighting people with a religious zeal for learning is that keeping things from them is damn near impossible. Has the strategy group proposed any potentially viable countermeasures yet?”

“Not yet, sir, although Emi Evans-Asano says that she has one. She has asked to see you.”

“Alright, set up a call.”

The door to his ready room slid open to reveal Emi standing in the doorway.

“No need. Let’s have a chat, Grand Marshall.”

Michael sighed again as he pushed himself out of his chair.

“I see you still share your uncle’s flair for the dramatic.”

He followed her into the room as if she wasn’t an intruder who would have been shot under most circumstances, the door sliding shut behind him. The ready room had a desk, Emi gestured invitingly to the seat behind his own desk.

“You realise that is my ship, right?” Michael asked as he sat down.

“Of course it is,” Emi said with an unconvincing tone and a smile.

“Your ability to reach the very heart of this ship undetected represents a significant security failing.”

“It does.”

“Then perhaps that might be better addressed by sharing that vulnerability, rather than saving it for the chance to make an entrance with flair.”

“Mike, would you agree that one of the most dangerous aspects of our enemy is their Ability to gather intelligence?”

“I would, which only heightens my belief keeping security vulnerabilities from our own forces is a very bad idea. Sooner or later, the enemy will dig those secrets.”

“Yes, they will.”

Michael leaned back in his chair, narrowing his eyes as he stared at her.

“You’re using the high command of Earth’s planetary forces as bait?”

“We are.”

“You didn’t think it might be a good idea to warn me?”

“What do you think I’m doing, Grand Marshall? The thing about intelligence gathering is that people don’t trust information that comes too easy. If we made it easy for them, the enemy would sniff the trap, and telling your people would absolutely make it easy.”

“You don’t seem to hold the informational security of my command staff in high regard.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust your people, Grand Marshall, as I suspect will become clear by the time we’re done today. And it’s not just your command staff we compartmentalise from. Before my uncle left, he entrusted a small group within the Asano Clan and its closest allies with certain tasks. Tasks kept from the group departing to Pallimustus because Knowledge would learn everything they knew.”

“Wouldn’t she learn them from your uncle?”

“His unique nature allows him to keep things from the goddess. Or even from himself, if need be.”

“He explained the process to me once, although I still not sure I understood it. Are you now going to share these tasks he left you with me?”

“Just the one, today. The Grid.”

“You have a means to shut out the enemy?”

“No. Farrah did what she could to secure it, but she wasn’t confident she could establish any kind of defence they wouldn’t ultimately circumvent. Not without her here to actively counter them. As such, she enacted a protocol my uncle devised, although not one to be used lightly. They instituted a means to disable the Grid, in way that would be rather harmful to anyone using it at the time.”

“That would include us.”

“Yes. But we believe that the Knowledge Army will make a move to seize full control, sooner rather than later. A conclusion your analysts have likewise predicted. It would make sense, then, for you to prepare your forces to rapidly withdraw from grid usage before the enemy punishes you for it.”

“At which point, you punish them for it.”

“That’s the idea. We are hoping to give them their biggest setback since we took out their bridge anchor base.”

“You realise that will also mean that any early warning system for monster manifestations will be gone.”

“Yes.”

“That means people will die. Civilians.”

“Civilians are already dying, Mike. You know better than me how the church is handling monsters in the territory they hold.”

“Not as thoroughly as I’d like,” he said grimly. “Anything that isn’t a threat to them or their interests goes ignored. They’re even using monster attacks to bait out any essence users lying low behind enemy lines, when they go to help people.”

Emi shook her head unhappily.

“There’s something I haven’t told you,” she said.

“It seems like there’s a lot of things you haven’t told me.”

“This one matters. If we’re going to take out the grid in a way they can’t use to get it back online, we can’t just disable it. We have to destroy it for good. Even after the war, assuming we win, we’ll have to build a new one from scratch.”

“Is that even possible?”

“It won’t be quick, but Farrah believes it can be done.”

Michael nodded, but was visibly unhappy about it.

“Strategically, we can’t afford not to. Not if you’re sure it won’t blow up the whole damn world.”

“I am. In fact, we can actually choose where to break it and where to make the destruction more exciting. In certain key nodes currently held by the enemy, for example.”

“We will need to discuss more of the specifics, but you have at least provisional approval to move forward. What we need to address is that your clan is clearly operating further outside the lines than I thought. I don’t want some rogue group running operations without my knowledge that will shift the whole course of the war. I’m meant to be in command of all Earth’s forces.”

“Your role as Grand Marshall is to take everything that Earth does better than Pallimustus in terms of waging war and turn it into a weapon that the enemy is unable to reply to. Knowledge’s people may learn how we operate, but they cannot replicate it because that’s not how they think. They’re all about individual power, individual glory, even within their church.”

“I’m well aware of our advantages in conventional warfare.”

“And commensurately of the enemy’s advantages.”

“Unconventional warfare. Small group tactics. They’re a whole damn army of special forces teams. Are you in danger of reaching a point, Emi?”

“You’ve been very accommodating with the degree of autonomy you have allowed the Asano Clan in how we achieve your directives, both broadly and in specific.”

“I’ve met your patriarch. I’m well aware that if you weren’t given a long lead, you’d all go rogue on me. I appreciate the degree to which you share operational information, but it seems that you’ve been keeping a lot more from Ops Command than anyone realised.”

“We have, and with good reason. You’ve been using us to counteract key enemy moves because we didn’t train like people from Earth. Rufus Remore trained us like people from Pallimustus, so we’re the ones best equipped to counter Pallimustan strategies. What you didn’t know was that clan members are significantly more resistant to the Knowledge Church’s more supernatural methods of information gathering. It’s something we’ve suspected for some time, but only recently managed to confirm.”

“How are you doing it? More importantly, can it be replicated?”

“We believe it can, but you won’t like why, and you’ll like how even less.”

Michael rubbed a hand across his forehead.

“Go ahead,” he told her, his voice filled with reluctance.

“The answer is faith.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The Church of Knowledge can’t use their god’s power directly, but their methods are still infused with divine-aspected magic. It makes their magic based around accumulating knowledge much more powerful, but it has a drawback: it’s less effective on people with strong faith in other deities.”

Michael winced, clamping his eyes shut.

“And the clan has faith in—”

“Our patriarch, yes.”

“I’ve heard him quite specifically say that he wasn’t a god. Several times.”

“Yes,” Emi agreed. “He says it so much, in fact that the lady doth protest too much, methinks. In seriousness, Grand Marshall, he does have aspects of godhood. The clan territory is essentially holy ground, and he did create my cousin. Did you know he hears prayers?”

“I did not. Does he answer them?”

“He says no. After the last few years, I’m hoping he was lying. But my point is that the clan will continue to operate in ways that keeps other parts of our intelligence infrastructure in the dark. Without a means to effectively counter the Knowledge Church’s magic, they simply aren’t as secure. It’s not their fault, but there’s nothing they can do about it, either. Not unless they want to start—”

“No.” Michael said firmly, cutting that line of discussion right off.

“Yes, but it is not easy. Your intelligence apparatus in very capable, and as our operations escalate, we want to avoid their intervening for the simple reason of us not telling them what we are doing. We can’t always let the right hand know what the left is up to, but maybe we can warn it enough to avoid them getting tangled up.”

“You want me to start moving the intelligence services out of your way.”

“Nothing as drastic as that sounds. Just let them know that certain operations might be happening without their specific knowledge. That’s hardly an unusual practice in intelligence circles.”

“That does sound suspiciously reasonable.”

“What’s suspicious about it?”

“The person saying it being named Asano.”

“Hurtful. I’m simply saying that, for example, we wouldn’t want them stumbling onto us sabotaging the Grid and trying to stop us.”

“And how would you suggest this new spirit of shamelessly one-sided cooperation work, if you’re unwilling to let anyone know anything you’re doing? I hope you aren’t expecting me to get involved. I’m Commander on Chief of the EDJI. I don’t have time for the kind of micromanagement that would require.”

“Honestly, I was expecting you to push back more. Insist on integrating our operations with your regular intelligence groups.”

“Would me trying that accomplish anything?”

“It would not.”

“Then why waste time I don’t have? What’s your pitch, Asano?”

“A liaison. The clan has worked well using that model in the past. Someone who can coordinate with your command staff, the various intelligence directorates, and—”

“You people, who do whatever lunatic thing that jumps into your heads.”

“That’s an uncharitable way to put it.”

“Are you, or are you not attempting to bait out enemy attacks using holes you refuse to reveal in the security of the planetary flagship?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny—”

“I don’t have time for shenanigans, Emi. Who do you want as liaison, and give me a name I can live with, or you’re going to find my oversight becoming increasingly onerous.”

“How about Michael Aram? Civilian, but he’s worked for the clan, the Network, the UN, the Australian government. Even been a civilian military liaison, I think, during the first vampire war.”

“I know him. I’ll have to get several intelligence directors to sign off, but it’s a provisional yes from me.”

“Great! Now, let’s talk about how to prepare to blow up the Grid without letting anyone know that what we’re doing.”

“Please tell me that ‘blow up’ is a metaphor.”

“Absolutely. Mostly. Almost certainly. I mean, this is sabotage on a much larger scale than what the EoA did back in the day, so we can’t be completely sure, but the odds of some kind of chain reaction—”

“Chain reaction? In a network of magic that covers the surface of the planet.”

“It’ll be fine, Mike. I’ve studied the magic involved, and from what I understood of it—”

“What you understood? How much did you not understand?”

“Natural array magic is very esoteric as a field of study. I’ve done a bit, obviously. The Grid is worth studying, and it is an interesting field, but I will confess to not grasping every intricacy.”

Michael sat up straight, the fatigue lining his face turning to hard stone.

“I’m not going to just let you potentially detonate the face of the planet.”

“Allow?” Emi asked, her light tone hiding a promise of danger.

“Mrs Evans-Asano, does the Asano clan rule this planet?”

“Of course not.”

“Then we’ve reached the edge of that autonomy you’ve been enjoying so much. I am not going to tolerate you doing something so potentially destructive without reasonable safeguards in place. I’m well aware that I can’t stop you, should you choose to do it anyway, but understand that, if you do, the Asano Clan will become a rogue sovereignty. I am ordering you not to do anything to the Grid without a proper understanding of the consequences.”

Emi grinned, letting out a chuckle.

“Understood, Grand Marshall. But, to be honest, I may have been exaggerated the danger, and how little I understand of what we intend to do.”

Anger creased Michael’s expression and he shot to his feet.

“You’re messing with me? I do not have time for Asano games.”

“All in a good cause, Grand Marshall. For all that he likes to operate under the authority of his own conscience, my uncle is very clear on the importance of guardrails. With the level of autonomy you were giving us, I’ve been concerned that you might not be up to reining the clan in when necessary. Clearly, my worries were unfounded.”

Michael scowled at her.

“I’m starting to understand why so many people hate dealing with your family.”

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