Gettysburg: A Tale of the Second War for Pennsylvanian Independence

by Chris Pourteau

  “I understand, Elder,” she said.

  Heralded by the babble of livestock, the airbuses were landing in the barnyard.

  “No time for long goodbyes, ma’am,” said Hatch, with a wry grin. “Your deliverance awaits.”

  “Go,” she ordered, and the others began to move out. Turning to Noffsinger, she said, “Don’t punish him harshly, Elder. And if Transport gives you a hard time, say we merely held you hostage until you fed us and we could get away. It’s what they’ll say anyway, when they spin this battle for the public.”

  “Go now,” he said to her. “And may God bless.”

  The ride to the TRACE safe zone provided a final release of tension for the eight survivors of Gettysburg. Crammed into one airbus, the exhausted and overfed members of Bestimmung Company held loosely to the straps keeping them in their seats, their heads lolling. When they landed, the airbus opened to a busy camp. In one corner, one of the cargo ships full of okcillium sat, scorched but intact.

  “At least one of ’em got away,” breathed Stug. They had all stopped to stare at the ship sitting on the ground, looking like nothing so much as a beaten-down prizefighter. The same question was in all their minds, and they hardly needed their BICEs to share it.

  “Was it worth it?” asked Smoker.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” replied their captain.

  She went straight to Colonel Neville’s tent to make her report. He and half his command had managed to rendezvous in the woods and evade Transport, but he’d lost the other half, along with four cargo ships, six drones, and the personal arms and equipment of every soldier who’d died. In return, he’d gained one shipload of precious okcillium, a score of laser rifles, and further disdain for the costly tactics of Mary Brenneman. The debriefing wasn’t pleasant.

  While their captain was being upbraided, the remaining members of B Company reunited. Charlie and Delta squads were like inverse images of one another. Charlie had helped cover TRACE’s retreat from Gettysburg but had hardly seen any real action. As a result, the squad had lost no one. Delta Squad was a different story. Charger and her troops had held the tree line against Transport’s flanking drones, then continued the fight when the Authority had taken the field in force. In the end, they’d lost all but one: their sergeant. Everyone called her Pusher. She held her head up but talked to no one in the camp, silent tears tracking randomly down her cheeks. Still in shock, she seemed like a mother who’d just been told that her children had died in a senseless accident.

  Hatch sat across the table from the QB in what passed for a lounge in the rebel camp. The waitress had left them each a bourbon, neat, and walked away.

  “Bad?”

  She shrugged. “Some would say not bad enough. Pusher might say that.”

  He shook his head. “I doubt it. She’s grieving. Let her do it. Try not to take it personally.”

  Her eyes met his with a look that assured him there was no other way to take it. She was in command. These were her troops. Her orders had led them to their deaths.

  “What’d Neville say?” he asked.

  Again a shrug. “The usual. I bit off more than I could chew. I should’ve waited for his backup to get there. By moving early, I tipped off Transport. The usual.”

  “Or . . . had we not moved when we did, the Authority might’ve had the entire town reinforced by the time he got there and we’d have come up with bupkis. It wasn’t your fault the intel was wrong and we bumped into Transport on the first day. Command should’ve known a warehouse full of unguarded okcy was too good to be true. The only question after we made contact was how quickly to move. I think you made the right call.”

  She slugged the bourbon back. “Command seems to agree with you. I’m still here.”

  Hatch smiled. “Good. You should be. And Neville?”

  She reached over, took his glass, and slugged it back too. “So’s he.”

  Less happy now, Hatch nodded to the waitress. “The next time you want a double, just order one.”

  She twisted her mouth at him.

  “So, in the AZ, I gotta ask. How did you know that hole was in the wall?”

  Mary shrugged. “I played around there when I was little. All the kids did. There are holes all along the wall, though Transport tries to keep them plugged up. I figured if we looked hard enough, we’d find one.”

  “And Yoder? What was he going on about?”

  Her face went flat. She’d known it was coming, and that it would come from Hatch. As close as they’d once been, she’d never shared her history with him, the circumstances of her life that had led her to join the resistance. Her shunning by the Plain People. And she didn’t feel inclined to share it now.

  “It’s not something I talk about. I’ve tried to forget it ever happened.”

  A laugh if there ever was one, her inner voice said.

  The waitress set down their drinks and walked away.

  “Oh, come on, Mary,” he urged. “It’s just you and me here now.”

  “I was young and stupid, Lieutenant,” she said. She used his rank to let him know their personal connection wasn’t going to work here.

  He took his glass in hand and sipped it. “Have it your way, Captain.”

  She immediately regretted the distance she heard in his voice. The distance she’d put there. But she didn’t want to talk about her life in the AZ.

  Ever, her inner voice confirmed.

  “It’s just not something I want to relive, Sean,” she said. “But I appreciate your concern.”

  Hatch finished off the bourbon. “I care about you, Mary. You know that. Whatever our ranks.”

  She nodded. She knew.

  “Hey, you know what tomorrow is?” he asked.

  “It’s not today,” she replied. “That’s a start.”

  “It’s the Fourth of July.”

  She stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “It’s an old holiday back on Earth. Independence Day.”

  “Ah. How ironic.” Her voice bled with sarcasm.

  “Don’t say that!” Hatch said. Sometimes her defeatism, though it was rare, really got to him. Maybe its rarity was why it hit him so hard. She was a rock. Most of the time.

  “I’m sorry, Sean. I guess I just don’t feel much like celebrating.”

  Hatch nodded. He got that.

  Pusher walked through the door. She looked around, spotted them, and headed straight for their table. Mary braced herself. She’d seen this before. The release of grief by assigning blame. Blame that Mary thought might even be justified. Every tactical situation was different, a complex web of opportunities and decisions. All a soldier had was her training and her gut instincts and a dubious relationship with the Almighty. A small quiver of arrows, really, when it came down to it. “I did the best with what I had” often fell flat with those asked to pay the price for her decisions, good or bad.

  The sergeant stopped at their table but didn’t sit down. Everyone in the lounge went quiet and watched.

  “I lost my squad yesterday, ma’am,” Pusher said. There were no tears. Just a clenched jaw holding them back. “I lost Charger. I lost them all.”

  “Yes, you did,” said Mary. She wanted to harden up, to be the QB. But something about the pools of anguish staring from Pusher’s stony face wouldn’t let her. She had to take this as a person, not a soldier. Death was never impersonal.

  “I just wanted to say, I’m proud to serve under you, Captain Brenneman. I’m proud of what we did. I’m proud of my soldiers. I’m proud of my lieutenant. I’m proud that they died for something worth dying for.”

  Mary stood up. Standing was required to honor the woman in front of her, who was stock-still and looking her captain straight in the eye. Standing was necessary to pay proper respect to the dead.

  “I’m proud to have you in my command,” she replied solemnly.

  Pusher reached out her hand and Mary took it. The sergeant saluted and walked away.

  When Mary sat back down, she
did all she could to hide her emotions. To reestablish the mask of the QB. The old trick. The muscle memory of command.

  Hatch pushed her bourbon toward her, but she let it sit.

  “And that’s the difference between you and Neville,” he said simply. “That’s the difference between being a leader and being in command.”

  Mary was unable to catch it, so a single tear bled down the curve of her cheek. She quickly wiped it away.

  “And now what?” she asked, her voice hitched.

  “It’s like I told you when the heat was on. Now, we have to get ready for the next battle. Bestimmung Company still needs its captain, Mary.”

  She picked up the bourbon, rolled its weight around in her hand. She took the shot in one slug, its smoky tingle burning the back of her throat.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m still here.”

  Afterword and Acknowledgments

  The American Civil War has always seemed like a Shakespearean tragedy to me. Its five acts spanned 1861 to 1865, and its two sides were matched as inverse images of one another, seemingly fated to fight an extended, bitter conflict. The Confederacy had better leaders, more élan early in the war, and—whatever our modern perception of its rationale for secession (the catch-all concept is “states’ rights superseding federal authority”; the most obvious expression of those rights involved the continuation of slavery as a cheap labor force, something the South considered vital to its economy)—an absolute belief bordering on religious fervor in the rightness of the Southern cause. In other words, the Confederacy was more motivated to fight and—thanks to the quality of its military leadership—more capable of doing so effectively, despite obvious but willfully ignored strategic disadvantages.

  The Union, on the other hand, had everything else. A larger population from which to draw soldiery, a mature industrial base, a more thoroughly developed transportation system, a better-equipped navy—which it put to good use in strangling Southern trade from abroad—and President Abraham Lincoln, whose force of will is often credited for our having a cohesive United States today. What the Union lacked early on was effective military leadership, and that simple fact extended the pain of the conflict—the crucible of the American character—much longer than it should have lasted. In an ironic twist worthy of the Bard, a week after the start of the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, then-U.S. Army Col. Robert E. Lee was offered command of the Union army. But this was a day after Lee’s beloved Virginia seceded and he demurred, saying he could never march against his home state. In Lee, the Confederacy found a brilliant, daring leader for its own army, and some consider him the greatest military commander in American history. His greatest blunder was the Battle of Gettysburg.

  The battle is called the “high-water mark” of the Confederacy because it represented the culmination of a rare offensive campaign by a Confederate army and the South’s last real threat to Northern soil. Losing the battle began the long descent of Southern fortunes that ended at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, almost four years to the day since hostilities began. Until July 1863, the Confederate army had won (or, in some cases, fought to a draw) every major engagement of the war. In the North, the political will to continue the fight was waning, as evidenced by draft riots and Copperheads (Northerners favoring an immediate peace with the Confederacy). Had the Confederacy won at Gettysburg, many historians have suggested we might well have two American nations today.

  When Michael Bunker created the world of Pennsylvania, he brought forward to his land of New Pennsylvania many of the artifacts and familiar places of old Earth. I decided to have fun with that notion. It wasn’t so hard to imagine that folks who immigrated to this new land—named for a state in the old world—would also bring their town names with them, perhaps even naming a town Gettysburg. And what if fate and history conspired to create circumstances that resonated with events more than 250 years in that world’s past? Instead of Confederates looking for shoes and bumping into Union cavalry, let’s have TRACE looking for okcillium and bumping into a platoon of Transport soldiers. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

  I had a lot of fun reimagining aspects of the battle as elements of my story. I just gave one Easter egg away with the shoes/okcillium example, so I won’t give away any more. But if you know the battle, maybe you’ll find and crack open some more of those eggs. I hope you enjoy their discovery. And if you’re not a history buff like me, it’s cool; I hope you enjoy the story for what I primarily intended it to be: a tale of adventure, bravery, and catastrophe—much like the Civil War itself.

  Interested in Mary Brenneman and what led her to fight for TRACE? And what about all that cryptic venom Marcus Yoder was sending her way? Check out my short story, “Gelassenheit,” in the forthcoming Tales from Michael Bunker’s Pennsylvania, the first short-story anthology set in the world of Pennsylvania, due out in November 2014. It’s chock full of great stories by first-rate independent authors like Nick Cole, Edward W. Robertson, and Michael Bunker himself, just to name a few.

  Dave Monk Fraser Adams designed Gettysburg’s classic cover. It reminds me very much of the sci-fi novels I grew up with. Dave is an awesome Aussie and never minds my asking for one more tweak. Thanks, Dave, for your flexibility, patience, and willingness to lend me your talent.

  The excellent illustrations that front each of the story’s three sections come from the fertile imagination of Ben Adams. They look like electronic woodcuts to me—the perfect mix of contemporary expression and traditional composition. Ben’s style creates an impression both fresh and classic. Thank you, Ben, for perfectly capturing three moments in time from my story.

  My beta readers helped tremendously to identify and iron out glitches, typos, and “wha?” moments. The first of these, as always, is my wife Alison. I conceptualize stories and characters with her, and she always has a nuance or texture to add that I hadn’t thought of. I hand her drafts tentatively, knowing she’ll be honest but hoping she’ll like what I’ve written. She’s my biggest supporter, and I love her for it (one of many reasons).

  My “official” beta readers were Ellen Campbell, Nick Cole, Samuel Peralta, Kim Wells, and Bridget Young. Thanks, guys, for your suggestions and the gift of your time in reading the story. Howard Hendrick and Bob Rink, my geek gaming buddies for decades—and two of the most intuitive, knowledgeable men I know when it comes to military history—helped me with some fact checking. Much appreciated, guys!

  A special thank-you to my nephew, U.S. Marine Captain and Judge Advocate Alec Pourteau. In the dedication, I devote this story to my older brother, Randy, who is no longer with us. Alec is his son. There’s a certain serendipitous elegance in having Alec help me fill in some practical gaps in my knowledge of squad tactics, since it was his father that introduced me to them through classic wargaming when I was a boy.

  David Gatewood, known as “the editor extraordinaire” among independent authors, also lent me his insights and corrections, and I’m very grateful for his eagle eyes. And Michelle Benoit, an old friend and the sharpest proofreader I know, gave the manuscript a final perusal. Thank you, Michelle, for always being willing to look over my shoulder.

  Thanks also to my authorial inspirations, including Bernard Cornwell, Joe Haldeman, and John Scalzi. And, of course, thanks to Michael Bunker for creating this sandbox and letting me play in it.

  I’m also grateful for your time in reading my story. I hope you enjoyed it. Please consider taking the time to review it at the venue where you bought it, as well as on Goodreads. As a reader of independent authors, you’re both our market and our marketing force. If you’d like to hear more from us, let us know that with your online reviews.

  Coming soon: Susquehanna, the next adventure of Mary Brenneman and Bestimmung Company. Be sure and join me for the ride.

  Chris Pourteau

  September 2014

  About the Author

  Chris Pourteau has been a technical writer and editor for over twenty years. He’s published num
erous technical articles and several literary essays and short stories. His first novel, Shadows Burned In—a contemporary, Southern Gothic novel published in 2013—has been praised by his fellow independent authors and readers alike. He lives in College Station, Texas.

  If you’d like to let him know what you think about Gettysburg or just want to say howdy, feel free to email him at c.pourteau.author@gmail.com.