Alliances: part 3
Can't we all just get along?
This is my ongoing scifi / fantasy / crime fiction serial. New chapter every week.
The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1980s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real
Previously: London is under martial law. The Triverse is on lockdown. A team of former detectives and rebel insurgents have a plan…
The Bruglian Wastes.
3208. Brightsun.
The Six Blades swaggered through the staging camp, Halbad at the front and the other four members flanking him on either side. Even amidst a gathering of seasoned freedom fighters and rebel units summoned from across the continent, the monster hunters cut a distinctive path. Being battle-hardened from resisting the dominance of the city states was one thing; taking down kengto, sclereshog and durgon for a living, quite another.
“Remind me why we’re here?” Erik asked, thumping his staff into the dusty ground to emphasise every other syllable and his evident annoyance. “This place is noisy, and I don’t see any monsters.”
“Because she invited us,” Ellenbrin said simply, as if explaining all possible questions.
“Ah yes,” the wizard said with a performative sigh, “your Mid-Earth fancy. You do know she’s not on the market, yes?”
“We’re here because we were hired,” Halbad said. “We’re getting paid.”
Ngarkh snarled and clacked their teeth. “We usually make a point of only hunting monsters. What’s the plan this time? Start ripping off heads of the city guard?”
Laughing, Seline clapped the koth on the back. “It does sound pretty bad when you put it like that. Brother?”
“I’m curious about that part, too,” Halbad said, shrugging. “But I promise you, we’re not going to do anything we don’t want to do.” He pointed at each of them in turn. “And, we’re getting paid either way.”
“I still think we should have stayed well clear of all this politics,” Erik grumbled. “It’s a mucky business.”
They walked through the gathering, past armed units of aen’fa, humans and koth. Makeshift armouries had been set up, where weapons, armour and projectiles were being forged by elementalists. Energy blasts pinged back and forth in a cave, where training was taking place for the less experienced magic wielders. The entire camp was hidden, nestling at the base of a canyon deep in the Wastes and far from Bruglia. Halbad had never seen such a gathering in one place: there must have been thousands there, from all corners. It would be quite the sight, though he doubted they’d be able to depose the university and the leaders in Bruglia. He’d heard the rumour of Mid-Earth technology deployed on the battlefield; the few survivors who had made it out of Kunac talked of flying vehicles and mobile armoured fortresses. Halbad knew his Earth history, and recognised descriptions of helicopters and tanks when he heard them.
An impressive assembly, to be sure. Halbad grimaced, glanced up at the strip of blue sky above, the edges of the canyon rippling in the heat. If it went sideways, the rebellion would be done. There’d be no coming back from a defeat on this scale. He wasn’t a political animal, had no stake in this particular game, but that’d be a lot of dead people.
Still, there’d be work for monster hunters whichever way it went.
Zlati sat in the corner of the command tent, legs folded up on her chair, her arms wrapped around them and chin resting on her knees. It wasn’t nice, having to listen to the shouting, but it would be too awkward to leave. So she sat, hunched into a ball, biting her lip. She thought about telling them all to shut up.
“You’re a spoiled Mid-Earther brat!” Krystyan was pacing up and down, waving one arm dramatically. She’d seen him like this before, always before a raid.
Lola moved around the war table, face stern. “I think I’ve earned my place, Krystyan.”
“Pah!” He raised both hands in the air. “So you had a few scrapes. We’ve all got scars. Don’t go thinking you’re something special.”
“You’re being a dick,” Daryla said, arms crossed, standing off to one side. “Can we get back on topic?”
Krystyan let out a frustrated sigh. “This discussion would be a lot easier if we didn’t have a fucking Londoner worrying about how she’s going to get home after all this is done.”
“You think this is me versus you?” Lola laughed. “This has nothing to do with where I’m from, or where I’m going. You want to go backwards; we want to go forwards. That’s what this is.”
Krystyan slammed his fists on the table, rattling the map markers. “The portals have brought us nothing but death and despair!” He swept a hand towards the others: Lykasra, looking decidedly unimpressed by the entrance, Yana sitting quietly in a chair by the table. “We have a chance to close them. To end the cycle and free our people — all of our people. Yours included, Lola. Can you really say that the portals have made your world a better place?”
“That’s not the point. It’s what is. We can’t just turn the clock back.”
“But we can!” He hurried round to Yana, put a hand on her shoulder. “You can fix all of it. Cut off their power base. Without Mid-Earth weaponry, without the joint Council propping him up, Baltine will be done. The city states will fall one by one. You know the spell.”
Yana looked down at the floor. “I don’t know what I can do, Krystyan. It’s all untested. Until I get to the university grounds, it’s all theory.”
He leaned closer. “You know the spells. Kaenamor’s spells. You can close the portals, right?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps. Or I can fix them — open the Palinor-Max-Earth portal. Complete the original faulty spell.”
Krystyan clenched his fists. “You say that like this was what Kaenamor intended! That’s not the case, though is it? He had no intention of creating the triverse.”
“No,” Yana said quietly.
“An accident,” Krystyan said triumphantly, as if he’d been the one to piece together the man’s writings. “The triverse should not exist. All of it is a mistake.”
Lola screamed impatiently at the roof of the tent. “It’s what we have! Mistake or not, it is what it is. The problem isn’t the triverse, or Mid-Earth, or Max-Earth or Palinor. It’s us. It’s all of us, and what we do with it. We’re the ones that have messed it up.”
“We?”
“People! Point your finger wherever you like. Chancellor Baltine, Prime Minister Maxwell, everyone that stands up and chooses to follow them. Men like them only have power because people happily do what they’re told. Not because they’re forced to, but because they enjoy it. It’s our decisions and our actions that have led us to this point. Charismatic leaders preying on people’s fears, influencing what people think.” She waved her hand vaguely in Krystyan’s direction.
He flinched as if slapped and took a step back, his surprise quickly replaced by anger. “You’d compare me to the butcher we are trying to defeat?”
Pausing, Lola shook her head and took a breath. Zlati stayed small and quiet on her chair at the edge of the tent, an observer rather than a participant. She’d never waned to be involved in the decisions, though she was happy to help out. That was fine by her — she’d never been much of a thinker. She didn’t understand people much, had always found other people confusing and inexplicable. Or perhaps it was Zlati that was the odd one. Her brain put things together in different ways to most people she’d ever met. She did know Lola, though, and had lived alongside her for years, long enough to know that she was kind, and thoughtful, and not one to throw accusations around idly.
“I’m just saying,” Lola said, more quietly, keeping control of her voice, “that if all of Baltine’s city guard and soldiers and lackeys had just said ‘no’ to him, he’d have no power. If people hadn’t voted for Maxwell, hadn’t marched in the streets with Earth First, he’’d have no power. Go back through our histories, every war on Mid-Earth, every warlord of Palinor, all the chaos in Max-Earth’s past. Every dictator, every corrupt leader, is only able to do what they do because we allow it. Because we say ‘ok’ and give them permission. We hand them the loaded gun and then hold their arm steady while they point it at our heads. If all of us just said ‘no!’ for once, we’d rob them of their power. Then they’d just be people, the same as the rest of us. And then you wouldn’t have needed to lead this movement, and get other people to follow you, and we wouldn’t have thousands of people out there ready to die for a cause. We could all have lived our simple lives, if everyone just said ‘no’.”
A silence hung in the air, the only sound the soft rustling of the tent in the wind. Zlati bit her lip harder, feeling suddenly tearful.
Krystyan stood with his hands on his hips, turning his head to look at each of them, then back to Lola. “That’s not how the world works, Lola. I wish it was. I wish I lived in your perfect world, and that we could all see things as you do.” He pressed a finger into the map on the table. “But people will always say ‘yes’. They want an explanation. A direction. An excuse. A reason. So they say ‘yes’, and they do as they’re told.” He moved around the table, back towards where Lola stood. “There will always be people who say ‘yes’ and follow these bastards.”
He stood before her, a good head and a half taller, and placed his hands on her shoulders. Not forcefully, but gently, sympathetically. “And that is why it is up to all of us to stand up, and answer ‘no’, as loudly and as forcefully as we can. That is what I’m doing, that is what all of us are doing. The atrocities carried out in Baltine’s name deserve a response. I intend to provide it.”
Clearing their throat, Lykasra took a step closer to the war table. “I suggest we get back on track. The endgame is still to be decided. Yana, ultimately that’s going to be down to you. The rest of the plan is clear. At the convergence time, we move on the city. Everything is a distraction ploy, to enable the infiltration unit to move Yana to the university campus.”
Daryla was playing with a small ball of sand, spiralling the grains in the palm of her hand. “If we can get the garrison on-side, it could make all the difference.”
“We know you have a point to make to your father,” Lykasra said, “but don’t get distracted yourself.”
“I won’t.”
“As long as the others on Mid-Earth get their timings right, we have a chance,” Lykasra said. “And that’ll reduce Mid-Earth’s ability to send military aid through the portal.”
“They’ll do it right,” Lola said.
Zlati exhaled, not having realised that she’d been holding her breath. A hand touched her arm and Jiraa leaned over from his seat, from where he’d been quietly watching.
“Is it always this intense?” he asked, his beautiful eyes flashing in the light from the lamps. She was really quite smitten.
“Oh, yes,” she said, grinning. “It’s how we like it.”
Meanwhile.
On Tuesday evening I attended the
Summer Party down in London. To give a flavour of the event, here’s the harpist:
Harpist? Is that the correct word?
Photos are by @jesslittlewoodphotography. Except this next one of the hidden entrance to the gardens, which I took:
The party was in a secluded garden in the middle of London, just next to the British Museum. There’s something very curious about a social event in which the only unifying factor is that we all happen to use Substack. Hence the gathering included fiction writers (hello!), political writers from across the spectrum, food writers, travel writers, art history writers, cultural commentators — an eclectic bunch, united through a general love of writing.
On that political aspect: it was somewhat heartening in these dark times to see people with very different ideas and viewpoints gathered in one place and being civil. Intense discussion, but no shouted polarisation. It felt old fashioned in that regard, and a little hopeful.
The evening gave me a chance to talk to a number of Substack employees, as well as writers, and I took the opportunity to explain the potential of fiction on the platform and the features we’d all love to see. Fingers crossed on that one.
Some more pics, including one of me looking very angry (I wasn’t, promise) while talking with
and :
Author notes
I’ve noted before how writing fiction is my way of processing the real world. If the themes of Triverse feel contemporary and relevant, or even prescient, it’s only because they’re a direct result of me needing to comment on what’s happening.
And, to be sure, there’s a lot happening.
When I started writing the book, in 2021, it was in part a reaction to the first Trump term, and to Brexit. The background political story in Triverse is about what happens when we voluntarily give bad men too much power. All of that has unfortunately become even more relevant as time has marched on.
I think back to earlier storylines, in which Maxwell and Earth First fabricated emergencies in order to influence elections and bring in emergency legislation, and I look to the spiralling events in Los Angeles right now. If any of it connects at all, it’s not because I’m clever or particularly observant — it’s simply that these things always play out the same way, and it’s the same playbook every single damned time. I’d say Triverse is a warning about what happens when we take our collective eye off the ball, when we leave it to late to make a stand, but I’m hardly treading original ground there — we know all this, and yet we make the same mistakes over and over.
The ‘Alliances’ storyline has hopefully felt tense and pressurised: like something is about to blow. But also hopeful, in that the three parts of the story have focused on our various heroes as they are finally able to take the lead and put a plan into action. They’re no longer on the back foot, even if they’re outgunned and outnumbered. And in the spirit of the ‘Alliances’ title, this storyline has been about groups of people coming together to try to make a difference.
This particular chapter is also about pacifism. About not wanting to fight, and wishing that nobody else wanted to fight, either. The world would be simpler. It’s entirely mad that in one part of the world there is war and destruction and death on a daily basis, while in another part of the world — same planet! Just round the corner a bit — there’s parties and harps and comfort.
This chapter is, in a way, me arguing with myself. I’ve always thought of myself as a pacifist, as someone who would say ‘no’ to fighting. I’ve always been anti-military, along similar lines to Lola’s thinking: if people just didn’t join the army, then military leaders and demagogues wouldn’t be able to wage war.
Except, it isn’t that simple, and never has been. Humans make mistakes, fascism will always creep in, and at some point stern debate is not enough. That’s Krystyan’s point here, and it’s one I think I’ve had to learn the hard way, and still find difficult. I want to live in Lola’s world, but that’s not the one we’ve got. Hell, even Lola knows that’s not the reality in which she exists.
Anyway. The board is set.
As you say - the board is set.
Especially the most important piece, obviously Jiraa - who is having the most interesting week.
Although anyone dismissing Lola Styles as "having a few scars" is either very stupid, or quite brave.