Ferndale's Second War of Independance

Kerma looked over the battle plans Sam had given her to approve of and while she was at it looked over Ferndale’s abandoned ideals. Now that the war was fully engaged, for real this time, she was starting to realize how naive they had been. The first war they had had with the underground cities they had tried to have a bloodless war of the sort that went on in the school. Ferndale hadn’t been ready for serious adult warfare, and so they had lost. Two years and much planning later Ferndale had decided to try another bid of independence from the underground cities, and again they had been attacked because of it. This time Ferndale had known what to expect though.

This is war, it isn’t supposed to be nice, and it isn’t supposed to be fair, Kerma told herself as she looked over the placement of the siege machinery. That still seemed like cheating though, the underground cities, with their lack of heights or space had never seen siege weapons before. They hadn’t allowed siege weapons to be used the last time they had fought against the underground cities, and we lost, Kerma reminded herself again. If we had allowed them in the first war we would probably already be independent. There was a knock at the door and she answered it, it was Sam again.

“What do you say?” Sam asked, jerking his head at the battle plans. Soft spoken, stuttering, a slight man with sandy hair, Kerma was always amazed by how much his looks belayed his sharp, and sometimes vicious mind. Sam and his assistant Angel had come up with plans that even with Ferndale’s new outlook on warfare Frendral and Kerma had vetoed as being too vicious. Kerma didn’t envy Sam his job, and she often wondered how he slept at night, so many people’s lives weighed on him, both their own troops and the enemy’s.

“This looks good, we shouldn’t lose many people doing this and it will make them lose a lot of moral,” Kerma rolled up the map and handed it back to Sam. We shouldn’t lose a lot of people, she thought to herself. We didn’t lose anyone in the last war, because it wasn’t really a war, she reminded herself. We surrendered before it became a real war and ended up paying huge taxes as punishment for attempting rebellion. We don’t want that to happen again and all of our people agreed to a real war this time.

“The plan wouldn’t work at all if the enemy wasn’t being unusually stupid,” Sam told her, his soft voice had a scornful edge to it. Kerma smiled, so long as Sam was talking about the enemy being stupid they were safe, Sam was always honest about how he looked on the enemy. He was just as open about his praise as his scorn and the last time he had admired one of the underground generals they had lost a lot of people in the battle. They had captured the general alive and Sam insisted that the man be treated like royalty. As Frendral had pointed out it might be a good tactic because if the general ever managed to escape and tell his fellow generals the treatment he had received the enemy would be lining up to be captured. He had of course been being sarcastic but Sam had just shrugged it off, Sam wasn’t as sensitive as he looked by any means.

“I wouldn’t call them stupid exactly,” Kerma said, though she couldn’t say why she always defended everyone. “They just aren’t used to fighting aboveground like you are. They might not have been real wars exactly, I guess it isn’t a war unless someone dies, but you did get a lot of tactics practice here before we left the school.”

To be continued...