“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”

Lao Tzu

There was something wrong with the sky. It was early morning and the light shining through the big picture windows should have been – well, sunlight. It certainly wasn’t supposed to be a cold, actinic blue. It threw the contents of the room into sharp relief, hard contrasts separating light from shadow.

‘Well this is new,’ he said, to no one in particular.

He turned to face the window and had to snap a hand over his eyes, as the horizon exploded. Transfixed, Corbin heard the feed kick into gear as confused reports began to stream in, but he didn’t turn away from the window, his eyes fixed on the horizon and his mind occupied by still greater horizons expanding beyond. For long minutes he drank it all in.

A camera crew finished their hurried preparations behind him.

‘We’re ready to go, sir.’

At first few people had noticed the gentle bulges of water and unusual swells that appeared across the oceans of Earth. The vast collective weapon systems rose to the surface in stages, unfurling like some monstrous creature from the abyssal depths. The great deluge of displaced water produced surges that lapped at every coastline, but they were only the faintest hint of what was to follow.

There could be no warning. Within every bundle was a spindle of optically perfect hyperdiamond, a cluster of sensors and enough electromuscle to aim with pinpoint accuracy. There were several thousand Dynic craft in orbit. A dozen lasers aimed at each vessel, and from each laser poured gigawatts of coherent light.

Clouds are opaque to lasers, so the beams often didn’t travel more than a few metres before they were absorbed, creating an expanding bubble of plasma. But the power was so great that the next pulse of energy blasted straight through the bubble, pushing the water vapour out of the way as if the beams were drilling through solid matter. Focussed down to coin-sized targets, the beams could slice through dozens of meters of metal per second. The Dynic ships were blinded, then torn apart, then consumed as internal fuel and munitions detonated. Most died before they even understood what was happening. Some fled for higher orbits in disarray, never getting far before they too were caught in the frenzied destruction: you cannot dodge a laser, not at a range of mere thousands of kilometres.

In a settlement too minor to be a numbered conurbation, an Arco district officer was woken by a blastwave that shattered the windows of his flat. He rushed forward, pulling on a jumpsuit, curiosity overriding fear, and stared out at… nothing he could describe. From the thirtieth level of his housecube stack he could see the Southern Ocean roiling beyond. It was alive with the stabbing radiance of… what? It might have been aurorae, if aurorae were bright enough to turn night into day. It might have been lightning, if lightning streaked from the ground to the sky. His gaze followed the beam up into the morning sky.

Elsewhere, in a plane crossing the Atlantic Ocean, passengers gaped from their point of privileged vantage as the surrounding sky was lit up by otherworldly fire. Pyres of unnatural light blazed heavenwards, their wake leaving the aircraft buffeted by turbulence while all around it the atmosphere was set ablaze. The clouds twisted and contorted into strange formations, and steam boiled off the ocean as the Earth itself convulsed.

A woman at a market stall heard the crowd around her cry out at something she couldn’t see. Her home, Conurbation 6581, was more than a hundred kilometres from the coastline. But when she turned to follow their pointed fingers the horizon shone, a line of bright blue like an onrushing tsunami of light. She was elbowed by her friend beside her. He had lifted his arm upwards, to the night sky. One by one, the constellations of Dynic craft were flaring and winking out, like tiny flecks of ash.

And in a city that had once held claim to be the centre of human civilisation, men, women and children rushed out onto the streets, Enforcer and civilian, young and old, to stare up as the false stars faltered. Even in the morning sky, the flashes were visible, lines of light that signified not struggle but annihilation. The sky flared above them, lighting up the crowd like they were bodies rising from graves on judgement day, casting weird, skittering shadows. They didn’t understand what was happening either, but it felt imbued with significance. It felt like the end of the world.

Then there was a voice.

It emanated from the speakers and screens in every settlement and Conurbation on Earth. The face that appeared on them was unfamiliar to most. Instead of the weary and distant gaze of the Dyn’s puppet, Vash, there appeared a younger man. He wore an Arco uniform, pressed immaculately, bronze delta on his breast. He looked vital and assured, as different from the last as any man could be. Some Arco execs shuddered to see his face. While the false stars flared and died above them, the man spoke. He leant forward to the camera, as if addressing every one of the huddled billions personally.

‘Hello everyone. I know the lightshow is very impressive, but I would like your attention for a moment.’

All across the world, people began to turn their gaze to the screens. In the crowded streets of Conurbation 131, Enforcers struggled to contain a stampede as people crushed their way onto the streets. In other places, wastelanders in their firebreak-ringed villages crowded around radios, glancing up at the sky as they did. There weren’t many false stars left. In fact, there were almost none.

‘I don’t come before you as a representative of someone else, as a puppet or ‘Ambassador’. I am here, speaking to you, as myself – as Corbin. I’m here to tell you that the occupation is over. That today, a brighter day has dawned. A brighter day than we have seen in all our lives. Our oppressors, those above – the Dyn – are fleeing and dying as we speak. Nobody holds dominion over us now, there is only nothingness above. From here on out, we choose our own future.’

Corbin stopped, and a few seconds later the lagging translators stopped too. The Earth fell quiet, as people collectively held their breath, waiting on his every word. In the streets of Conurbation One, Enforcers let their guns clatter to the ground.

For some onlookers, Corbin’s words made no sense. They didn’t know what the Dyn were, and had only the faintest idea that there were powers beyond Arco ruling their lives. Most were shocked for a different reason.

‘I made this happen. For years, I have planned for this day, the day of our ascent. It fills me with joy to see the aims of our revolution fulfilled,’ he smiled and seemed on the point of laughing.

In Conurbation 771, someone let out a whoop. The rest of the crowd picked it up, and in half a minute a crowd of thousands was ecstatically cheering the name of a man they knew nothing about. In other places, people simply gaped where they stood, or shouted that it was all a trick, that the Dyn’s world-ending reprisal would come any moment now. In some places there was even anger – who was this ‘Corbin’ to declare such a thing?

The panic and joy that did exist were outweighed by an exhausted relief. Old men and women stared at a still night sky for the first time in their lives. People staggered, or felt their legs collapse from under them as they realised what had happened. Some people laughed, many more wept.

‘I know that Arco has not always been the promised shield of humanity, subverted by traitorous men corrupted by the lies of the Dyn,’ he said, his voice momentarily hardening, then softening as he continued. ‘But that changes today. We are your protectors. I am your protector, a duty I humbly accept. Safe in that knowledge, you are free!’

Above them, the last few false stars flared and winked out. The icy blue fleck that was the Other Moon disappeared.

‘So celebrate! Dance in the streets! Go home and rest, start thinking about how we get the world back on track. Arco will still be here when you wake up tomorrow morning. We have so much to do, but not today. Today, you can enjoy your freedom. And that’s an order, direct from Arco.’ He did laugh then. A few million people joined in.

Then the message ended.

The camera techs relaxed, giving him the thumbs up. The broadcast was out, but that was only the start of it. Others might still wait in nervous anticipation. Surely that couldn’t be it, could it? After all these years – over in a morning? But then they didn’t know what he did and even he didn’t have the full picture. The race to find what had befallen Vash was on.

Others were packing into the room, a gathering crowd waiting to hear what would come next. He recognised Koslov, and his executive undersecretary, a few generals and aides. They looked dazed. He didn’t feel dazed. How did he feel? Triumphant. Ecstatic. Alive. He stood from his desk, turning to the window. The morning sky was alive with the glittering, disintegrating fragments of the Dynic firmament.

‘We’ve won,’ he said. The world continued to spin on, and didn’t contradict him.

‘We’ve won!’ he repeated. Then he laughed, clapping his hands in the air. He whirled around, and pulled Koslov into a hug, still laughing. The man stood rigid and unresponsive. Corbin broke free and vaulted over his desk, staring up at the heavens again. He mimed drawing a gun, pointing it at the sky.

‘Just like that – pow, and gone!’

The fragments were still there, still glowing with the fury that humanity had unleashed. He let out one final bark of exultant laughter. There were tears in his eyes, but he wiped them away.

‘Right! Let’s get started.’

Vash was oblivious to all this as the bathyscaphe rose and surfaced on the choppy ocean waves. The massive front of water displaced by the rising weaponry had set the bathyscaphe and its one living occupant tumbling, powerless and adrift.

After struggling with the hatch for a moment, Vash heaved it open and hauled himself out onto one of the bathyscaphe’s hull plates, the equatorial sun, already hot, beating down on his head. The ballast tank had detached during his ascent to the surface, so only the buoyant, spherical crew cabin was left.

Mists clung to the ocean surface, the remnant of the energies the Utilitaria’s creation had unleashed and overhead, lights streaked across the morning sky as debris burned up on reentry. Before such a sight would have filled Vash with dread, heralding the final arrival of an apocalypse postponed for over a century. Now he only felt a profound serenity, albeit tinged with sadness that it had come to this. To kill or be killed. They must have won, then.

Vash permitted himself a smile at that – he hadn’t realised how fragile his hope had been, until he noticed how surprised he was at the victory. Sometimes things did go better than expected, and nothing that came afterwards could be as bad as what they had endured. There would be a future after all; one which promised potential rather than slow, grinding triage. He would be truly free to choose once more, no longer forced to merely inflict the lesser evil over and over again.

In time, he tied Christo’s blanket-bound corpse to some floats from within the bathyscaphe, and using spilt biofuel and a welding torch set the man’s body alight as he sent him out onto the ocean. It was a small gesture, lost in the wider scheme of things, but that didn’t matter – Vash felt Christo deserved a send-off, and somehow it felt even more important now to have some form of closure. The revolutionary hadn’t really been aware of the events unfolding around him, that had always been Aurelie. The man was a hero all the same. Selflessly, he had played his part.

Vash was panting with the effort by the time he’d finished, and collapsed back down in exhaustion. He watched Christo’s funeral pyre drift away.

After what might have been hours, Vash heard a wing of jets scream overhead, but he didn’t look up. Here, isolated and alone, he felt an absurd sense of calm. At last, he was resigned to whatever fate might bring.

Vash’s thoughts turned again to Aurelie. Just who was she – or rather, who had she been? He knew she was a fellow survivor from before the invasion, lucky enough to have slipped through their nets, but there was more to it than that. She could command the warseed around them as if she were a higher authority than he…

Vash felt a wetness on his cheek and realised he’d been crying. Where was the sense in that? It was sad that she was dead, but he’d seen so many people die. Jan had given his life and his newfound hope of saving his daughter, all to save a world he didn’t truly understand or care for, but all he could think of was Aurelie. They hadn’t even been friends, not really.

It went deeper than that. When he’d been with her he hadn’t felt alone.

He must have slept after those thoughts had run their course, exhausted by the events of the last few days and decades, for he was woken again at sunset by the steady drone and buffeting of a dropship. The Enforcers helped him to his shaking legs, lifting him aboard. Vash’s vision was blurred with heatstroke and thirst, making him barely aware of what was going on.

He looked back one last time as they lifted away. The bathyscaphe was caught in a nest of organic-seeming fronds of spent Utilitaria tech. And that was it; the last physical connection to the ill-fated revolution severed, gone forever. Already it felt like it had happened to someone else.

He gratefully accepted a canteen an Enforcer offered, tipping the water into his mouth. He coughed and sputtered at first but then gulped the water down thirstily. Vash let his head loll back, exhaustion almost claiming him.

Corbin burst into the hold, looking more animated than ever, almost manic. So much for sleep.

‘We’ve won Vash, we’re free! The Dyn are gone, dead or routing. We can begin again, a fresh start for us all,’ he exclaimed, clapping Vash on his shoulder. ‘I never doubted you, never doubted you would live to find me again!’

‘Corbin, I – It’s good to see you again. Did you find any other survivors, any bodies?’

Corbin’s grin faded by an almost imperceptible degree.

‘Just a wastelander, half dead apparently, and two bodies,’ he answered, waving the question away dismissively, taking a seat opposite. Vash didn’t dare dig further. ‘Don’t you understand Vash? Now’s not a time for mourning. The Dyn are gone! You actually did it! I always thought… well… you always defended the status quo, argued for caution, inaction, but now, but now… They will rally to us, Vash.’

Vash shook his head, trying to clear his mind. It felt incongruous to discuss such things after what had just happened, but he supposed they had to.

‘I doubt anyone will be rallying to me. I’m the villain, remember? The Dyn’s puppet. Who’s going to believe what really happened? I can hardly believe it myself.’

‘Well no, it’s not the most convenient narrative,’ Corbin conceded. ‘I won’t lie to you Vash, there are many who would like nothing better than to see you executed, broadcast for all to see. But we don’t need revolution. We’ve had the revolution. Now we need reform. The people need a figurehead, a new face, somebody that can embody the changing of the guard, so to speak.’

‘An emergency government can’t last forever, not without cause. Without the Dyn in orbit Arco has no legitimacy. There’s going to be challengers. Within and without. Does that not concern you?’

‘Not unduly. What do they have on me? The man that brought down the Dyn. I think the people will accept me. It’s humbling. It’s the least I can do.’ He noticed Vash’s look. ‘Sure, a little bending of the truth will sometimes be necessary… But it’s done in service of the greater good. The last thing we need now is chaos. Now tell me Vash, let’s get our facts straight – what happened? How did you do it? I’m desperate to know,’ said Corbin, flashing him that sharp smile.

At Corbin’s prompting, Vash stumbled through a description of everything that had happened in the past few days. Well, not everything. There were certain details he omitted. Aurelie, for example. After all, a little bending of the truth was sometimes necessary. Corbin didn’t seem to notice. Vash could chalk it up to his exhaustion if things didn’t match up.

‘Jan, the wastelander you found, he sacrificed himself to save me… ’ Vash finished. Corbin leant back in his seat, clapping his hands together.

‘What a story! But it hardly matters how you survived, Vash. What matters is that you did and that you’re here to help me in our next great endeavour. We have so much to do! We have to consolidate, seek out the Dyn still hiding in the Reservations, and get people down to the seabed. The technology – the things those warseeds can do! We’ll have a human expansion rebooted in a generation with machines like that, once we’ve reverse engineered the godtech. Remember those dreams of a whole universe following the beat of a human heart? I don’t, but you do, and we’ve been given a second chance to fulfil them. But most of all, we have to make sure people remember the truth, that they don’t ever forget what we sacrificed.’

‘What we sacrificed?’

‘Well, of course. They have to know how we worked against the Dyn, how we concealed our plans for a strategic strike – ’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean people have to know that we are their liberators. Like you said, Arco needs legitimacy.’

‘I never said – ’

‘That is our claim. I was able to uncover what you saw in that symbol, in your cryptic mentions of dragon’s teeth. I understand that you couldn’t risk communicating it in any great detail with me so instead I anticipated the shape of what was to come and made plans. When those weapons fired I made a broadcast using the Ambassadorial public address privileges. All those people, wondering what was happening. I answered them. I told them this had happened because of events we set in motion. I told them the story of how they were freed, on the day of Ascent. That’s what we’re calling today, by the way. The day we wiped them out. It’ll be remembered for the rest of history, as will we.’

‘Surely you could have thought of something better,’ said Vash dully. ‘Is it such a good idea to start this… new era, with all these lies?’

‘Come now Vash. Sometimes these things are necessary. Remember when Meyer showed up dead? I did that. I ordered him to save your position and save Arco, but he couldn’t see that there were things more important than his own pathetic life, and then in the end I was forced to… What matters is not the deed itself, but the consequences. Sometimes the stakes are high enough that greater crimes than a few mere half-truths are justified. You know that better than anyone.’

Vash wondered if he should say something, but he shut his mouth. Corbin seemed to be in full confession mode.

‘The situation is the same now,’ he continued. ‘It’s necessary that I take the credit for what happened, and not poor Christo and his revolutionaries. It’s a burden we’ll both have to bear. Yes, it is sad that things had to end up that way, and history won’t remember their sacrifice. But what would they gain from it besides martyrdom? They’re dead. We can probably arrange a discreet statue or plaque. So will you help me? You’re not indispensable to my plans, old friend, but there’s always a place for you at my side. That’s if you want it. You’ll be valued as an advisor and frankly I think you’d relish the chance to stay out of the limelight. Am I wrong?’

‘If I don’t?’ Vash wondered.

‘If you don’t, you can walk away now. I trust you to be discrete. Most people think you’re dead or wish death upon you, after all. You could lead a quiet life, under a new identity, with a great dose of my gratitude for good measure. But I have a feeling you’ll want to take part, because there’s something greater still at stake, because how we respond to it will define our humanity. The Dyn. I saw their Broadcast.’

There was a moment of recognition.

‘You know of the Broadcast?’ asked Vash. ‘How did you -?’ he began.

‘Never mind that for now. We can discuss it later. For now, we’re heroes. So what do you say Vash?’ asked Corbin, offering his hand.

Vash looked away. Beneath them, waves were breaking on the shore and beyond that the whitish-purple jungle remained, unchanged. He didn’t feel like a hero. He just felt empty, used up. Just as before, the tide of events had swept him onward, overpowering any attempt he had made to swim against it.

‘I need some time, Corbin.’ Earth’s self-appointed liberator nodded graciously. Vash looked into his eyes, but he couldn’t read what it was he saw there.

Night had long since fallen by the time they reached Conurbation One, but Vash could still see a few faint glimmers, as debris slowly radiated away heat far above them. Shooting stars streaked across the night. An inane part of his mind wondered how much more difficult recolonising space would be with that many millions of tons of debris in low orbit. Earth had a bad case of Kessler Syndrome. Those asteroids the Dyn had towed into Earth-grazing trajectories would need to be moved away, urgently. The dropship made its circling descent, landing in the centre of the Hollow Tower.

Corbin stepped out of the belly of the craft, smiling confidently and waving. Vash followed behind, now dressed in a similarly formal Arco uniform. He kept his old overcoat, draped over his arm, holding himself up with the kind of strength and inner fire Corbin had displayed. Two squads of Enforcers saluted. In front of them were ranks of cameras, arrays of microphones, picking up everything.

From beyond the tower, Vash heard distant cheering, fireworks and music, growing steadily louder as they walked out under the vaulting main entrance. The cameras and mics tracked them both as they walked towards the plaza beyond, where adoring crowds awaited.

His heart lifted. The world would be a better place, now the Dyn were gone, whatever may be yet to come. Maybe Vash could, for this moment, believe it would all turn out for the best. Maybe this was what they all needed. Another brave new world.

END