Travis was feeling great! Amazing, in fact! Better than he ever would have expected. Joining the Revolution had been the single best decision of his young life. He could never go back, would never go back. Compared to how things used to be, this was bliss. No parents constantly disapproving of his hustle, no goody-goody older brother constantly showing him up with his shroud and his ridiculous bad luck. He never wanted to be a doctor!
No, here he was appreciated. It turned out that Travis had a talent for ethertech, especially explosives. Even better, the Revolution liked explosives. Everything he made was praised to high heaven. No one cared if he was a little loose with the formulas or was exactly the most accurate with the timers. If it went boom really good, everyone was happy. Comparatively, all the exact minutia of medicine was a chore that he regretted ever being involved with. It was so much easier to blow someone up than diagnose an illness or set a broken bone.
So Travis had succeeded in mission after mission for months, building up an impressive resume that turned heads. Important heads, as it turned out. Travis, at the tender age of fifteen, was brought into the real plans the head revolutionaries had cooking. Another thing he liked about these people. They recognized talent. There was never any talk about him being too young or ‘not ready,’ whatever that meant. They saw he could do it, so they let him.
And what amazing plans! He never would have guessed how ambitious the Revolution truly was. They weren’t content with a slow battle, retaking the Starry Sea village by village, island by island. No, they wanted change now, and Travis couldn’t blame them. He’d seen plenty of hellish conditions on his missions. Entire towns where the population was little better than slaves for the one or two shrouded that lived there.
So when they asked him to participate, he was all in. The overarching plan was vast, with many moving parts. Travis still regretted that he wasn’t placed with the Academy attack team. That group had been selected long ago, inserted into key positions as part of Central City and Central Academy staff so that they could infiltrate the school more easily. Despite that, Travis wished he could have been there. Maybe he would have run into his stupid brother and evened the score for a lifetime of high-handedness and special treatment.
Of course, the Academy operation had ended as a partial failure. All their forces were captured or dead, with a much lower shrouded casualty rate than the leadership had hoped. So he dodged a bullet there. Information coming out of that situation was sparse, but Travis had to wonder how that attack went so sideways. Early reports had the shrouded routed and being hunted down like rats by the heavily armed revolutionaries. Then it all fell apart in a matter of hours.
Well, not his problem! Rather, Travis had been set as a minor part at an ethership dockyard in the CA’s islands. It was a massive complex that repaired and made hundreds of etherships which were sold all over the Starry Sea. The Central Authority’s etherships were superior to any other, and their sale was a major industry. So, obviously, it became a target of the Revolution.
All he had to do was guard a door after the suppression field went up. It just so happened that that door was the main point of attack for a massive force of shrouded trying to stop the Revolution from sabotaging billions of credits worth of etherships. Travis personally killed over twenty before reinforcements arrived with a combination of gunfire and handmade fragmentation grenades. One of those explosives he made while under attack.
The leader of that particular attack had sung his praises to anyone who would listen. According to the man, Travis was the only reason they weren’t overrun. If those shrouded had made it through, the Revolution wouldn’t have managed to do half as much damage as they did. For a newly recruited 15, now 16, year old to show that much bravery and grace under fire was nothing short of a miracle.
So Travis moved up. He moved up a lot. It helped that he had also coordinated the response team to stop three more attempts to break through at that door. No one expected leadership potential from him, but he had shown it in spades.
So the high-ups had brought him in on the next big movement the Revolution was going to make. And it was truly massive.
“The plans have shifted.” The man at the head of the table stated. Travis was by far the youngest in the room of over a dozen men and women. “The supreme leader’s original plan has to move drastically. Initially, we were going to expand to attack other countries in less than a month. Unfortunately, all that groundwork is going to have to be transitioned or scrapped. Sorry, David; I know you’ve been working on those networks and attack plans for over a year. But the response from outside the CA has been more aggressive than we anticipated. Of course, leave it to the shrouded to smell blood in the water and get all excited.”
He snorted before standing and pressing a button on an ether controller. The lights in the room dimmed and an image formed on the wall behind him. Several sets of communications appeared on the screen before shifting to the side as an ariel view of a massive city took their place.
“We’ve managed to intercept or otherwise retrieve several sets of communications between both the Fire Kingdom and the 10,000 Empires. The attacks we successfully executed have caused them to take a closer look at the CA. They’re sensing a weakness in their mutual neighbor from a multitude of factors. Lower exports, fewer border patrols, less skirmishes. It would be amazing for us if they could independently decide to attack the CA in a massive assault, but their own spy networks don’t stand up to the same level as the CA’s, so they’re currently working off rumors.”
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Another man, wearing dark, close-fitted clothes, raised his hand. Travis knew the man was part of the intelligence corps from his garb. “I’d like to know why we don’t just feed them that information. The CA is vulnerable, so we wouldn’t even be selling them a false bill of goods. Let the shrouded fight it out. The more of them die, the better.”
The man in front, Dajuan, nodded in agreement. “That was an avenue we looked into, but it has multiple failure points. First of all, shrouded intelligence agencies rely entirely on shrouded agents. Information coming from unshrouded will inherently hold less value. Which leads to the second problem and the heart of the issue. To convince either country that our information is valid enough for them to act on, we’d likely have to reveal that we were the perpetrators. At which point, they’ll view our motives with suspicion. It might actually put them off attacking the CA more than it helps. After all, the shrouded will view our agenda as the universal threat it is. And the damage we’ve now dealt makes us more of a threat than they can ignore.”
The dark-clothed man nodded. “Fair enough. I just didn’t want the avenue to be overlooked. We’ve done similar things with other unshrouded organizations, so I was hoping it would apply here.”
“A fair point, but we’re considering that an unreasonable risk at this time. Especially with better avenues to pursue the True Revolution.” Dajuan nodded before turning back to the screen. “Now, the information they’ve gotten, some of which we’ve helped facilitate.” He looked back at the other man for a second. “Has gotten both countries to move. They’ve initiated the Tournament of Powers for this part of the Starry Sea.”
“For those of you that are unaware, the Tournament of Powers is an event that shrouded hold once a decade to spy on each other and assess local threats under the guise of international cooperation. The actual tournament is immaterial to our ends, so we won't be discussing that, but the event itself is a point of interest. The ToP draws in leadership from all the countries participating, which five in this case. The Central Authority and its two neighbors, the Fire Kingdom and the 10,000 Empires, and their two neighbors, the Wild Queendom and the Dread Federation.”
“The participants come down to which countries are hosting, which in this case is the Fire Kingdom and 10,000 Empires, which decided to jointly sponsor the event to place pressure on their mutual neighbor. This Tournament of Powers is six years ahead of schedule and interferes with our next major attack plan. Several key locations will either be emptied of important targets or under increased scrutiny due to the movement of important personnel. So, we’re revising.”
“Instead of the planned attacks in less than a month, we’re pulling back our timeline. Instead, the new target will be this.” He pointed to the city on screen. “If you can believe it, this is a city built specifically for the Tournament of Powers. It didn’t exist three days ago. And it will be gone in six months when the tournament is over.”
Travis shook his head. Building a city in three days? This was why shrouded were insane. Too much power for a single person.
“Now, the city may look complete, but it isn’t. A few shrouded with the appropriate shrouds threw together this outline in a few hours working together, but the specific details of the city are still functionally under construction. After that, they’ll be bringing in tens of thousands of unshrouded to staff it. At the current construction pace, we expect that to happen within a month. That will be when the plan truly begins.”
He clicked again, and the view of the city shifted along with the communication copies. They were replaced by a single image, a schematic showing the same city they had just looked at. “Obviously, we’ll be infiltrating with the surge of unshrouded. Current projections have us managing to place at least twenty thousand agents onsite. The actual number will change some timetables for specific projects, but overall we’ll be working assuming the total number of personnel on hand is around that amount.”
He clicked, and three red circles appeared. One was around an arena that took up nearly the tenth of the giant city. The other two were around a building situated at the city center and another location nearby. Even from the schematic, Travis could tell the third building was extravagant beyond belief.
“These three buildings will be the main focus, with the most setup needed. The arena will house millions or even billions of shrouded who will be watching the competition. It’s too good of a target to pass up and the most difficult one to attack effectively. So many shrouded in one place is a daunting force regardless of any advantages we manage to eke out. Most of our manpower, about half, will be focused around covertly setting up explosives and heavy ordinance ethertech discreetly in the arena’s service areas.”
“The second target.” He pointed at the central building. “Is the most tactically vital. It will house the ether generators for the entire city. Intel has come in that the CA will be the ones providing the generators. We have semi-reliable reports that they’ll be designing new models specifically for this event. In less than two months, before the Tournament of Powers begins, this building will be the single largest source of raw power generation in the Starry Sea. Gaining complete control of this facility is crucial. With it, we plan to put up a suppression field big enough to cover the whole damn city.”
Finally, he pointed to the fancy building. “This will be the target requiring the most finesse. This building will be a meeting hall for the leadership of five different nations. Here, they will meet face-to-face and try to stab each other in the back as subtly as possible. Obviously, it will have the most advanced defensive, anti-spy, anti-interference ethertech the shrouded can come up with. That is to say; it might actually take us five minutes to crack.”
A round of chuckles filled the room.
“The real problem, as always, is the shrouded themselves. We’ve learned from the Academy assault that even a suppression field cannot keep these people down. Damon Vestigious, one of the most powerful men in the CA, held against literal tons of heavy weapons fire for over half a day by himself. And we’ve confirmed that he’s primarily an aura user. He was fighting with both hands tied behind his back and blindfolded. A building full of people on that level is the single most dangerous target in the history of the Revolution, no contest.”
“Sorry, sir,” Travis raised his hand, feeling like he was missing something. “But what exactly is our end goal for this attack? Besides killing as many shrouded as possible.” He added the last sentence as an afterthought, feeling like he was stating the obvious.
“Ah, Travis, our rising star.” Dajuan smiled. “An excellent question. We’re going to kill the leaders of five shrouded countries in one night. Let me explain how.”