Even growing up on classroom holo-footage of the Partition Wars, it was hard to believe wyverns, all razor-edged wings and jaws crackling with plasma fire, had ever been real. Anyone could build weapons for a war, but the Incorporated had built monsters. Nothing about wyverns would ever look real to Pru.
Like a switch flipping, those big black eyes went flat and cold. “Partition War veterans might beg to differ with that take.”
As if some fine-faced rich boy would know. “The war ended, like, a decade ago. Our government’s just paranoid out of habit. Any leftover mechanical monstrosities the Incorporated engineers have cooked up aren’t going to leave their territory.”
“Right,” said Alex. His sarcasm sounded lighthearted, or should have, but something dangerous lingered in the tilt of that expressive mouth. “Because you’ve spent plenty of time on Incorporated land, I’m sure.”
“Yeah,” said Pru, emboldened despite the anxiety thrumming through her gut. “I’m a real secret revolutionary. By day, I’m a schoolgirl of modest origins here in the hallowed halls of New Columbia Prep, surviving on scholarship sufferance. By night, dorm curfew be damned, I breach our fine city walls to spread Barricader values of freedom and liberty through their sad little corporate empire.”
An abrupt smile dimpled his cheek. “I don’t doubt you do. Enjoy your insurgency.”
“Enjoy my study,” Pru shot back, unable to contain that last bit of pettiness as she pushed past him. At least Anabel’s name was on the study booking, which meant Anabel would find a way to cover for them both if Headmaster Goldschmidt decided to check records of Pru’s whereabouts. Fixing trouble was what Anabel did, even when she was the cause of it.
“I’ll give our favorite double booker your regards,” Alex called after Pru as she rounded the corner. She snorted. Fine-faced rich boy he might be, but at least he’d stoop to match her petty for petty.
Pettiness wouldn’t sub in for a decent wingwoman on the other side of the wall, though. That, thought Pru grimly, was what sheer dumb luck was for. Fair enough. Not like she’d have gotten this far in the book smuggling business without it.
* * *
Barricader’s Daily: Op-Ed
by Emilia Rosenbaum
Staff Writer
With rumors of wyverns on New Columbia’s walls and Head Representative Lamarque in a new round of diplomatic talks with the Executive General of the United Continental Confederacy Incorporated, seemingly frivolous matters like cross-border media regulation are easily forgotten. Yet media regulation is also the hallmark of Incorporated power. The moment that marked UCC Inc.’s transition from a mere war mech manufacturer to a mega-corporation with the power of a sovereign nation wasn’t expansion from the former United States into Canada and Mexico, or even the infamous rise of arms dealer Harold Jellicoe’s mechanized wyvern flocks. It was the moment the Executive General instituted censorship laws within Incorporated territory, and Incorporated citizens let him.
And frankly, interfering with those laws is a dangerous game for Barricaders. The so-called “book smuggling” business—the black market by which citizens of the Barricade Coalition sell banned media to our Incorporated neighbors—thrives for the moment, but it won’t thrive for long if the Executive General is provoked to war. Remember: no one—neither Barricaders nor Incorporated—will have access to free media if wyverns raze our city walls.
* * *
SHEER DUMB LUCK, AS it so turned out, was not on Pru’s side today.
Getting her creds past the sentries actually proved itself the easy part. That was another thing you learned as a prep schooler: making the stupid neckties and button-downs and precious-looking pleats work to your advantage. “Internship, you say?” asked one of the guards over the intercom. Pru could imagine him up in his comms tower, squinting down at the holographic student ID and carefully forged gate pass she’d pulled up on her phone, which she offered alongside the widest, most dopily earnest schoolgirl smile she could muster.
“That’s right,” she said, and made herself preen a little, trying to channel her inner Anabel. “I’m one of the students from New Columbia Prep’s Modern Politics II seminar. You know those Barricader reps negotiating diplomatic efforts with the United Continental Confederacy?” Spelling out the full name of the Incorporated always made you sound one of two things: pretentious and trying too hard, or earnest and painfully genuine. Pru, smoothing her uniform pleats and leaning into the stereotype, could make either work. She pitched her voice artificially low, but lost none of the self-importance: “Well, I’m one of the student interns staffing them. You know, in light of the wyvern rumors.”
“I don’t like it,” muttered one of the guards. “Barricader government does what it got to, but giving kids a front row seat to this wyvern bullshit don’t seem right. This ain’t the Partition Wars anymore.”
“Wyvern bullshit is right,” retorted a second guard. “No one’s seen new wyvern prototypes in, what, fifteen years? It’s probably just the UCC Propagandist’s office shooting some life-size hologram reels from the war into the sky to give us a good scare. And some idiot on late night shift fell for it. I say these little prep school interns deserve an education in human stupidity. The sooner they learn, the less disappointing they’ll find adulthood.”
“Stupidity! Son, let me tell you—”
“I’ll probably just be fetching coffee for the reps or whatever,” interrupted Pru, before the argument could escalate, “but someone has to do it, you know? Maybe I’ll even get to meet Head Representative Lamarque.”
The original Barricader guard snorted. “No wonder you got into New Columbia Prep. So eager to staff Lamarque’s peace talks with a bunch of Incorporated assholes. You a sympathizer to the Incorporated government, kid, or just hoping to pad your résumé?”
“The United Continental Confederacy Incorporated isn’t technically a government,” Pru recited, in her very best social studies drone. “UCC Inc.”—she pronounced it like “ink,” with tongue-clicking emphasis on the K—“is a private mech manufacturing company that continental consumers, with the exception of the Barricade Coalition, opted into during the Partition Wars. My tutors say this demonstrated free market principles, but—”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Jameel, let the girl through before she prattles us all to death.” The second guard’s irritation felt palpable even through the digitized auto-tuning of the intercom. Ducking her head, Pru smirked. “Prudence Wu, correct? Modern Politics II intern, New Columbia Preparatory Academy?”
“Yes, that’s me.” Pru grinned, waving her holographic phone ID under the camera with calorie-burning enthusiasm. If she went more chipper than this, she might actually combust.