by Scott McKay
“I wonder if I might help,” he said.
“Latham. I heard you’d made it back, dear boy,” said Terhune. “You’ll be with our detachment as we head south.”
“He will not,” said Irving. “He’s joining my contingent. That was already arranged.”
Terhune shook his head. “You’re not in command here and you have no contingent. I am the ranking officer in this military district, and I will arrange the composition of my battle force.”
“You won’t if you’re going to raid my arsenal for weaponry, and you won’t if you’re going to use my ferry to move your troops,” Irving said. “The Marines protect the river, and we’ll do that by routing out the enemy and driving him back where he came – and with our weapons that we had to beg, borrow and steal to stock that arsenal with.”
Terhune’s eyes narrowed. “You have no authority here. Stand down or I’ll have you court-martialed.”
“You can’t court-martial a marine officer, Terhune.”
“Gentlemen, this isn’t going to get us anywhere,” Latham offered. “Has anything come over the teletext from Army headquarters in Trenory?”
Just then an Army sergeant came forward with a slip of paper. “Orders, sir.”
Terhune read the message, then gave it to Irving. The latter read the sheet and shrank a little.
“With me, Latham,” the colonel ordered. “Irving, take fifty men, you’ll garrison the city. Watch the river, but don’t neglect the east and west. They might cross upstream or down and attack from your flank or rear. Muster what militia you can to bolster your force. And put the town under martial law.”
“Aye,” said the captain, shrinking.
“The rest of your men are coming with me as a supplement to my force,” Terhune said. “Give them supplies for three days’ ride. Beyond that we’ll either send for more, or we’re either victorious or dead. And you have my permission to commandeer what weapons and men you can find to kit out your garrison, though I would suggest you ask for cooperation first.”
“I’ll do it, sir,” Irving said.
Terhune nodded at him, then turned. “Latham, a word.”
Terhune took the architect into a side room.
“You saw the lay of the land this morning. Can you lead us down there now? Am I misplacing faith in you by taking you with me?”
“I’m no combat hero,” came the reply, “but I can still shoot, I know the area and I have some idea what’s out there. If you want me, I’m ready.”
“Fine. Welcome back to the army, Lieutenant. You’re with me, in the lead element. We’re for the ferry, now.”
Terhune then hastily gave orders to the other members of his regimental staff as to the provision of the expeditionary force, which Latham noted contained a good deal of pre-arranged scrounging from the community.
No wonder he raised so much hell last night, Latham thought. He’s got a tiny force equipped with a bunch of old rifles, and he’s borrowing equipment from all the dry goods and hardware stores in town that he ought to have ready at the base.
How on earth was a frontier garrison in such a state of neglect in a rich country like Ardenia? Latham’s recollection of his time as a soldier more than a decade ago, when Dunnan’s Claim was still largely wilderness, was a whole lot different than this.
A little under an hour later, as the sun started its descent over the horizon, two hundred and sixty men departed with their horses across the Tweade on the Barley Point ferry toward an uncertain fate at the hands of an unknown and unreconnoitered enemy force. Latham was among them, nursing memories of past Udar encounters he’d hoped to forget.
…
TEN
Pelgreen – Evening (First Day)
The sun had disappeared from the western sky behind them an hour earlier as the Ann Marie touched down at the end of a four-hour flight from Belgarden. Cross’s ground crew raced to secure its moorings as he powered down the engines. The 38 passengers, a collection of politicos and well-connected swells, were collecting their things and waiting for the cabin doors to open.
Cross made his landing announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he called over the clamor, “we’ve now made our landing at Pelgreen Aerodrome, and this concludes our journey. I hope you’ve enjoyed the voyage, and I’d like to thank each of you for traveling with us to our capital today. The Airbound Corporation wishes you a successful visit to Principia, and we hope you’ll choose us again.”
He was ecstatic that none of the passengers were heckling him at those remarks, knowing the foul odor his company enjoyed with the public at present.
However, as Cross moved from the cockpit into the passenger area in hopes of helping the customers to debark, he found himself accosted by no less than five of his passengers, led by the dumpy white-haired politician from the front row.
“This might be your lucky night, Cross,” said Harms, as the four others nodded. “We might have a proposition yer in no position to turn down.”
Cross shot him an inquisitive look, his eyes widening.
“We believe we can deliver a majority vote at the Societam to have the Army purchase Airbound at a suitable price,” interjected Delegate Mortimer Vines, a Peace Party member from the well-to-do Settleton district of Belgarden, who currently sat as Vice-Chairman of the Treasury Committee. “That is, if you have interest in such an arrangement.”
“Certainly we would wish to insure your participation in the continued progress of this aeronautical endeavor,” blurted a third politician, the notoriously verbose Delegate Ralph Gray of Jerrison, the middle-class suburb across the Morgan from Belgarden, who sat Third Chair on the Improvements Committee. “This would be important in selling such a transaction to Parliament and the government.”
“And there are some truly outstanding partnership opportunities waiting that your company might find useful to its future,” added Oliver Pleasance, who had an executive position of some kind with Foreman Technologies, a manufacturing concern in Belgarden which had a corporate account with Airbound for shuttling its personnel back and forth to Principia. Cross had shared a bottle of whisky with Pleasance in a Principia evening club once or twice, but he didn’t know the man well or exactly what he did.
They were all looking at him.
Cross gave a nervous chuckle as he spread his hands wide. “That sounds a very attractive offer, fellas,” he stammered. “Of course, before we’d commit to any arrangement I’d have to confer with my partner, and we’d want to make sure the particulars are sufficient to everyone’s benefit. But I’m quite willing to listen.”
There were knowing smiles all around, and heads nodded.
The fifth member of the impromptu parley, a rotund middle-aged man in a top hat and a golden vest named Winston Gregory, had said nothing. Cross knew why. Gregory was the Peace Party’s political boss in Belgarden Province; he was the intersection between money and votes in the bare-knuckles political swamp the nation’s fourth-largest city was known to be, and Gregory was also the man behind Belgarden Province’s governor Thomas Cole, who stood to be the Peace Party’s presidential nominee and almost certainly Ardenia’s president at the next election.
It was Gregory, Cross knew, with whom any deal would need to be struck. Otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to get the support of uber-powerful Belgarden delegation, without which nothing got done in the Ardenian Societam.
And Cross knew that whatever deal was presented to him would almost surely be the product of Gregory’s quietly pulling levers and making moves that he would never see.
…
ELEVEN
Dunnansport – Evening (First Day)
To call the locomotive terminal here a “rail station” would be charity on a scale straining credulity. The Aldingham & Port William Line’s southernmost reaches ended in a short loop in a grass field some 500 yards from the Tweade on the western outskirts of the new city, with wood fires burning in iron braziers atop six-foot poles for what illumination existed as the loc
omotive slowed into Dunnansport. The city had yet to be wired for light, and unlike the fine houses of Tweade’s Landing and the business district to the east, the station lacked its own electrical generator. A wooden frame which would, presumably, soon be the skeleton of an actual building but was now covered with canvas served as a makeshift station house, while the muddy field astride the tracks was dashed with planks that would in time become a platform.
“Lot of progress since we left,” Will said as he stepped off the train. He wasn’t kidding.
“Master Robert!” came a voice as the smaller cadet followed Will off the locomotive. “It’s good to see you, sir.”
“Jefferson!” Robert answered. “Thank you for meeting us here. It’s good to see you too.”
“Come, sirs,” said the manservant, dressed in the uniform of the well-to-do Ardenian male: knee-high riding boots, woolen britches, an embroidered waistcoat and a thigh-length frock coat over a high-collared shirt with a necktie in a floppy bow. “Your uncle is home and must see you straight away. There has been important news which I fear will not meet you kindly.”
“What news?” asked Will as the two loaded their bags on Jefferson’s carriage.
“An attack by Udars,” answered the man. “Your uncle has the details. We’ll be there in minutes.”
They boarded the carriage hastily. Jefferson took the reins, and the team of horses was off. Will and Robert shared nervous looks at the man’s news.
A few minutes later, Robert and Will strode through the front door of David Stuart’s Tweade Landing mansion – perhaps the most opulent and palatial house of the district. Uncle David, dressed not in his usual business suit but a brown leather cavalry jacket, sleeve pinned at his left elbow, over a waistcoat made with copper mesh above a woolen lining, and sporting tan riding pants and black leather boots, wasn’t in an entertaining mode, though. When the two arrived, he gave his nephew a short one-armed embrace and then commanded, “Sit, both of you. I have something to tell you.”
They sat in the living room chairs David indicated. He remained standing, and began as he paced nervously.
“This morning H.V. Latham – he’s the architect from Port William your father had commissioned to do the expansion at Hilltop Farm…”
“I met him,” said Robert.
“…right. Latham was on his way down to the farm to deliver the plans and go over them with your dad. But when he got there the whole estate was aflame and everybody was gone but Hannah and Ethan.”
“By the saints,” gasped Robert, tears forming in his eyes. “Are the children all right?”
“They are. Latham got them out. But, and I regret to tell you this, Will, but Grayvern was also burned.”
“Bastards,” Will said, his eyes narrowing.
“We don’t know whether anyone got out at your estate, Will,” David continued. “There’s a military detachment leaving this evening from Barley Point to sally south and meet the enemy. We’re putting together another here from Dunnansport to sweep the eastern farms and then meet up with them. A third force is mustering at Battleford. The plan is to locate the enemy and then trap him, in hopes of rescuing what captives he’s taken.”
“Do we know…”
“Robert, we don’t know who they have,” David’s voice rose just a little. “We don’t know who’s alive and who’s dead. We know there are a lot of families – maybe hundreds – who were blown apart today. Every one of them needs our help. I’m the captain of the militia here, and I need to draft both of you to join my contingent.”
“I’m in,” Will said in a somewhat emotionless voice Robert hadn’t noticed before. “When do we leave?”
“Shortly,” David said. We’ll have a quick bite to eat, so Robert can at least say hello to his aunt, and we’ll give you two a chance to change into something useful to a military expedition. Then we’re riding down to the ferry where the militia will meet up with a few of the marines the Adelaide was able to part with, and that’ll be our detachment. We need to try to get south and save what people we can.”
His head reeling with the news, Robert strode into the kitchen, where his aunt Rebecca had been supervising the cooks, and the two embraced. “I’d thank the Lord of All you’re here,” she whispered in his ear, “but you’ll be gone in a flash of lightning. It’s all I can do not to weep.”
“I’m terrified I’ve lost Mother,” he said quietly. It was beginning to dawn on him that Judith had been taken from him before he could even say goodbye.
“I know, darling,” she said, the collar of her shirtwaist blouse betraying small stains where her tears had earlier deposited residue of her eyeliner. “Such evil. And that you must face it at only seventeen years.”
Robert and Will stepped away, as the meal was ready to be set out. The four sat at table, and Uncle David offered the benediction.
“Lord of All, you have graciously given us your Word and summoned us in your presence this evening. Nourish our souls as we nourish our bodies, for our hearts are broken at our most current news. Lord, grant us the courage to face the terror we meet in the south, and grant us the will to defeat that terror. And Lord, let us be mindful of the need to help those innocents we may. We pray, Lord of All, all this in your name.”
“And grant us vengeance on those who have wronged us, Lord,” muttered Will, his eyes strained shut.
They ate quickly. Will and Robert dragged their bags to the upstairs guest rooms, where they changed out of their cadet uniforms and into combat attire: leather cavalry jackets, canvas-covered aluminum helmets, riding britches and heavy combat boots. The three men then departed the mansion and met a similarly-dressed Jefferson, who had four horses at the ready in the barn next to the house loaded with weapons and supplies.
Robert was fighting off a numb feeling of loss, like an appendage, a leg, perhaps, had been cut from his body. If the Udar had come, his father had fought. And if his father had fought, they’d killed him. The last interaction he’d had with the man had come prompted by Robert’s having let him down, and George had blown into Aldingham to put on a show for the cadets and bail him out by appointing Will as his bodyguard. Robert had neglected to write him a note of thanks, figuring he would do so in person. That opportunity was now, presumably, lost to the afterlife, taken from him by a horde of sub-human scum.
And Robert knew of the Udar depredations where women were concerned, which meant something horrible had happened to his mother and his sisters Sarah and Tabitha as well. With him at the academy and his older brother Matthew at the garrison at Strongstead – and what about Matthew if the enemy had come this far north? – the women would have had to assist in defending Hilltop Farm. That meant the Udar would have likely killed them too.
He didn’t want to process it. Robert decided that until he knew the final score of the day’s horrors, he would maintain faith that somehow, his parents and his sisters had made it.
But deep down, he knew that wasn’t true.
And as he looked at Will, who’d had very little to say since getting the news about what had happened back home, he could tell Will knew it wasn’t true as well.
The four then mounted up and rode for the Dunnansport ferry landing as the sun set in the west.
…
TWELVE
Principia – Night (First Day)
Cross’ rented carriage covered, laboriously, the seven miles from Pelgreen Aerodrome to the Airbound Corporation headquarters on Broad Street downtown, as the bustling streets of the capital were jammed with traffic of all kinds–pedestrians, bicycles, horses, carriages and even the new steam wagons and motor sedans (of which he’d regretfully sold his, owing to Airbound’s financial exigencies and the need to create appropriate appearances). Traffic would be especially challenging in a mid-evening hour such as this, when the prosperous denizens of the world’s most opulent city were venturing forth to enjoy their nocturnal entertainment.
Principia was a city of six million, spread out over a large area
centered around the massive port where the Morgan River emptied into the Gulf of Prosperity. A bit upriver from the port, separated on the south side of the Morgan by a reviving residential area and the smaller Shelton River which flowed into the Morgan, was the Capitol District. At its center was where the Presidential Palace, Hall of Justice, the Societam and National Temple formed a diamond around a massive, 100-foot statue of Fletcher Belgrave, who 400 years ago led a rebellion against the dynastic monarchy which had governed Ardenia for two millennia, and established a republic to replace it. The Capitol District was the foremost tourist destination in the world, and it drew throngs of people at all times of the year to gawk at its majestic buildings and other landmarks. Just south of its parks, museums and halls of power was the Elkstrand, an entertainment district filled with theaters, restaurants, cafés, saloons, a high-class brothel or two and some of the priciest apartments on the planet.
Cross would be on the Elkstrand scene shortly enough, as he made his home in a seventeenth-story penthouse along Courtlyn Avenue and would be entertaining some of his new political friends at the Oleander Club around the corner on Selwyn Street. But first, he and his partner had to have a heart-to-heart, and Gresham, having received a teletype message from Pelgreen upon the Ann Marie’s landing there, was at the office waiting for him.
Where Cross was going was the Business District, located west of the Capitol District and just up the river from the government buildings, in which Airbound’s fate would likely be decided in the next few days. Broad Street ran along a slight ridge three blocks from the Morgan River, on a natural embankment; that location meant a north-facing office in one of its stately brick commercial buildings afforded a fabulous view of the city and the river.
Such a panoramic view was precisely what Cross had on the fifteenth floor of Airbound Corporation’s headquarters, and it was to that office that he hustled as his carriage exited Broad Street to the portico in front of the Harrow Building. Cross blew through the lobby, jumped into the elevator and barked, “Fifteenth,” to the operator.
