Admiral Barnes reviewed this week's reports aboard the carrier he had claimed as his flagship. Not that a carrier made much of a difference since the San Francisco harbor had turned into a lake. But it was still a statement, and it allowed him to stay mobile. The harbor might be a lake now, but it was still an enormous lake.

He glanced up at the man who had delivered the report, the Warrant Officer. The man stood rigidly at attention, waiting for orders. “So you’re telling me our analysts think the Council was involved in the attacks against these four Lieutenants under Commander Alvarez’s command?”

“Sir, that is what our analysts believe.”

Barnes threw the report down in disgust. “What led them to such a silly conclusion?”

“Sir?” the Warrant Officer asked uncertainly.

“Have you read this report?”

“Yes, Sir. You stated not to bring anything to your attention unless it was critical to the mission.”

“And you didn’t feel like anything was off about this incident?”

“…”

“I asked you a question.”

“…N- no, Sir.”

Barnes did his best to suppress his annoyance at the Warrant Officer. The man was decent at his job but he wasn’t very tactically minded. He would never rise through the ranks much farther than he already was.

He flipped the report open and turned it to face WO Jones. “Read this paragraph out loud for me and give me your thoughts.”

“Using the cover of night, assassins snuck into the camps under the four lieutenants' control and executed strikes against them. The strikes were carried out using undead and three of the four lieutenants perished during the encounter. The fourth was medevacked to the closest hospital but died from his injuries on the way. No sign of the intruders has been detected and the Council has yet to claim responsibility for the attacks.”

“When was the last time the Council didn’t claim credit for an attack or try to use it as leverage against us?”

“Uh…”

“The answer is never, Warrant Officer Jones. They have never missed the opportunity to use a victory of theirs as propaganda against us. And yet this states that they never claimed responsibility for these attacks. That leads me to believe that they are not the ones responsible for these attacks. So who is?”

“… Um.”

“That was rhetorical, Jones. Send a runner to alert Commander Alvarez that I want him here at his earliest convenience. But not before he replaces the fallen lieutenants. We cannot afford to have the front weakened by their losses at the moment. You are dismissed.”

Jones gave a crisp salute before turning and retreating from his office. Barnes sighed after the man left. He had to remember that he didn’t have access to the best of the best, only those who had been stationed here during the fall. Mistakes were likely to happen, especially since he didn’t have any Marine officers available to him. He still regretted having to stomp them out but they had brought it upon themselves. As an Admiral, he simply couldn’t let their mutinous ideas spread. As for the Marine division under his control, half were near the front, and the other half were used to keep peace in the larger cities.

It was certainly not what Marines were trained for. But it was all he had, and they were ruthless in their duties to keeping peace.

Any local troublemakers were shipped to the front line and it worked both to keep the peace and ensure they had ample soldiers to deal with the legions of undead trying to force their way through the Sacramento Valley Gap. Parking his flagship in the harbor and blowing up the Golden Gate Bridge had forced the Silicon Valley Warlords to retreat to Sacramento less than a year after the fall.

Barnes assumed they would continue to fight amongst themselves until they killed each other off but he hadn’t accounted for Donovan Kane to come along and unite them. He had met the man years ago at a military conference. Kane came off as competent but not very driven. He had seemed perfectly happy at the time to run his small military contractor company. What changed to make him the way he was today, Barnes couldn’t say.

Peace talks were agreed to between the two groups and they came together to hash out the details. The biggest sticking point was who would get to lead this new nation. Donovan wanted the Council to be in charge. But Barnes wouldn’t stand for that. While he didn’t always like the elected leadership, he knew the people needed a voice. The only reason he was currently in charge was because the civilian leadership had died or fled. And he would give up his role if a legitimate official ever appeared. But after ten years, he held little hope for that.

Everything was going smoothly at the peace talks and Barnes thought a deal may have eventually happened, but one of the Council members attempted a coup. Barnes barely escaped during the chaos but a lot of his top advisors did not. After the refusal of the Council to kill off the perpetrator, the battle lines were drawn. From the San Francisco Harbor to Lake Tahoe. Thankfully most of the land was too rugged to cross easily. This concentrated most of the fighting in the valley.

The lines were continually shifting, but the enemy was slowly gaining ground with each passing week. Stockton had already been burned to the ground during the intense fighting. If it wasn’t for his air superiority, this fight would have been over long ago. But his reserves of jet fuel and munitions were starting to run low. And the development of alternatives was a slow laborious process.

His only option to keep the fighting going had been to push the undesirables into the front line. So far it was working but for how long he didn’t know. Conscripts did not make ideal soldiers. The process of moving these criminals to the front was also a slow one with the lack of transportation and fuel.

A knock on his door pulled him from his thoughts and he checked his watch. It had been four hours since he sent Jones away. Plenty of time to helicopter someone from the mainland.

“Come in.”

Just as he suspected, Commander Alvarez stepped inside and saluted.

“At ease, Commander.”

The man dropped the salute and stood at parade rest.

“I want your take on this attack. Was the Council really the ones behind it?”

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Barnes watched as Alvarez shifted slightly and swallowed. If he didn’t know any better, he might think the man was nervous.

“No, Sir. I do not believe they were the ones behind the attacks.”

Barnes put his pen down and cupped his hands as he stared at the Commander. “That’s not what your report indicated.”

“At the time I wrote it, it seemed likely. But as the hours passed, and then a day went by without a peep from the Council, I personally looked into it, Sir.”

“And where is this updated report?”

“I was preparing it when your helicopter arrived, Sir.”

Barnes glanced at the case the man had set on the floor next to him. “Show me.”

After the Commander handed over the partially completed report, Barnes quickly read through it before setting it down on the table and glaring at the Commander.

The Commander had his eyes firmly fixed on the wall behind Barnes. Because he knew he had fucked up.

“Who gave you the authority to conduct raids outside of our current conflict zone?”

“Your orders for me were to track down and attempt to eliminate the enemy's production facilities. I-”

Admiral Barnes held up his hand, causing the Commander to snap his mouth closed so quickly he almost bit his tongue. “Are you trying to say this mistake is my fault, Commander?”

“No, Sir!”

“Since you seem to have forgotten my orders, let me refresh your memory. The orders I gave you were as such. Prevent the enemy from breaking through our lines. Locate any high-value targets in the area and eliminate them. And perform reconnaissance to figure out where and how the Council was creating undead. Do any of those orders sound like the go-ahead to launch strike teams against another zone?”

“No, Sir!”

“So then what made you think it was a good idea to attack this,” Barnes had to glance at the sheet to recall the name of the city, “Ashvale?”

“Our scouts overheard some enemy Controllers talking about the city. They said they were waiting for reinforcements coming from them. I thought it best to try and put a stop to this as quickly as possible.”

Barnes stood up from his desk and walked around to the side of Commander Alvarez. He made sure to get right up in his personal space. “You thought?” Barnes could see the Commander sweating as he stood there. “You are not paid to think, Commander. You are paid to follow orders. Is that clear?”

The man nodded.

“I can’t hear you, Commander!”

“Yes, Sir!”

Happy that the Commander now understood, Barnes returned to his seat behind his desk. “Good. Now that we have established that. What have you learned about this, Ashvale? I assume you were going to add that to your report before I so rudely interrupted you.”

“Not much, Sir. All of our strike teams have gone missing. I only just learned about one survivor but I haven’t had time to get a statement from her.”

Barnes wanted to sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose but he stopped himself. “Send a helicopter to retrieve her. I want to speak to this woman in person. You are dismissed until she arrives, then I expect you here for that meeting as well.”

***

It took a day but they did eventually track the woman down and bring her in for questioning. It wasn’t that she was hiding, but she was in the hospital recovering from injuries she suffered on her trip back to California. They were minor things though, mainly caused by exposure and dehydration. At least her physical injuries. Most of her remaining issues were psychological at this point. As an Admiral, he understood how hard it was to watch people you knew die. And to be the sole survivor was a rough deal.

Admiral Barnes and Commander Alvarez waited off to the side as the helicopter came in for a landing. Two people stepped off of the aircraft after the rotors finally stopped. The first one was a man Barnes didn’t recognize. The second was obviously this Evelynn woman. The two stopped a few feet away, the woman looking awkward and unsure of herself. The man seemed to be reassuring the woman and providing comfort. Barnes figured he was probably a therapist of some sort.

“You must be Evelynn?” Barnes asked, offering his hand. The woman shied back from him.

“Sorry, General. Evelynn is still recovering.”

Barnes turned to address the man. “It’s Admiral, and you are?”

The man clasped Barnes’ outstretched hand. “Sorry, Admiral. I didn’t mean any offense. I’m not well-versed in military ranks. You can call me Pedro. Think of me as a faith healer. I offer peace, solace, and emotional support for those in need. As well as a bit of magic to help it along.”

Barnes grunted, “It’s fine. We only wish to ask Evelynn a few questions today. Please follow me.”

The group headed into the ship and Barnes led them to a small operations room. Soon after the four settled into seats, Barnes spoke up. “While I don’t wish to have you relive your traumatic experience, we need to know everything you learned about this Ashvale.”

It wasn’t hard to see the woman’s reluctance. She immediately stiffened when she heard him speak the name.

After an obvious internal struggle, the woman finally spoke. “I- I can’t tell you much. My team was intercepted before we even made it to the town. They had countermeasures in place to detect invisible units as well as those cloaked from the undead.”

While he didn’t want to stop the woman for fear she might clam up, he needed clarification on that last part. “Where did you get a spell to hide from the undead?”

The woman seemed confused by the question and the man beside her was starting to frown. “The officer that gave us our orders supplied the spells to us.”

Barnes cursed internally. It was obvious now that the Council was playing them. But why?

“Please continue.”

“After we were ambushed in some sort of spell that sucked away all the mana in the area, our guards were quickly dispatched by men in black armor. They were all enhanced, so we had no chance against them without magic or any way to fight back. They slapped some sort of magical cuffs on us that kept us drained of magic while they interrogated us for days. They never once stopped or let us rest.” The woman started to break down at this point and Pedro put his arm around her in support.

Though she was sobbing and shaking, she continued. “I knew we were all going to die. One of the men had cracked and they started rotating us through being questioned faster and faster until it was only me left.”

“And what did these people want?” Barnes asked.

“They wanted information. They wanted to know why we were there. Who we worked for. They seemed annoyed by the fact we tried attacking them. And said they had nothing to do with the Council.”

“But they employ undead,” Alvarez scoffed.

The woman seemed unsure about saying something.

Barnes coaxed her to continue. “If you have an insight, please don’t hold it back, it could be important.”

“I- I don’t think any of the undead I saw were mindless.”

The room went quiet at that.

Evelynn broke the silence shortly after, seemingly wanting to be done with this conversation. “There was one last thing. The man that was questioning me told me he was the leader. And he had some words for me to bring back. He said his name was Norman, and to stay the fuck out of his territory.”

Before Barnes could process this information, Pedro bent over and whispered into the woman’s ear. She nodded and got up to exit the room.

Pedro waited until the door closed before he turned back toward Barnes. “I’m sorry about that but she’s been through enough today. She doesn’t need to be here for this next bit.”

“What next bit?” Barnes questioned.

The faith healer sighed. “I have met this Norman. And while I don’t doubt Eveylnn’s recollection of the incident, I think I can supply some much-needed context about the man.”

“First tell us how you know this man.”

Pedro chuckled lightly at that. “Well, it’s a bit of a story.”

Barnes leaned back in his seat after Pedro finished his tale. “So you’re saying this man tortured our people and you expect me to believe he only did this to protect his town?”

Pedro shook his head. “You can’t claim the moral high ground, Admiral. The US Government did that and much worse to prisoners over the decades. You yourself might detest such practices but can you say for certain that your people haven’t done something similar to extract information? What you need to understand about Norman is that he will go to great lengths to protect his people. The Brotherhood wiped them out. That’s not hyperbole, Admiral. They were all dead. Yet they came back. And they did so with swift violent vengeance. So be cautious with how you deal with him and his people.”

After Pedro left the room, Barnes took time to think over the issue.

“What should we do, Admiral?”

Barnes looked over at Commander Alvarez. It took all of his will not to throttle the man for dumping this steaming pile on his lap. “First of all, find out which one of your fucking underlings is working for the Council. Then get rid of him and countermand any orders they have given. After that, we need to put together an envoy to this Ashvale and apologize.”

“Sir? Is that wise?”

“Wise is not inviting enemies we don’t need, Commander. The loss of a bit of pride to do so is something I can afford to lose. When you have finished dealing with the traitor, get coordinates for this Ashvale. We will be taking a helicopter, I don’t want to give the Council more time to poison the waters between our two groups.”