The New Order (20 page)

“That's right, Stan. The Noctem Alliance has a tech-savvy of their own, and whoever it is, they're countering all my hacking.”

Stan sighed. “Does that mean you're not going to be able to spy in on their conversations anymore?”

“No, I don't think so. In fact, I have reason to believe that now they know when I'm spying on them.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because they caught me in the act once. Just yesterday, I was thrilled when I accidentally warped right into Nocturia, in the middle of Caesar briefing his men on their upcoming plans. He revealed some pretty interesting information, but
then a messenger came in and told Caesar that he was being spied on by an Elementia-backed hacker, and so they moved their conversation away. Honestly, who else could they have been talking about?”

“That is really unfortunate,” said Stan. “Did you at least hear a lot of their plans before they caught you?”

“Yeah, I did, Stan, and that's actually what I need to tell you about. Basically, Caesar was briefing new recruits to the Noctem Alliance. I managed to get a glimpse of the recruits themselves, and there were hundreds of them. I guess that recruitment for the Alliance must have gone way up in the past week. If I had to guess, most of the new members are players that have always hated the lower-levels, but up until now they thought the Alliance was too weak to risk joining.”

Stan cringed. He hadn't realized that he very well may have been losing his own citizens to the Noctem Alliance this entire time, with more and more bigoted players defecting as they grew confident in the Alliance's strength.

“What were the plans, Sally?” Stan asked finally.

“Well, as it turns out, the Noctems know that after the takeover at Brimstone and the Tennis Machine bombing they had planned, Elementia would have no choice but to declare full-out war on them. And the Alliance is preparing to fight too. They're sending a lot of troops into the Nether to secure that dimension, I assume mainly so that they can fast-travel.
And they also have an entire army prepared to fight on the home front in the Overworld.”

“Is that it?” Stan demanded. This was nothing that he hadn't already expected.

“No, it's not, Stan. There's one more critical piece of information that Caesar revealed.”

“Well, spit it out!” pressed Stan.

“Basically,” said Sally, her voice becoming slightly hastier and more urgent for reasons that Stan could only imagine, “the Noctem Alliance knows that you're going to assume that the leaders of the Alliance will be commanding the troops from their castle in Nocturia. They also know that the leaders of Elementia are going to be fighting out on the battlefield instead of commanding from far away. Their basic plan is to lure you into the castle in Nocturia, and then capture and kill you in there.”

“Well, isn't that worth it, then?” Stan asked. “I mean, I'm sure that we can take on their leaders in combat and win. And if we get trapped in Nocturia, I'm sure we'll be able to fight our way out of any traps they set for us.”

“That's the thing, Stan. The leaders won't be in Nocturia. They've converted the entire building into a gigantic bomb, and the Noctem troops fighting around Nocturia are going to lure you deep into the heart of the castle and then blow you sky-high. That's the biggest thing that you need to
know, Stan. The leaders of the Noctem Alliance will not be in Nocturia during this war. They're going to be somewhere else.”

“Where?” Stan asked, appalled by the cruel trick the Noctem Alliance was planning to play.

“Well, I don't know where it is. Caesar only referred to it as the ‘Specialty Base,' a Noctem outpost far away, where the leaders of the Noctem Alliance can safely wait out the war. Also, I'm not positive, but he implied that that may be where Lord Tenebris has been hiding out this entire time. Stan, if you want to destroy the Noctem Alliance, you need to locate and attack the Specialty Base.”

“Okay,” Stan said slowly, trying to process all this new, vital information, with two main questions surfacing in his head. “I have a couple of questions. First, if the Noctem leaders are hiding away in the Specialty Base, then who's going to be commanding the troops?”

“Caesar told his men that while he himself and the other important Noctem leaders are away, the army will be under the command of General Leonidas and Count Drake, whoever that is.”

Stan shuddered, remembering the devious Count Drake and knowing exactly the kind of underhanded tactics he would use in war. As for Leonidas, Stan was a little bit surprised that Leonidas didn't qualify as one of the important
Noctem leaders who would be safe in the Specialty Base. Then, Stan shook his head in revulsion as he realized that Leonidas had probably volunteered for the task, preferring the rage of war over a safe house, being the ruthless killer that he was.

“Okay, one more question, Sal: you said Caesar was aware that you had been listening in. Do you think they might change their plans because of that?”

“Honestly, I don't think so. As they walked away, the messenger told Caesar that I had only been there for a short time listening. And immediately afterward, I was thrown out of the server by the most impressive set of firewalls yet. It took me all day to get around them and contact you. And besides, the plans the Alliance put together were very complex, what with converting their entire capital into a bomb and constructing a foreign base just to capture you. I seriously doubt they would abort their plan just because of the possibility that someone might know what's going on. For all they know, I wasn't even able to get the information to you because of the firewalls. They'll probably just go along with the original plan.”

“Okay, thank you, Sally,” said Stan, the gears already spinning in his head. “I'll make sure to have the military send some scouts out into the server to try to locate this Specialty Base. Although I don't know how they're going to spare the
manpower—we already have to fight a war on two fronts.”

“Don't worry, I'm sure you'll find a . . . wait . . . ooooh boy . . .”

“What is it, Sally?” Stan asked, startled by her sudden change in tone.

“The Alliance just put up some more new firewalls. Really nasty ones too. I'm gonna lose contact with you in a few minutes, Stan. How about you go and start planning with the others now? I've told you all that I need to, and if I log out now, maybe I can get rid of the new security before it really takes hold.”

“Okay, do what you have to do, Sal,” replied Stan. He knew very little of hacking and computers, and trusted that what Sally recommended was for the best.

“Right. Later, noob.” And with a pop, Sally's voice, and the slight static undertones that denoted its presence, disappeared.

Stan wasted no time. He sprinted down the hallway back to the council room.

“. . . necessary it is to investigate this, Charlie,” Bill exclaimed in exasperation, staring across the table at Charlie, “but I just don't understand how we're going to do this! I mean, even with a draft in place, we're not going to have enough players to do all this at once!”

“Ah, Stan, you're back,” the Mechanist greeted him, and
with that, all eyes in the room turned to him.

“Hey, Stan,” said Kat. “Did Sally tell you anything important?”

“Yeah, she told me a ton,” replied Stan, and wasting no time, he recounted to the council and police chiefs everything Sally had told him.

“She wants us to send out scouts?” Bill yelled in angst when Stan had finished. “I'm sorry, but it's just not possible!”

“I don't care if it's not possible, Bill,” replied Stan in vexation, “it still has to be done! Take troops away from the front lines if you have to, but we have to find this Specialty Base if we ever stand a chance of ridding ourselves of the Noctem Alliance!”

“Do you even hear yourself?” Bob shouted. “Without at least a hundred men on the front line, we won't be able to stop the Alliance from marching up to our front doors. Especially if what you say is true, and they really do have hundreds of new recruits incoming!”

“Personally, I really only see one course of action,” said Blackraven calmly.

“Then spit it out,” cried Charlie, to fervent nods. At this point, any course of action was a good one.

“We have to instate the Double Draft,” Blackraven replied simply.

Dead silence reverberated around the room. Blackraven
had just touched the land mine that nobody had wanted to step on.

“No,” said DZ firmly.

“There is no other way,” replied Blackraven.

“Well, I'm not doing that,” said DZ again, an edge to his voice now. “It'd be tyranny if we did that now, especially at the start of the war. If we were losing the war, then it might be a different story, but . . .”

“I think Blackraven may be right,” cut in Gobbleguy, and everybody's eyes shot over to him in surprise.

“Do you really think so?” Blackraven asked. Even he seemed caught off guard.

“Yes, I do,” replied Gobbleguy. “The city needs to be kept safe at all costs. Having double the number of soldiers than a normal draft would provide would allow us to fulfill all the tasks required to defend Elementia, with no shortages in any area.”

“Are you kidding me?” shouted Kat with a mean laugh. “The first time you ever have an opinion about anything, and you're supporting the most desperate measure we have?”

“Shut up, Kat!” yelled G. “It's not your decision, it's his! Jeez, do you ever think rationally about anything?”

“What's that supposed to mean?” demanded Kat.

“Oh, I don't know,” retorted G, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Wanting to risk going into a war with too few
soldiers when having more than enough is just a vote away. Thinking that a guy giving up his time to spend it with you is desperate, not sweet. I don't know, after all these ignorant opinions, you start to notice trends.”

“That's enough, you two!” the Mechanist intervened as G snickered and Kat snarled in hostility. “You can deal with your personal problems outside the council room. Now, as for the matter at hand, I believe we should put it to a vote.”

“Good idea,” said Stan, confident that the idea would be shot down with ease. At least he and his friends were smart enough to realize that drafting half the population of the city into the army (through the power of the Double Draft) would do nothing more than make the citizens angrier with the council than they already were. Even if the number of players added to the army by the regular draft looked a little bit low now, Stan was sure they would still be able to manage. If things got desperate in the future, then they could instate the Double Draft.

“All in favor of a Double Draft?” asked Stan with the hint of a smirk. He looked around the table and watched the hands go up one by one. Blackraven . . . G . . . Jayden . . . Gobbleguy . . . the Mechanist . . . haha, as Stan suspected, they had only gotten five votes . . . wait . . . five votes? The Double Draft had gotten five votes? It had passed?

“Well . . . okay then . . . ,” came a voice. Stan jumped.
He had forgotten that the police chiefs were still in the room. Bob spoke on. “If you guys really think the Double Draft is the best idea, I'll go make the announcement to the citizens.” And with that, Bob directed Ivanhoe out the door, followed by Bill and Ben. They all had distressed looks on their faces.

“What are you thinking?” cried Charlie, wheeling around to the Mechanist.

“Yeah, why would you support the Double Draft? It's overkill, is what it is!” agreed DZ.

“In an ordinary situation, I would say that you are right,” replied the Mechanist coolly. “In a regular war, calling half our citizen population to fight would be too much. However, this is the Noctem Alliance we are dealing with. They have proven to us on multiple occasions that they are not afraid to use sly and dishonorable tactics to fight. Therefore, if we want to maintain our integrity, we must fight them using all the raw force we can muster.”

The council room was quiet for a moment. Stan sighed. Why'd he have to go and say something logical like that?

“Well, how about the citizens, huh?” demanded Kat. “What's your response to that? The citizens already think we're doing a terrible job running the server, especially with the leak and all these attacks by the Noctem Alliance . . . they hardly even trust us anymore. How are we gonna tell them that one in every two people in this city is going to be drafted
into the army against their will?”

“The key is happiness,” replied Blackraven wisely. “If we are going to keep the citizen population from despising us, or even turning on us, we must keep them distracted from the war going on, and we must keep them happy. While the army is fulfilling all of their duties, it must be our jobs to think of and execute ways to keep the citizens still in the city content.”

“How about this?” Stan exclaimed, a brilliant idea popping into this head. “The Spleef finals are coming up in just a couple weeks. How about we hype that up, and get everybody all excited about that?”

The room fell silent. The silence had a certain weight to it, and Stan could tell he had just said something wrong.

“What is it?” he asked cautiously.

“Stan . . . while you were in there, talking to Sally, a soldier came in with another message,” said Charlie slowly.

Stan gulped. What else could possibly have happened in such a short time?

“You know how they found a book in the bombed-out Tennis Machine?” Charlie continued. “Well, they finally got their hands on it, and it was a threat from Lord Tenebris. I actually have the book here.” And with that, Charlie pulled a book out of his inventory and tossed it over to Stan. The leather cover was charred, but Stan could still read the title and author:
The Demands of Lord Tenebris
by Caesar894. With
trembling hands, Stan opened the book and flipped through it. It was entirely blank, except for the first page. Stan read it.