Generation Z (Book 4): The Queen Unthroned

by Meredith, Peter

  “Well, we might as well get to it,” he muttered under the sound of the rain. Louder, he ordered, “Everyone forward!” No one moved. His soldiers were spread out along another of the endless mucky hills, and instead of charging in a screaming attack, the men glanced to their left and right to see whether someone else was getting up to attack.

  “Son of a bitch!” Leney barked. “Come on. Let’s go.” He stood taller and snapped his fingers at them. It wasn’t much of a Patton-esque move and it didn’t instill an ounce of fighting spirit in the men. “Alright, fine. Anyone who doesn’t follow me is going to get shot.” He pointed his rifle at the nearest person. The mud-caked man sighed and pushed himself up.

  “And the rest of you! Come on. Let’s go.” There was a good deal of muttered curses as the entire group got to their feet. Leney scowled until everyone was up.

  He started down the slope, more like an inept skier than a warrior. He slid and slipped and tripped his way to the bottom which was thick with deep mud. Slogging his way across, he started up the next hill, fully expecting to be shot at any moment. There was no shooting and really no sounds except for the rain and the whispered curses coming from the stunted battalion behind him.

  At the top, he paused to catch his breath and survey what he could of the scene. There wasn’t much to see. Higher ridges blocked his view of the ocean and the deepening dark made even the next set of hills little more than a shadow. Where the Corsairs were, he had no idea.

  After gulping down a few deep breaths, he went on to the next hill. It took fifteen minutes to climb and at the top, he paused to let the rest of his force catch up. That took another twenty minutes as they straggled slowly to the crest. While he waited, he radioed the Queen and told her of the lack of enemy contact. She told him to press on with all speed. Looking around at his ragged force, he knew they wouldn’t be pressing on anywhere with any kind of speed. The darkness made any movement especially tricky since it was impossible to tell if the next step would be into an inch of mud or five feet of it.

  Still, he replied with a firm, “Yes, your Highness.”

  The attack, which had begun along a quarter of a mile hill, had turned into three dangerously narrow attacks in which a single leader went first, picking their way through the mud, trying to find a path that had some substance to it. At first there was little danger since the enemy seemed to have disappeared— then a shot rang out and Leney almost pissed himself as the bullet passed high up between his legs.

  Everyone threw themselves flat and lay in the mud, panting, waiting for the next shot or the next thousand. It seemed as if the real battle was about to begin. Minutes went by and when nothing more happened, a few of Leney’s men fired back, wasting their bullets as they hit nothing but dark sky or the darker hill.

  Slowly, Leney stood in something of a Cro-Magnon crouch. He then scurried here and there, getting his force prepared to attack. It took another twenty-five minutes and, by the time they did attack with a shout and a blast of bullets, the Corsair who had taken the shot was a hundred yards farther away. He was set up in a good spot: a squat boulder to hide behind and a good path that would take him to his next shooting position.

  There were ten others just like him covering the retreat of the Captain’s main force, which was rushing north as fast as they could, back to Muir Beach. They already had something close to an hour and a half head start and, with every bullet fired by the covering team, they gained an extra twenty minutes.

  It soon became apparent to Leney that they would never catch up in time, yet the Queen had them go on. “The wind could turn,” she told him. The wind did not turn for many hours and during that long grueling night march, half of which was spent crawling through the mud, it was whispered that the Queen had met her match in the Black Captain.

  Leney couldn’t believe his ears when the whispers finally got back to him via Deaf Mick. “You gotta be kidding,” Leney shot back. “That’s got to be the dumbest thing anyone ever said. Who is spreading this crap?”

  Deaf Mick wasn’t sure how to answer this as he had just spread the rumor to Leney. “Somes are talking, is all. And that’s all it is, just talk, no one’s ack-sually gonna do nothing.”

  “Well, if you hear any of that again, you tell them that the Captain just lost again. He lost half of what was left of his fleet and more than half his men. I’d be surprised if the rest don’t mutiny before they get back to Grays Harbor. If you ask me, the Captain is done.”

  Leney chalked this sort of talk up to exhaustion. It took hours to get to Muir Beach and by the time they got there, the last Corsair boat was being towed out of the inlet. There was nothing left to do but turn around and go back. The return trip was only slightly easier since no one was taking potshots at them. They didn’t have to crawl, though some did. Some didn’t even make it back that night.

  Just over a hundred men crowded into the few beach homes that were still standing and slept snuggled in on each other for warmth. Some took the wide way around, cutting across the peninsula on an actual paved road, before going south through Marin City, Sausalito and even the hill compound where Stu and Jenn had grown up. It added miles to their return trip, which was offset by the lack of mud.

  Leney led a straggling group back to the bridge, arriving just as the sun was rising over the battlefield. It was a sad, wet view. Between them and Rodeo Lagoon were a few hundred mostly naked bodies. They had been stripped of anything valuable and their remains left to the thousands of seagulls which were busy pecking the dead to pieces. They were not the only ones to feast. Unseen from his vantage were a few more thousand crabs and an equal number of rats gorging themselves.

  The battle was not exactly over. Five hundred Corsairs were trapped on a jutting angle of land just south of the lagoon. A ring of massive hills protected them from direct attack. Nothing would protect them from starvation. They were surrounded: on three sides by the ocean and on the fourth by the Queen’s men.

  Leney barely glanced in that direction. The only things he cared about were getting warm and dry, eating anything he could get his hands on, and finding a bed. It should have been nearly impossible to get any of this on that barren wasteland, however the Queen had a genius for logistics that was completely unrivaled. While Leney had been tramping back and forth along the Headlands, she had harnessed the strength of the remaining noncombatants.

  Food, fire, and a change of clothes were readily available, while shelter and clean beds were only a short boat ride away.

  As much as he wanted to sleep, he thought he should check in with the Queen, who had a huge white tent set up in a sheltered spot called Battery Spencer. It was one of the many reinforced concrete “hard points” built to protect the Bay area at the turn of the previous century.

  The Queen’s tent was so large that it should’ve been called a pavilion, and it was so perfectly white on the outside that Leney expected to find a throne inside, or maybe a series of banquet tables overflowing with food and wine. What he found instead were thirty-two occupied hospital gurneys, blood everywhere, bodies wrapped in sheets and cast in the corner, two sleeping assistants, and a haggard Queen, who looked more tired than Leney.

  She was also a bloody mess. She had her arms elbow deep in a man’s chest. Leney swallowed heavily at the sight, causing the cut across his throat to sing out in sharp pain.

  “It’s Leney,” she sneered upon seeing him.

  “I can see that,” she replied, with a quick smile his way. Leney hesitated and she shook her head. “Don’t worry about Eve, she’s being cranky.”

  “Any wonder why?” Eve snapped. “We could be sleeping or getting something to eat. Hell, I’d rather be getting it on with Leney than wallowing in all this blood and this wasted time. You know he’s not going to live.” The Queen shushed herself, which only made Eve angrier. “He’s one of them. He’s a Corsair, Jillybean. We should be saving your talents for someone who counts.”

  “Should I come back at a better time?” Leney
asked.

  The Queen’s blue eyes were darker than usual and the sneer more pronounced. “A better time? Look, Leney, I didn’t realize just how ugly you are. About that roll in the hay? It’s a no-go unless you bring your own paper bag.”

  Jillybean suddenly made a bloody fist. “Shut up, Eve!” She glared until her eyes cleared. She then apologized to Leney and said, “If you’ll give me a situation report, I would appreciate it. Any casualties from your attack?” Leney hesitated at the question. He honestly didn’t know. His entire focus had been on finding the enemy, enveloping them, and destroying them.

  “Not any to speak of,” he answered, glad that the Queen was so focused on the operation that she didn’t seem to have noticed his long pause. “We really didn’t get into any action. They retreated, and we chased. We would have got them, I think, but they kept setting these little traps.” He did his best to explain the difficulties he faced, but she didn’t seem too impressed.

  When he was done, he happened to glance down at the man she was operating on and realized that he recognize him. “That’s Trevor Waldron of The Hammer. He’s a Corsair, but not a bad guy compared to some. Do you really think he’ll make it?”

  “Fifty-fifty. He’s a bleeder. It’s what happens when you drink alcohol to excess. You can smell the gin wafting up.” Her nose wrinkled and then twitched. “Could you do me a favor and scratch my nose, please.”

  He gave the tip of her small nose a light rubbing, saying, “I heard alcohol thins out the blood. So…any word on Waldron’s boat? The Hammer was a good ship. Some say it was a little too flashy, you know. Still, it was a good, sound ship.” It was more than just good and its reputation as flashy was well founded. It was a gorgeous forty-seven footer with a wide, accommodating deck and deep, spacious cabins that Waldron kept in a state of perfection.

  “I have no idea about the boat. He was found on land, whatever that might suggest. Also, alcohol doesn't actually thin the blood. As the liver deteriorates over time from over-exposure to alcohol, it slows the production of blood components called platelets, which are responsible for clotting. Ah, here’s our problem. The right gastroepiploic vein has been severed.”

  Leney turned away as blood fountained up. “I should be going. If you don’t mind, I want to check on my men and then get some shuteye.” He was really going to ask around about The Hammer and then get some sleep.

  “Of course. You’ve had a hard night. Six hours is all I can afford to let you have. Sorry, but I want that pocket reduced by nightfall and in two days I want us ready to move out.”

  “We’re going after the Black Captain so soon?”

  “No. Even wounded as he is, the Black Captain is too great a foe for us in his home waters. He will have a hundred tricks up his sleeve, and if anything, the night’s fighting has proven once again the ascendancy of the defense over the offense. As we must attack and attack sooner rather than later, we’re going to need more men. In two days, we sail against the Guardians.”

  Leney made a sour face. “The Guardians? Really? I don’t see it. Have you heard about their wall? It’s not as big as the one up in Bainbridge, but it’s still a beast. It’s one of the reasons the Black Captain wasn’t in a tearing hurry to come south. And the people…” He made another face. “You know they’re Christians, right?”

  “I do.”

  “I mean like super Christian. Even worse than before.” When she cocked an eyebrow, the way that only she could, he began to stammer, “I-I mean like weirdly Christian. They go to church every day and they don’t drink. I really don’t think they’ll mix with our kind.”

  The eyebrow sailed higher. She paused, a clamp in one hand and a bowtie of intestines in the other. “There is no ‘our’ kind, Leney, there is only my people. A person might have once been a blood-thirsty Corsair, or a diseased Sacramento girl, or Santa Clara gambler, but now he or she is one of my subjects. The same will be true of the Guardians. They will render unto Caesar, or else.”

  “Of course, your Highness. We just have to get past their wall.”

  The wall was the least of her problems concerning the Guardians. She needed a wall of her own to keep her evil contained inside…an image of a burning house flashed in her mind. It had only been three days since she had burned Kimberley Weatherly to death, and had stabbed Matthew Gloom in the throat, and hung some Corsair from the mast of her ship.

  One “slip up” like that in front of the Guardians and she would lose them, likely for good. Did she dare turn to drugs to keep her other selves in check? Would her liver hold up? One pill too many would cause her to develop hepatorenal syndrome or spontaneous bacterial peritonitis, or simply send her into a coma.

  “It’ll be just for a few days,” she told herself.

  Chapter 20

  “I’m sick of boats,” Jenn groaned from within the pile of blankets which she kept herself wrapped in when not on deck or dealing with Rob LaBar’s wound, which, sadly was not healing well at all. It seeped grey fluid on a constant basis and was clearly infected.

  It was the third day since they had fled from the Hell Quake. It had been an eventful three days, especially that first day when they had been with faced black boats and guns at every turn. It had started with them waking up with the Queen’s ship so close she had recognized Jillybean standing at the bow with the light wind in her hair and her black coat flapping around her.

  Although he was still feeling the effects of the poison they had swallowed, Mike performed a miracle of seamanship and was in the middle of pulling off an unbelievable escape only to run smack dab into the entire Corsair fleet.

  In an insane move, Mike turned The Wind Ripper into the heart of the black fleet. Jenn thought she was seconds from fainting dead away. Everywhere she looked were Corsairs. They were defenseless, and Jenn’s disguise of a ski cap and a scowl wouldn’t hold up under any scrutiny. Then Mike had given the fleet a cheer and began jerking the black Corsair flag up and down so it couldn’t be missed. He then turned around again to make it look as though he were joining the chase as the Hell Quake fled.

  In minutes, there had been Corsair ships ranging up on either side of The Wind Ripper, asking about Cannan. “He’s dead,” Stu yelled back, just as Mike ducked the boat into a low cloud, hauled her around and cut under the Corsair ship on their right. When the ships broke out into the open, the missing Wind Ripper was quickly noticed. This began a chase within a chase.

  They fled south, ducking from squall to squall, doubling back, slashing through the Corsair formations, making the most impossible and unlikely moves until, after many stressful hours, they had finally managed to elude their pursuers. Mike and Stu were exhausted from the chase, and Jenn wasn’t much better off. Unlike them, she couldn’t rest; she still had to look at Rob LaBar’s leg.

  She was afraid that looking was about all she could do for him. Their medical supplies were terribly limited, and the bullet had done extensive damage. Still, she lowered the sails and restrung the main so that it hung over the middle of the deck like a tarp to keep the rain off of them. They had no anesthesia except for a few quarts of horrible bathtub gin that she found in a locked box in the captain’s cabin.

  Its smell was so pungent and sharp that it made her dizzy just opening the first bottle.

  After watching Jenn lay out her surgical instruments, a white-faced Rob LaBar drank the gin until his ulcers ached and his head swam. With his blood loss, it didn’t take much to get him drunk and once drunk, he backed himself into a corner and raved about torture and a girl named Rita. He had to be tied down just so Jenn could inspect the wound. When she cut open his leg to get a better look, he practically screamed and was so loud that Stu wanted to punch him into unconsciousness. LaBar then puked up blood and gin onto the deck of The Wind Ripper, which made the normally more reticent Mike want to punch him, also.

  “No one’s punching anyone,” Jenn hissed as she squinted in at the gory wound. The muscle in his thigh was so torn up that she didn’t know wher
e to begin. In the dim grey light of the wet morning, it looked like a bowl of bloody hamburger, which she would have to turn back into steak. “Get him another drink of the gin. Just tell him it’s from Rita.”

  Stu was able to coax another couple of tumblers into him, and much to everyone’s relief, he passed out. Jenn went right to work, tackling the bleeders first so she could see what was going on. She had only gotten three clamped and was struggling after a fourth when there came the sound of a sail flapping from out of a low cloud.

  Everyone froze, their ears straining to hear through the patter of rain and the growing wind. No real straining was needed, in truth. The sound of the flapping sail was punctuated by a cough, a low, grunting laugh, and a splash of piss as someone urinated over the side of a boat.

  Very quickly, more and more of these sounds came to them until it became painfully obvious that they had become surrounded by a large number of boats. Each of them thought they had somehow managed to float back into the Corsair fleet, but, as they were about to find out, it was the Queen’s fleet. It had taken up its secondary position, twelve miles due west of the Golden Gate Bridge, where it was hidden from the Corsairs by distance, the curve of the earth, and the desolate Farallon Islands.

  Everyone on the deck of The Wind Ripper was frozen in place. Jenn and Stu, kneeling on either side of LaBar, didn’t know what to do, while Mike at the wheel was afraid to do anything for fear of making noise and calling attention to them.

  This state of inaction couldn’t last.

  “Wha? What are my handsh doin’ like dis?” Rob suddenly slurred, trying to sit up.

  Stu clamped a desperate hand over LaBar’s mouth, while Mike rushed about on tip-toe to get his ship ready to flee as quietly as possible. He had barely tied off the mainsail before the wind blew away the mists and showed them that this fleet was even larger than the one they had just escaped from. A hundred and thirty ships surrounded them, bobbing gently up and down on the swell.