Field of Vision

Chapter 12: Black Light

A man cleared his throat as he lumbered down what they were to assume were steps. "The informants from Kunden?"

"The sympathizers, sir," Wilson emphasized.

"Yes, yes... defectors nonetheless..."

Clearly this man was itching for a fight, or perhaps he didn't realize they were telling the truth. Wilson sighed, which, even he realized, was becoming a bad habit. "I was born in the Brother's Blood valley, " he elaborated.

"Right," the man spoke doubtfully as he stepped into view. He was tall and physically built, moderately, anyway, yet articulated each word precisely, and wore a trimmed, black beard with a short haircut to add to his apparent youth.

He had an old-fashioned rifle from the back-up emergency arsenal. Wilson assumed that Nara's plasma tech had become mass-produced, putting traditional weapons into the emergency weapon stores, and the ancient relics these men possessed into the back-up emergency stores. Nara came prepared, Wilson always joked. On the inside.

"Those relics won't do much good in realistic warfare," Patrick stated.

The man shrugged as he turned around, implying that they follow. "That or we're defenseless. I'd like to take even one idiot soldier-boy if I'm going to be thrown into an all-out battle."

Just two more years, Wilson and the man thought to themselves in unison as they and Patrick stepped through the end doorway, nodding away the suspicious glances cast at them from the defending ambush party.

The rebels, Wilson noted, wore nothing but a curved bark chestplate that wrapped around onto their back, with holes for their waist, arm, and neck. They also had leg bracers of wood on front and back, possibly to avoid close-combat damage, or to look uniform. They had boots, as was the norm, and leather gloves with their long-sleeve, gray-black shirts they obviously spray-painted.

Their helmets were made of regular oak, and were literally bowls the shape of heads flipped and fitted with straps.

Possibly a theme of brown wood to match their old-school flintlock rifles, and their dull silver barrel. There were quite a lot more than he imagined, though. They all had cargo pants and long-sleeve t-shirts colored light gray with black crescents wherever the emblem deemed necessary.

"Black Light," the man explained. "is the name of our faction. We've drawn in people from as many as fourteen sectors, totalling 230-some troops that we train constantly. We get our food from supporters in food plants, and in case they get discovered, we have our own farms hidden away in the mountains to help supply the people here. We've no spies in the military, though. You'd think even one..." he paused for a minute to announce to everyone that it would soon be time for their hour-long physical 'checkup,' until they arrived at a long tent, the kind used for outdoor parties. They step through the flaps and sit at a wood table with chairs.

He continued. "We have some veterans that defected from the military, but we could never convince them to go back as spies. Instead, they work as the training instructors."

"Any children being trained?" Patrick inquired. Wilson nodded along to show his curiosity. He'd seen ample kids that were using their time playing in the tunnels or playing war behind crates, rather than studying, or having the intense childhood of the previous generation.

He shook his head vigorously. "We're trying to preserve the future generations, and there's only two years of this dreaded war anyway. No need to-"

"Sir," Wilson interrupted, and before he could hold himself back, he hissed, "If you're planning to start a civil war in Nara, you can't expect them to abide by international rules as you are not an internationally recognized faction, therefore either another 100-year war will annihilate your petty resistance in a matter of weeks, or they'll just completely rid this valley of your presence with a bomb."