by Scott McKay
Sebastian gave his father a stricken look.
“But I don’t want you to regret that decision,” his father said, “because the politicians had designs on you long before the Justice crashed. And they were going to set their hooks in you, because that’s what they do.”
“Did you ever isolate the cause of the Justice crash?” asked Reeves.
“We never did,” said Sebastian.
“Don’t be so sure it was an accident,” Gregg said.
“Are you serious?” Sebastian asked him.
“Deadly,” Gregg said, with a severe look. “And I mean that in every sense. You don’t want to ask me any more about that issue, either.”
Sebastian inhaled strenuously, then closed his eyes. “I feel like I’m going to be sick,” he said.
“You need to know the kind of people we’re dealing with here,” Gregg said. “This was never about business. It’s about power, and the more you were carving out a niche for yourself, the more you got yourself noticed.”
“It sounds like becoming the patsy who coughed up my company for a song might have been the safe move,” Sebastian said.
“No doubt about it,” said Gregg. “That’s why I pushed you so hard to get it done, and quickly. Fighting those people, especially with a war breaking out that Ardenia is totally unprepared for, would have been suicide.”
“Let me make you feel better about this,” his father said, offering the bright side to his son. “The real opportunity here isn’t just commercial, and now that you’re an Army man heading off to fight a war, the Peace Party crooks can’t touch you. We have an opportunity for substantial reform now.”
“Now, we can talk about this machine here,” Reeves said. He explained that what had struck Sebastian’s eye was called a biplane, and it was a flying machine capable of speeds in excess of 150 miles per hour.
“That’s definitely not legal,” his father chuckled.
“You designed this?” Sebastian asked Reeves.
“The engine, yes,” the man answered. “The aeronautics and the assemblage aren’t mine, though. That came from the Thorne workshop in Alvedorne.”
“The Thornes are involved in your project?”
“They are,” his father said. “And this machine here is one of ten. The other nine are on their way to an airfield just north of Trenory, where pilots are waiting to redeploy them to Barley Point as soon as you have a field available to take them.”
Reeves then showed Sebastian something which wasn’t readily apparent on first inspection, namely the barrels of four chain guns emplaced on the top wing of the biplane. “This is the most effective attack weapon in the world,” he beamed. “Bear down on an enemy force with one of these and nothing in the open can survive.”
“Check under the fuselage,” his father suggested. Sebastian bent down and noticed a pair of notches. “Those are bomb ports,” said Preston. “You can drop two hundred-pound shells on an enemy from those.”
“Also,” Reeves said, “We are shipping eight improved-model chain guns on the locomotive to Dunnansport, with a team of mechanics to install them on your two airships.”
“Your designs?” Sebastian asked Reeves.
“No,” the man replied. “These are the latest model from Trunxton, the Mark 11.” Trunxton was the maker of chain guns for the Ardenian military until eight years earlier, when the company lost its contract.
“You don’t want to go into battle with that standard-issue Dulsey gun,” his father said. “That’s nothing but refuse. The ammunition cartridges get bent as they’re fed through the chain into the chamber, and then they jam and the gun is useless – and it stays inoperable until the chamber is unscrewed and taken apart.”
The Dulsey Corporation, which now had the military’s chain gun contracts, was owned by Riggs Dulsey, who sat on the Peace Party’s National Fundraising Committee.
“This is some eye-opener,” Sebastian said. “Makes me feel like a life of croquet and whisky naturals isn’t so bad after all, compared to the filth of the commercial and political world.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” his father said, as he started walking back to the elevator. “Come on.”
…
The four rode the elevator back to the first floor, and then exited the warehouse to re-board the yacht. As he stood on the deck, Sebastian noticed what appeared to be a whale, or a large fish, approaching them under the water line. As it got closer, he could see that it was a watercraft rather than a monster from the deep, and what looked like a large turret began to poke out above the waterline. The craft pulled aside the Sebastian, and a hatch opened atop the turret, out of which popped a familiar face. Sebastian recognized Abraham Dees from the night before.
“Greetings,” said the general, as he climbed from the submersible craft and clambered aboard the yacht. “Long time no see, Sebastian.”
“I would not have expected you here,” Cross told him. “You’re a man of many parts, sir.”
“I’m the Office of Special Warfare,” Dees reminded him. “This cloak and dagger business is how I earn my living.”
Preston and Gregg greeted Dees, and the four went inside to the yacht’s stateroom where a table had been laid out for dinner. Reeves, who had been belowdecks, joined them.
As they sat, Gregg piped up. “Now, Sebastian, we will have our conversation about last night – and we will talk about the future.”
“Did you talk to him about the Justice?” Dees asked Gregg.
“I only intimated.”
“You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you?” Sebastian asked Dees with a shocked expression on his face.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “But we have evidence foul play was involved. Teletext message intercepts after the fact to indicate more knowledge of that explosion than anyone should have, by people with no reason to have such knowledge.”
“By the Saints!” Sebastian hissed.
“When those were recovered,” Preston said, “We decided to hold off from intervening in the problems you were having with Airbound. Had you come to me I would have helped, but it was important that you make your own decision on that issue.”
“And equally important that we build a trap for the criminals who used your company to kill sixty-four of our countrymen to nourish their greed and lust for power,” Gregg said.
At that point Sebastian decided the less he knew about the ruling cabal’s designs on Airbound, the better. He had a job to do, after all, and going down the political rathole any further would only get in the way. And he told Gregg so.
“Maybe when this is all over you can fill me in on the details,” he said. “I know enough to be dangerous already, right?”
“Essentially, yes,” said Gregg. “There will be a dossier you can read if you want it.”
“Good enough,” Sebastian nodded.
“This is what you’re going to do, Sebastian,” Preston said. “You’re going to go down there and you’re going to throw away the equipment they give you. You refit those airships with this illegal hardware, and use and distribute the other things we’re going to send down there, and you tear the enemy to pieces.”
“And you’re going to do it on my orders,” said Dees. “I am your commanding officer, after all.”
“And then, when this war is won by the industry and character of the Ardenian people in spite of our corrupt and incompetent ruling class,” Preston continued, “the very people who stole your company out from under you, we will see real change in this city.”
“You think you’re going to beat the Peace Party in the elections next year?” Sebastian said, doubt in his voice. “With what? You’re a Prosperitan, Papa. You hold how many seats in the Societam? Sixty-five out of 406? And the Territorialists aren’t much better. They have what? Seventy? Where are the votes coming from?”
“The people, son. When the people see what the criminals in charge of the country have done, public opinion will turn.”
“
I would agree,” said Sebastian, “but you’d have to find a way to fuse those two parties back into the Party of Enterprise.”
“The Thornes are Territorialists,” Gregg noted. “The Morgan River Valley barons are Prosperitans. Discussions are being had, very quietly.”
“And not everybody who’s in the Peace Party is an admirer of the Peace Party,” said Dees.
“You’d be surprised how many detractors there are,” Gregg said. “This kind of corruption rubs a lot of people the wrong way.”
Preston and Gregg sent knowing looks Dees’ way. Sebastian knew Dees was a Peace Party member; he’d given a speech at the party’s convention four years earlier.
“That’s interesting,” he said. “But what about the land giveaway scam the Peace Party runs? How do you counter that?”
Full citizenship as an Ardenian, complete with the right to vote, depended on property ownership. That was something the nation’s Constitution required as a safeguard against the public bankrupting the treasury by voting themselves money. Property ownership as a prerequisite for the franchise had been a staple of the Ardenian political order since Belgrave’s revolution, but it had unraveled, thanks to a rather genius workaround the Peace Party had crafted.
Each year, the government that party controlled would transport tens of thousands of the nation’s urban poor to an unsettled, or lightly-settled, rural area and have them pick out small plots of arable land they could claim as property owners as part of the Land Settlement Act passed a decade earlier, before bringing the newly-minted homesteaders back to their urban domiciles.
Technically, to qualify as a property owner, one had to make improvements to or live on the land in question, but several large Peace Party-affiliated agricultural concerns would immediately lease land granted to the poor under the Land Settlement Act. Those leases would confer a tidy little income to the underprivileged.
Those concerns would then farm the land, aided by infrastructure improvements in the south and west the Societam was funding like mad over the past decade under Peace Party control, and recoup the cost of the lease.
Or, and this is where Sebastian thought it got really diabolical, they would leave the land fallow and take a government price-supports subsidy which was passed by Parliament ten years earlier to keep Ardenia’s farmers from outproducing the demand for their crops. The Delegates, moreover, passed a measure including the acceptance of the subsidy as a condition satisfactory to improving the land in question. In so doing Parliament conferred full citizenship upon the landowners, who’d obtained their land and the franchise from the government for free.
The effect of which was that the Peace Party was turning poor people who were not property owners and not entitled to the vote into voters and then paying them with taxpayer decirans to support the Peace Party.
“When this business breaks in the broadsheets, all the land in Ardenia won’t save them,” Preston said.
“This isn’t theoretical, by the way,” Gregg said. “These wheels are turning.”
Sebastian was intrigued. Could a scandal like getting into a war with inoperable weapons and equipment from crony contractors be enough to shake those votes loose? Sebastian didn’t know. What he did know was that he was angry enough to participate in this cockamamie plan, and, deliciously enough, he was registered as a Peace Party member. Therefore nobody would suspect him of anything other than trying to get the best materiel for the Special Air Force they’d put him in charge of, and what was more he’d have fellow Peace Party member Abraham Dees, the head of the Office of Special Warfare, running interference for him.
Sebastian found he had suddenly changed his attitude quite a bit about not antagonizing people who had transgressed against him. He was beginning to see the value in being a sonofabitch after all.
“Fine. I’m in,” he said. “Let’s make it happen. What do we do first?”
…
TWENTY FIVE
Sutton Hill – Noon (Second Day)
Will and Robert and the rest of the scouts had returned to the command line, and the Terhune contingent had now linked up with the smaller force making their way south from Battleford. The force had gathered on a landmark, a flat-top rise about 500 feet above sea level that had been the site of a great Dunnan’s War battle.
“So this is Sutton Hill,” said Rob. “What would Father think of me being here?”
“I imagine it would make him a little bit sad, son,” said Latham. “I don’t expect he would have wanted his children fighting on the same ground he bled for twenty-five years ago.”
The Battle of Sutton Hill had been one of George Stuart’s military highlights. Then a young lieutenant to the great general Henry Dunnan, Stuart led a detachment of scouts through this territory looking for an Udar Var’asha named Quawi and a war party they had intelligence was coming through the area. Instead, Stuart’s mounted contingent found themselves faced with a lot more than just a war party, and by the time the thirty cavalrymen had retreated to this hilltop to dig in and mount a defense, some six hundred Udar warriors had surrounded them. For three days the Udar laid siege to the Ardenians, and for three days Stuart and his scouts held them off with marksmanship from atop that hill. By the time relief came, the Stuart contingent had lost a third of their number. They’d killed, however, more than two hundred Udar.
Sutton Hill had then retreated into obscurity. There had been talk a dozen years ago of building a fortress at the scene, as it commanded a good vantage to survey the area south to the coast and west to the northeast tip of Rogers Range, but no fort had been built.
But now the Ardenian cavalry was back on Sutton Hill.
Terhune’s force now contained 432 men, with the Battleford group included. The colonel was concerned that number was hardly enough. He knew he was up against an Anur of Udar, at the least, and his concern that he was being lured into an ambush somewhere to the west was growing.
They were there to rescue prisoners taken by the Udar, though, and that meant any risk was justified. They would press on, in hopes that he could pin the enemy against the coastline and get some artillery support from Adelaide, or whatever other naval assets might be available.
Sutton Hill had a vantage of Watkins Gulf, about 25 miles away. If Adelaide was in position Terhune might be able to signal the ship and get some coordination going. The ship’s twelve marines detached to his force had brought along a heliograph–a shuttered mirror capable of signaling in military code–for that very purpose. And while the troops were resting in the warm late-morning air, he gave orders to Lt. Wells, who commanded the marine detachment.
“Lieutenant Wells, let’s see if your ship is in hailing range. Set up your signaler and try to flag down the Adelaide.”
Things started happening quickly a few minutes later.
…
“Skipper, signal coming in,” a young ensign called down from Adelaide’s observation tower “Starboard side.”
“Call it out as you read it,” Patrick ordered.
“Says they’re atop Sutton Hill, sir,” called the ensign as he made out the series of short and long flashes of light coming from the top of the hill as Wells’ marines opened and closed the shuttered mirror of the heliograph. “No sign of the enemy’s main party. They did encounter Udar scouts. They’ve linked up the Battleford, Dunnansport and Barley Point groups and have a full contingent, ready to head west.”
Patrick had his own heliograph operator at the ready, and replied with his own message. “WARNING,” it read. “STRONGSTEAD FALLEN. ENEMY USING RAPTORS AS WEAPONS. EXPECT DIVISION STRENGTH OR GREATER APPROACHING. RESCUE PRISONERS AND EVACUATE ASAP.”
From the observation tower, the response: “They want to know if the naval assets are available for evacuation.”
“Good question,” muttered Patrick. He had Yarmouth approaching, and behind it Castamere and Louise. So far as he could tell none were within the twelve-mile hailing range he needed to coordinate something like an amphibious evacuati
on.
“WILL ADVISE ON NAVAL EVAC. HEADING WEST IN SEARCH OF ENEMY,” Patrick had Adelaide signal Sutton Hill. “WILL ENGAGE WITH GUNS IF SEEN. HAIL WITH NEWS.”
…
“None of that helps much,” groused Terhune. “All right, we’re going to move out along this ridge heading west. Forling, send the word along the line.”
“Enemy riders six miles to the southwest!” called a lookout, scanning the expanse from the high vantage of the hilltop. “I make them a good hundred or so. They’re heading to our north.”
Terhune’s assumption was that the riders were attempting to circle around to his rear from the west and smash his force from behind once he engaged some larger Udar contingent he might shortly come across. If he was wrong, though, and he detached a portion of his riders to block the Udar foray, he might be dividing his force in the face of that enemy. Without having a full understanding of the battle space, there was mortal risk in either decision.
“All right, this is what we’re going to do.”
…
TWENTY SIX
West of Sutton Hill – Afternoon (Second Day)
David Stuart wasn’t exactly an experienced military commander, and he certainly wasn’t well-equipped as a fighting man, with only a stub below the elbow on his left arm where a wrist and hand had been before he last met an Udar warrior. Nevertheless, as head of the Dunnansport militia he stood as the commander of the largest sub-group among the force gathered under Terhune, so when the Colonel ordered a foray to the west to meet the Udar riders spotted from Sutton Hill, and selected the militia group minus the Adelaide marines, plus the Battleford militia group to comprise it, that made David the senior officer available for command.
Particularly given the rather ad-hoc order of battle available in this crisis.
Stuart had with him Will Forling and his nephew Robert, who so far was the only of their number with an enemy kill. He also had ninety-four other militiamen of Dunnansport and fifty-three from Battleford, giving him a total force of 147 men to face down the Udar warriors. They galloped west, aiming to cut the enemy riders off, aligned in a straight line. David hoped that formation would allow him to turn and envelop the opposing force much like “crossing the T” in naval parlance.
