by Scott McKay
“And here you are, the fashion critic,” she said, knowing he was still playing the jealous fiancé. Broadham had an appointment to drop in for lunch, as she’d agreed to let him interview her for his report to the Admiralty on the Udar raids.
“That’s Major Fashion Critic to you,” Will responded.
She kissed him. Hard.
“Take care of yourself, Forling,” she said. “Don’t get killed. And keep those letters coming.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “Stay safe, and I’ll come and see you as soon as I can.”
She kissed him again, and then he was gone.
…
FORTY SIX
Barley Point (Afternoon, Sixth Day)
The ride in the motor sedan from Dunnansport was a productive one from Cross’s perspective, as it turned out he had a passenger in Helen Irving who boasted a complete command of the town of Barley Point. Most importantly for Cross’s purposes, that meant she knew what houses of quality were available in the small town.
Helen particularly clued him in to the availability of a stately two-story abode, which had not yet gone on the market, only a block off Main Street. The house was by far, she assured him, the most suitable property in town. Its owner was an aging friend of hers who had been considering moving to Port William to be with her children, and with the outbreak of war so close to Barley Point, she was the very definition of “motivated seller.” After dropping Helen and Latham off at her house, Cross pulled up at the prospect residence with Will, who said he wouldn’t miss this potential transaction for the world.
Within twenty minutes Cross had bought his first piece of property in the South. He thought he probably overpaid, having written a check for 40,000 decirans for a four-bedroom house not yet wired for electricity, but this was a small town, the pickings were slim, and Cross had more money than time. The house was spacious and well-built, and he couldn’t think of a more advantageous location. His new residence was five minutes from the army base by sedan, only three blocks from the ferry, and five blocks from the site of what would be the rail station. Perhaps more importantly, until he could secure himself a bit of staff for the residence, he was only one block from the inn.
The house would also come largely furnished, as Mrs. Jordan, the fabulously cordial matron who agreed to part with her home for the cause of the motherland (and Cross’ price), was not so fond of the hardware as to demand it make the move with her. Cross promised her the use of one of the Special Air Force’s lorries to transport her valuables and intimates to Dunnansport; from there they would join her on the train to Port William. In no time, she had produced three volunteers to pack up her belongings, and by nightfall was ready for departure, but not before insisting on offering Cross and Will a meal and a room for the evening since neither had secured a billet in the overcrowded town. Both greatly preferred Mrs. Jordan’s lodgings to a cot at the army base, which was all that would be available in town that night.
At nine of the clock the next morning, Cross’s lorry arrived to load Mrs. Jordan and her property for the two-hour journey to Dunnansport. She had never been a passenger in a motor vehicle before and considered the seventy-mile ride the pinnacle of her life’s excitement. Cross simply saw it as a utilitarian approach to getting a problem of headquarters and executive lodging solved quickly and without much cost, as the lorries were busy bringing material in from the Dunnansport train station and were otherwise empty on the return trip.
It turned out that when the lorry returned from Dunnansport, though, it contained an unexpected cargo. General Dees marched through the front door unannounced as Cross moved furniture around, attempting to construct an office out of what had been a parlor.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Dees said.
“It isn’t exactly elegant,” was Cross’s response. “I don’t suppose you fancy taking up tenancy here?”
“I do not,” Dees said. “though I may be prevailing upon you from time to time. Good work securing a place for us to operate from in town, though. I want our exploits to be largely unseen by the army, despite my admiration for Messrs. Terhune and Forling.”
“Forling I can’t help with,” Cross replied. “He’s billeted in one of the guest rooms. Too late to stop that.”
Dees pitched in to craft something workable for an office out of the tables and chairs left in the house from Mrs. Jordan’s departure, and while Cross recognized the place would fall far short of his Elkstrand digs, he could at least stand it. A man from the Barley Point Electric Works was coming that afternoon to begin a rush-job installing electrical wiring, and a steam generator was due to be dropped off shortly, at its designated location in the side yard.
“Let’s talk,” Dees said as the furniture moving came to a conclusion. “I want to clue you in on what’s going to happen in the next few days, because it’s all very fluid and you’re going to need to be ready.”
“I was at the base and saw the airships come in early this morning,” Cross said. “Those Foreman engines aren’t the smoothest-running contraptions I’ve seen.”
“Not indeed,” said Dees. “Your engineers know what to do, I assume.”
“Two days,” Cross affirmed, “and we should be ready for battle with the new equipment.”
“Good, because in four days we will likely be in a tempest for the history books.”
“You tell me this after I just bought a house on the front lines?”
“That was your choice, young Sebastian,” Dees said. “You could have had a wonderfully inexpensive cot at the base.”
“Where are the Udars coming?” Cross asked. “I take it you have intelligence.”
“I have some. We think the main action will be west of here. We think it will be Battleford, Trenory or Azuria bearing the brunt of the assault.”
“I shouldn’t ask, but how exactly do you come by such knowledge?”
“Painfully,” the general said. “The risk our people are taking among the Udar is at a level you can’t even fathom. When they’re caught, they’re burned alive on the spot, and they’re caught at an alarming rate. Your air power will make a revolutionary difference in the speed of transmitting intelligence and saving the lives of our operatives when their cover gets blown.”
“Makes me happy we can help,” Cross said, “but your tidings aren’t the sunniest.”
“I don’t deal in good news this week,” Dees said. “That’s why I’m still down here despite having planned yesterday to head back to the capital. And you need to know some unpleasant truths.”
Cross plopped down on his new desk chair, which had formerly served as a parlor chaise.
“That doesn’t sound like fun,” he said.
“The enemy’s numbers are more than we can withstand,” Dees said. “Holding along the length of the Tweade is probably impossible. At least for now this is a salvage operation more than anything else. We’re going to have to save what we can until we can reverse the tide.”
“Don’t we have three divisions setting up fortifications at Trenory?” Cross asked, puzzled. “Don’t we have the Fourteenth Infantry garrisoning Battleford? That would seem like the makings of a stout defense.”
“The Fourteenth is useless, Sebastian. General Oliver is a political appointment who can’t lead a bowel movement, and his men have never smelled blood before. We’re trying to resupply them with better armaments and equipment, but Oliver has so far rejected the Office of Special Warfare’s help. It’s a lost cause.
“As for Trenory, I’ve seen General Rosedale’s plan of defense, and it’s completely unsuitable. The enemy will go right around his positions and storm the town.”
“I can’t believe it,” said Cross, stricken. “A city that large? It can’t be that bad.”
“Trenory isn’t even the worst of it,” said Dees. “As of now there is no defense of note for Azuria. Other than three steam frigates currently en route from Port Adler to the north and two brigantines due back from tours of the S
unset Sea in the next two weeks, the city is open for the taking. We don’t even have five hundred men in defense as yet. I’ve been advocating for an evacuation, but the Societam and President Greene don’t want to touch off a panic. As if that is somehow worse than letting the enemy enslave and slaughter 75,000 people.”
“Sounds bleak,” Cross said. “We’re not that much better here. Maybe 1,000 available to fight, 1,500 at the most.”
“Barley Point must hold,” Dees said, steel in his eyes. “We can’t lose this town or Dunnansport. We can retake what’s west of here, but we can’t lose the Lower Tweade. Whatever it takes – whatever it takes – we will hold this area.”
Dees then hit Cross with a surprise. “I’m bringing you some Udar tomorrow. You’re going to take them for a ride in your balloons.”
“That’s an unusual request.”
“You’re going to drop these people off behind Udar lines and let them link up with their troops.”
“And why on earth would we do that?”
Dees gave him a look indicating to Sebastian that he probably didn’t want to know.
“Let’s focus on the job at hand and not so much the reasons why at this point, shall we?” he said.
Dees indicated on a map he’d produced where he wanted the eight Udar to be deposited.
“What about the headman? What was his name? Ago’an or something?”
“He’s going back to Strongstead,” Dees answered. “We’re going to exchange him for our people the Udar are holding there.”
“Bit of a poor trade for us, no?”
“We have our reasons for making it.”
“You’re operating on a level I have neither the information nor the cloak-and-dagger skill to match,” Cross said, grimacing. “I’m in far over my head right now.”
“Don’t you go to pieces on me, Cross,” said Dees, admonishing him. “This thing is going to get infinitely worse before it gets better. You’ve got to be prepared for adversity and atrocities you haven’t even read about in books, and you had better be ready to do things you never, ever considered doing. And you had also better be prepared not to question the morality of anything we’ll need to do to survive what’s coming.”
Sebastian blanched. “Just seeing the grief of the Stuarts gave me an inkling of how bad this is.”
“What you saw with those good people is what just about every family from Azuria to Dunnansport faces in the next few weeks,” Dees said. “We don’t have the troops to stop them. They could easily be 1,000 miles toward Principia before we could effectively counterattack. That’s how poorly prepared we are.”
It was then that Sebastian felt a great deal of gratitude to Rebecca Stuart, the magnificent widow of David Stuart who had supplied him with a parting gift of two bottles of the deceased hero’s reserve of Beacon Point whisky. He retrieved a fifth from the kitchen with a pair of glasses, offering one to his guest. Dees eagerly accepted and Cross poured a pair of indecently substantial drinks.
“On to a different subject,” Dees said, “and perhaps a happier one.”
“If this is about my love life,” Cross answered, “leave it.”
Dees smiled at the joke. “One of the reasons you are so well-suited for this job isn’t just that you know aviation and almost no one else does. It’s that you have money and connections and you can do some things off the books that others can’t.”
“That sounds like it spills the bounds of ethics,” said Cross.
“Not at all,” Dees said. “There is in fact no code of ethics for the Office of Special Warfare, and as such, all is fair game. And what I will suggest that you do is limited only by the time you have available to do it, which means I strongly suggest you employ someone to act as your agent.”
“Agent for what?”
“I think you should go into business down here.”
Cross wasn’t opposed to that idea, as from what he’d seen of Dunnansport and Barley Point so far there were immense opportunities for growth if the Udar could be fought off. “What kind of business are you specifically thinking of, General?”
“Real estate and banking would be a start,” Dees said. “You need to buy up those two banks here and in Dunnansport. The ones Stuart is sitting on that are insolvent. Do that and you’ll be in a position to drive the entire economy in these parts. And I would snap up all the land you can from here to the mouth of the river.”
“How do you know about Rob’s holdings?” asked Cross.
“Let’s just assume I know everything,” Dees said. “It’s quicker that way. I didn’t get where I am by being uninformed.”
“All right. To what end?”
“You need to save the economy of this area,” Dees said. “If it goes and everybody goes broke, they’ll just pack up and leave. Then, besides the fact we have no civilian infrastructure backing the military effort, it’s a rolling economic collapse. Barley Point and Dunnansport take Port William down, which destroys Aldingham, Sapphire Bay and Newmarket, and the contagion spreads. This war is already going to cause a major bank panic and recession, and the worse it gets the more trouble we’re going to have fielding an army that can withstand twenty million fanatics riding at us.”
“Did you just say twenty million?” Cross gulped down half his glass.
“At least,” Dees said as he quaffed his own beverage.
“By the Saints!” Cross said. “We can’t mobilize that.”
“We don’t have to. We can win with firepower and technology. In a year we will counterattack with weapons you haven’t even dreamed of. But our active army is less than 400,000 men. We’re outnumbered fifty to one at present and the invasion is coming within a few days.”
Down the hatch went the rest of Cross’ whisky. He reached for the bottle. “Top you off?” he asked Dees.
“Sure,” said the general.
“I feel like investing in land and finance in a climate like this is more suicide than duty or opportunity,” Cross said.
“I understand,” Dees responded, “but you’ve got good people down here. And when we hold, and we will hold, this is going to be the area Ardenia looks to for a new political order. There is a delegate from Port William; his name is Roth….”
“I know him. Good guy. Territorialist, right?”
“Yes. He’s bold. Very sharp. Has a future. He needs a base of support. We need you to make sure that base isn’t bankrupt. Takes a lot of money to finance a revolution.”
…
FORTY SEVEN
Principia (Morning, Seventh Day)
“TERROR IN DUNNAN’S CLAIM,” read the above-the-fold headline just under the masthead of the opposition-leaning Principia Herald. “SAVAGE MARAUDERS WREAK HAVOC AT ESTATE OF FAMED DUNNAN’S WAR HERO.”
The story carried the byline of Nathaniel Prince, the Herald’s national correspondent.
DUNNANSPORT – The fresh outbreak of war with the savage Udar nation began in earnest not with the capture of the citadel at Strongstead one month earlier, but on the sixth day of this month when raiders under the command of a headman named Rapan’na surged into the rich, but poorly-defended, estates of Dunnan’s Claim south of the Tweade.
One such estate was Hilltop Farm, owned and operated by the Stuart family of Dunnan’s War fame. George Stuart, hero of the Battle of Sutton Hill, was killed in a raid by Udar marauders led by Rapan’na as he attempted to save his wife and children from rape and murder. Stuart was decapitated, but not before he had killed seven of the invaders. His wife and daughters killed five more before succumbing to superior numbers. Sarah Stuart, the eldest daughter, was taken captive. Her mother Judith Stuart, a Thurman of Trenory, and sister Tabitha were slaughtered. Two younger siblings survived the attack by hiding in the cellar of the manor-house and were later rescued.
Sarah’s older brothers Matthew and Robert were not at the scene of the attack. Matthew, the eldest of the Stuart children, was a member of the Strongstead garrison and, as reports indicate, was captured when it
fell. Robert returned from the Aldingham Defense Academy, where he was a first-year cadet, and joined the hastily-organized force to defeat the enemy and rescue the captives.
The loss of George Stuart, who was rumored to be the Territorialist Party candidate for Governor-General of Trenory Province in next year’s elections, and alternatively the likely holder of the Presidium of the new Dunnan’s Claim County to be formed following the next Census, was a grievous blow to the nation and a thorough rebuke to failed Peace Party leadership. In recent letters written to the Societam on behalf of other Dunnan’s Claim landholders, but not read into the legislative record despite demands from the Territorialist delegation, Stuart had decried the poor provisioning and insufficient manpower of the cavalry force tasked to protect the nation’s southern frontier. His warning that Peace Party policy of demilitarization was creating an unsafe border area, a warning echoed by Delegates from both Territorialist and Prosperitan camps in recent months during parliamentary debate, proved prescient.
“My father risked his life for his country as a young soldier,” said Sarah Stuart, who granted this reporter a long-ranging interview from the home of her aunt Rebecca Stuart in Dunnansport, where she is recuperating from her capture and ordeal at the hands of the savages, “and then he gave it as a middle-aged landholder. It shouldn’t have been this way.”
The Stuarts also lost George’s brother David, a cotton merchant of significant means who had lost an arm in Dunnan’s War but nevertheless joined the responding force and was killed in battle. Robert Stuart will assume management of the family’s vast holdings.
Sarah Stuart provided detailed description of the Udar raiders, led by Rapan’na. Army sources indicate Rapan’na was in charge of the invading force at Strongstead and had taken as a slave Charlotte Naughton, the wife of Col. John Naughton, who commanded the doomed garrison. Sarah Stuart made contact with Mrs. Naughton while in captivity and reported the widow had, amid grief and abuse, broken under the strain. She said Mrs. Naughton was deeply disturbed by the lack of resources available to the Strongstead garrison, which she believed was the cause of its fall.
