There was a coronation after the war. Group of upper class citizens thought that, since Cove did so well on the battlefield, he’d do even better in office. They ran it alongside the ceremony for the men and women commended for the war. I was there, as were several others.
There was David Hoffman, the guy who took over Cove’s role as First General of the Military after he got elected. He was one of the elders -- half the people there were. But Athenians live long lives, and tend to not show their age until they’re nearing the end of their years. No Athenian has ever died of natural causes, though. So our life expectancy is spotty.
Let’s say he looked forty. Like a six-foot-seven bodybuilder at age forty with a beak nose. Marv from Sin City, if that’s too vague.
There was Jacquelynn Harriet Gayle. Nearly the same age as David, but looked to be in her mid thirties -- that not showing your age shit tends to go in overdrive when you’re an Athenian woman. She was five-foot-eleven -- so like, an inch shorter than me. And she had dreadlocks that went down to her waist. To this day, I still don’t know she she survived with it during the war.
There was Terrence Dickson: Combat Engineer, Ali Kai Sun; Combat Pilot, Pierre Dawes: Retired General, and Perry Todd: Director of a military faction called Frontline.
Speaking of which, there were two people there that were more than comrades to me. One of whom was from that faction.
Her name was Morgan Annabelle Dawes: the retired general’s daughter. She was born on the 10th of Frost, 1987, and was six-foot-one, so she was both an inch and a year ahead of me. She and I go back to Lordroad Advanced. Or high school, if that’s what you want to call it.
Frontline soldiers are known for being the “Bulwark of their Blood,” or “shield of their brothers,” to put it in Southland terms. They take the damage meant for others, and keep at it until either their charges retaliate or they do. Morgan’s build reflected that. She wasn’t as built as Hoffman -- she didn’t want her mobility to suffer -- but she put on enough muscle and conditioning and gained enough of a reputation that even the most decorated Eastland officers feared trading punches with her.
That’s not to say they never tried. If medicine wasn’t as advanced as it was, Belle’s body would be littered with scars left by the ones who did.
The other one was Lexine Merrill Wilson. 31st of Hail, 1977. She was W.A.S.P, and had been with them a lot longer than I was.
She was a graduate from a Westborn engineering institute called Harlock, who's responsible for the majority of our applied AquaCell technology. They weren’t military based, but there were a lot of toys in our armory that came straight from their factory.
Ah, I’m straying. The official celebration started and ended on the same day, but the “after-party” carried on well into the end of the Heat season. After that, efforts went into rebuilding what had been destroyed. Our side had been relatively untouched. The North had been swallowed up by criminals around this time, and the South was nearing the end of their repairs. So most of our focus was on the East.
During the course of the war, a lot of their citizens started hating it. There were a few who never wanted it to begin with. Those numbers eventually grew to the point where recruitment was a problem. So the Eastland military started conscripting people. The people fought back. Then they started killing them.
You remember Xavier Hallscott, right? How I said he was a puppet? By then, he was a scapegoat.
He made the call to conscript his own people, and was convinced later on that refusing it was treason, but it was because he was impressionable; Someone was telling him that this was the right response. Once they lost, they tried to disappear and leave him to the wolves. Didn't pan out they way they thought it would.
Most of the Eastland military were still sour from losing, and there were a lot more patriots in the country than anticipated. None of them pitched in, opted to stay home and swear off whatever we touched or some shit like that. The Eastlanders that were in favor of us showing up -- which were the majority -- were convinced that Cove shared Moore's worldviews. That he was carrying his torch.
Now normally, each country has a council. The council would take actions that would be in their respective country's best interest, either at the behest or the absence of their leader.
In this case, however, there was no council. Everyone that served during the war were complicit with Hallscott's actions -- carried them out without question. So the decision was left to the people. And given the aforementioned mindset of the Eastlanders, you can probably guess who I'm going to name.
Whether or not the Westlanders thought that was a good idea is a matter of debate. But it's not one I'm going to bring up now.
Because now you're caught up. Here's where the story begins.
On the 31st of Fall, 2009, the reconstruction of East Athena was pretty much finished. There were a few buildings and structures in need of repair, but the bulk of what kept the country running was all back in place.
I remember working on a few of them with one of the construction crews in Holtz. Hyde's Con Crew, I think it was called. I didn't think the owner of that company knew what a name like that would insinuate, but I was told it was a family one. As in, it'd been there for a long time.
One of their best employees -- the one who told me that -- was helping us through it. Five foot seven, athletic looking girl. Hair past her hips -- had it not been tied -- and skin as pale as death.
That's not an expression. When Athenians die, we lose all complexion. Grey out. So her looking like that was VERY uncommon.
Her name's Alex, by the way; Alexandra Morgenstein.
I remember being in the cafeteria of the Con Crew building with Belle when breaking news hit every screen in the East. Apparently Hoffman and Gayle crash landed on an Edgeworth airstrip. Said their landing gear had been taken out by hostiles.
We got a call from Cove almost immediately after that, telling us to head to that state. When we did, he briefed us. Those hostiles were dead Westlanders.
I'm not going to bother letting that sink in. Our world's been over saturated with enough zombie flicks to turn anyone off the genre -- I can only imagine what it's like for you. Since our job in rebuilding the East was nearly complete, and almost all the Westlander soldiers endeavoring to do that task was relieved from duty half a season ago, we had enough of a force to mount an evacuation.
But "Dead Westlanders" was an umbrella term. We hear that, and think your conventional zombie. Shoot them in the head, they stop being a problem. I couldn't blame the General or Gayle back then. Neither of them were there long enough to gauge the severity of the situation.
We all found out real quick: They were not conventional zombies. Shooting them in the head did nothing. Taking it off made them even more frenzied than they already were. It was the first mistake we made that took a quarter of our forces.
Next, we got it in our heads that dismemberment was the better option; that severing all their limbs would somehow subdue them. Not only did they grow back, the limbs developed defensive means to ensure that the method used to take it off couldn't be done again. It also gained offensive abilities to make it even more deadlier; a mistake that cost us more troops, and even more survivors, since we told them this was an effective method.
Let's be clear here, short of slowing them down, nothing we did worked. Everything we tried made the situation worse, until someone suggested that we glass the country.
You remember when I told you the Glassers don’t normally harm inorganics? It was generally assumed it would be a problem if, say, they wanted to use those weapons on a group of terrorists that were taking shelter in a building.
Glassers work like light. White hot, controllable light. On its default setting, that shit goes through everything.
It wasn’t just me that brought up the point that evacuation wouldn’t work as much if there were no civilians to evacuate. But lucky for us, power of that magnitude was never unchecked.
The glassers were under the control of Athena’s Security Assessment -- A.S.A for short. They were responsible for the policing of the entire planet, and only they got the final decision on using the weapons. We needed their approval, codes and a key, a designated “foreman” to activate the weapon, and the correct platform in which they can do so. The correct platforms would have been in the West, and by the time we got to any of them, they were pretty much destroyed.
The A.S.A opted to use the existing ones on their space bound headquarters. The same ones hijacked by the assholes who started the war, though it was under heavier security, and buried in many more checks now. It gave us more focus on evacuating the Westlanders still under threat.
Around that time, we started getting enlistments from the East, of all places. Sympathizers, apologists, even some veterans from the AC war. There were also a few leftover agents from Moore’s time that came out of hiding to assist, and a few acolytes from the Remnant Shield; a Southern faction that’s been around since...Forever, I think.
We also got news of how the outbreak started; in the depths of a science institute they call Eden Under Earth. We were told that Harlock had regular dealings with them; They were the brain, Harlock were the hands. U.E would conceive the prototypes, get them to work in theory, then send the blueprints off to Harlock so that they could make it work in practice.
It was also an university. Some of the brightest minds of Athena came there to expand their horizons. Not all of them stay, but the bulk of them did.
Apparently, someone there was working on something they weren't supposed to. Hoffman elected to find out. Gayle seconded it. A date was set for when we'd check this out -- the 50th day of Fall. Needed to be before Frost season came around, and doing our job became impossible. It was also decided that the 60th day would be the day we'd use the Glasser. We assumed by that point, anyone that could be saved would have been.
Well...All of that shit went to hell before the 50th day even came. I would say most plans don't survive enaction, but that would've implied we had the chance to do so.
END RECORDING
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