Operation Risen Sun

-1-

suspects

Some of the best secrets are stolen.

No one would admit it, least of all Head Secretary Barrister-Finch, but The Republican Liberation Army was at a disadvantage in this “conflict” with the Eastern State.

Which meant a small tactical division had to be created with the sole purpose of assessing and monitoring the  Eastern State Military headquarters mainframes and trades.

In other words; spies.

The Tactical Espionage division was comprised of three RLA soldiers who had previously worked  for  a private nuclear war head program. They were used to keeping secrets. Their existence was a necessary evil and they did their job exceptionally well.

Until they were caught

For four months the spies were interrogated and tortured to give up their secrets, but true patriots they were, they never did.

I was on the leadership team for the negotiation task force. I’d been studying war time convention and law for only a few months, but I had managed to strike an agreement through the Geneva Conventions for the spies release. Somewhere along the way they named the release Operation Risen Sun. 

It was supposed to be a simple rescue mission.

It wasn't. 

They were all amateurs. 

We were all amateurs.

The mission fell apart before it even started. No one caught the error in the landing coordinates. Instead of going to the  Eastern State base,  we landed on an Eastern State  minefield testing site.  I was barely off the helicopter when  three of the soldiers and our Capitan stepped on some kind of high-tech IEDs. They exploded within their own skin,  misty blood and wet flesh flew back at me and stained my fatigues.

Just like that I was the most senior officer on board.

I hadn’t been prepared for combat, I was an administrative officer.

I panicked.

When I saw the Eastern State Guards coming towards us with confused looks, I  shot at them. I wasn’t thinking, I wasn’t used to having a gun and I was  so consumed  by their  savage technology ripping apart of my colleagues.

 I made one kill shot.

A misfired bullet through the head of my own pilot. The Eastern Guards returned fire on me,  just enough to bring me down; 2 shots in in the leg and one in the shoulder.

 At some point the co-pilot finally remembered to wave a white flag, signaling we had come in  peace.

 

***

“What will happen to me, ma'am ?” I ask General Hinkley

The older,  polished looking woman simply looks down and hands me a glass of water.  I shake my head because the IV in my arm is keeping me hydrated with a water based oxytocin knock off.  It’s got hideous side effects, but it’s all I get since morphine has been rationed for critical condition patients.

 I’m alert but fuzzy around the edges.

My gunshot wounds aren’t  critical, they just hurt like hell . I’m yearning to leave The City of Hope Hospital. The RLA ward is so full there is barely an illusion of privacy. The hospital beds are all lined up in one expansive room and the staff use a portable curtain if a patient needs privacy.

City of Hope is still mainly for civilians, the Republican Liberation Army has simply  taken over a small ward.  Most of the wounded soldiers around me are probably from this area of The Valley if not close to it. They are the types of soldier who were drafted and then thrown into dangerous manufacturing facilities that left them withering in pain from radiation scars.

I'd requested to be transferred to this hospital to defer my family from coming to see me; I didn't need anyone seeing me like this.

“Kenneth,” General Hinkley finally sighs. She won’t use my military title. She still thinks of me as the law student who followed her around campus like a groupie.

Ever since that dammed Operation Risen Sun went to hell in a handbasket I knew there was a chance I’d be court martialed and sentenced. I’d heard the only other survivor, the co-pilot, was sentenced to 2 years of hard labor for the landing error. I was just as guilty, I had acted irresponsibly in the face of the enemy. I’d shot the pilot in his head. Not that anyone was alive to testify to that. The co-pilot hadn’t seen anything through the bloody smears and the body had been obliterated by the mines.

 “You’re a smart, loyal young man. Mistakes were made and they weren’t just yours,” she says to me. “I’ve pulled some strings and have arranged to have you quietly re-assigned to Fort Harmony.”

The name doesn’t immediately ring a bell until I remember some eminent domain agreements I’d been asked to draft.

“That’s an unfinished fort… Isn’t it slated for the labor camps ?,” I ask. “ Am I being sentenced already? Don’t I deserve a court martial first ?”

“Nothing like that,” she assures me. “ You’ll be the warden, the highest ranking officer onsite and when the fort is completed  you’ll conduct RLA boot camp for the more challenging enlistees. It’ll be  easy work, you won’t ever see combat. You just have to  keep things quiet and keep your head down.”

They’re demoting me. Down to a job that any civilian with half a compulsory education diploma could do.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity ma’am,” I begin. “But when I enlisted it was explicitly stated that I was supposed to be working with the senior officers in a  legal capacit-,”

“Kenneth, they don’t like fuck ups,” Hinkley snaps at me. “Even accidental ones. Unless you want to lose your rank and get on the front lines, you’ll nod your head and take this assignment.  This job is good for you,  you’ve worked with convicts in the system in your internships. You’d better take it and like it because I won’t keep putting my neck out for you.”

That silences me.

Last year, when former Secretary of Public Safety Julian Walker was executed for treason for not warning the city about the nuclear attacks, anyone who worked in his office was tried and most of them were convicted for conspiracy, including my former boss.

 Hinkley had just enlisted as a high ranking officer and stuck her neck out for me then. She made a deal where I  had to pledge my allegiance to Secretary Barrister-Finch and the RLA to use my experience and talents as an enlisted officer in RLA Legal Affairs.

I was never political and didn’t care who I had to follow so long as I didn’t go to jail. I made my oaths and spent every waking hour devoted to the RLA.

It’d been going fine until Operation Risen Sun.

Suddenly I can’t catch my breath, I open my mouth to get in more air, but my heart is beating so fast it hurts. I try and talk, but my mouth goes slack. I start gagging and cross  my hands on my throat to indicate I can’t breathe.

“Calm down. You’ll be fine,” Hinkley says sternly, putting an awkward hand on my arm. “You’ll even get a promotion from corporal to sergeant.”

I still can’t breathe, but it has nothing to do with what Hinkley is saying, the nurse rushes over and adjusts my oxycotin level.

“The oxycotin  made your heart slow,” she says dryly. “Rest, Corporal Maxwell.”

Hinkley leaves all too quickly, while I had always admired her I don’t think she quite felt the same affection for me.

I’d been here two weeks  and my right arm and legs were still sore. I liked the  nurse in our ward, she was efficient, honest and unemotional most of the time, which I preferred. I suppose she was a knockout too, but I was on too many drugs to tell.

 She has to  help me  slide down and contort my body to fit into the bedframe that wasn’t made for my height. The Oxycontin takes over and I get lulled into a deep nightmare of the small war scene that landed me here.

It scares me the bleakness hidden inside the RLA

When I wake up from my terrors, the pinks and purples of sunset are streaming through the windows , but all I see is blood, sand, gore and flesh. I can hear the echo of their horror, I can feel their pain and sorrow and regret in the room with me.

There is a yellow rose at the foot of my bed.

-2- au revoir

At first I think I am imagining it because it’s  damasked petals seem too  large and full to be real.  It’s exceptionally fragrant and smells just like the perfume Cassia, my girlfriend in undergrad, wore. I look over to see a similar flower on the bed of my neighbor, a dozing 19-year-old enlistee  who got her arm accidentally shredded in a hydraulic tank engine.

I’m about to signal for the nurse to ask what this flower was about when I notice a new face  in the far corner holding a large bouquet of the roses. As they come closer, I notice they are a he, an exceptional he. His features are odd and beautiful; delicate and calm. They feel out of place here.

The boy must be young if he hasn’t been drafted and his long hair tells me hasn’t. He’s walking along the row of beds across from mine, shyly handing roses to the wounded soldiers or, laying them on the beds of those who aren’t awake. He barely lifts his eyes to meet theirs and mumbles something softly when the soldiers make a remark to him.

I hear a sharp sound from the back of the room and turn to see an older woman, snapping at him  like a dog to come and he obeys.

The older woman is holding a large shopping bag and the boy  takes several neatly wrapped paper packages out the bag. They begin passing the packages out, they are saying something to each soldier they give the packages to. The wounded soldiers seem either grateful or embarrassed about what is happening.

When the boy gets to me, he glances at me for  barely a second. His colorless eyes are almost too large for his face. They reminds me of the hideous antique  prints my great-grandmother keeps locked  in her display case with the gigantic, expressionless eyes

He may have a touch of a radiation mutation but the look suits--

“You’re suffering isn’t in vain,” he mumbles to me halfheartedly before placing a package in my hand.

I want to ask his name and what exactly  he thinks “You’re suffering isn’t in vain” means, but he’s moved on to the sleeping 19-year-old soldier, leaving the package on her bedside.

A wave of  intense nausea suddenly hits me, I  call the nurse on my syndicate and reach blindly for the cane they had left for me if I needed to get up. I can’t turn my head , because if I do I know I won’t make it. I grab on to the cane and hoist myself. I’m assaulted by the worse vertigo and the  standing makes the nausea wash over me harder. My weak leg buckles and I quickly sit on the bed.

The sitting down motion does me in and I begin to vomit helplessly in my lap when a waste bowl is placed in my shaking hands.

I double over and everything inside me comes out. When I look up I see the boy with the roses holding the bowl. His  eyes are focused not on my face, but pointedly on the top of my head. He doesn’t look at all bothered by everything I am retching up.

My throat is rubbed raw from stomach acid and all I can do is point to the glass of water by my bed.  He slowly picks it up and keeps  his fingers steadying the bottom as I drink the entire glass.

I'm humiliated. 

I start another coughing fit; bringing up water and bloody phlegm before the fit ends. A handkerchief is at my mouth, wiping away the mess and I'm burning. I take the handkerchief from him because I am atleast healthy enough to clean myself up.

“Are you okay ?,” he says so softly I don’t make it out at first.

“Yes-,” I respond.

 Before I can say thank you the nurse comes up behind him and starts scolding me for standing up. The boy quickly moves on, seemingly terrified of her wrath.

After I’ve cleaned up, I look at the package the boy with the roses gave me. It’s just mass manufactured cookies, but tied around the packaging is a gold ribbon with the words “Many are the troubles of the just. For they will ascend to the highest glory.” I recognize the x shaped saltire with an infinity symbol in the center.

Suddenly I want to throw up again.

The New Revolution Church

 They’re rather popular the Valley. They were a mix of religious philosophy that believed in the power of suffering  and that it means they will be rewarded greatly in the next life. From what I understand the most devout believed in necessary pain tithes, purity, constant sacrifice and basically anything their priests told them.

 Thet were a  fanatical and delusional bunch, but good to soldiers. Always giving donations and supplies. Always admiring their—our—sacrifice.

That next night I dreamed of the boy with the roses. He  was the antithesis of the battlefield. His purity and kindness showed the war for the savagery it was.  

I dreamed he was on the front lines. I dreamed he saw the freshly mutilated corpses  and walked by each one and placed a yellow flower on their chests and told them their suffering wasn’t in vain. When he gets to the last solider he sees me  watching and the dead soldiers stand. They stab him the heart with the thorns of their roses and they tell him:

“You’re suffering isn’t in vain.”

I dream he dies and just lays there.

And then I never dream of him again.

I don’t think of him again until nine months later when I am released to my new assignment at Fort Harmony and find the dried up rose with the string around it in the bottom of my pack.

------

A/N

Okay, this is the last POV. I know these are short, but I wanted to kind of re-set everyone before we get into it.

1. There is nothing more horrifying than Googling failed US military operations. Little mistakes happen ALL the time.

2. In my head the cookies the boy (fine, Haley) gives Maxwell are Oreos

3. A saltire is an X. Originally he was wearing a cross, but then I figured instead of bastardizing Christianity to fit my story. I'd just make up my own religion.

You: Why is this and Alan's in first person, but Harlows in third ?

SHV: Maxwell's POV started as third person too, but then halfway I realized I had started writing in first person and it just felt..right ?. I will say, Maxwell’s first person will go away because as you can imagine Harlow and Maxwells POVs will touch. I've spent days of my life re-writing a third person into first person. Maxwell's POV will now always be first person. Third wasn't working and I kept slipping out of it by mistake.