Freedom Forged

by Alan Austin

  Left in her solitude, she went back to pacing as she started to put together her plan once they landed. If she could find Sam quickly enough, she could still get to Boston with him on time. If she couldn’t make it by land, she’d have to steal the airship to get there, but even that option had a window that would close far faster than she liked. There was no way to get word to General Clive about the delay and he would assume that she’d failed or betrayed him if she wasn’t there on time. There was no doubt that he would kill her daughter.

  She wrestled with the potential choice of having to go alone and try explaining the situation, or using every last possible second to find Sam and perhaps concoct some way of rescuing their daughter together. It was impossible not to consider those potential outcomes, but she did her best to stay focused on how to find him early enough to avoid that decision.

  Mac was right though. Pacing and worrying was only causing her to feel lightheaded. She wasn’t thinking clearly and that wasn’t going to help at all. She needed food and rest now so that she would have the energy needed to deal with this once they arrived. Hopefully, Sam would be there waiting for them and all this would be nothing more than wasted anxiety.

  After getting some food for herself, she joined the others at the large table further forward in the cabin and found everyone to be quite subdued from both the emotional and physical toll of the mission. All of them were worried about Sam and Grease, they just weren’t as panicked as she was. To her surprise, Boomer offered her a drink when he got up, and they seemed willing to let her join the conversation. It was a small consolation, but far better than the isolation she’d experienced from them up to that point.

  Seeing that she wasn’t quite as on the outs with the others as she expected, she actually drifted further in her mind from the present and began to reflect on her past and all the events that had brought her to this place. It seemed like the perfect string of terrible timing ever since she left just about two years prior.

  Having always been something of a loner, Rosalyn had been overjoyed to find herself belonging to a family of sorts with the gang. The others had started calling it the Rosecrans gang without Sam ever asking for that, but there was never a question of who the leader was. When he found her and folded her in with the rest of the group, it was like nothing she’d ever known before. Their relationship started almost right away, and everyone looked at her like the second in command in a sense as Sam’s right hand in everything.

  She found herself in love with Sam and with her new life and family in no time at all. Everything was perfect, until she got pregnant. Her first reaction was joy, but doubt soon filled her mind as she thought about how Sam might react. Rather than telling him about it, she started asking him about the thought of raising a family. It was a subject he clearly didn’t want to discuss. When he didn’t just put it off for later, he shared that he wasn’t in a position to head down that road.

  After one particularly rough conversation, Sam went so far as to tell Rosalyn that if she was so intent on starting a family after their many conversations of being wild and free, that she might be with the wrong man. That was the moment that she decided it was better not to tell him at all. He wasn’t a bad man, and despite his reaction, she knew that if she told him the truth he would do right by her and the child, but it wasn’t what he wanted. She loved him and the gang too much to be the reason everything needed to change.

  After two weeks of crying herself to sleep trying to work up the courage to do what she’d decided was needed, Rosalyn did it. She found an opportunity on a raid to disappear without a trace. It was the single hardest thing she’d ever done. Knowing the target for their next job, an independent bank funded by the crown, Rosalyn made a deal to disappear. She sold out the gang in exchange for assurances that they would not be hurt and that she would be able to vanish. There were contacts that she’d retained from her days as a solo con artist that helped put it all together.

  When the job began, she ducked away into a sleeper cabin on the train with a change of clothing and a bed to sleep in for the duration of the trip back south, where she had arrangements that would carry her through the child’s birth. In her mind, Sam and the others would see the job was a bust when the cargo was missing and leave, but she underestimated how hard he would look for her before he went. The hardest part was keeping her sobs quiet as the members of the gang scoured the train shouting her name and risking things going bad. Fortunately, they left before the train security lost their patience and jumped into full action.

  From there, the bank held up their end of the deal and took her down to Jacksonville, where she lived out the next many months in relative peace before giving birth to her beautiful baby girl, Lizzy. It wasn’t the life she wanted. She missed having Sam with her every moment she was there, but life wasn’t all that bad and her girl was happy and healthy, which was the most important thing. She made the most of it, hoping that at some point she might be able to share the truth with Sam, once Lizzy was old enough not to be a burden that would pull him away from the life he so desired.

  She had sent him word that she was still alive along with an apology. She wasn’t willing to fully explain her reasons and she knew it wasn’t enough, but she felt like she had to say something. There was no return address for him to reply.

  The opportunity to open up more fully about her reasons for leaving was never going to come. Just before Lizzy’s first birthday, Rosalyn was woken from a deep sleep to a room filled with British soldiers. She’d been isolated from the world for so long and had no idea what had been going on up north, but since leaving, Sam had shifted the gang’s focus to more directly target the Empire and their supply chain. It was something he’d long talked about, but the gang hadn’t been quite ready back then. Apparently, they were now.

  The trouble was that the British leadership had received word from their partner bank about the operation that they’d undertaken with Rosalyn to help her escape. They didn’t know about her daughter, but when they’d come to find her some weeks earlier and seen her with Lizzy, they realized that they had leverage to force her hand. Rosalyn was the best chance the British Empire had to stop the rebel gang that had done more to disrupt them than the entire resistance army. The chances of them having been able to convince her had been slim, but with her child, everything changed.

  Rosalyn was led down to her living room where a burly soldier held her crying child. She lunged for Lizzy, but was hauled back by her sleeping gown by another man. He’d nearly torn the thin fabric right off of her, and from the way most of the men were looking at her, she wondered if that had been his intention. The emotion of the situation had been so much that she hardly recalled the conversation with the lead man at all, but the gist was clear. They were taking Lizzy.

  The only chance Rosalyn had to get her back was to agree to work for the British and help them stop the Rosecrans gang from costing them any more than they already had. There was no decision to be made. Nothing would stop her from getting her daughter back, and if the only path to that conclusion was through more betrayal, she had to go through with it. It had taken months for her to get the intel she needed and coordinate with her British handlers, but she eventually had a plan that would put her back in Sam’s path.

  Even in all the time she’d spent planning the mission and longing to see her daughter again, she never found a way around what she was being asked to do. The thought of telling Sam everything and having him help to rescue Lizzy came to mind over and over again in those months, but the risk was just too high. If they had anyone else anywhere near the gang that caught wind of that, Rosalyn knew that they would kill her daughter. That was the one certainty. They were not afraid to kill a child if that’s what it would take to save her operations.

  Her contacts back in one of the towns Sam and the gang had used as a base of operations had given her enough to know that they were going to hit the trans-Atlantic train. From their departure time, she knew exactly which train it
would be and was able to ensure that she’d be on board when they hit it. Everything had finally been in place, but by that time it had been months without so much as seeing her child.

  Rosalyn was ragged, having hardly slept at all and in constant fear for herself and her daughter. Her life had been hard when she was alone and missing Sam and the rest of her family, but having her daughter taken away felt like someone had ripped her heart right out of her chest. The world lacked color, food was without taste, and terror gripped her in the dark of night. She tried to keep her head down and get through it, but days before her departure, she reached a breaking point.

  Rosalyn faced a decision even harder than agreeing to betray the man she loved more than any other. She told the British leaders that she would not carry out the mission if they did not let her spend a night with her daughter before leaving. They, of course, refused, but she called their bluff when they threatened to kill both her and Lizzy. If she wasn’t able to rest and complete the mission, they were as good as dead anyway, and she had a feeling they wouldn’t give up on this chance over something as trivial as her request to see her daughter. She was unwavering in her position; no matter what they did, no matter what they threatened, she didn’t care; there was nothing they could do to her that was worse than the thought of never seeing Lizzy again.

  They finally gave in to her, and she was taken to a home where she was very pleased to find Lizzy in good spirits and being cared for by a family that seemed to genuinely care for her. The mother even pulled her aside at one point after dinner to apologize for what the army was making them do. It seemed that they were being forced to hold her there, and it was a great relief to know Lizzy was being cared for by good people in her absence.

  Rosalyn’s biggest fear was that her daughter would not recognize her after so long apart, but Lizzy’s cries for “Mommy!” sent her heart soaring from the moment she arrived. She slept that night in a small twin bed, clutching her daughter tight to her body, and it was the best sleep she’d had in as long as she could remember. When Lizzy woke her the next morning, she didn’t want to let her go. Rosalyn knew that getting up was bringing their time to an end, but she’d gotten what she needed. The image of her daughter’s smile was burned in her mind, and she knew she was safe and well cared for. Nothing was going to stop her from coming back and bringing her home.

  All that had brought her to the place where she ‘ran into’ Sam. She hadn’t known for sure it would be him, but with him being single again, she suspected he’d go back to his old routine of taking the wife of the most powerful man on the train. It was his calling card and something that he’d only stopped doing when he and Rosalyn had become a very serious item. There was even an occasion or two when someone was enough of an arrogant asshole that Rosalyn gave him permission to take the wife while they were together. On one occasion when she was in a VERY special mood, she’d even joined them.

  Sure enough, after seeing their special ships dropping from the sky like alien craft, she tucked herself into a car with her handler who was posing as her fiancé on the voyage. When the men entered the car, she waited to hear them come back out of the lounge area, but the all too familiar sounds of Sam taking a conquest rang out first, confirming that she was right where she wanted to be. Everything from that point had been like riding a tidal wave and hoping for the best.

  Both she and Sam had nearly died escaping the train together, and then the resistance army had gotten involved much earlier than they were supposed to. Now she had new orders, and her only hope to get her daughter back, and the man she still loved, was likely dead in a crash site somewhere.

  Suddenly, she became aware of someone calling her name. Snapping out of her reflection, she shook her head reflexively, as if she could dislodge the memories, and looked across the table at Boomer.

  “We’re here,” he said, looking at her with concern at her apparent fogginess. “I think you need to get some rest.”

  “I do,” she agreed. “As soon as I find out what happened to Sam.”

  “You still love him, don’t you?” Ben asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then why on Earth did you leave him?”

  Rosalyn paused as all the history washed over her again before replying, “It is too long of a story to tell now. Perhaps one day soon. I wish you could all understand.”

  “So do we,” DaVinci added as he headed back toward the cockpit. “You were like a daughter to me, and seeing what you did to Sam, and to all of us... that was more than just a punch to the gut.”

  Her head hung at the shame she felt from his words. How much more were they going to feel her betrayal if she was able to find Sam and carry out her orders?

  Rosalyn went forward to the cockpit and joined DaVinci. The sun was up again and it was nearly mid-day from the look of it. How long had she been daydreaming? She could feel how tired her body was, but there was zero chance of her having gotten any sleep. The first thing she noticed was that they were not where she’d expected them to be landing.

  “I thought we were going to Roanoke?” she said in confusion.

  “There… uhhhh… there was a change in plans,” Da Vinci replied. “Didn’t Sam tell you?”

  “No,” she said, giving the old man a strange look.

  Something was up, but she wasn’t sure exactly what it was. Looking at what was set up in front of them as they approached, it was clear that this had not been a last-minute change. This had been the intended rally point all along. Why had Sam lied, and why was DaVinci covering it up for him? Had they learned something about her?

  There was no time to panic now. Thoughts of how she might find out what had happened to Sam were back in her head. The train was in front of them and there were no signs of the carrier, which meant that it had made it this far and then headed back. Something must have happened after that. Seeing the train was at least confirmation that he hadn’t been killed trying to get it to its final destination. Having expected it to get hauled much farther from the river than the few hundred feet it had been, Rosalyn hadn’t been planning to find out if even that portion of the mission had been a success on their immediate arrival. It narrowed the work she had to do.

  The airship touched down smoothly and everyone departed to thunderous applause from the soldiers who’d gathered around. The army was clearly very pleased with their accomplishment. It seemed that nearly all of them had come to welcome the arriving gang with the exception of those who were escorting the passengers off the train into a building that must be set up for their temporary detention. There was no sign of General Adams, likely because his airship was not as fast, but she approached the first person she could find who looked to have any authority.

  “Have you received any word about Sam Rosecrans?” she asked.

  “No,” the man said with a troubling tone. “He’s not with you?”

  “He was aboard the carrier that dropped the train with your people,” Boomer interjected. “The three aboard never made it back to us.”

  “The carrier left here just as we expected and showed no signs of trouble at all. I’m sorry, but I have no idea where your friends are. Is Ms. Parker with you?”

  “Navada was also on that carrier,” DaVinci answered, also joining the conversation.

  The man, likely a colonel from his insignia, looked troubled at that news. “We were expecting an update from her upon your arrival. This is troubling news indeed.”

  Rosalyn wanted to punch him at his response. He was clearly far more concerned now that one of his soldiers was also at risk.

  “We’ll send out pigeons to see if we get any word from our outposts between here and the coast. That is our best bet.”

  Rosalyn still burned with rage, wondering if he would have bothered had it just been Sam impacted, but Boomer thanked the man and turned her away, seeing that she might be about to unload and make the situation worse than it needed to be.

  Some soldiers led them all to tents that had been set up by the
river. Everyone seemed more than happy to rest while they waited for word, and Rosalyn recognized that there was nothing else she could do without waiting either. She’d considered stealing the airship and heading back toward the coast on her own to see if she could spot anything, but doing that without giving the resistance a chance to locate him would be foolish. They were more likely to find him than she was.

  Lying down in the small cot, Rosalyn didn’t expect to get any sleep, but knowing for the first time in more than twenty-four hours that there was nothing more she could do in that moment allowed her just a slightest bit more relaxation, and her body drifted off almost immediately. Her dreams flipped back and forth between sweet situations, where she found Sam and they rescued Lizzy together, and nightmares, where Sam was dead and she was forced to watch soldiers shoot her baby girl right in front of her.

  After one particularly horrifying nightmare, Rosalyn awoke with a scream and saw Mac standing at the entrance to her tent. Clearly, the other airship had made it back while she was asleep.

  “We just received word. Sam is alive and on his way here now.”

  Chapter 14

  Reunited

  Sam had pushed all through the night and it was clear that the Resistance men who’d come with him were less than thrilled with that decision, but as the sun rose again behind them, he saw activity over the horizon ahead and knew they were getting close. Four airships were rising high into the sky, having just departed, and he knew that it had to be the Resistance base camp.