From the air, this place looks like a couple of rocks no larger than one of their buildings on the base. From the water, only the trained eye can see we’ve disguised its size with woven camouflage, made it less prominent, rerouted the channels leading up to the base so there’s no easy way to approach by boat without knowing the way. You could get here by foot from the base if you were determined enough, but it would mean hours of slogging through mud and waist-deep water. The stone hides us from their heat detectors, and Avon’s atmosphere wreaks havoc with imaging drones and search gear. The leading theory among TerraDyn scientists is that the ionization levels interfere with their equipment, but all we know is that it forces them to search for us the old-fashioned way, with boats and spotlights. Though there are pockets of resistance all across the planet, these caves harbor a significant percentage of TerraDyn’s most-wanted list.
We call ourselves the Fianna. The soldiers think it has some simple meaning—“warriors” is how they usually translate it. But it’s more than that. Blood is forever, and though Earth was abandoned so long ago the generations are now uncounted, we remember our cradle. We remember Ireland, and her stories, and the bands of warriors who defended their home. And we carry on their traditions, and honor them. Avon takes care of us, hides us, and in return we fight for her.
The currach nudges up against the dock, and I yank my attention back to the present when I realize I’ve heard no challenge. The sentries are gone. The landing is empty where there should be guards, and abruptly my heart’s pounding again as panic sweeps through me. The military has discovered Jubilee missing. I shouldn’t have taken that detour—they’ve found our base and beaten me back here to rescue her.
I leave the trodaire in the currach, hands bound, and hurriedly tug a tarp up over her limp form to hide her from view. Then I scramble up onto the dock and toward the passageway. My wounded leg is aching as my mind pulls in a dozen directions all at once, tracing the path the trodairí would take, predicting which caverns they’d claim and which we’d hold, mapping a way to the weapons storage as I pull my gun from my belt.
But slowly one thing sinks in: if the trodairí had found us, this place would be swarming with copters and speedboats outside, not to mention ringing with shouts and gunfire. There’s only silence, until I make my way farther in and hear the low murmur of voices coming from the meeting cavern.
The crowd in there’s so big I can’t see my way to the front, but relief rushes through me as I recognize this noise as anger, not panic. It’s only the Fianna inside, and there are no soldiers here today except the one I left in my currach.
Our meeting place is a high-ceilinged bubble in the rock that we’ve hewn larger over time, stone softened and echoes muffled by rugs hung around the walls and crates of liberated military supplies stored along the edges. It’s almost impossible to round us up in the same place—there are always folks on patrol, on guard, asleep—but this is the biggest crowd I’ve seen in a long time.
They’re crammed in, perching on the crates, leaning against the walls and sitting on the ground. The cavern’s full, buzzing with tension. Then I hear McBride’s voice at the front, and I know what brought them together.
For ten years we’ve been hiding out in these caves, paying for the bloody rebellion my sister led. Too hungry to get organized, too sick and too bruised to care who was in charge. It’s taken a decade to come close to stability again, but the day my people could fill their bellies without fear of where the next meal would come from, there was McBride. He has the age and experience I lack, and his talk of fighting back and finishing what my sister, Orla, started makes my people itch for action.
Victory, to his faction, is beating the trodairí at any cost. Casualties are glorious sacrifices to the cause. Firepower is the only measure of strength. Because, futile though the fight might be, there’s a satisfaction in direct action that these people crave. It’s the easier path—I feel myself tugged that way too, sometimes. So did Orla. And that’s what killed her in the end.
These people remember my sister, and how she fought to the last and faced her execution fearlessly. Her death buys me their sympathy, and thus their attention, but every time McBride opens his mouth, I lose a few more of them. Nobody wants to listen to a teenager speaking for peace when their children are sick and their very freedoms are being bled away by TerraDyn’s harsh regulations. McBride knows it. I know it too. They all wish I were more like Orla.
Judging by the air of tension in the crowd, it seems he’s jumped on my absence to stir them up and inch ever closer to breaking the ceasefire. Only fear of retaliation and lack of resources has stopped McBride’s lieutenants from carrying out their own raids without the support of the rest of us. That, and I’ve got the key to the munitions locker—and I’m not about to let McBride get his hands on it.