It took only twenty minutes to come up with a full-blown plan. With only three hours until the match started, Anson immediately began commencing with it. Every mercenary would gather around headquarters, a seaside Sovan Local Chapter, and inland Sovan Local Chapter, the Arena, and the Stock Market. There wasn’t much disagreement until right before Anson began to wrap everything up and begin explaining it to the other mercenaries.
Deo walked through the door, ignoring what happened earlier and asked if there were any updates about how to get the rest of the shares. Knowing they didn’t have the time to re-explain everything and then move, Anson walked out of the office with everyone else following as he they made their way to the common area where Anson made his speech earlier. By the time they got to the table, Anson had explained the basics of the plan. There shouldn’t have been any objectionable areas he thought, but Deo already had alternative plan. “If we attack everything at once, we won’t know anything any at the other locations as they happen. We need to take each location, starting with the one of the Sovan ones, then taking the other, and finally work our way up with announcing our takeover at the stock market.”
“That would be great,” admitted Anson. “But we don’t have any time. Besides, I don’t think knowing what would happen at the other locations would help as by the time we heard about it, any chance in trying to fix it would be too late.”
“It’s not just about that,” argued Deo. “The Chairman might be expecting us to charge everything at once, so we need to build momentum. He might have dispatched troops to each of the locations.”
“Might have,” countered Anson. “We can’t really on steady information, by the time we figure out where the troops are, it will be too late.”
“Guys!” Baldwyn interrupted. “We don’t have to figure out where the troops are, we just have to know where they aren’t. If we send a pigeon to each of the groups at the locations, we can just ask.”
Anson thought about Baldwyn’s idea for a moment before rejecting it. “We still don’t have time for that we need to move now.” Deo tried to protest again, but Anson shushed him and made his way to the center of the building. “Someone, send pigeons to the stagecoach stables and Vasos. Call every single one of them not in use to the headquarters.” When he got to the center, near the blacksmith where he made his earlier speech, Anson turned around to face his comrades. “However, Deo is a little bit right, we can’t control all four attacks at once, but we don’t have time to attack them one by one.” The three other men waited for Anson to begin speaking again, but he did not. Instead, he stood on one of the tables and addressed the other mercenaries in the room. Telling them to gather anyone in the courtyard or the nearby area before organizing into their groups. The final phase of the operation was about to commence.
When he got down, he gave last instructions to everyone before leaving. “Deo, you’re coming with me to the inland Sovan location. Cyril, you will be in charge of taking over the seaside one. But first, you will take your dad with you. I want to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't run to the Chairman ruining the operation.”
“Why am I going with you?” Deo asked. “I seem to be getting things done faster on my own.”
“To keep any eye on you, that’s why,” Anson responded without even looking at Deo. Deo, on his part, shook his head and gave no response. “Lastly,” Anson continued. “Baldwyn, you will take our personal driver and head up to the stock market with Hera and the shares. You shall hide them in an alley and when the time comes and the Kadon arrives with the rest of the shares, we’ll buy the country.”
“So, we are just abandoning the original plan?” asked Cyril.
“Modifying,” Anson said. “Deo had a point. Okay, let’s go.”
#
Soon the exodus of men began. Forming two columns that stuffed the streets, one with Anson and Deo, and the other with Cyril waiting for his dad to arrive. After about forty-five minutes of organizing, the groups set off to their respective Sovan Local Chapters, each about another minute’s ride from their headquarters. Luckily, the arena and stock market were only around twenty minutes away from those locations, so Anson, though it wasn’t an amazing situation, kept his cool as the delays in organizing the group piled up.
Anson and Cyril gave each other a thumbs up from dozens of meters away as the hoard of mercenaries stood shoulder to shoulder underneath the stagecoaches. Soon, most of them would be loaded up and on their way, while the rest would have to walk. Hopefully, we’ll hit the locations before anyone gets too smart, Anson thought to himself as he entered a stagecoach with Deo, closing the door afterward. Continually checking his body, it felt as if he was missing something, like this operation wasn’t supposed to start yet. Noticing this, Deo asked if Anson was okay. “Yeah,” Anson responded. “It’s just that… I don’t know. There’s pressure from somewhere. I just don’t know where from.”
“It’s called being nervous,” Deo responded. “You’ll be fine.” Deo fell silent for a moment before continuing. “Or at least that’s what you acted like back in the headquarters.”
Shaking his head, Anson asked if Deo was nervous. Deo responded with a firm no, saying that if he was nervous, that he wouldn’t have joined the operation in the first place. “Only concerned,” he added. “If I am not concerned, I am a dead man.”
They continued riding as they got closer to the local chapter. Soon, in the distance, a smokestack appeared in the sky near where the Kadon Headquarters was. “The hell is that?” Deo asked.
“I don’t know,” Anson responded, trying to appear ignorant. “Probably a fire.”
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“I know it’s a fire dumbass. I mean that it’s a big one,” Deo snapped back. “Hopefully, it doesn’t spread.”
“I’m sure they got it handled,” responded Anson. “If they don’t, I’m sure we’ll know very soon.”
Arriving at the local chapter with an hour and half 6:30 until the game, there wasn’t much time to hand around, but when Anson looked out the stagecoach and looked upon the local chapter that stood in a subterranean pit that sat at the edge between the southern half of the city and the fifty-kilometer-long bridge behind the building. However, that played no factor in what froze Anson and silenced him for a couple of moments. All around the building stood, sat, and lay around 1000 Sovan Triad members presumably waiting for the mercenaries to come and rob them.
Before any mercenaries could also see what was at the local chapter Deo told Anson that they should form a perimeter in secret so that the shares couldn’t secretly be smuggled out through an underground passage or via a bridge walkway. Anson sloppily nodded, prompting Deo to leave the stagecoach, and yell at everyone to go back so they couldn’t be seen. Meanwhile, Anson grappled with the thought of a bloodbath. There was no possibility that robbing this Sovan local chapter wouldn’t result in any deaths, let alone injuries. There wasn’t any obvious ways of sneaking in, nor breaking in.
After sitting in the stagecoach for a about five minutes as Deo continued to try and organize a thousand of their own men, Anson began to worry about telling the difference between the mercenaries and the Sovans apart. Sure, the Kadons would be easy, but besides the uniforms (which would get dirty in any fight) there was no way to tell the difference. Hell, he could barely recognize Baldwyn when he rescued him from the Bandit. Wait, though Anson. Baldwyn might know these people. Maybe he can sneak in. No, his posters are everywhere.
By now, Deo had come back into the stagecoach. “Where do you think Baldwyn is right now?” Anson asked.
“Why?”
“You think he can still pretend to be part of the Sovan Triad and sneak in?” he suggested.
Deo didn’t say anything. Only looking at Anson with a face that an adult would stare at a child with after the kid through feces at their shoes. “No! Here’s my plan. We surrounded the place and rush the place before they could get any shares out.
“Unless the shares are waiting at the escape route, and we can’t get there in time.” Anson responded.
“Oh, they won’t be able to do that,” responded Deo.
“And how’s that?”
“Because they’ll all be fighting me.”
Anson didn’t take what Deo said seriously and tried to think of another plan, but Deo noticed that and repeated this plan. “I will fight them, and you and a couple of people will run. Don’t worry, I sent some people to break through the bridge and check if they have any tunnels out to the bridge.”
“And if they have a tunnel underground, instead?”
“There are some risks we have to accept. As you said, we don’t have a lot of time.”
Anson sat in the stagecoach desperately trying to think of an alternate plan, but Deo was right. No time to think, no time to improvise, the only thing that would be acted upon was whoever spoke first, and in this case, it was Deo. About five minutes later, two men ran up to the stagecoach and informed them that there was no escape route under the bridge. Nodding, Deo asked if any of them had a sword. The two men shook their heads. “I have a knife,” one of them said, while the other offered a spear. Rejecting both, Deo exited the stagecoach with Anson following.
Turning to the rest of the mercenaries behind the stagecoach. He made an announcement. “If they haven’t already, the Sovans will notice us soon, but I require two things. First, don’t charge the building until thirty seconds after I engage the first man. Second, does anyone have a sword?”
The group of around one hundred buildings squeezed in a narrow street looked around, but it seemed none of them had one, that was until a door opened by one of the buildings. It was an old man who asked if he cared what kind of sword he wanted. “No,” responded Deo. “Any shall do. I just need a blade with two edges that is bigger than a knife.”
Nodding, the old man closed the door for a moment, leaving everyone confused for a moment, before appearing again. Holding sword and sheath in his hands. Stepping away from the carriage, he went over to the man and thanked him. Everyone was silent as they watched this random pedestrian aid a coup attempt. Whether he was aware of his actions was unclear, but Anson watched wondering where he got the sword. Was he a former mercenary who retired? There were other possibilities, but they all became irrelevant when another person showed up behind the old man, asking what happened.
As if it was a goodbye message to backing out, he saw the woman who sold him, Cyril, Deo, and Zeki fruit earlier that day. It seemed too improbable to see her again in the same day. Something he never considered before entered his head. He used to be that young woman. A simple pedestrian trying to make it through the day before joining the mercenaries. Living in a tiny apartment, sometimes, squeezed between other cramped ones. He couldn’t bear it. Looking away, Anson took his head out of the stagecoach window and sat back down.
Sitting there for a moment as everyone remained still. Everything felt out of his hands. Anson thought he would at least have control of this operation, but everything fell apart, as if he was writing a book blindfolded. A moment later, Deo came back and opened the door. “Alright, I’m ready,” said the man. “Anything you want to say to the men before I head in. We have some time before my message about delaying the attack makes it rounds.”
Anson nodded and stepped out stagecoach with his ragged outfit, with hundreds of men staring at him. “Boys!” he announced as loudly as he could without tipping off the Sovans. “I cannot control what you do after this point. I realize that my previous order about killing no one has already been broken and was most likely impractical. Now, I only ask one thing. If you stab a man with his weapon falling out of his hands, and he looks up at you while lying on the ground, waiting for you to kill him…don’t. Let him live. Maybe a wife, child, or parent shall thank you in the future.”
He paused before turning back to Deo. “I don’t know how you are expecting to do any damage to the Sovans before the rest of the men come charging in. If you could tell me as a head up, that would be great.”
Deo chuckled while looking at his new, spotless, never used sword. “You’re asking yourself the wrong question. You should be asking how I killed all those men back at the Kadon Local Chapter. Why I didn’t leave as soon as I thought this whole operation was doomed or when I saw the Bandit reveal that the whole thing was a set up. Because I am about to provide the answer.”
“I’m afraid I can’t understand sword swings, so I would prefer if you said it in Sovan first.”
Deo began to walk away from the stagecoach toward the Sovans without saying anything. Expecting not to receive an answer, Anson picked out five mercenaries to protect him for when he charged the local chapter. However, as Deo reached the front of the group he turned to face Anson as he sheathed his sword. He only said two words before turning the corner and revealing himself to the Sovans. “It’s practical.”