Chapter 9

It was a long, slow winter season in some ways, but a very busy season in other ways. A lot of time and work were put into getting Mesa and Mountain View going as full fledged towns. Also, Aelinor, Armor, and Brad spent many hours going over their options for fighting the Glaxoi. The consensus was that it was going to take "forever" to accomplish the job taking on one town at a time. They badly needed to readjust their priorities.

They decided to try to provoke the Glaxoi into taking major steps to fight the rebels. That was the time when Aelinor could make use of her special weapons capabilities. They now had the resources to take over a town and keep the Glaxoi out; there was no need to set up a completely new town as they had done with Mesa and Mountain View. This spring, they would form a formal Army, with Brad in charge and Armor/Aelinor acting as technical adviser. Once Brad was comfortable in his new role, Aelinor would attack some of the main population centers and strike at the upper levels of the Glaxoi hierarchy.

Once this policy decision was made, they set about getting organized. Brad began organizing the Army, Joe worked on producing the crossbows and trebuchets, and Stan put his efforts into making sure that there was enough ammunition. They were ready to go by the time the spring rains let up and the roads dried out sufficiently.

There was no way to hide an army on the march, so they didn't even try. In fact, they didn't want to hide; they wanted to draw the Glaxoi forces out to fight. Meanwhile, they planned to liberate as much of the country as they could before next winter. Starting out, they had to keep together as one army, so their plan was to sweep in an arc around Mesa and Mountain View, trying to make the area controlled by the rebels resemble a disk, with the two towns at the center.

The first town they hit was totally unprepared for the rebel onslaught and was conquered before the entire rebel army had arrived on site. Brad found the town's human leaders and had them reorganize the town into a functioning unit without the presence of the Glaxoi rulers. They left a small cadre in the town to train the people in the manufacture and use of crossbows so that they could defend themselves should the Glaxoi attempt to return. They also left a radio for the people to use to call for help if they needed it. A few weeks of training was all that Brad thought that the new people needed before they could supply a contingent of troops to augment the rebel army. Once control was consolidated, they moved on to the next town.

Things were going so easy, that they were averaging conquering a town per week. The rebel army was growing, now, into a respectable force. It wouldn't be long before Brad was going to be able to delegate the leadership of a second force to one of his lieutenants. When that happened, they could really start their geometric growth. The Glaxoi had never made any effort to win over the conquered humans—they never even thought of it. The only humans who willingly worked for the Glaxoi were either as stupid as the Glaxoi or as venal. Thus, the only incentive people needed to join the rebellion was the opportunity.

By the end of the summer, the rebels had 16 armies in the field and had conquered the land that had once been California and Nevada, plus significant portions of the surrounding states. The next spring, the rebels would try to conquer all of the old USA west of the Mississippi River and significant portions of Canada and Mexico. Therefore, most of the winter downtime was spent in planning this and making sure that there were enough supplies to keep the armies going.

Yes, there were now three main armies of rebels, the Northern, the Central, and the Southern, with smaller groups filling in the cracks between. The rebels had an unexpected added resource. Every one of the bandit groups they encountered begged to join the army; in every case, they had been bandits simply because they had refused to live under Glaxoi rule. There were a few bad guys in the bandit groups, but they were quickly weeded out. Often, the bandit gang became the nucleus for a new fighting unit. They took to the crossbows like starving men and quickly mastered the proper use of the weapon.

Aelinor was now free to utilize her special capabilities and started doing so as soon as spring came. The army was working the Glaxoi hierarchy from the bottom up, so she decided to work from the top down. Eventually they would meet somewhere in the middle when all of the Glaxoi had been removed from North America.

The center of Glaxoi control in North America was located in the former city of Memphis. Aelinor flew there one dark night and was able to identify the salient features of the city with no trouble. Her augmented sight showed the concentrations of Glaxoi, so she was able to pick those targets with ease. What she couldn't find so easily were the humans who had joined with the Glaxoi in exploiting their fellows. She hated these people as much as she did the Glaxoi, themselves, so she wanted to make sure that they were taken out along with their masters.

She especially wanted to locate the military leaders and eliminate them. She considered them to be the most dangerous of her human foes, maybe ultimately even more dangerous that the Glaxoi, since their level of intelligence was much higher. Aelinor didn't want to kill everyone in the city, since many were innocent victims of the Glaxoi, in town only to supply emotional food for their conquerors.