Opus Veda

"How many do you think, detective?"

"Say about 20, some on the surface, some on the towers."

"…you're a useless twat," Gemma smirked out the driver's window, "it is good to be back though."

"Yea good to have you back," Luis scanned the target location, "I'd say R-B could fit a full company in there. A few hundred max, including support staff."

Gemma zoomed her shades on a delivery van. Couriers unloaded wooden crates, hauling them into a building confirmed as Revolution Britannia's southern outpost in London. From a crumbling and vandalised car park streets away, the detectives watched from their squad car. Its windows, on full-tint, panned multitudes of data.

"I wonder if those crates are packed with the game-changers. Look heavy enough."

"Bah," Luis flicked his shades off, "even if they were, these 'guardsmen' can barely fire a crossbow. It's the guys in the palace you need to worry about."

"I'm not worried about them whatsoever; they just spaffed their ammo up the walls of a hospital," Gemma pursed her lips and held a fist up, "we could take them."

"We could have taken them, if management wasn't again stalling, as they did with our Jubilee case," Luis typed into the windscreen interface, "let's have a flyby."

The tiny drone buzzed from the car roof, and perched on a cornice amidst a row of gormless pigeons. The detectives watched through its lens in comfort.

"What I wanna know," Luis pen-tooled the buildings adjacent to the base, "is what these two are hiding."

Gemma checked them. Both were boarded over, with no signs of life. But the drone's thermal lens detected shuffling hints of heat signatures. The flared red reminded Gemma of her vape. Luis held it out. She took it and puffed.

"This is their only outpost south of the river, they can't have a full company going in and out everyday. I'd say they tunnelled through the office and turned the flats into a barracks."

"And the site behind? No Gemma-"

Luis whined about women drivers as Gemma took the drone, straight away exposing it by scattering the pigeons. She flew over the base and hovered before the rearmost building.

It was an old gym, with a glass frontier showing it as truly deserted. Luis swiped its blueprints over the passenger window and rotated the 3d model with two fingers.

"There's a lot more of this gym underneath; a swimming complex."

"Would make a good bunker wouldn't it," Gemma loaded the local police reports, "and oh look: noise complaints, starting right as R-B moved in. Drilling sounds."

"And, take a look at this…" Luis correlated the list against social media posts taken nearby, "comments asking about cheering. Listen."

He played a video recorded by a local resident. In the background, vague and easily missed: a chanting crowd.

"What on earth are they doing in there?" Gemma's eyes narrowed, "you don't think they-"

"I do. Let's stick around and see if a punter shows up."

They reclined and waited for someone to bag for persuasion. Luis played a LoFi mix and napped. Gemma socialised with friends on her phone.

Hours passed. Little occurred. They received one distraction: the forensic report on Great Ormond Street covering the killed terrorists.

They were nobodies - regular people from all backgrounds. Many worked in healthcare, others were already registered deceased - an effective cover. Kristoff, if that was his name, was unaccounted for. The man leading them remained illusory.

Their drone showed them someone useful: a man exited the gym with a sketchy glance over his shoulder. His dishevelled face and tattered clothes weren't helping him, nor was his drunk swagger.

Luis wrested the drone off Gemma and tagged the man's face. His social profile appeared on the windscreen.

"Mick Manson. 38. Local plumber. Profile headline 'not afraid to ask questions' right so he's a racist then."

Gemma rolled her eyes, "would his principle question be: 'why does no one look like me anymore'?"

"Have you noticed how the ones asking that are invariably hideous?" Luis rubbed his cheek, "the thought of a future England, overrun with dowdy, saggy Saxons… As if our birthrates weren't low enough."

"You never had to work the night-desk Luis, you'd get a 'Mick' or a 'Chanel' every day of the week. You know the type that permanently frowns but still looks confused? Racially-motivated assault every time."

"Right then back to toddling around the high street with benefit money we pay for gimme that vape Gemma…" Luis inhaled nicotine before he could get more angry. Gemma tabbed together a case file for their lead, highlighting the address.

"Off to give Mick his own medicine and 'just ask some questions' then?"

"Miiick! Miiick!" Luis made piano hands and gurned, "I can't see Keef anywhere what ya done wiv 'im!?"

Gemma stared darkly at him. Luis looked hurt.

"Mick Jagger? Come on Gemma! Never listened to the 'Stones?"

"You are so past your fucking use-by-date..." she cleared the interface and started the engine, "come on look, let's go and pull this guy's wings off."

* * *

Faizan battled to traverse ruined lanes and abandoned villages. He saw no human life. Not even their digital footprints; drones found no reason to visit the boneyard of England's pleasant land, no crawler bot had need to walk its mountains green. Faizan felt a tug of patriotism, to restore what his forebears had surrendered to a foreigner's cloud.

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The pub sat alone between old fields, obscured by the tides of advancing flora. A muscular off-roader had parked outside, out of place.

Marshal Ferdinand's. It was as colossal as its driver, though Faizan imagined its driver could carry it. He parked behind, checking himself in the mirror, wincing at the civvy suit he had on and didn't want to need.

The pub's interior was stripped clean, leaving a mausoleum of rotten wood and faded squares where art once hung. Anything behind the bar had vanished. Two stools remained by it.

Marshal Ferdinand stood there, in full battle-dress, glaring at his renegade captain. Faizan could not salute wearing civilian clothing, disempowering him. He at least snapped to attention. Ferdinand cocked his head to one bar stool and took the other, banging his gauntlet on the bar.

Faizan delivered his report, pushing through the marshal's grumbles, growls, and interjections of woe and disaster. He wisely withheld excuses, sticking only to the hard facts his superior demanded.

Marshal Ferdinand got bored and struck, accusing his captain of every feasible insult. Faizan was foolish. Faizan was reckless. Faizan was wasteful. The marshal had costed the spent ammunition, it was worth more than a captain's life, though he pondered if wasting a captain would feel nicer. 'The difference between a wank and a blowjob', and how handy to have a disgraced captain here to assist with the latter if so required.

Hearing his first name so relentlessly, unworthy not only of his rank but his surname too, reduced Faizan to a child's state.

But there was that disarming glint in the marshal's eye too. One Faizan recognised but resisted appealing to. Marshal Ferdinand deserved his reputation: a good tactician until he entered the fight. There he turned berserker, leaving his orders with lesser officers as he blitzed ahead. He was the hero of Faizan's favourite war story: witnessing the then-major, when the British were in full retreat, throw himself against a tank column with such aggression the column u-turned and left. He saved hundreds from torture and execution, and earned Britain's final, bittersweet Victoria Cross.

He also earned the only title of its kind: Tank Slayer.

How could they have lost the war?

The onslaught ended. Faizan stuttered an apology. The marshal pulled out a hip flask, swigged, and handed it over.

"You've been wi' me you since you were a lad Faizan; always workin' 'ard to make an impression. But you never broke rank. Whah now?"

Faizan forced a sip of the corrosive spirit and handed it back.

"Like everyone in Second, Marshal, your fearlessness wore off on me."

"Is tha' your defence is it? 'Ferdinand woulda dun the same'? Gonna fairce the consequences wi' tha'?"

"Sir I will not…"

"27 of our boys and girls down, our foothold in Lunden compromised, to give Vehda a scratch. Whah?"

"As the Spartan's bled Xerxes at Thermopylae Sir, we've shown our enemy as mortal," Faizan brought up his ongoing conviction, found confidence in it, "I believe we can destroy Opus Veda if only the public can see behind their tricks! I believe the casualties are justified Sir, including my own if necessary."

The marshal made a rumbling noise - the one that could mean anything, that Second Division named 'Ferdinanding'. He swigged again.

"The Spartans lost tha' battle to a man, then they lost their hegemoneh to a boonch o' Theban poofs. Ah hope you got better plans for our good Second when you head back to Lunden."

Varma's chair creaked.

"I don't follow, Sir."

Ferdinand thumped the bar, sending a shockwave through the pub. He snarled impatiently.

"Listen carefulleh: Birmingham's ours any minute now and Lunden's next. Ahm on the van and ah need sumone ah can trust ahead o' me. You won't fook about twice ah know you well enoogh."

It was a classic Second Division move: rewarding spontaneity better discouraged. Haughty First Division would sneer from the safety of predictable doctrines. Third Division would continue ignoring its predecessors. One too orthodox, the other not enough.

And all three divisions knew from the fate of several overweening men: no one pissed Ferdinand off twice. The first fatalities of Second Division had, after all, come at his hands.

Varma had no plans to join that list.

"What will General Byron say if I go back Sir?"

"Don't you worry about ol' Enver! Ah'll charm mah way out of it as always. You will make amends for your bloonder and get that shit-heap of a city ready for mah arrival."

"I would go back a guardsman if that's what you asked Sir," Varma stood and, receiving permission, saluted, "I'll tie Westminster up and get you your red carpet."

Ferdinand stood and saluted back. His armoured limbs clanked.

"Captain, one more thing: get that fookin' bird out of the picture. Tha' doctor. Ahm sick o' seein' Taylor's killer lurkin' about lahk he owns the place."

"I'll bring you the man's mask myself Sir. We'll pin it to the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square."

"Mah god captain do that for me I'll promote you to fookin' General," the marshal made another rumble, "fookin' Veda…"

He engulfed Varma's fingers with a painful handshake and dismissed him. Varma returned to his car, itching to escape the yoke of his civilian suit, and began the long drive to Kensington.

* * *

Andrez threw the silk gown - conveniently black - over his skin. He pulled the last wine out - a horrendous white zin - and poured himself one.

Desperate times.

The flat was lovely - intelligently furnished and correctly lit. The books on the shelf were impressive but never gauche, the art on the walls interesting but never obvious. Andrez could tell each piece had a story. He never learnt those stories, but it mattered they were there.

All that let this picturesque hiding place down was the rosé, sticking out like, Andrez mused, a masked terrorist in the middle of London.

None of this belonged to him - neither the gown, the wine, nor the flat. Only the uniform drying on a clothes line, and the mask balancing on a chair's armrest, were his. The rest belonged to a lover who, for their past sins, no longer required their home. It was now a Vedic halfway house. The lover was left to remember their failings in a vat - one full of acid used to treat resin figures.

A fitting end, to be dissolved into the stuff of children's toys, for a lover who did so enjoy playing games.

He slithered into the chair. His arm rested on his mask. There was nothing to do. Half of his section were undercover, the other half gone to ground. He was alone, wallowing in the pointless purgatory he suffered between contracts. Made worse this time by the crushing defeat he'd sustained.

The phone rang. Katryna. He made her wait, toked from a slender vape, and answered.

"Go on, tell me… what's left of my reputation?"

"We'll spin it into an advantage, like we do."

"And the Ormond cell?"

"Transferred and safe. Medical goes dark for now, nationwide; no more late night surgeries whilst our cover's blown. But you know the public, in four weeks time they'll have seen a hundred other stories. We can cruise back on ward through the front door."

"I'm not sure I'll have the confidence Katryna."

"You won't need to. Saffi's been gossiping about you a lot Andrez. She wants you in Insurgency full time. Our 'Byronic War' is in play; our performances must be grand."

Andrez turned away with disappointment. All the performances they staged, the ugly truths they revealed; the public simply shrugged as rivers of blood poured by their door. Veda's theatrics were starting to look stale.

"I assume you're currently brooding about humanity's condition."

"I've just had an entire revolutionary regiment-"

"We both accepted, Andrez, when Saffi gave us London, that Opus Veda's first defeat would happen under our watch. Our watch. This is on me as well."

"And now you've got me in Insurgency full time, as I predicted. Does this make you my boss."

"It does."

"Can I not report higher up."

"You cannot."

Andrez's gaze landed on the bookshelf, picking out a single book's spine. The Conquest of Happiness.

Quite. His head swayed back around.

"What are you then? Sir or M'am? How well are you passing these days?"

"That bitter voice! I'm just Katryna. We've been friends before anything else, right?"

"Much to my disappointment my dear."

"And mine too…' the phone made a kissing sound, "if I could visit, you know I'd love to. Are you going to be okay?'

"No. But what I'm feeling can be put to use."

"Speak to your little assistant!'

"I can't. You put her undercover. Without consulting me."

"What about your partner?'

"Also undercover, as you know."

The line cut out. Andrez tossed the phone away and drew from his vape. At least the rest of Medical were safe. More practically, the spies remained active - besides Kristoff, who on balance was not Andrez's liability anyway.

He pulled the gown's hood down and cupped his hand over his mask. A robed assassin posing as a bored King. The hood darkened his face save for two dots of screenlight - his eyes reflecting what the TV fed him.

Faizan Varma paraded on screen. For the dead vigilantes that man had taken, Andrez would strike again, creating a spectacle for the public who deserved nothing good.