Abney Park's The Wrath Of Fate

by Robert Brown

  “Surrender with no more protest, and we’ll set you adrift in your dingies. From here you should be able to return to the shore, but your ship we take! This ship is too crowded. I’ve got a boat load of Massai here that I think look like they could use it.”

  In the months that followed, the seas became thick with tribal African warriors. We taught them to sail, and use cannon, and together we sought other slave ships and their escorts. Two ships quickly became four, and four became eight and then twenty, and so on. Each slave ship they overtook added sailors and warriors to their crews, and each escort ship they defeated added to the size of their armada.

  In under a year slave trade was eradicated between Africa and the Americas. Soon the nations of the world had to ask permission from the United Tribal Navy of Africa for permission to sail through their waters. UTNA was swift, and strong, and merciless.

  The night of our rescue, as I sat in the captain’s cabin, undressing for bed, I noticed in the corner of the room a device that looked like an antique typewriter with a small screen TV screen attached to the top. A plaque on the bottom read: “Chronofax, by Calgori Industries”. Now how did that get here, I wondered.

  I went over to it and typed,

  Dear little boy.

  It looks like you were right, so I dropped that worthless life. Things are really looking up for us. Wait till I tell you what you will become when you grow up! Rock star. Airship Captain. Pirate!

  Oh, and you’ll also be a hero. Better practice your swordsmanship.

  As I typed this message to myself, I could swear I remembered receiving it…was I typing this from memory, or making it up?

  I pulled out my journal, and sketched these lyrics:

  Letters Between a Little Boy

  and Himself As An Adult

  Dear Mr. Brown,

  One day I’ll be you and

  Although I’m only eight now,

  You need to hear my rules.

  Never stop playing

  Never stop dreaming and

  And be careful not to

  Turn into someone we’d hate.

  Dear little boy,

  I’m doing my best up here but

  It’s a thankless job and

  Nobody feels the same.

  You work long hours

  Watch your credit rating

  Pay your taxes and

  Prepare to die

  Hey, Mr. Brown,

  That can’t be what life is like!

  I’ve watched some movies,

  And I’ve read some books

  Life should be exciting

  And sometimes scary but

  What you’re describing doesn’t

  Seem worth the time

  Hey little boy,

  I think you were always right

  I’ve dropped that worthless life and

  I’m moving on

  Life should be adventure

  I’m stealing back my soul

  I’ve lost too many years now

  I’m awake

  NEW PLANS

  “Seriously, what the hell was that?” said Daniel as he strode into the map room. Most of the crew, Dr. Calgori, and myself had assembled to talk about our rescue from the previous day.

  “That was bloody brilliant, is what it was!” replied the salty giant, Mongrel, once again mopping under his eye patch with a dirty rag, but grinning from ear to ear. “It was like a good round’o piracy, but instead of stealing from people, we was stealing people back for dem’selves!” Then he pause, with a concerned look. “Not that I’d know what piracy was like. I was just imagining what it must be like, I guess.” And he nervously looked at his feet.

  “It was drunken, emotional, rashness,” said the Doctor “But I also agree with Mongrel, it was brilliant. It would appear the man we borrowed from the future has leadership skills, as well as piloting skills. I set him to learn to pilot the Ophelia and nothing more. Yet before you know it, he’s barking orders and you’re all following them, much to the benefit of mankind!”

  “You’re over stating what happened,” said Daniel dryly. “The crew was following orders from him, because the last captain was also our pilot.”

  “We’ll see,” said Calgori. “In the meantime, I think he should take over captain’s duties. We don’t currently have a captain, and the crew seems eager to follow him. Plus, he carries a broader knowledge of history than any of us. We need someone in charge with a bird’s eye-view of what will happen over the next hundred years.”

  Daniel opened his mouth again to object, but Calgori interrupted him “No, this wouldn’t be following standard procedure. But I dare say we are not, in fact, following any laws but our own at the moment. If you press gang a ship full of pirates and criminals, you’ll end up with a ship run by pirates and criminals! Who among us would care to return to Victorian England at this point and offer up our ship’s log, outlining our theft, and drunken attacks on what would have otherwise been a profitable enterprise for the English crown for the next hundred years?”

  No one had a response.

  “At this point, I think we are now on our own agenda. Robert, will you do us the honor of captaining this vessel?” Calgori asked.

  “I will!” I said, and the crew cheered! Well, some of them made enthusiastic noises, if I remember correctly. Daniel certainly did not.

  “So then what do we do now? Are we to be employed with escorting the Maasai on the quest to overthrow slave ships?” Tanner said.

  “We could. But no, I think we have a greater duty.” Doctor Calgori replied, “Throughout time, there have been incredible injustices to mankind, by mankind. Right up until our glorious age, mankind never stopped inflicting terrors on itself. And unless I’m greatly mistaken, our new Captain, Robert, can probably tell us of a few that happened after our time.” Here he paused for me to speak.

  “It’s true,” I said “ Every decade seems to have its world wars, and some of them have eclipsed anything you have ever seen. We’ve had government planned nation-wide starvation, and genocide…and that’s just off the top of my head”

  “I feel we have a machine now that, for the first time since the dawn of man, can actually UNDO the things mankind has done wrong,” the doctor continued. “It won’t be easy, rulers do not easily change their mind by persuasion, so I’m afraid we’ll have to stop them by force.”

  Daniel interrupted, “But a captain should have…” He was interrupted by Dr. Calgori dramatically collapsing into his cane and said, “This would be easier if I hadn’t gotten so damned old! I feel so tired now. Kristina, can you help me to my cabin? Robert, speak with Daniel. Think up our next move! Let’s right the wrongs of history…Together!” He trailed off in a coughing fit, as Kristina helped him out of the room.

  Daniel protested, but less now than before, and it was not long before he was starting to get excited about this new mission. The more we made plans, the more excited he got. He was a proper military man, but he was also an American army officer, who I am guessing was imprisoned after being caught on a covert mission. He seemed glad to no longer be pressed-ganged into service for another country. We didn’t stop our enthusiastic planning until just before sunrise.

  Kristina told me later that as she helped the Doctor into bed, she asked him why he so surprisingly pushed for me as the captain.

  “When I first created this vessel,” he said, “It was for science. I didn’t care how that science was applied after I had finished, I just wanted to achieve it, and I couldn’t achieve it without military funding. But the more I heard of how they planned to use this vessel, the more I realized I had to get it out of their hands, or at least change the plan. Daniel was likely to be next-in-line to command it, and he’s a good man, but his nature is to follow the orders and objectives laid out to him at the start of a mission by a superior.”

  And then he took a more apologetic tone. “But with Robert as Captain there seems little chance that this vessel will continue on its original miss
ion. He was not a pirate, so I didn’t see him using it for personal gain. My impression was that he was motivated more for the sake of earning the title of ‘hero’ then anything else. That seemed the least dangerous motivator for a new captain.”

  “I’m surprised how well you seem to know Robert, after such a short time.” Kristina then asked while helping the doctor into his bunk, “But are you saying you did something to the old captain?”

  “Of course I did!” he answered with mock pride, “Well, I put things into motion that ended him. People are easy to motivate, and motivating pirates towards revenge is particularly easy.”

  The doctor laid his gray fragile head on the rough pillow, “And I feel no guilt. If he hadn’t made so many enemies in the short time he’d been captain, he wouldn’t have been so easy to dispatch.” He closed his eyes, and mumbled, “Imagine the damage he would have done if the world’s most powerful weapon had been left in his hands.”

  THE BATTLE OF ARCOT

  To hear history books tell the story, the Battle of Arcot was a heroic example of an underdog, Robert Clive, fighting against insurmountable odds. By “using his clever wit”, he “overcomes insurmountable odds and saves the day”. In truth, the odds were grossly in his favor. Robert Clive took more than the city of Arcot with more than five thousand soldiers, easily defeating a part-time militia, seizing food, supplies, wells, and enslaving the city in the name of the East India Company. By holding the city of Arcot, the British Crown divided the forces of Chanda Sahib, which would weaken India’s defenses against this conquering nation. Ultimately this would prove to be the fall of India as an independent nation for next one hundred years to come.

  Even if you overlook the military advantage of holding the city of Arcot, you still have a city being held by an evil empire. I’m not passing judgment on England; to the best of my knowledge most countries have been “Evil Empires” at some time or another. This was their era. I lived in India as a small boy while my mother did anthropological fieldwork there, so when conversation in the map room turned to “what shall we do next” it occurred to me that if we overturned that one battle, we could overturn decades of the slavery of India.

  As we appeared over the city in 1751, Clive’s fortifications of the city easily held out against the surrounding forces of Chanda Sahib.

  From above, the city looked like the geometric pattern of a Persian carpet. A patchwork of walls and buildings with circular towers placed at each corner, British cannons bristled from the tower sides like points of stars. There were square courtyards, with little flower-shaped wells or fountains in the middle, and little patchwork-like buildings, crawling with people. Lines of regimented soldiers could be seen placed around crowds of the native city dwellers.

  We were still very high up, and we could see tents to the southwest, and barracks, and the war beasts of Chanda’s forces. Not a small force, but it was ill-equipped to withstand the British cannons Clive had placed in the many towers around the city. Even if Chanda could get to the walls without the cannons pummeling his soldiers into the bloody sand, all he could do is stand at the gate of the city and knock.

  The hot wind of summer dusk was blowing little spirals of dust below us as we slipped over the walls of the city toward the siege camps. Boys, tiny in the distance below us, ran along the city walls yelling up at us. Some met the butt of a rifle from Clive’s border guards.

  We descended our rope ladders at gunpoint in the middle of a empty elephant paddock. Ironically, one of our Victorian sailors had learned to speak Hindi when he was stationed in the still occupied India one hundred years in the future. He had a tough time convincing turbaned soldiers that we shared a common enemy, and were here to help. It was obvious that we could help, our flying warship was holding Chanda’s soldiers in awe. Our skin color and accents were no different from the enemy’s (with a few exceptions among the crew) but I think in the end it was our clothes that convinced them we had nothing to do with the East India Company.

  That night we met with Chanda and his generals. We told them we were sent from a country called “Imairika”, and that the English were our common foe. Hell, it might have been true at that time. We made plans that night, and preparations for two days, and during this time the camp was filled with hustling craftsmen.

  As the morning sun of the third dawn stained the city a peach-gold color, Robert Clive’s soldiers saw a puzzling site. Over the city walls appeared the sails of a ship, surrounding a massive canvas balloon. As the hull of our ship appeared, the soldiers sounded alarms, and ran with rifles to the walls.

  On the city towers, cannons fired their shots, but our height was greater than they were used to firing on and they narrowly missed our airship. Their shots fell back into the city amongst the troops now swarming the walls. Ophelia’s cannons erupted in an angry retort – dozens of shots causing the soldiers in the southern tower to leap into the moat, while the Ophelia’s cannon turned the northeast tower to dust.

  Now the Ophelia was high above the southwest wall of the city, and under it hung a huge platform, nearly as big as Ophelia’s hull. Her bow dipped as the ship and platform slipped down toward the city’s main open square.

  A company of one hundred British soldiers marched orderly into the square. They were regimented, and well groomed in their blue-gray uniforms – freshly laundered by the women of Arcot – and tall black boots – polished nightly by orphaned children of the city. They acted unimpressed by our flying ship, and raised their rifles toward the platform we carried, awaiting the Indian soldiers they expected to run out. But more than one eyebrow was raised at what they actually saw.

  As the massive timbers of the platform kicked the courtyard’s dust in the air, up stood a half-dozen armored elephants. On their brass-plated backs were turbaned soldiers armed with pachyderm-mounted swivel cannons (borrowed from Ophelia), and even a couple full-sized cannons. The massive beasts thundered forward into the British soldiers, scattering their ranks as the swivel guns pounded and crumbled the perches of the snipers on the walls around them.

  After the elephants left the platform, a dozen ropes dropped from the belly of Ophelia, and down slid our pirates and myself; pistols tucked in belts, swords strapped to our backs. At this point, our crew had had many months of fighting together, and this kind of attack was old hat to us.

  As soon as the courtyard defenses were disburse, we turned the largest elephants toward the gates. These massive gates stood under a huge stone bridge, and faced the outside world with six inch thick iron plates. But from the inside, our target was simply one large wooden beam that horizontally braced the doors, two foot by three feet thick.

  Three or four British soldiers were stationed behind the doors, and each dared no more then a single hurried shot toward the charging, armored elephants before fleeing to small, side passage ways.

  To protect the elephants’ ears from the sound of the cannon, each had been packed that morning with clay and cloth. This kept the beasts from rearing up as the massive ten pounders shot through the wooden beam, splitters and smoke filled the air as they ran on. The ear-packs also kept the beasts from hearing their master’s commands to “Thehar Jaana!” and the gates smashed open as the stunned elephants tripped on the wooden splitters and rolled, crushing their riders and armor.

  Clive’s soldiers stood on the dusty bricks in the doorway, rifles at their shoulders. As the first of the Indians rushed in the doors, British guns went off. Bullets found their mark in the massive shoulders of Chandra’s front guard but that hardly slowed their pace. Their objective was to push back the British guard enough to allow the rest of the army to enter the city.

  I saw this from the center of the square, and gestured to the elephants’ riders to come in from behind them. The ground then erupted in front of me, and a group of five gray coated infantry men ran in firing at me.

  I leaped toward a small arched tunnel in the wall, and ran into the dark wet interior. I didn’t look back, but in a few minutes
I heard them enter the tunnel behind me. There were no turns, only doors that I could not risk the time to check and see if they were locked, but ahead of me I could see green-golden daylight.

  Soon I burst into the light, and it was as if I’d entered a new world. The sound of gunfire was distant and muted. My feet slipped on hard packed red mud, and all around me was lush thick vegetation: vines, leaves the size of dinner plates, and tree trunks the size of small houses.

  There were more rifles firing behind me, these guys were determined! They must have noticed I was giving orders, and figured I was worth the pursuit.

  I stumbled forward. The mud clung to my boots as I ran, and with each step my feet got heavier with the weight of it. Eventually I found myself running on ancient carved stones. I was running out of breath. Cardio is hard to achieve on a flying boat with few large rooms! Ahead of me I saw some nearly faller arches and red stone domes of an old shrine.