by James Axler
“You would do anything to make your son a blood heir to the Iron Throne of the Thousand Islands,” Glassman replied, oddly calm. “Why do you think I would do less for my son to be free?”
Without speaking, Lord Baron Kinnison raised the blaster and thumbed back the hammer. Dr. Glassman stood there with the blaster in his hand, knowing that he could never use it. The punishment for attacking the baron would bring bloody horror to his family forever. He had played his card, father to father. The gambit would be accepted, or he would be chilled. That was all there was to it.
A long minute passed with only the sounds of the ocean breeze and the soft cries of the newborn child.
“Accepted,” Kinnison said, easing down the hammer with his gore-streaked thumb. “They go free and you die.”
“Agreed,” Glassman said, and entered the tiny cottage. There were raised voices, a woman’s scream, the soft chug of a silenced weapon firing again and again, and then the man walked out carrying a tiny wiggling bundle of life.
Glassman and the infant took the front seats, and Kinnison squeezed his bulk into the rear cargo area to stay as far away from his son as possible. Kinnison opened a canvas satchel and started to toss cylindrical grens through the open doorway of the cottage.
Gunning the engine to life, the doctor drove away from the cottage and passed the fence just as there was a brilliant flash of light and the first of the white phosphorous charges ignited. Chem flame shot out the door and windows, and soon the entire clearing was a roaring inferno, flames licking into the sky for a hundred feet. Kinnison watched the destruction with some degree of satisfaction. Willy Peter didn’t burn as hot as thermite, but it made much less smoke. Let people think what they wanted, but nobody would know the source of the child but himself and the healer. And when Glassman was aced by his hand, Kinnison would order one of the steam-powered PT boats to find and destroy the runaway slaves in the stolen ship. Setting the man’s family free, and letting them stay free were two entirely different matters.
As they drove over the plains of grass, the jungle rapidly approaching, a sea breeze carried the smell of the burning cottage to the Hummer and the child began to cry.
Every jounce of the wag bringing pain to his sores, Kinnison bristled at the noise. “We’ll never smuggle him into the fortress this way. Silence the thing!”
Slowing carefully, Glassman offered the newborn a clean rag dipped in coconut milk, and it started sucking happily, kicking tiny legs.
“All hail Corbet Kinnison,” Glassman said, “heir to the Iron Throne of the Thousand Islands, admiral of the fleet, general of the army, master of the black powder.”
“Not yet,” Kinnison said, glancing across the island to the imposing fortress on top of the main mountain of his island ville. “But very soon.”
Avoiding the farms with their slaves and overseers, Glassman drove the Hummer through an arid stretch of land yet to be reclaimed from the last acid rainfall until reaching a rough culvert, actually a cooled river of lava from the island’s active volcano. Here the baron painfully stepped from the wag and watched it drive off before starting his long journey toward the fortress on the hill.
Walking was difficult for the overweight man, and he was drenched in sweat by the time he reached the end of the culvert and emerged onto a great grassy plain.
Pausing on a low hill to catch his breath, the baron looked out upon the world he ruled. Tendrils of dark smoke rose from the mines, which delivered the basic ingredients for black powder, and a good mile away were the mills that mixed and rolled the explosive into usable form. More farms spread into the jungle hills, tiny plows pulled by slaves harvesting the grain and fruit for his table. Nearby stood the slave pens and the execution yard. Keep the dead in sight and the living will obey, his father had always said, and he had been correct.
Scattered among the hills and forest were the blockhouses filled with Firebirds, the real source of his power. Most of the fools believed he ruled the Thousand Islands by controlling the secret of how to make the black powder. It wasn’t true. The unstoppable missiles could blow the gate off any ville and sink the largest ship in minutes. None dared to stand against him as long as the Firebirds were his to command.
Once, a rogue sec man had turned one of the rockets on the young baron, and the would-be killer couldn’t believe the sight when the weapon curved away from the baron in midflight and headed straight for the traitor, exploding his body into bloody smoke. Black powder brought Kinnison sec men, beautiful women to bed and lots of slaves, but his word was obeyed because of the Firebirds. If that secret ever fell from his hands, then nothing could save the man from a terrible retribution.
A stone castle stood on a distant mountaintop, its imposing array of Firebirds undetectable in the manicured gardens and trimmed hedges. Armed sec men patrolled the grounds day and night. A monumental flight of stairs, carved from the living rock of the mountainside, led down to the walled ville on the beach where his people lived in constant fear of his wrath. In the water were countless fishing canoes trawling the rich waters, and several large sailing ships called windjammers that used sails instead of steam engines. Prizes won in battle with the renegades to the south, they now served both as items to be sold to villes that needed to increase their fleets and as physical protection for the vulnerable dockyards.
On the beach were the great docks that housed his fleet of PT boats, salvaged from a predark museum and repaired over many long years. Armed with Firebirds, those vessels were his iron fist to rob the weak villes, threaten the strong ones and beat back the growing menace of the pirates.
Feeling better, Kinnison started forward once more, mopping his face with a clean handkerchief. As he neared the estate, a bell began to ring and suddenly sec men came running from every direction with drawn blasters. Baron Kinnison stopped and watched as the guards spread out in a protective circle around him.
“Sir, you were walking the grounds alone?” a sergeant queried, sounding puzzled. “Is that wise, my lord?”
“Should I fear an attack on my own island?” Kinnison asked, sneering in reply.
The man blanched. “Ah, no, my lord! Of course not. I mean, that is…”
“Shut up, ass,” Kinnison snapped, brushing past the guard. Competent sec men were so difficult to find. They either obeyed every command blindly and without thought, or else tried to ace the baron and take over. Nobody could be trusted, and traitors abounded.
Trying to pretend he enjoyed arduous walking, the baron gave no sign of his fatigue as he crossed a decorative bridge arching over a burbling moat of clear mountain water. Tall hedges blocked a clear view of the mansion now, making it doubly hard for snipers to find a target. As Kinnison maneuvered through the maze, the gardeners and passing slave girls dropped to their knees in homage. Exiting the hedges, he encountered a group of visiting barons talking with one another, discussing some nonsense. Probably how to cheat him on the price of the next shipment of black powder. Bastards. As required, the visitors touched their chests and bowed their heads as a sign of respect.
Lord Baron Kinnison sneered. Respect, his ass. They feared his Firebirds, nothing more. Past a splashing fountain, he turned and headed for the side door of the massive structure. The mansion used to be some sort of government building, but the thick walls and lack of windows made it a perfect fortress. Every door was fronted by a low sandbag with armed sec men behind, and more guards walked the rooftop, equipped with bamboo tubes packed with black powder and sharp pieces of coral. The grisly results of detonating these bombs near living flesh were most interesting to see, from a great distance.
“Morning, Lord Baron!” a young sec man called out, and snapped a salute.
The older sec man snarled and cuffed the other to the ground. “Idiot!” he roared. “Never salute with your gun hand! Do it again, and I’ll see you in chains!”
Kinnison nodded at the exchange. At least some of his guards knew their job. Before entering the fortress, the baron glanc
ed down the great stairs and out in the harbor. The view was magnificent, the rising sun filling the sea with crimson fire. Then the baron noticed a lone PT boat steaming into the dockyard. Badly battered, the craft was riddled with holes, white smoke spurting from damage to its aft steam engine, and it was listing badly as if taking on water. For a brief moment, Kinnison thought the craft was Lieutenant Craig Brandon’s ship, PT 264, but that was impossible. Baron Kinnison had sent his chief sec man off with ten of the stout fighting craft, armed to the gunwales with Firebirds, to handle the problem of getting more flash from Cold Harbor ville. It was unthinkable that only a single vessel would return from such a simple task. Nothing less than a full fleet of pirate vessels could even challenge such an armada. He turned for the door and went inside. Just a trick of the light reflected off the dancing waters of the ocean. Nothing more.
But as he waddled along the cool corridor of the predark post office, the lord baron felt an unfamiliar shiver run down his spine. Odd, it almost felt like fear.
AFTER A HUGE breakfast, Kinnison went to the throne room to listen to petitioners from the lesser islands try to bargain for more black powder at lower prices. He really should have been walking through the mills, making sure the overseers were storing the powder properly. The last accident removed a chunk of the hillside larger than most villes. But the lord baron wanted the lesser barons to be present when he received the good news, not grubby techs and sec men.
The room was packed with visiting barons from other island villes and their attendants. Nobody was armed, not even with eating knives. Only his sec men standing guard in the corners were allowed to carry weapons in the presence of the lord baron. The huge room was lit by smoky torches even though it was morning, as there were no windows for an assassin to shoot through. The doors were double thick and banded with iron, and the walls of the throne room were covered with carpeting stolen from the ruins of a skyscraper on Forbidden Island. It cut down on the echoes of raised voices, which often hurt his ears these days.
A raised wooden platform supported his specially built throne with blasters hidden in both armrests, and steel plating under the seat was protection against bombs. Female servants stood attendant on either side holding trays of wine and small fried birds. More servants walked through the crowd offering brass mugs of tree-bark tea or warm coconut milk to the dignitaries. All accepted, but few drank. Hours passed as barons and sons of barons placed their cases before Kinnison. To some he said yes; to most it was no. It all depended on whether they looked him in the face when they spoke. Those that did were dangerous and got nothing, but the ones who averted their eyes out of fear received at least a portion of what they needed. But never all—nobody ever got everything they wanted. Keep them hungry and off balance. Ruling a ville was simply a matter of blasters, but controlling a hundred villes was a different matter entirely.
Accepting a mug from a full-breasted serving girl, Kinnison reached into a pocket and extracted a small purple capsule of predark design. He broke it apart between his strong fingers and sprinkled the powdery contents into the brew. He drank deeply and soon felt the telltale rush of warmth through his body. Jolt was the only thing keeping him alive these days. It cut his pain by half and gave the man back some small measure of his once formidable strength. Flash helped the open sores on his skin, but only jolt eased his pain. Unfortunately, he was needing larger and larger doses to achieve the same results and knew that one day he would cross the line and overdose, hopefully to die before wakening chained in his own dungeon. Anything but that.
“But these girls are not norms,” the brother of a baron from a southern island declared once more. “They are muties, and rarely speak because they’re afraid of showing their forked tongues.”
“Forked?” Kinnison repeated, trying not to get too impatient. The jolt had him wide awake now, and he tried not to glance at the main doors. Where the hell was Glassman? His family was already far to sea in their boat. Could the healer be holding his son hostage? Unthinkable!
The young man nodded. “Yes, my lord. Gods, they are beautiful and can pleasure a man in ways no gaudy slut would dare. But death follows the muties, and I have found that several have been seen in other villes.” He paused. “And they all look alike.”
“Sisters,” Kinnison declared, bored with the subject. If the girls were trouble, fuck them, then chill them. Or do it the other way around; he really didn’t care.
“No, my lord, they are identical. Absolutely identical in every way.”
The crowd murmured unhappily at this news.
“Clones?” Griffin asked softly.
As always, the bony man was scrubbed painfully clean, from his pointed beard to his soft leather moccasins. His clothing was plain, almost nondescript, and if he was armed, no blaster or blade was in sight. The lack of a visible weapon frightened most people, although they couldn’t quite say why.
Kinnison glowered at the high chancellor. “Crap,” he snorted. “My father chilled them all. There are no clones anymore.”
Just then, cheering could be heard from outside the throne room. Suddenly, the double doors were thrown open and in came a large group of laughing people, led by Glassman.
“My lord, it’s a boy!” he cried, carrying the swaddled bundle into the throne room of the baron’s fortress. “You have a son!”
“I have an heir!” Kinnison roared, brandishing both bandaged fists into the air. “An heir! Nobody works for the rest of the day! Wine for everybody, and it is forbidden to whip the slaves until nightfall!”
The crowd of attendees erupted into cheers, lifting high their mugs made from old 120 mm tank shells. From somewhere in the fortress a chorus began to sing, and fireworks could be heard exploding outside as could the crackle of blasters.
Reverently, a midwife placed a clean white blanket on a sturdy table, and Glassman lay the swaddled infant before the lord baron. “The ship carrying my family is long gone,” he whispered. “I am yours.”
“I know,” Kinnison replied, leaning closer to see the child as if for the first time. The boy was large, ten, maybe twelve pounds, and had a wild stock of coal-black hair. Incredibly, he seemed to actually resemble the baron slightly. But then, it was hard to recall what the baron looked like under his layers of encrusted bandages.
“Corbet,” the baron proclaimed, grinning so wide his lips bled at the corners. “His name shall be Corbet Kinnison, the twenty-seventh lord baron of the Thousand Islands!”
The room erupted in cheers once more, and now an army of slaves arrived to serve predark wine in crystal goblets. One by one, the barons lucky enough to be present for the wonderful event filed by the infant to pay their respects.
“Magnificent!” an old baron said, nodding at the tiny pink face. “A perfectly healthy norm. Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Kinnison said, reaching out a hand toward the babe, then forcing himself to withdraw it. There was no way he would chance spoiling everything now by giving the little one the Red Death.
“And how is the mother?” Griffin asked, his hands tucked into the loose sleeves of his jacket.
The guards in the corners raised their blaster at the movement, and the chancellor quickly withdrew his hands and kept them in plain sight.
“Lady Susan died giving birth, noble sir,” the midwife answered sadly, giving a slight curtsy. “The delivery was long and difficult.”
“I see, what a tragedy,” Griffin said, stroking his beard. “I will attend to her burial needs personally. Such a glorious day to be marked by tragedy.”
“That is life,” the old baron said.
Kinnison agreed, and carefully watched the chancellor disappear into the crowd. There was something in the way the man had spoken that greatly disturbed the baron. He debated having the man chilled on general principle. His father had always told him that only the dead couldn’t hurt you.
“Looks exactly like you, my lord,” a baron from the western islands said in a measured tone.
/> The lord baron narrowed his cold eyes and started to draw a blaster. “And what does that mean, shiteater?” he growled in an icy voice.
The visiting baron went pale and began to sputter apologies, when a bedraggled sec man stumbled into the throne room pushing his way past the armed guards and guests.
“Who dares!” Kinnison began, then saw it was Lieutenant Brandon. The baron scowled at the man’s appearance, clothes torn and bloody, his face slashed with a dozen half-healed scars, some of his black hair burned away, and an expression that announced serious trouble.
“My lord, we need to speak in private,” Brandon said quickly, giving the most cursory of salutes. His hand was bandaged, and it was obvious two of his fingers had been broken.
Kinnison felt a blind rage build at the implied discourtesy, especially on such a day as this! Then he saw the grim determination in the sec chief’s face and forced down his fury.
“My private chambers,” he directed, and rose to his feet. “The audience is over for today. Come back tomorrow.”
As the fat man waddled for the door, the slaves and bodyguards hurried to follow, but not getting close enough to chance touching their master and catching his dread sickness.
“What the fuck was that about?” a baron muttered softly.
Another sipped his wine before speaking. “Perhaps,” he said in a hushed tone, “those clones that don’t exist have come to call upon our lord and master.”
“Wouldn’t that be a shame,” another added, failing to hide his smile.
“Yes, wouldn’t it just be—” he paused to find the correct word “—a total disaster.”
“Poor man would never be able to fight the muties and defend this island, would he?”
“That’s not for me to say,” the first baron replied. “At this time.”
Slaves opened the door to the room before the baron, and quickly closed it behind Brandon. The brick walls were lined with longblasters, handcannons and even rapidfires. Covering an entire wall was a detailed painting of the Marshall Islands, every known landmass, island and atoll clearly in beautiful detail. Some sections of the wall map were raised higher than others, layers upon layers of corrections lifting the features until it was almost a contoured relief map.
