It seems random, but when the first in a string of explosions rattles across the city it all becomes clear. The dust settles, revealing a bombed-out storefront, with debris scattered across the street like so much useless confetti. An old café, on the same block as a police station, the café known locally as a favourite place for the policemen to come when off duty. Policemen are among the dead and wounded. In an act of calculated savagery, the rebel has, unknown to all but a select few, struck a declaration that he is to be reckoned with. In the coming days, another explosion rocks the city’s streets, then another, then another, all across the country a series of explosions all strike at the same targets, all using the same methods, bombs set to demolish places highly visible, near the instruments of power, restaurants near army bases, stores near state offices, warnings phoned in without enough time to get word out to evacuate. Like an exclamation point inappropriately placed at the end of a too-long sentence, these are a sequence of attacks meant to show they are all carried out by the same people, using the same tools, but without declaring their identities, the rebel aiming to induce all to find him and make him known in ways no propaganda ever could. Still living in the sewers, in the little nooks and crannies where the light cannot reach, the rebel blends in with his surroundings as seamlessly as a rivet made flush with sheet metal, and in so blending evades detection; when the storm troopers raid his hideouts, they find only empty warehouses, tunnels, and old, disused garages, one after the other until, there must happen something, until there must be that opportunity inevitably handed down by way of divine influence, a few days after all that’d happened this influence reaching out to offer its intervention in the affairs of the human heart. It’s a fight to the finish, all will come to realize, and in fighting to the finish all will come to see theirs as a fight for the finish, an explosion, then another, then another, a string of explosions bursting across the city at precisely the right moments, creating the impression without confirming the fact all come from the same place. Still at the union hall when these explosions take place, Valeri and Tonya stand aground, looking as one. But when Valeri’s turn to speak comes, he looks this way and that, and then nods back at Tonya, inviting her to stand on the stage beside him. “…And this is why we must all stand together now and fill the streets as one! United we can never fail!” And she follows his lead, standing by his side as he whips the crowd into an ever-intensifying frenzy, speaking his piece while outside the world sets itself on fire anew.
A murmur sweeps across the crowd as news breaks of this latest attack. “Brothers and sisters!” Another speaker takes the stage, Valeri turning back with Tonya to watch from the side. “Don’t fear the acts of our friends who fight! They’re fighting for you! They will attack the rich man who controls all, and their attacks will pave the way for our future!” But the assent is far from unanimous. In Valeri’s heart, though, the sounds of explosions booming across the city inspires in him a surge of passion, and he steps forward to cheer and urge the crowd on. But Tonya doesn’t step with him, not yet. Amid acts of spontaneity the significance of this act of deliberation can’t be lost on the wealthy man’s apparatchiks. After the speech is had, Valeri and Tonya meet in the alley behind the hall with Miguel Figueroa and Rose Powell, the latter pair promising them guns to use in their stand. Meanwhile, in a lot somewhere, holding the half-finished shell of what were to be an investment for the wealthy man, troopers stage another of their raids, finding nothing, as they’re about to leave one young trooper pressed into service during these times of crisis mistakenly setting off a bomb. Only the one trooper dies, and only later, after his colleagues rush him to the nearest hospital. It may seem like a small thing, the death of a single trooper against the violence and the loss of life all around, but it’s these little acts that, over time, add up, and in so adding provoking a larger turn of events. A young woman’s death, still an act with the power to shock and outrage after all that’s happened, provoking an outpouring of anger as crowds again take to the streets, in turn provoking the shooting deaths of scores more, when the cycle of crowds and shootings and crowds and shootings reaches its apex the rebel stepping to set off another of his explosions, this one placed so perfectly at the head of the largest crowd yet, in the immediate aftermath spreading the notion it was an attack by the storm troopers themselves. Through this whole period, the rebel sends his gunmen out into the streets in ever increasing numbers, drawing on his newfound reputation as a man of the people to recruit, under the cover of darkness gunfire rattling across the city. Still yet the rebel conserves the bulk of his strength; his time is not yet come. Still yet the rebel reserves his strongest fire and fury for the fires yet to be set.
24. Call to Arms
It comes suddenly, as such things tend to, with all but a few among the working man’s ranks taken by surprise. The army, the Prime Minister declares, is to be marched into battle right away, where it will surely rout the enemy and bring quick victory to the nation and to every man, woman, and child living under the banner of heaven. For his part, the working man can’t figure out what to make of this grand pronouncement, and it only hits him hard the next day when he sees his own, fresh faced, young men being marched along the street in formation. The war has finally hit home. Russia launches an invasion of the Baltic countries where the Borealis has been heading; they don’t call it an invasion, but that’s what it is. The Baltic countries are part of a Western military alliance, and the Russians are betting none of their allies will come to their aid given all the internal turmoil going on within their rivals’ borders. The United States, given to isolationism and with a faltering industrial plant, refuses to honour its treaty; but the United Kingdom and most of the others dutifully declare war. Serbia takes advantage of the opportunity to launch an attack on Kosovo. Old rivals Greece and Turkey trade air raids in the night. In the span of a few days, the last vestiges of the old European Union are gone. Like the Americans, the Chinese government stays out of the fighting, for now content to continue quietly consolidating strength through covert means in all combatant countries, but in time their central role in this, our apocalypse rising, will become clear as a summer’s rain. Beset by internal conflict, the world’s empires seek a resolution to their own strife by using each other as an outlet. Each of these empires has their ruling interests, each is governed by a coalition of these interests as is this country in which our working man lives. For Valeri, this turn of world events strikes near to him, his mother and father having come from the Russian city of Krasnoyarsk, leaving many family and friends behind. He has aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins still in Russia; however far this war reaches, however long it lasts, some of them might be killed in it. This, Valeri realizes as he watches the news on his screen, is reason enough to oppose the war.
On board the Borealis the news comes immediately, even before the public is made aware, and Captain Abramovich announces the declaration of war over the ship’s intercom. Dmitri’s in his bunk when the announcement comes through. “At last, the waiting is over,” he says. “I’m not ready to give up on this,” says another crewman. “Nor am I,” says Dmitri, “but soon enough we’ll find which way we’ll turn.” Later that day, the Borealis joins a task force headed up the Norwegian coast for Russian waters. Still in his bunk when the order comes down for all hands to battlestations, Dmitri scrambles with the others, arriving at forward gunnery unsure whether he would live or die that day but determined nevertheless to see his shipmates through. Before the day is out, he’ll lose some of them, still to lose many more before the real war is won.