Sofiane’s hand shook. He was on his fifth cup of coffee but it was the only way to stay focused when he was getting three hours of sleep a night. This required the balancing act of figuring out if he was actually frustrated with something, or if it was his skyrocketing blood pressure.
“No, no, listen. You’re not hearing me,” Sofiane said, ignoring the scalding coffee leaping onto his fingers. “The patrols would go down a set list of questions to identify—”
Spriggansnout slammed his gnarly green fists on the table. “Questions!? They’re the ones attacking us! How much time do you think the patrols have to ask gods-damned questions!?”
“Our patrols are doing the same thing! If we can recruit the Heroes, we should. One fucking hand on one fucking rod could be the difference!”
“And if they pick the wrong Heroes you’re asking them to die, bonehead! Then we’re out even more hands!”
Medea rubbed her face. Both of them were partly right, but while Spriggansnout had always been a grumpy little green bastard, Sofiane was slowly becoming a purple one. Everyone was on edge. Their siege had already begun, even if it was currently invisible. She had placed her faith in Sofiane precisely because he seemed to have a level head unlike most Heroes, but that level head was now full of red eyes and dark sockets and was starting to tilt.
“We’re not going to get anywhere if you two don’t calm down. This only helps the Heroes,” Medea said.
“The Yishang,” Sofiane corrected, his tone tense and bitter.
The Non-Heroes referred to their enemies generically as “Heroes,” but he preferred “the Yishang.” It was a little thing and shouldn’t have bothered him. It clear they were using "Heroes" as an abbreviation for “Heroes threatening Shuixing,” but every time he heard it, Sofiane’s mind lumped himself in with “the Heroes.” He was a Hero. And so were the people the patrols were ambushing. Spriggansnout was correct that something like 90% of them were enemies, and that the patrols were acting in self-defense and might even be helping to thin the numbers for the eventual siege. But Sofiane still didn’t like it.
“Right. The Yishang,” Medea said.
She was well aware Sofiane’s mind was on the 10% of Heroes that might not be cruel bastards. It was easier to think about them than the other 90% when your job wasn’t to be killed over and over by them, like hers before a couple weeks ago. Medea wondered whether this entire enterprise was simply impossible. Perhaps Heroes and Non-Heroes were two distinct species that couldn’t work together. Whether it was possible or not, her freedom and future were riding on a Hero. With more time, it might have been possible to internalize Shuixing’s proclamation that Heroes and Non-Heroes were all the same, but not with their mad scramble to organize a defense.
Sofiane’s wild, unfocused glare swept the table before he finally said, “fine. The patrols don’t have to stop and interrogate. But tell them to observe more and try to approach Heroes who might be converted. Okay?”
Spriggansnout snorted and grumbled something neither affirmative nor negative. After that the defense committee moved onto other items which Sofiane was less and less able to focus on.
“I think our best shot for aiding Natsuko and Daisy’s efforts is to exploit visual and auditory effects rather than focusing on damage,” Medea said. “Heroes who can fly will have too much HP and we already lost Vidorgia who was the only one who could’ve matched them.”
Sofiane stared blankly then shook his head. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”
“That was the repetition,” Medea replied.
“Shit... I think I know what you said. We’re going to…” Sofiane trailed off. It was on the tip of his tongue. He knew something had wormed its way into his ears. “We’re not going to attack them— wait, why the hell aren’t we attacking them!?”
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Medea rubbed her eyes. She was also tired, but at least her focus was purely on figuring out sightlines and defensive positions for ranged attackers. Sofiane was doing everything. With help from the committee, of course, but he was the glue keeping the committee together. She explained her point to him again and finally Sofiane processed her logic.
“Okay, yeah, no, good idea. The question is whether we want to concentrate all our distractions on single targets or blanket the sky so Natsuko and Daisy have better cover."
“Blanketing would distract Daisy and Natsuko too, no?” Vronsky asked.
“Ugh. Yes. You’re right. Focus fire it is,” Sofiane said, kicking himself for not taking the extra couple of seconds to think.
What other considerations was he missing? Would missing the wrong considerations cause catastrophic failure? Aerial defense was already the area he was most concerned about since that would be where the absolute bastards like Boulanger would come from. And they still hadn’t figured out a way to reliably ground the flying Heroes so they could be dimension-jumped. At the moment, the only method was Natsuko swapping and having someone else clock them. But if Natsuko got dropped herself, which might mean any regular death in the context of the Special Event, they would be out of options. Sofiane slapped his cheeks to bring himself back. He had to stay focused. He would stay focused. He would push through a lack of sleep until Shuixing researched a way to escape. The two of them had to work non-stop because no one else would.
The rest of the afternoon committee report was filled with mixed news. Joad reported that by tomorrow they would be sitting on a surplus of FDJ weapons, which was a plus, but Dr. Cox informed them that despite round-the-clock work with additional help, the science team’s research on long-ranged FDJ weapons and an escape method had both stalled.
As it drew closer to Zicheng’s report Sofiane’s heart raced. With no long-distance means of communication, Sofiane was at the mercy of however long it took the Non-Heroes to bring back Team Harald. Using steammobiles, the search party should’ve made the round trip in a day, but it had been three since they left. Zicheng wouldn’t have anything to report on that front since Sofiane had given him instructions to come straight to him when he had news, but his report made the lack of news all the more agitating.
“Our recruitment efforts have not born fruit yet,” Zicheng said, “but we’re also only three days in and our agents will have only just made it to Tianzhou, Cascadia, and Deco-Imperia. It will take even longer for those sent further afield. Furthermore, we have reports on the movement of—”
He was interrupted by a knock at the lecture hall door. One of the students standing guard opened it for a trio of goblins who Sofiane recognized as some of Zicheng’s people.
“B-Boss! We got people back from Deco! They got got!” one of the goblins said.
Sofiane’s heart skipped a beat. He shot up from his chair. “What do you mean ‘got got’!?”
“Bonked! With their own rods! Heroes got some of ‘em and got away,” said another of the goblins.
“Who got bonked!? Did they say anything about Heroes with them!?”
“Ask them! We came straight here to report to Boss!”
Zicheng waved the goblins off as Sofiane sprinted for the door. The rest of the committee got up, suspecting the meeting was adjourned.
Sofiane found the returned search party by spotting their steammobiles sending up plumes of smoke outside the city walls. A crowd had gathered by that point and were examining the abandoned vehicles which had spawned a coal fires in their engine stacks. After yelling for everyone to get back, Sofiane tracked the injured search party to a tent where some women were giving them tea to drink. All three of the survivors, Purple Bolters by the look of them, appeared shell-shocked.
“You were the ones who went to Deco Imperia?” Sofiane asked, more edge entering his voice than he intended.
One of them, a Bolter woman, swallowed and nodded. “Yeah.”
Sofiane fought down the urge to plow right into interrogating them.
“Are the three of you okay? What happened? ” he asked.
“Fine. Can’t say the same for all of us,” said an older man who reminded Sofiane of Joad.
“We were ambushed by Heroes,” the woman explained. “We were gonna drive right past except they stopped our car. We didn’t know they had rods of their own until they started knockin’ us through the ground. They kept sayin’ they, “knew what we were up to,” and calling us Hero-killers.”
Which was true, Sofiane thought. It wasn’t lost on him that the Non-Heroes, both before and after Baphomet, had set up ambushes exactly like that. He sympathized with the survivors, but this was in fact a war, and it was a war with all of Po-Lin at stake. Everyone was a fair target.
“When did this happen? Was this before or after…” The possibility that Gomiko and the others were among those killed was too awful to finish the sentence.
“After we investigated,” said the third bolter, a younger man.
Terror seized Sofiane. His world narrowed to his own ragged breaths as he tried to keep himself from panicking.
“Were they… was Gomiko…”
The younger bolter shook his head. “The place was empty when we got there. Everything was ransacked, so either your folks left in a real big hurry, or someone dragged them out.”