“Well, what about the others? The ones in the cells? What about them? Are you just gonna forget them?” The same voice as before rang through the room.
Brody closed his eyes and took a breath, “I know it’s hard Seth, but there’s only sixty of us, twenty of whom will be tied up at the airport, leaving forty to take on the prison… you do the math—”
All eyes turned to Seth at the back of the room. His face was flushed with emotion.
There’s no telling him—
Brody spoke again, “So, our newcomers: Mercy, Rose, Tawny and Flynn, we have a map of Charlottesville here and a schematic of the prison, which is just outside the city.” Brody nodded at a man at the far corner of the table, “Joshua over there, used to be a cleaner at the prison, the diagram here is from his memory. He worked there for twenty years, so I’d say it’s pretty accurate. The population of Charlottesville pre-Fall was around fifty thousand people. If you could gather a horde of a few thousand and Pied Piper them to the prison gate using noise, a ghetto blaster is what we were thinking, then after the gates are blasted open you can lead them into the prison grounds. That should keep the militia busy, they may even retreat indoors and lie low, maybe use up their ammo on the horde. It all depends on what their leadership is like. Either way, we’ll have one hell of a distraction… a window to get our people out. You can walk among the dead, Annalise too, she can go with you. You can bring extra guns to give to the prisoners when you’ve freed them from the exercise yard—”
Barnes interjected, “Once you’re in and at the exercise yard, we can fly back in and drop more bombs to draw the tropes away, create a diversion, so you and the prisoners can escape. We can also strafe any militia resistance using the wing-mounted machine gun—”
The room fell silent.
Finally, Brody stood up, he rubbed his chin, “What do you say Mercy?”
Mercy looked at Rose, Flynn, Tawny and Annalise in turn. “We’re in. We’ll do it. We’ll have comms with you and Barnes, so we can co-ordinate the time of the attack.” She paused then continued, “What about the prisoners? Is there any way of letting them know this is happening, to prepare them?”
Brody shook his head, “We considered a Trojan Horse plan where we’d allow one of our people to be captured so as they’d be imprisoned but there’s just too many variables. They might be interrogated for days, they might break or die under torture. They might not be held in the prison, they might be taken straight to one of the militia slave farms. No, we’d just lose one of our own on a gamble. We’ve ruled it out—”
Mercy nodded, “Understood. So… just let me recap. Barnes is going to deal with the airport, we’re going to deal with the horde, and the rest of your people are going to be positioned outside the prison to provide backup, troubleshoot and exfil the prisoners as they come streaming out? Is that basically it? Have I missed anything?”
Brody looked at Barnes and Dimitri, “You’ve got it, pretty much, that’s it. You’ll all need to discuss the details among yourselves; fine tune your strategy, what to take with you, back up plans, escape routes and so on. I’ve got maps here for you all to familiarise yourselves with the city and landmarks, and Joshua’s schematic for the prison. We’ve got enough radios, guns and ammo for this one last push to get our people out but yeah, that’s the gist of the plan—”
Mercy nodded and looked at Rose. Rose pulled a face.
I know, I know, I know Rose. Oh, here we go—
Rose stood up, “I’m with you all the way Brody. I’m sure grateful for you and your people helping to get me out of that silo. I owe you my life. I just want to say one thing, this plan of yours stands up, I agree. It stands up pretty well, but it all hinges on the plane being able to blast the gates open. I’m not sure how well that’s going to work out, it could be pretty hit or miss. It would’ve been good if we had some RPGs instead but we don’t… so all I’m saying is we’ll have to be able to adapt, change our plans if things go wrong because people will die otherwise—”
Harsh, but it needed to be said—
Mercy looked around the room. There was an uncomfortable silence.
Here it comes, the final word to seal the deal—
Barnes grunted, “You’re right Rose. We’ll have to adapt if things go south because no battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. They ain’t my words, they’re Von Moltke’s words; every army worth its salt has understood that lesson of war. Prepare, adapt and survive—”
Barnes, who the hell was… Von Moltke?
“Wait,” Tawny stood up. “What about alphas? In Charlottesville? If we try and gather a horde, if there’s any alphas in there, they’ll be on to us. Alphas can see through our biotech and they’ll attack. The biotech just allows us to walk through regular tropes—”
Annalise shifted in her seat. “I’ve been into Charlottesville quite a bit, scavenging. I’ve covered a lot of ground in there, on my own and with others,” she looked around the room. “I’ve never encountered any of these… alphas. In fact, the ones in the silo were the first ones I’ve seen—”
Brody nodded, “Yes, we hadn’t heard of these alphas until you told us about them—”
“Maybe they’re more of a big city thing, bigger populations… more chance of
