The Hangman's Revolution Read Free Page B

familiar.
    “And in history class you shouted, ‘Tell it to Oprah!’ What is OPRA? The Oriental People’s Republican Army, perhaps?”
    Chevie shook her head helplessly. “It’s not me, Director. I don’t say these things.”
    “Oh, you say them. The question is why.”
    “She’s a spy,” said Vallicose bluntly. “A Jax spy sent to sow confusion.”
    Chevie flashed back to how DeeDee’s face had looked before the bullet struck her. She had seemed a hundred years old.
    “I am no spy, Director,” she said. “I may be ill. A tumor, maybe, or a virus, but I am no spy. I love the Empire. I would die for the flag.”
    A huge Empire flag hung on the wall behind Gunn, perhaps the most recognizable image in the world: a gold circle, and inside the circle a 3-D box, the lower rear horizontal and forward right vertical rendered thicker to form a cross.
    This is all wrong, thought Traitor Chevie, brain-shuddering at the very sight of the image.
    Director Gunn spun the pad absently on the desktop, puffs of mildew rising from his sleeve.
    “You love the Empire, Cadet?”
    “Absolutely, Director. With my body and soul.”
    “And do you know the Empire, Savano? Do you realize the sacrifices this empire has demanded of the faithful?”
    History questions, thought Chevie. I have a chance.
    “I do,” she said. “Chapter and verse.”
    Director Gunn hmm ed. Cadet Savano had set herself a challenge.
    “What do you know of the Blessed Colonel, Clayton Box?”
    An easy one.
    “Colonel Box. A god who came among us to scorch sin from the earth.”
    Gunn waved a testy hand. “Yes, yes, yes. Any child with a cereal box knows this. You are a cadet. What is your understanding of the Revolution?”
    Chevie frowned; this was a loaded question. Director Gunn was asking for her take on the Revolution. He wanted her to summarize, and summaries often included opinions, and opinions could get a person killed.
    Chevie spoke slowly, taking her time, trying to ignore the hulking Thundercats breathing beast-like in each ear, waiting for the order to pounce.
    “The world was in chaos. The empires of man were vast and cruel. Millions of souls perished through ignorance, cruelty, want.”
    “But more important than the perishing?” said Gunn in a voice that seemed too deep for his miniature frame.
    Take it easy, Bilbo, thought Traitor Chevie. I’m getting there.
    “More important than the dying bodies were the lost souls. People were dying in vast numbers without enlightenment. God decided that He could no longer suffer this, so He appeared on earth in the form of Colonel Box to build a New Albion that would be a shining example of virtue to the world.”
    “And how did the colonel plan to build this New Albion?”
    “He recruited his disciples, the first Thundercats.”
    Traitor Chevie couldn’t swallow this. It’s a spiel. A hoax, a joke. The whole world is being conned. Box was a rogue soldier. I remember the file.
    The effort of keeping these blasphemies inside forced beads of sweat through the skin of Chevie’s brow.
    “For thirty long years, Colonel Box and his disciples went into the catacombs below London, where they communed with the souls of the faithful and slowly built the colonel’s machines. When they returned from the underworld on Emergence Day, Colonel Box ordered his men to launch the first missiles at the Houses of Parliament, Windsor Castle, and the naval port of Portsmouth. Most of the government and monarchy got their just deserts in less than an hour, and it took little more than a day for Colonel Box to arm his legion of London poor folk and take the capital. Within a month, Britain was completely given over to the colonel. The reign of man was at an end. Colonel Box set the arms factories in Sheffield to building the great ballistic missiles that the colonel had designed, and in under a year, after the second round of Boxstrike, the earth once more belonged to the righteous.”
    Traitor Chevie brain-snorted.