Eric Flint's Blog, page 172

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 32

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 32

Little Alexander resisted, but it came out of his mouth if it stayed in his hand, and the co-king of the Alexandrian empire started screaming. “Quiet,” Dag said, and for just a moment there was quiet. Following up quickly, Dag looked around for something, anything, to distract the kid from the painted sword. Nothing in his pocket. It wouldn’t help to keep the kid from lead poisoning, then have him choke on a button or keys.

There, in his back pocket, a plastic comb. He gave it to the kid.

Then he looked up at Roxane. She had come out of her chair when Dag grabbed the sword, and was now kneeling next to Dag, ready to snatch her son out of danger. Dad tried to explain, but he didn’t have the words for paint, lead, or poison. All that came out was “Sword bad.”

“Not for a son of Alexander the Great, they are not.”

Dag pointed at the teeth marks in the sword blade and said, “Sick.” He pulled out his cell phone and turned it on. Then he called up the translation app that Marie Easley had been working with programmers to tweak. He spoke in English. “Poison in the paint.” The app translated.

Roxane grabbed the blade away from her son, and threw it across the room. “How do you know?”

Dag was ready and pushed the translate button and got the words in English. But Roxane was still talking and the app only worked one way at a time. It had to record the words in ancient Greek, then translate them, or record the words in English and translate them the other way. It couldn’t just work in conversation. Dag recorded a message in English. “You have to say the words to the phone, then wait for it to translate them, then say another phrase. Just say the words when the front of the phone is facing you.”

Then he had the phone translate. Roxane looked at him and nodded slowly with emphasis. Then she waited.

Dag pushed the record button and turned the phone to face her. Then she spoke two phrases with a short pause between them and nodded again.

Dag had it translate and “How did you know?” A pause, then, “Who tried to poison Alexander?”

“No one tried to poison him. It’s the lead in the paint that is a slow-acting poison. It takes a lot of it over a long time, but it’s unsafe, especially for children.”

The guards were all watching this. “So, not a plot,” said Kleitos. Dag had enough Greek to make a good guess, and shook his head no.

Roxane pointed at the phone imperiously, then at herself. Once Dag had pushed record and had the phone pointing at her, she asked, “How does that work?”

Dag tried to explain using the translation app and pointing at symbols on the phone’s screen. In the process, he noticed that the little battery was less than half full. So he explained that.

“So it will be useless when the charge is gone?” Kleitos asked.

Dag thought he understood, but had Kleitos repeat the question to the phone.

“Yes, sort of. There is a charger, but it’s not mine.” More questions and answers. Finally Keith was brought from holding.

“What’s up, Mr. Jakobsen?”

“What would you want for your charger, Keith?”

Keith looked around the room. It was a luxurious room with golden candelabras and expensive wall hangings. The chairs were throne-like. Dag could see Keith getting greedier by the moment. “Don’t go overboard, Keith. They can always just take the thing. And kill us both in the bargain.”

“How about a couple of talents of silver?”

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“I’ll let them talk me down, Mr. Jakobsen,” Keith said with a grin. “Let’s see what they say.”

Kleitos was playing with the hilt of his sword, so Dag guessed that he had at least understood the term “talent.” A talent of silver was enough to pay the two hundred man crew of a trireme for a month. A trireme crew weren’t just casual labor. It required skill to handle those oars, and the men were also the boarders in battle.

Dag made the offer. Roxane started cursing in Greek and some other language, and all the guards were fingering their swords now.

Finally, she calmed down and pointed out that the charger wasn’t of any use without the cell phone. Apparently she had understood Dag’s explanation fairly well. Then the real haggling began, using Dag’s phone with the translating app. Roxane called Keith the worst kind of thief, and Keith protested his desperate straits. It went back and forth, and a couple of minutes in, Dag got the feeling that Roxane was enjoying herself.

Kleitos was clearly amused and a bit impressed by Keith’s audacity, and was kibitzing. It was Kleitos who pointed out that if they bought the charger and not the phone, they had nothing. Suddenly Dag was in the bargaining too.

They finally settled on one silver talent for both charger and cell phone. Dag was to receive two-thirds of it, while Keith Seiver got the remaining third. Since both were necessary, Keith wanted an even split. That didn’t fly with Roxane. She was very clear on the issue of officers versus common sailors. Dag was an officer/noble, he would get more. Dag would be required to help Roxane handle her new cell phone. Keith was sent off to fetch his solar power charger.

Dag checked his bars. He had three now. The Queen was on its way, but was still probably a hundred miles out.

He borrowed Roxane’s new phone and used the app to ask, “Where has the fuel ship gone?”

“Rhodes. That idiot Metello has decided that he will take the island and all of the Rhodian ships.”

Quickly, Dag pushed the button and called the Queen. He had enough bars. The call went through and he was talking to Adrian Scott. “Adrian. First, the Reliance is headed for Rhodes. Now I need you to get Marie Easley up to the bridge so that she can talk to Queen Roxane. Then I need you to come get us.”

“You’re on your way to Rhodes?”

“No, not us. When we got here, they dumped me and my work party off and took the Reliance, with her crew, off to conquer Rhodes. They have her packed to the deck heads with soldiers.”

“That could be a problem, Dag,” Adrian said. “The passengers are pretty mad about the attack and the Reliance running off like that.”

“Hey, Adrian. I didn’t run off. That was Kugan’s doing.”

“I know that, and you know that, but the passengers don’t want to believe it. I’ll tell you, Dag, I’m starting to think we ought to dump the whole bunch of them off in Ashdod and let them stew in their own pot. Hold on, I have Professor Easley on the line. Patching her through now.”

Dag handed the phone to Roxane, and was then left out of the conversation while Marie Easley talked to Roxane about what was known, and Roxane explained what she knew about the players involved. It was a few minutes later that Roxane looked up and said something in Greek. She listened to the phone again, then handed it to Dag.

“Dag, this is Captain Floden. We need to get the Reliance back before it gets us involved in the political mess that Alexander’s successors are involved in.”

Dag felt the color drain from his face. He understood. He wished he didn’t, but he did. Right now the Queen of the Sea was walking a political tightrope. She was virtually impregnable, but she needed food and supplies that she couldn’t force anyone to sell them. So she couldn’t afford to be banned from any port, especially not Alexandria. That was why the captain had decided to go after the Reliance before rescuing them.

But it might be worse than that. It might be that they would have to leave Dag and his crew right here in Tyre rather than alienate Attalus. Dag could be here for months.

* * *

Dag Jakobsen was a nice guy, but he was neither an idiot nor a coward. He realized that they were liable to need some form of weapon and that his captors were unlikely to sell them swords. Not that Dag could use a sword if he had one. But Dag had known how to make black powder since he was a small boy. His family made their own fireworks. Besides, he was a fan of Nobel and had studied the arms manufacturer’s life in school. “Keith, I want you to do me a favor.”

“What’s in it for me?” Keith asked resentfully. He wasn’t pleased that Dag got the lion’s share of the money for the phone and charger combination.

“Get over it, Keith. We don’t have time for that crap.”

Keith came to a parody of attention, snapped an open-handed British-style salute and said, “Sir, yes, sir. Anything the officer requires, sir.”

“Sit down, Keith. We need to make some black powder.”

Keith looked around sharply and Dag shook his head in disgust. He wished he had Romi Clarke with him. “Keith, how many people on this island know what the term black powder means?”

“Seven. You, me, and the other members of the work crew.”

“Right. So just don’t make a big deal of it. You want to make a poultice. For your aching backside, or your legs, or your forehead. I don’t give a crap. The poultice will contain…” Dag proceeded to give Keith the ingredients for black powder, along with some other stuff that was essentially useless, but would mask the purchase of the ingredients a little bit. “Any of the local apothecaries ought to have all of it, so we are going to have to be fairly careful. One thing about black powder is it needs to be ground moist, and then dried, then ground again. For that second grinding, you want a brass mortar and pestle to avoid sparks. We’re also going to need clay or iron pots, little ones. Hand grenade size. And nails or other bits of metal for shrapnel.”

“What are you planning, sir?” Keith asked, serious now.

“I don’t know, but we’re prisoners. I believe the captain is going to come for us, but what do you think these people are going to do when he does?”

“They won’t turn us over. They’ll try to ransom us.”

“Right. How much are you worth?” Dag asked. “How much will Wiley and his people think you’re worth? I can hear him now, being noble. ‘We will not negotiate with terrorists or kidnappers.'”

“Yeah. Me too. Funny thing is, I sort of agree with him in principle.”

“As do I. However, it feels a bit different when you’re the one being sacrificed for his principles.”

“Don’t it just?” Keith agreed.

“The day we arrived, Kleitos asked me if the Queen would ransom us or not. If not, we will be sold as slaves. I figure they can get a really good price for us on the auction block, considering we’re such unique items. I’d rather avoid that, Keith. So I think that we might want to be in a position to get out on our own. Or at least close enough to out that the captain will be able to come get us.”

“You think there’ll be enough time to make black powder grenades before the Queen gets back from Rhodes?”

“Again, I don’t know. I do believe it’s better to try than not.”

Keith saluted again, but this time it was casual and real. “I’ll get right on it, Mr. Jakobsen.” He coughed experimentally. “I think I’m developing a chest cold.”

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 07

Iron Angels – Snippet 07

Chapter 4

Special Agent Vance Ravel rubbed his eyes. Poring over the data a few months back had been exciting, and on occasion provided some decent leads resulting in instances of anomalous activity. These past few weeks, though? Nothing. Boring. At least Sentinel, the Bureau’s case management software, allowed for the use of keywords and even an RSS feed. In the old days — he chuckled — let’s say, the year 2010 or so — he would have had to search manually for what he was after. Well, what he and his superior, Supervisory Special Agent Temple Black, were after.

“Hey,” Temple called out.

“Yes, boss,” Vance said.

“It’s too late –”

“Or early, depending on how you look at it,” Vance said.

Temple sighed, a sound Vance heard all too often, especially late at night when they’d both forsaken caffeine in the hopes of heading home.

“All right, what do you need?”

“I got news of some crazy incident earlier this evening, have you seen anything come through?”

Temple leaned close. Her soap or perfume, Vance couldn’t tell the difference, was in the final throes of its effectiveness.

“Yes, and I’ve been sitting on it for hours now.” Vance stared at the computer screen and didn’t even glance in Temple’s direction.

“You’re becoming quite the sarcastic little human, aren’t you? Tell you what,” Temple said, “rather than be like that, how about finding something useful for a change?”

“How about you tell me about this crazy incident?” Vance asked, tapping away at the keyboard, adding new search strings, and ready to add more based on Temple’s information.

“There was a kidnapping out in Indiana, close to Chicago.”

“Wow, that sounds so strange.” Vance rolled his eyes.

“Look, I know it’s late, but how about we don’t turn on one another, okay?”

“Yes, boss,” Vance said, and winced.

“You know how I feel about that word, right?”

“Yes, b — Temple.” Vance shook his head. “Tell me more, please.” But he had already begun a search for Indiana and kidnapping and before she started talking again he had it.

“– ah, here it is. Huh. This is a draft, and you know how drafts can sometimes be a little too raw and, might I add, a prank of some sort?”

“What does it say?”

Vance turned and grinned. “How does suicide by thermite sound? That strange enough for you?”

Temple pursed her lips, tapping them with her forefinger. “Not bad, anything else?”

“There is mention of a weather anomaly…”

“You mentioned thermite. Could this supposed weather simply be the remnants of the thermite’s exothermic reaction?”

He glanced back and up at Temple and whistled. “I’m impressed.”

“Here you go again.”

“No, really, you’ve been listening to me.”

“I do remember basic chemistry from my high school days,” she said, folding her arms. “And before you make another crack, it wasn’t that long ago. Now, read that part of the report to me, that bit about the weather.” She had taken to pacing behind him when they went through this exercise on at least a daily basis the past couple of days. She must be worried about her future, and perhaps that of their fledgling unit, the Scientific Anomalies Group. They’d been made fun of for the acronym, SAG, but there was nothing for it now. The name was theirs and would stick even if they changed the name down the road.

“But what about the thermite? Or how the men who killed themselves with the substance looked alike?”

“Interesting. All right, you know what? I’ll take the entire report. Print it out for me.”

Vance sighed. “Aye, aye, captain.” He stood and saluted her, garnering a quick “pfft” from Temple. He smacked the printer, which beeped at him. “We need a new printer.” He withdrew the toner cartridge and shook it.

“We need to use our funds carefully, and if this report is as good as I think it’ll be, we’ll be taking a trip.”

The pages printed. Temple read. Vance removed his glasses, a beat up pair he kept around the office, and rubbed his eyes. Temple didn’t say anything while she read, only emitting an “oh” or an “hmmm” and one single gasp.

A few minutes later, Temple said, “Vance, we’re heading to Indiana. You better phone the agent who drafted this and let him know. He’ll bitch about getting local concurrence to travel to their AOR, but this is just a heads-up we’re giving. We’re not asking permission. Got it?”

“Yes, boss — uh, ma’am.”

“A simple ‘yes, Temple’ will do.” She walked off, shaking her head, but turned back before she hit the door leading to the outer office, “Go home, pack enough for a few days and get back here ASAP. We’re heading out on the first available flight.”

“But –”

“You can nap on the plane.”

 

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 31

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 31

Dag looked at the old reprobate and did. “First, you need to know that Metello made a bad mistake by taking the Reliance. The Queen of the Sea is almost twice as fast and a lot bigger.”

“The sea is a big place. It’s going to be hard to find a single ship. Even a ship the size of that one.”

“Not that hard. They know we were headed for Tyre.”

“How would they know that?” asked Evgenij in a voice like gravel. He had a scar along his neck and apparently didn’t like to talk.

“I told them,” Dag said. “Building big ships isn’t all our people can do.”

Evgenij looked frightened, then angry.

Kleitos, though, looked intrigued. “From what we heard and from what I saw you people are just very skilled crafters so if you told them, you had to have some way to signal. Some device? That’s right isn’t it?” He was watching Dag like an eagle watching a mouse hole, and Dag wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

Kleitos was still watching him, not saying anything, and Evgenij was starting to fidget like he was getting ready to do something Dag would regret.

“Yes, that’s right.” Dag said. He was being careful now that it was too late. And he realized that Kleitos would make a really good poker player if someone taught him the rules.

“Is the device still on the ship?”

Dag started to lie, hesitated, then told the truth. “No.” He pulled the phone out of his pants and Evgenij laughed and said something that was probably obscene.

Kleitos laughed too, then said, “Show me how it works.”

Dag turned it on and Kleitos lost his smile. Something approaching wonder was on the face of Evgenij. Gears and springs these men understood. Even ships made of steel made a kind of sense to them. But a flat piece of black glass that glowed to life with images and strange symbols? The Greek of the third century BCE didn’t have distinct words for science and magic. Learning and trickery were all one to them. Invoking the favor of the gods, just another skill, like knowing how much to slant an aqueduct, or how to arrange a phalanx of infantry to best advantage in a battle. And if invoking the gods didn’t always work, neither did arranging the phalanx. This was magic. This was learning, but of power and subtlety well beyond anything they had ever seen, even the Reliance sitting out in the harbor.

“There are devices like this on the Reliance, and other devices. And though this small one is out of range now, the emergency beacons on the Reliance will lead the Queen of the Sea straight to her.” Dag had tried to say that in Greek, but Greek didn’t have all the words. At least, Dag’s Greek didn’t. He had the phone out, so he used the translation app. It was out of range of the ship, but it had been updated with the most recent lexicon only day before yesterday.

Kleitos exchanged a look with Evgenij that Dag couldn’t read. He suspected it was something to do with the Reliance, and Dag wondered if they would warn Metello about the beacon.

As it happened, they didn’t. Neither Kleitos nor Evgenij was fond of Metello, who was arrogant in a way that Macedonians found objectionable in anyone but another Macedonian.

“It will run out of power soon if I use it too much,” Dag explained, then turned the phone off.

“Well, you’re wealthy enough,” Kleitos commented. “You should be able to pay your ransom, so you won’t end up a slave. Will your people pay the ransom of your common soldiers?”

Dag froze for just a second. Somehow, unconsciously, he had been thinking that he was still in the twenty-first century. No. He hadn’t been thinking at all. He had just assumed that there was civilization here. Then he spoke, parsing every word carefully. “I think you should assume that the Queen of the Sea will do whatever is necessary to get us all back.”

Queen of the Sea, Alexandria Harbor

October 19

Eileen Sanders, Jose Clavell, and Owen Kalusza were buried in Christian ceremonies in the Gabbari necropolis two hundred thirty years before the birth of Christ. That, at least, is what archaeologists would call it when it was rediscovered in 1997. The locals just called it the necropolis. Josette Easley attended the funerals both as a representative for her mother, and because she had met Eileen. Their staterooms were just across the hall from each other and they had drinks together at the first night party. Eileen was killed by Greek fire. Her husband wanted her buried, not “dumped in the ocean.” Ptolemy was most accommodating.

More delays while they had people in the hands of pirates. Meanwhile, the signal fires confirmed Dag Jakobsen’s report. The Reliance arrived at Tyre at dawn on the sixteenth. Now Josette, back on board in the Nobles Lounge, was having a drink in memory of a woman she barely knew.

“Why are we wasting time going after them?” the drunk whined. “We should just go ahead and go to America. Let these European barbarians kill each other. And let that stuck-up bastard Kugan take care of his damn fuel barge himself. He was busy telling everyone the barge was his. Let him and his crew protect it. We don’t need them. There’s oil in Trinidad, plenty, and the engines will use it without refining. We should go to America and never come back to this hell hole.”

“We have people on the Reliance, Mr. Stuart,” said Romi Clarke. This was said more in the way of a threat than the simple providing of information.

“We have people right here too,” Stuart said. “Paying passengers.” One of the changes over the weeks in 321 BCE had been the dropping of the rules about below decks personnel staying below decks. Crew and staff were, by the captain’s orders, allowed into all the public areas of the ship. They could buy booze at the bars, swim in the pools, and so on. Not all the passengers appreciated that, but Captain Floden had been firm. Apparently, Mr. Stuart was one of those displeased by the crew’s admittance into passenger territory.

Josette Easley wasn’t the history scholar her mother was. She was an electrical engineer who had gone on the cruise to celebrate her recent divorce from her mechanical engineer husband. Since she was on the ship, she studied it and was working part-time with the electrical systems managers. So she knew the specs pretty well. “Mr. Stuart, the Queen of the Sea has a full tank range of just over eight thousand miles. But we don’t have full tanks. Even sitting in one place, just running the lights and other electronic devices, plus air conditioning and water purification systems…all that takes power. From here, Trinidad is over five thousand miles. We might have enough to make it to Trinidad, but we would be close to out of fuel when we got there. We need the Reliance. We need her fuel and we are going to need her in the colony, to take that oil from shore to the Queen. And to do all sorts of things that a very powerful tug boat can do, like helping to dredge canals and harbors.

“But even if none of that were true, it takes a truly contemptible coward to advocate leaving our people in the hands of barbarians when we have a height advantage of over a hundred feet, not to mention steam cannons.”

Suddenly there were people standing and applauding. Romi looked at the skinny little white girl. He’d seen her around, but hadn’t really noticed her. Now he decided he liked her. He walked over, took her hand, bowed with a flourish, and kissed it. “Well said, pretty lady. On the money.”

* * *

Meanwhile, something similar was going on all over the ship. Joe Kugan and, to be honest, most of his crew had been less than subtle in harping on their newfound wealth, and the need the Queen had for their fuel. And how rich that made them. Finally, Captain Floden got on the ship’s intercom and made an announcement saying basically what Josette had said. Then the Queen of the Sea headed for Tyre.

Royal Compound, Alexandria

October 19

Ptolemy watched the Queen of the Sea sail out of the harbor and worried. He hadn’t imagined the steam guns, and he should have. He had seen ballistas and catapults. He had underestimated the ship people. But he hadn’t been wrong. They were soft. The loud lamenting over casualties so light as to be meaningless proved that. He simply hadn’t realized how powerful their tools made them.

Ptolemy turned from the harbor and re-entered the palace. “Call Dinocrates,” he told a guard. “And Crates and every scholar in Alexandria. We need a library.”

Hades, Ptolemy thought, I’ll even send for that idiot, Apelles. He was a very good artist and a fair scholar. And Ptolemy was going to need all the scholars he could get. There was no way that he was going to be able to reproduce the Queen of the Sea. But he might produce the steam cannon on another ship. Cannon like that, on the Nile with a powered ship, would control the Nile.

Royal Compound, Tyre

October 20

The sun was setting and Dag decided to check. He was rationing his checks, especially since the Reliance had sailed off. He didn’t know where the ship was headed. He hadn’t had a meeting with Roxane. Kleitos had kept him busy, then let him check in with his work crew. They were being treated well. He pulled out the cell and turned it on. He had bars. Well, he had one piddly little bar. But it told him the Queen was on her way. He needed to find out where the Reliance was going.

Dag put his phone away and went looking for Kleitos. Dag wasn’t entirely sure why Kleitos and Evgenij had let him keep his phone. He would like to think it was because they were afraid to touch the magic, and there was probably something like that in their attitude, but it felt more like a plumber insisting they get an electrician in to work on the wiring. They knew that there was potential danger in it and wanted it left in the hands of the expert.

* * *

“I would like to speak with Her Majesty.” Dag smiled. “In fact, there is someone else who would like to speak to Roxane, even more than me. A scholar who studies your time, as some of your scholars study Troy.”

“A story teller, then.” Kleitos laughed.

“She knows a lot,” Dag explained.

“She? A woman scholar?” Kleitos laughed again, though there seemed a bitter edge to it. Dag didn’t know why. In any case, Kleitos finally shrugged. “Why not? She’s been pestering me all day, wanting to interview our ship people.”

“Isn’t she in charge?”

“Rabbit,” Kleitos said. “I told you that. Rabbits aren’t in charge of anything when the foxes are around, and that girl’s been surrounded by foxes her whole life.”

* * *

Dag struggled through the greeting and the woman seemed to be almost enjoying his difficulty.

“Thank you for your greeting,” she said. “I know it must be difficult for you. I had a great deal of trouble with Macedonian and I already spoke some Greek. Please sit and tell me of the ships from the future.”

About then, a little boy with a painted wooden sword came running in, shouting about the hydra, and chopping off the imaginary hydra’s imaginary heads.

Well, he was yelling “Hydra” and chopping the air. Dag went to one knee to put his head on eye level with the tyke, and said, “Greetings, oh great warrior.” At least, that’s what he thought he said. Whatever it was that actually came out, it was enough to stop the kid in his tracks and the little replica of a kopis stopped chopping hydras and went into the kid’s mouth like a pacifier. Dag, without thinking, reached out and took the sword away from the kid.

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 06

Iron Angels – Snippet 06

“What’s going on?” Jasper asked.

Pete stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the Euclid’s brick wall. “Looks like your victim specialist is here, she’s speaking with the girl now. You know her well?”

Jasper shook his head. “No. She transferred in a couple of months ago. She’s a contract employee, not full Bureau.”

Pete grinned. “She single?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. Not right now. Not after what we’ve seen tonight.” Jasper took a deep breath. “And I’m not ready, not after, well, you know. It wouldn’t be fair to Shelly, even assuming she was interested herself.”

“Who’s Shelly?”

“The victim specialist.”

“So you know her name.” Pete rocked on his heels. “It’s a start.”

Jasper tilted his head and stared at Pete until his grin faded.

“All right. All right,” Pete said, holding up his hands with the forefingers and middle fingers spread into a V. “Peace, brother. Don’t get upset. Just trying to give us something else to think about is all.” He rubbed the top of his head, the short graying hair poking through his fingers. “All that shit down there, a fireworks display and that poor girl. I’m a little shook up and not afraid to admit it.”

“Me too.” Jasper let the words hang, and sighed. “How long’s Shelly been with the girl?”

“Ten minutes, maybe?” Pete shrugged. “Ambulance is waiting. The EMTs gave her a quick once over, but they still need to take her to St. Catherine’s for the usual workup.”

St. Catherine Hospital was nearby, just a few blocks away. Jasper leaned against the nearest police cruiser, facing Pete and the Euclid Hotel. A block to the north, barricades came down to block Euclid, flashing their red lamps. A train was coming.

That happened so regularly that Jasper paid little attention. It was often said that Chicago was the nation’s rail hub, but most of that constant freight traffic passed south of the city — and just about all of it came through the northern Lake County towns of Hammond, East Chicago and Gary.

A line of police emerged from the alley. The one in front announced they’d cleared the building and buttoned it up for later evidence collection.

“They’re calling it early, don’t you think?” Jasper asked. Bureau personnel would have been more thorough during the initial examination.

“We caught the bad guys, so what else is there to do?” Pete asked.

“What if there are others out there?” Jasper spoke more loudly because the train was passing through the intersection now. It was moving slowly; not more than twenty miles an hour, but a mile-long freight train makes a lot of noise.

Pete frowned.

“Just saying.” Jasper tilted his head back and gazed at the night sky. Haze and light pollution obscured all but the brightest stars and the crescent of the waning moon. “The vastness of space is out there, countless worlds, countless stars, and here we are dealing with dirt bags as if we’re making some kind of difference in the grand scheme of things.”

“Thought for a moment you were philosophizing, and then you said dirt bags.” Pete shrugged. “If we don’t deal with ’em, who will? Every one we take off the street makes things a little better.”

“Yeah,” Jasper said, and dropped his gaze from the murky heavens, “but they just get replaced by… That’s odd.”

“What?”

Jasper pointed toward the alley behind the Euclid Hotel. “That. What the hell is it?”

“Whoa.”

Tendrils wafted from the alley, dark gray and silver followed by an oddly shaped body of mist strobed by the blue and red flashes of the police cruisers. A slow hiss escaped from between the buildings as if the mist was a real, corporeal monster. The tendrils poked and prodded, feeling their way about as if attached to a blind person. The mist changed shape and for the briefest of moments, congealed, forming a head like that of a beast, a lion perhaps.

No. The head of a dragon with large eyes and tendril-like whiskers, danced about as if submerged in water.

Jasper blinked. The form reminded him of Chinese-style dragons like the ones on an educational channel showing a Chinese festival; only this thing wasn’t a bunch of people in a costume tossing firecrackers. The resemblance was only a vague one, anyway. Rather than scales, this “dragon” sported patches of mist. Jasper closed his eyes, hoping the image would be gone upon opening them. A negative afterimage persisted in Jasper’s vision from the intense light of the men burning.

The mist dragon had to be an illusion, due to being tired and that horrid afterimage. He opened his eyes, and blinked a few times.

It was still there.

“Pete, are you seeing this?”

Silence.

“Pete?” Jasper glanced over. Pete had gone down on one knee and covered his eyes with his forearm. “You okay?” Jasper turned back for another glimpse of the mist dragon. The gurgling hiss continued, now morphing into a faint whistle, as if a distant gas line had been punctured.

The mist swirled and what had once been similar to a Chinese dragon was now a ragged cloud suspended above the Euclid Hotel.

“Could that be gas?” Jasper asked, but Pete still covered his eyes. “This some sort of religious experience, Pete? I’m not being funny.”

“I — I can’t explain it,” Pete said. “I can’t look, and I don’t know why.”

The raggedness of the mist smoothed and pulsed. Silver shot through the dark gray portion of the cloud like veins, a complete respiratory system. The hiss rolled into a thunder-like grumble, also sounding like it was far away. The cloud solidified, once more taking the appearance of a great beast — more like a dragonfly than a dragon, now. And then it was simply gone. Gone completely, as if it had never existed.

“Where in the hell did that thing come from? It had to be some strange atmospheric condition, right?” Jasper helped Pete to his feet. “I don’t smell any gas, but it certainly could have been. I mean, not all gas has an odor.”

“Thing? It was a weird cloud is all,” Pete said. “It’s easy to see what we want to see. Believe what we want to believe.” His face had gone white, even in the subdued lighting and the dwindling number of cruiser strobes flashing red and blue across the scene.

“I’m heading back to the office,” Jasper said. “If I don’t write this up tonight I won’t get to it until Monday.”

“Working tomorrow?”

“Maybe. I’m thinking about coming back here during the day.”

Pete nodded.

****

No further information had been gleaned from Teresa Sanchez. The ambulance finally pulled away, carrying her off to the hospital for a full examination. Her parents had been told to head directly there and they’d be reunited. Jasper departed before all the police had dispersed and grabbed a cup of coffee to help keep him wired for report writing — just one of many cogs adding to the administrative burden ushered in by a reliance on computers that was supposed to help eliminate paperwork. The irony was old and stale by now, though.

****

En route, Jasper informed his boss, the Agent in charge of the Merrillville office, who then informed his boss, so the Special Agent in Charge of the entire Indianapolis division could appear on the news at some point with the East Chicago Chief of Police and claim Teresa Sanchez’s recovery was a joint operation and everyone could slap each other on the back and be happy they busted a human trafficking ring or some other nonsense they made up to make the public feel better and feel safer. Someone would be receiving an award for the actions Pete and he had taken earlier, but it’d likely be some muckety-muck who had nothing to do with the girl’s rescue.

The Merrillville FBI office was a stand-alone building at the end of a cul-de-sac. At this time of night, it presented a half-lit face and stood deserted save for a lone person working the radio and phones. Jasper entered a narrative of the events and would finalize the draft in the morning. He then went to his sparsely furnished bungalow in Hammond and collapsed on his bed.

He lived alone. No pets. No family. No wife. Lucy had left two years earlier and he hadn’t seen her since. The divorce had been swift. Lucy hadn’t wanted anything from him, not even a portion of his pension upon his retirement. She probably didn’t want to wait that long.

Jasper stared at the ceiling. Light from a streetlamp penetrated his window and in that cone of light were two men ablaze and dying in the basement of an abandoned hotel. The negative afterimage remained emblazoned, on his mind if not his retinas.

 

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 30

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 30

Chapter 10

Queen of the Sea, Alexandra Harbor

October 15

“Do we go after them?” Anders Dahl asked. Not that there was any doubt.

“Captain, there is a ship heading out from the docks at Alexandria. It looks to be Ptolemy’s galley.”

“I am tempted to say to hell with it and leave now,” Captain Floden said. “We have people on the Reliance, even if Joe Kugan has been being a horse’s ass about weapons and fuel.”

“Well, he was apparently right about the weapons, Captain,” Daniel Lang said.

“Was he? If he had just stayed with us…”

“He would have been in our way when we ran over the triremes,” Elise said. “Sorry, Captain, but he would have been. It would have made maneuvering more difficult and dangerous for all of us.”

“Fine. He was right and I was wrong. All the more reason to go after him now.”

“I’d like to agree, Captain,” said a new voice as Congressman Wiley stepped onto the bridge. “But we are still going to need Alexandria for some time, and showing that level of disrespect for Ptolemy isn’t going to make that easy.”

“That bastard was behind this attack, Congressman. We had the ships on radar from the time they left the harbor to the time the last of them limped home.”

“I don’t doubt you, Captain. But we still have to deal with him.” Wiley waved a hand. “We don’t have to let him off easy. We can charge him through the nose. But we are going to have to let him save face publicly.”

“Fine. We’ll need Marie.” Lars looked around. “Where is she?”

“In the wardroom, having breakfast, Captain. After she delivered the warning, she didn’t want to be in the way,” Daniel Lang explained.

“Doug, would you go fetch her, please.”

* * *

It took Ptolemy’s galley fifteen minutes to reach the Queen, and almost the first words out of his mouth were protests that he had never authorized the attack, and that Gorgias had acted completely on his own and against Ptolemy’s orders. He didn’t try to convince them that it was anyone but Gorgias who had done it, which Marie thought was wise of him. For this meeting, Marie simply watched and translated. Wiley played peacemaker, with Floden in the background, muttering darkly about burning Alexandria to the ground in retaliation. It was a good bargaining ploy, and it worked in terms of getting the royal treasury to pay for the damage and loss of life, while letting Ptolemy save face and act as magnanimous innocent.

But it took time.

It was after nightfall by the time all was settled. By then they had received a phone call from Dag informing them that he was pretty sure they were going to Tyre. In a way, that made it less urgent to go after the ATB, articulated tug barge. They knew where they would be, and could go fetch them once the more immediate business was taken care of.

Internally, the attack cut the legs out from under the Jerusalemites. Yes, the Queen would defeat anything on the sea, but once they got on land, they could be taken prisoner and held for ransom. Not a good plan. Wiley’s plan of going to Trinidad or perhaps Spindletop, Texas and setting up the United States of America early gained a lot of credence and the consensus was that Trinidad was the best place. It was an island, so there would be some protection. And it had oil that was easy to get to.

They got a second call, but it was breaking up. Dag was out of range of the cell tower, even over water with no competing signals, well before the Reliance got to Tyre.

On learning that the Reliance had been captured and was on its way to Tyre, Ptolemy again offered a contingent of Greek soldiers to help them. Captain Floden started talking about the trojan horse, and Marie didn’t have to translate that, as Ptolemy’s next words made clear. “I understand the captain’s concern, but I am not Agamemnon.”

More time as Wiley smoothed things over.

Then the issue of burying their dead came up. There was a dive shop on the ship. Two of the entertainments available on the Queen were scuba diving and snorkeling, so there was extensive scuba and snorkeling gear. They had been able to recover the body of Eileen Sanders, the woman who had gone over the side in flames during the attack. They had three bodies to bury and they couldn’t afford the bad feeling that would be generated by ignoring the desires of the grieving loved ones.

Reliance, Approaching Tyre

Dawn, October 16

Dag, bloody and subdued, watched a bloody and subdued Captain Joe Kugan show Admiral Metello the sonar depth gauge. Dag knew Joe Kugan well enough to know that Joe was protecting the Reliance from going aground more than he was protecting himself from another beating. The Reliance and Barge 14 together made up a sea-going ship that was more seaworthy than anything from this time. They were designed to transport fuel across the high seas. In essence, Reliance and Barge 14 constituted a small tanker, except at need the massive fuel bunkerage in Barge 14 could be separated from the Reliance so that one of the two could receive maintenance or repair while the other part of the system was still in operation. That had happened several times before The Event. About half the time the Reliance had been attached to Barge 15. For a moment Dag was distracted by the question of whether the Reliance and Barge 14 would ever be separated again. It almost certainly would, he decided as he looked back toward the stern. It was a waste of fuel to lug around Barge 14 when you were towing triremes.

From the pilot house, Dag could see the steel cables that went from the stern of the Reliance to the bow of a trireme. After that was another cable from the stern of that trireme to the bow of the next, and so on until all six of the triremes under Metello’s command trailed the Reliance like ducklings. After Julio’s death, the crew had cooperated. In exchange, they had been mostly left alone.

Most of the crews of the flotilla were camped on the Reliance, with only steersman and a few sailors on the triremes. The campers were being careful to avoid dark places, the holds especially, and mostly not touching anything. Partly that was because of the guys who had died from the fire suppression system, but it was reinforced by how strange this giant ship made of steel was to them.

Dag had managed to make one covert phone call shortly after dark on the fifteenth, and confirmed that they were headed for Tyre. Everyone in the work party had phones. They were standard issue for the Queen’s crew. Pretty decent phones, not the most recent, but about two generations back. After making his point, Metello was surprisingly gentle with them. He had taken all the cell phones, but they hadn’t searched anyone and missed Dag’s.

Keith Seiver had a cell charger in his pocket, but there had been no opportunity to use it. The charger was, in Dag’s opinion, a silly gadget. At least, it had been before The Event. It was a battery to recharge your cell phone through the USB port. But this battery was shaped like a cellphone and had one side covered in solar cells. The idea was that you could just leave it in the sun and it would charge the battery, which could then charge the cell phone or tablet computer. The problem was the solar panel was small. It would take the solar panel a couple of days in the sun to fully charge the battery pack, then you could use the battery pack to charge the cell phone in a couple of hours. Given enough time, the solar panels would charge a cell phone, a slate, even a laptop, but that meant putting it out in the sunlight. As soon as they did that, it would be seized. At the moment Dag’s cell phone and Keith’s battery pack were both fully charged because they had managed to plug them into the ATB’s power grid last night. But who knew how long it would be before they had another chance to do that.

Dag looked out at the island they were approaching. Tyre was an island with an artificial causeway to shore. The causeway was about ten meters wide and nearly a kilometer long. Dag knew the history. Alexander the Great had built the causeway under the eyes and arrows of the defenders, then sacked the city. It hadn’t yet fully recovered, though a lot of Phoenicians still lived there, and the defenses had been mostly rebuilt. Now it was Attalus’ home base on the east end of the Mediterranean and currently the residence of Roxane and Alexander IV.

* * *

Dag and his work crew were pulled off the Reliance when they got to Tyre and put on a galley that took them into shore. A very beautiful, dark-haired young woman, surrounded by a bunch of grizzled old vets, was there to meet them.

“Why are these people tied up and what happened to them?”

Dag didn’t find the girl’s accent hard to follow. It was a bit different than the Macedonian accent, but was a lot closer to it than Metello’s. The girl had black hair done up with a sort of gold chain hat, dark eyes, pale olive skin…and she was built. This must be the famous Roxane. She looked a bit like Elizabeth Taylor.

The commander of the galley started to answer back, but apparently thought better of it and just said, “Admiral’s orders,” in a sulky tone.

“Release them.”

“Admiral said to…”

“I don’t care what Metello said, and I doubt Attalus will either,” Roxane said.

“You are not Alexander,” the commander said. “You’re not even Macedonian.” That struck Dag as strange, because from his accent and appearance, the commander was probably Phoenician from right here in Tyre. Not that Dag was an expert.

Roxane looked like she was about to back down, then an older guy moved up beside her. “I am! Release them.”

* * *

Hours later Dag felt better. He was washed, bandaged and even to an extent, briefed, by Kleitos, the guy who had backed Roxane. There was another man in the room, the commander of the Silver Shields, named Evgenij. Older and harder looking than Kleitos, he didn’t talk much. Kleitos was something between her bodyguard and jailor. Not one of the official bodyguards who had been appointed in Babylon, four for Philip and three for baby Alexander, but none of them were present. They were all out trying to raise armies to bite off their own chunk of Alexander the Great’s empire. Kleitos was a man for hire who would keep her safe or kill her, depending on the orders from the paymaster. That paymaster had been Perdiccas before his untimely demise, then Peithon for a couple of weeks, then Attalus. The Silver Shields were almost worse. They had appointed themselves and were halfway between guards and extortionists. As long as the money kept coming, they would keep Roxane and little Alexander safe. If the money stopped, they would sell her to the highest bidder.

And they were all quite disgustingly straightforward about it.

Kleitos had backed Roxane because he didn’t like Phoenicians, and the Silver Shields had backed him because they were mean old bastards who didn’t take crap from anyone.

“Roxane is pretty enough, I’ll grant, and smart too,” Kleitos explained. “But she has all the guts of a rabbit. You, on the other hand, look like you have at least a little bit of guts.” Kleitos waved vaguely in the direction of the Reliance. “So tell me all about the ship out there.”

 

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 29

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 29

He wasn’t the only one who noticed the crash, not that it was going to do any of them any good. They had no guns, none at all. And even as he watched, dozens of men, armed with swords and shields — even spears — vaulted onto Barge 14.

“Where the hell did they come from?” Kugan wailed.

“I don’t know, Captain,” Dag said even as he grabbed the radio mike. “Mayday! Mayday! We have armed men on the Reliance and are under attack.” He looked at the readings and continued. “By the inertial compass, we are twelve knots east northeast of Alexandria and I see no way to hold the boat.” Dag was struck by a thought. “Captain, can you disconnect the tug from the barge?”

“If I had a few minutes,” Kugan said, but even as he said it the pirates were running along Barge 14 to the Reliance. Dag guessed the pilot house was the obvious target for anyone trying to take the Reliance. Dag had his phone in his breast pocket. Now he turned it off, and slid it down into the crotch of his underwear. In all the old movies, that was the safest place. Though this was ancient Greece, close enough, so that might not help.

Then the Greeks were among them, except these guys weren’t speaking Greek. It was a different language. And when they didn’t respond, Julio was knocked to the floor with the flat of one of those short, curved machete-like swords they carried.

“We surrender,” Dag said in Greek. At least that was what he tried to say. It seemed to work too. Their captors immediately started giving orders in Greek. It was a weirdly accented Greek, unlike what they spoke in Alexandria, and Dag could barely make it out. The rest of the crew were totally lost.

A swarthy bastard with a curly, oiled, black beard started in. He wanted the Reliance to stop. Once the Reliance was stopped, he started asking questions. “Is this the Queen of the Sea?”

“No.”

“Then it is the fuel ship?” The word he used was the Greek word for lamp oil, but that was close enough and what they had been using with Atum and the Greeks in Alexandria.

“Strong boat?” That took a little explaining, but apparently the guy with the curly black beard, who Dag learned was named Ithobaal, had gotten some sort of briefing on what the Reliance was. And someone, probably Dag himself, had been a bit too free with information about the power and functionality of eleven thousand horsepower engines.

“Good. You will pull my other ship, while we go back to Tyre,” said Ithobaal.

Then another voice arrived, and with it another man with a curly black beard. Fancied up whiskers seemed all the rage with these people. This one was called Metello and seem to be in charge of the fleet of pirates that had captured them. Metello said something in the Semitic-sounding language, which Dag was guessing was Phoenician, then in Greek. “I claim this ship as a prize of war since you strangers have sided with the traitor, Ptolemy.”

Ithobaal started screaming in Phoenician, and some of the pirates started pulling their big knives. Then other guys were pulling their big knives. The knives were a type that Dag saw a lot in Alexandria. They were called kopis. They bent forward and were heavier near the end, sort of a compromise between a machete and a cleaver. They were made for chopping. Arms. Legs. Chests.

The new curly black beard, who had claimed the Reliance as a war prize, turned out to be the admiral of this little fleet. He worked for Attalus, Roxane and Alexander IV. At least Dag was pretty sure that was what he was saying. Between Dag’s poor understanding of Greek and Metello’s accent, he couldn’t be sure. But he knew that Roxane and Alexander IV were in the custody of Attalus. That much had come back to them by way of the signal fires. Marie Easley was calling it a major change in the course of history.

By now there were other ships tied onto the Reliance. Six, including the first one.

Metello was talking again. “You will tow the galleys.” He pointed.

* * *

Baaliahon looked at the metal and, being a fairly bright guy, figured out that it was a door. After some experimentation, he figured out how to open it. He turned the handle one way, then the other, and then when he thought it was loose, he pulled up the hatch. There was a ladder going down, and Baaliahon started climbing. He took a breath, then another. Then he went unconscious and fell the rest of the way down the ladder into a tank of fuel oil.

Baaliahon had no way of knowing just how dangerous inert gases like nitrogen are. When you hold your breath, you’re keeping your lungs full of air, and slowly the oxygen is taken up and CO2 takes its place. But when you go into an inert atmosphere, you exhale all the oxygen in a couple of breaths and there is no buildup of CO2 to warn you that something is wrong. So you lose consciousness quickly, with no warning. Baaliahon was with Baal before his mates knew he was missing.

* * *

In the pilot house of the Reliance a light went red, indicating that the port three hold had been opened. Then, when it stayed open, an alarm sounded. Not a very loud alarm, but an alarm, and a sound that none of the locals had ever heard. It was a beep beep beep in a pure tone and it caught the attention of everyone in the pilot house.

“What is that?” asked Metello.

Joe Kugan looked at the console and grinned grimly. Joe didn’t have Dag’s daily practice at understanding Greek and spoke not one word, but he knew his instruments. He saw the light and said in English, “Looks like one of these assholes opened the P3 tank. Think they used an oxy mask?”

Dag looked back and forth between them, Metello curious and Joe smiling, and wasn’t sure what to do. He knew what Joe meant about the oxy masks. Also, some of the safety systems had been let slide in the days since The Event. They were reworking the fuel barge to multi-purpose and Joe Kugan had been protected in some ways. He hadn’t dealt with the locals the way Dag had and he hadn’t seen the level of casual violence that was an everyday event on the docks in Alexandria.

“Joe, if they didn’t, then one of these guys is dead and the rest of them are probably going to take it out on us. So grinning is a pretty bad idea, don’t you think?” Then Dag looked at Metello and explained what the alarm meant.

Joe didn’t get the grin wiped off his face quite quickly enough. Julio wasn’t even trying.

Ithobaal was frowning, but Metello seemed almost as amused as Julio. Metello ordered everyone to stay out of the holds, but it took some time. Several more people had either followed the first guy down the hatch or opened another. Two more lights came on and a total of seven of the pirates died in the holds of Barge 14.

Metello didn’t seem all that concerned with the deaths. He went on with business, asking what job each person on the Reliance had. “What is this one’s task on the ship?” He pointed to a crewman and was told his job, then another, and another. He got to Julio and asked in the same tone of voice as the ones before. He identified all the crewmembers of the Reliance and Dag’s work crew. When he had everyone’s job, he turned back to Julio.

“It is unknown word to see your enemies die from their gibberish maybe stupidity maybe ignorance.

“You thought it was unknown word that Ithobaal’s crewman didn’t know of your unknown word air. Well, so did I. But I am an admiral, not a deckhand. For you to show unknown word was as stupid, maybe ignorant, as breathing unknown word air.” He gestured to two of his men. “Kill him.” And never lost his smile.

They fought — the rest of Reliance’s crew, Dag and his work crew. But the truth was they weren’t nearly as good at hand-to-hand fighting as the locals. They weren’t SEALs or Green Berets. They were working people who spent their time working, not training to kill. They were quickly restrained, then beaten for fighting.

Dag looked at the admiral through bruised eyes. “Even admirals can face consequences. It’s worth remembering.”

Metello looked back at Dag and shrugged. “Maybe, but life is risk.”

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 05

Iron Angels – Snippet 05

Chapter 3

As he approached the back, what he thought was the back wall appeared to separate, almost like one of those pictures that used to be popular way back when — the ones where if you stared at them in a certain way a different sort of picture or image would emerge. In this case, the wall was a partition, but blended in so well with the cinder blocks of the rest of the basement. The subdued lighting, mixed with the smoke, added to the illusion. So did the image of human sparklers indelibly stamped upon his mind’s eye.

Jasper reached the wall, its function as a partition now obvious. A five-foot gap on either end of the wall provided access to whatever lay behind. Jasper and Pete pressed against the wall near the right side gap. The familiar pressure of Pete’s hand fell on Jasper’s shoulder. He took a deep breath and poked his head around the wall for a quick peek.

The quick peek revealed a rectangular room, not as large as expected, but of the same dark gray rock comprising the rest of the basement. In the center of the room, upon a bleached stone slab, lay the girl, her extremities lashed to metal stakes punching through the slab. The slab itself rested upon what appeared to be a bed of smoldering coals. The room was thick with the smell of incense.

He pulled his head back. The quick peek hadn’t been quite as rapid, but no one else was in the room.

“She’s in there,” Jasper said.

Without a word, Pete moved. Before Jasper could react and depress his weapon, he was already around the wall and through the gap.

“So much for avoiding traps,” Jasper muttered. He didn’t believe there were any, but with the strange basins filled with a strange substance, and two men igniting like a fourth of July show… anything was possible.

Jasper entered the room, gun at low ready, and scanning for any other threats. Another basin stood in the back left corner. Scorch marks crisscrossed the back wall, and the stones there had odd shapes, as if they’d been warped. Had someone else lit themselves up like a sparkler too close to that wall?

Jasper’s gaze fell upon the girl. Pete was there, listening for a breath or a heartbeat. The girl’s black hair lay matted to her head, a few strings plastered to her face, the extreme paleness almost a denial of her Hispanic heritage. Her eyes fluttered, but she didn’t wake.

Pete lifted his head and turned toward Jasper. His eyes watered, and deep lines suffused his face. The East Chicago police officer looked as if he’d aged a decade in a few minutes.

“At least she’s alive,” Jasper said.

“But what evil lurks in the world today. Who would do such a thing?”

Jasper sighed, not out of impatience, but of weariness and agreement. “Two men who didn’t want to go to jail apparently.”

The girl’s knee length skirt, at one time white but now smeared with ash and dirt and grime and soaked through with sweat, clung to her legs. Her top had once been light blue, and it too clung to the unconscious girl. No outward or obvious signs of abuse presented themselves, but depending on her memories, she could be scarred for life after this sort of ordeal.

Wailing and yelping sirens reached into the basement.

“Pete,” Jasper said, but he remained focused on the little girl. “Pete,” he said again with a little more force.

Pete raised his head.

“Does she appear to have any wounds?” Jasper asked.

“None that I can see.”

The girl’s eyes fluttered and opened. Confusion filled her eyes, which flicked back and forth as she tried moving her arms and legs.

“Shhh,” Pete said, pulling out a knife and cutting her bonds.

The girl’s eyes widened and her mouth opened in a large circle, but no scream issued. She sat straight up as if some puppet master had yanked her strings.

“We’re police,” Jasper said, displaying his badge. Most people didn’t recognize the tiny gold FBI shield. Pete displayed his large silver badge to the girl and she collapsed back onto the slab, though her chest rose and fell both rapidly and shallowly.

“Are you hurt?” Pete asked.

The girl shook her head. She opened her mouth, but then swallowed and licked her lips. “My head hurts.”

“But your back and neck are okay?” Jasper asked.

The girl turned her head and gazed up at him.

“I guess that is a ‘yes’,” Jasper said, and smiled. “Do you remember anything? Anything at all? Even the smallest detail or most insignificant tidbit could mean something.”

“I want to go home,” the little girl said.

“Soon. But a doctor will have to see you first,” Pete said.

She grimaced. “Do I have to?”

Pete nodded. “Do you remember your name?”

“Teresa. Teresa Ramirez.”

“Where do you live?”

She recited her address, phone number, and not only her parents’ names, but also her brothers’ and sisters’ names. But she could not recall any details of how she ended up in the basement of the Euclid Hotel. Perhaps after she’d had some water and food in more comforting surroundings she’d remember something. Though, at this stage, it appeared as if the two men who had abducted her had been the only men involved. Jasper would have to meet with the informant as soon as he could to see if there was any more information to be gleaned. Why had they killed themselves, and in such a spectacular manner? Too many questions, but they’d likely never be answered since the girl had been rescued and the perpetrators were dead by their own hands, or rather — he shook his head — by their own feet. Feet coated with whatever had drenched the mats. They’d have to get an evidence team in here, but since the girl was saved, it’d wait until tomorrow if it ever happened. Maybe the CSIs of Pete’s department would be better suited. Honestly, he didn’t want to call in Morris Chan and the FBI’s ERT for this.

Pete carried the girl out of the basement as uniformed police flooded the place. The Euclid hadn’t seen this much activity in decades. Hopefully, Teresa would see a victim witness specialist in a few minutes. They’d had one on standby ever since the search began. The specialist was likely racing toward the hotel or already outside.

Jasper decided on one more look around the basement for any random evidence. The little girl would be taken to the emergency room and examined for signs of abuse, both physical and sexual, and then referred to child protective services. Jasper leaned over the third basin, the one he’d seen as they entered the back room of the basement, and saw that it contained the same substance as the two used by the men when they committed suicide. Or something that looked like it, at any rate.

More police entered. He told them to steer clear of the basins and the slab upon which the girl had been lashed — and the bath mats the men had stepped on. As far as he was concerned, the police could ransack the rest of the place searching for evidence, but he simply knew that the crimes had taken place down here, in seclusion and away from prying eyes.

His eyes went once more upon the back wall of the basement and the scorch marks there. He stepped toward the wall and ran his fingers down the stone. Rippled and charred, distorted — and surprisingly hot. He pulled back his hand. Odd. His fingers tingled. But then, his entire body was shaking a little, probably from the adrenaline.

Jasper ascended from the dungeon, trading the foul stench of the incense mixed with the thermite reaction and a hint of burnt flesh for the heavy chemical-laden air of the streets. Even in the dark, with street lamps casting their sharp stare, the tank farm’s big white cylinders to the southeast were easily visible. He sucked in a lungful of air, attempting to cleanse the Euclid’s death smell from his lungs with a less offensive odor.

During his first few years in the area, he’d worried about cancer and respiratory issues, and he’d actively sought a transfer. But one good case led to another and he’d never escaped northwestern Indiana, and now he wasn’t sure he ever would. Chicago loomed, and that’d be a fairly easy transfer to pull off, but there was something about working in a smaller office and the variety of hats forced upon agents working in them that he really liked. And as time passed, he’d grown fond of the people who lived there. Well, most of them. Northern Lake County was a working-class area, a lot like the one he’d grown up in except this area was racially mixed. But once he’d gotten used to that he’d come to like it also.

Police cruisers and unmarked cars lined Euclid and Chicago Avenues, and in their midst, an idling ambulance. Jasper hadn’t heard it roll up amidst the racket the police inflicted on his eardrums. A few onlookers stood around, curious over the scene, but it was by no means a mob. There just weren’t that many people who lived in the area.

 

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 28

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 28

There was apparently not a consensus among the passengers about whether the Queen should shoot.

There was motion on several of the galleys, and a shout hard to hear in the distance. Four of the rigs on the galleys went into action, flinging burning jars of something. None came near the guns, but one reached the Promenade Deck and two hit windows below the Promenade Deck. The windows both cracked, but neither broke. However, the passengers watching from the Hoi Polloi Lounge got a much closer view of the fight than they were expecting.

The results of the one jar that reached the Promenade Deck were much more serious. Twelve people hit, with everything from minor burns to two who were burned to death, and one who went over the side on fire.

As soon as that report came, Captain Floden lost all interest in waiting. “Sink those bastards, Lang. Sink every last one of them.”

* * *

“About damn time,” Romi Clarke muttered when they got the orders. He’d been wanting to shoot this thing since they built it. He took careful aim, using the camera’s rangefinder and the little program that adjusted the sights automatically based on range and input windage. Then he pointed the camera at the sucker banging the drum and fired.

As it turned out, either the programming was off or he had guessed wrong about the wind. The wide-angle camera recorded the round hitting the water forty feet to the right of his target. The shot didn’t even hit an oar.

Romi adjusted and fired a burst of five. The “potato gun” used steam to propel a heavy object down a four foot long barrel and fired a forty millimeter round that weighed about half a kilogram. They had a muzzle velocity of three hundred meters per second. It took the bullets a second and three quarters to reach the target and the first burst didn’t seem to do much. It had hit the trireme but the ship hadn’t slowed. So Romi tried again, raking his fire from one end of the ship to the other.

* * *

When a one pound lead bullet hits a thin piece of wood, it doesn’t slow much. And if the wood is thin enough, all it does is poke a hole. That was what had happened to the first five-round burst. They had poked five neat holes in the bottom of the galley. The displaced water from their exiting the boat had actually done more damage.

The longer burst hit the rowers on the port side of the galley. The same one pound round that went through the boat’s planking like it was paper, went through the chests of men like they were so many watermelons. Then it went on through the man behind, and the man behind him. The steam cannon weren’t silent, but they weren’t all that loud either. Besides, the pop pop pop of the cannon was over well before the men started to die.

Captain Heron saw the slaughterhouse that the port side of his ship had become and turned away from the battle. He didn’t have a lot of choice. He had lost a third of his rowers on the port side, and the rest were trying to get away from the bloodbath.

Gorgias didn’t see what had happened to the lead galley. He did hear the screaming but he ignored it. Screams, cries of rage and fury — those were inevitable in a battle. Gorgias was an experienced Macedonian soldier. He had been in battle many times and was not a man to run from a fight. He gave orders to speed up the beat. The remaining triremes raced for the big ship as though their life depended on it.

* * *

“Get us moving, Elise,” Captain Floden said. “I don’t want to be a sitting target if any of those triremes get through.”

The huge ship started to move. They had been anchored with plenty of sea room, as much for the comfort of the locals as because they needed it. Now they moved landward to keep sea room from the attackers. And they continued firing the steam cannon.

Two more ships pulled away from the fight after being raked by the stern port steam cannon. But the sonar was showing shallowing. And another, if smaller, volley of Greek fire was flung at them.

“Enough,” Captain Floden said. “Reverse engines, Elise. Run over those idiots.”

The engines on the Queen of the Sea ran generators which, in turn, powered huge electric motors located in turnable nacelles. This allowed the Queen to travel forward, backward, or at need, sideways. But even so, it didn’t happen immediately. The Queen was a massive ship. Even though they had barely started moving, it took them a minute to slow and reverse. But Elise Beaulieu, First Officer Navigation, was a skilled ship handler and no more pleased to be the recipient of Greek fire than her captain.

It took Gorgias a bit too long to realise what was happening. When the Queen started slowing, he thought he had won. He was unable to give up that belief in time to dodge. His flagship was run over by a 150,000 ton cruise ship traveling backwards at four knots.

* * *

Gorgias leapt over the side just as the Queen’s stern contacted the flagship’s port quarter. He was a good swimmer and thought he had a chance. He hit the water hard and had both the wind and the sense knocked out of him for a few moments. He managed not to inhale the water. His fingers worked desperately at the leather straps holding his armor on, and piece by sodden piece, he got it off. By that time he was deep in the water. Deep enough that the water pressed on his chest, making his lungs feel even emptier than they really were.

He swam desperately for the surface, but he was disoriented and confused by oxygen deprivation. He had to breathe, but he couldn’t.

It didn’t really matter. Though he would never know it, Elise Beaulieu had shifted the nacelles and an Olympic swimmer in top form couldn’t have competed with the riptides produced by those massive props. Gorgias never saw the propeller blade larger than he was turning at full speed.

It squashed him like a grape.

* * *

The reason for Elise Beaulieu’s adjustment of thrust was because the trireme behind Gorgias’ was rowing with great desperation to try and get out of the way of the Queen of the Sea. But like Alice in Wonderland, running as fast as they could barely kept them in place, for the currents of the massive motors caught them and pulled them toward the big ship even as the motors of the big ship pushed it at them. The Queen backed over them to the noise of cracking timbers and screaming men. The heavy wooden ribs of the triremes broke like so many toothpicks, and men in those ships were masticated between the Queen and the unforgiving sea.

There were no survivors. Not off the flag ship trireme, or the two others that hadn’t been able to get out of the way in time. The rest ran for shore. Of the nine triremes that had actually taken part in the attack, four made it to shore. None made it without massive casualties.

The two that had peeled off to go after the Reliance had better luck. After an hour of rowing, they gave up the chase. The worst thing that happened to them was the crew of the Reliance leaning over the back rail, yelling taunts at them.

* * *

Sound carries over water, even for miles. Metello of Carthage, admiral of Attalus’ fleet, heard the battle. He heard the strange noises — to him — of the Reliance at full power forcing her way through the waves. He gave orders for the fleet, six triremes, to spread out and to douse all lights. And to row quietly. When he saw the lights from the Reliance, he ordered his trireme to get to that ship, but as it happened, he wasn’t the closest.

Closest was that idiot, Ithobaal. And Metello knew what that meant. The motherless jackal would try to claim the whole ship. Metello leaned over to the aulates, whose job it was to play the rhythm for the oarsmen and whispered to increase the pace. He would rather have Ithobaal get there first than have that monster of a ship warned.

* * *

The first Dag knew of the new trouble was when he heard a crashing sound on the port bow of Barge 14. He looked back and saw the black outline of a mast and rigging. The Reliance was attached, slotted into Barge 14. That was important because it meant that the people who were scrambling onto Barge 14 were going to have no difficulty reaching the Reliance.

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 04

Iron Angels – Snippet 04

Chapter 2

Jasper brought his Glock and flashlight up in a ready position, his finger creeping toward, but remaining off the trigger. He didn’t bother glancing at Pete, as he likely had his weapon trained on the open door.

A brown haze hung in the subdued lighting of the room, masking its contents and whoever had flung open the door.

“This is bad,” Jasper said.

“We have no choice now,” Pete said.

Jasper took a deep breath. “You heard the girl’s whimper though, right?”

“Si. Think that door flung open on its own?”

“Not a chance,” Jasper said. “From this angle I can’t see much, but I’m pretty exposed.” Part of his body was in the doorway, but he managed to squeeze to the right of the door up against the foundation. There was only about a foot of wall on either side of the door, not much cover at all. He motioned for Pete to stay back and climb a step.

“Police!” Jasper yelled. “How many people are in there and do you have any weapons?” Depending on the mental state of the people within and also if they felt they were out of options they’d likely assume the police had come in force and give up. However, if desperate, there was always a chance of a shoot-out, or even a good old-fashioned death-by-cop scenario. None of them were good, but the worst situation would be if they took the life of their captive. Jasper didn’t care about the abductors’ health and well-being, not one iota, but that little girl in there, Teresa Ramirez, deserved better.

No answer.

“Police! I need one of you to come out into the open and show me your hands. And raise ’em high.” Jasper waited a few more seconds. “We’re here for the girl, Teresa Ramirez. Her parents are worried. We’re not interested in you, only the girl.” Jasper pursed his lip

“We call in SWAT?” Pete asked.

“No. We can’t wait on that. Not with the little girl in danger,” Jasper said.

A muffled conversation hung in the air — two men in a hushed argument.

“I’m going to peek,” Jasper whispered, “but I wish I’d brought a mirror.” Safer for sure, but Jasper wasn’t too concerned. Over the years, he’d developed a keen eye and ability to take in a lot of detail during a quick peek. Theoretically, it was dangerous, but he exposed only a sliver of his head for a split second during the action. The likelihood of a marksman on the other side knowing at what level he’d peek and when was very low, so being shot during a quick peek wasn’t that likely. It was when they made entry that they’d be at their most vulnerable.

Jasper kneeled down and poked his head in and out of the room in what took probably not even a half a second. The trick was not focusing on any one thing, but taking in the whole room in one mental image and sorting it out afterward.

“Two men in the left corner closest to us,” Jasper said. “But I didn’t see the girl.”

The brown haze drifted through the door, the incense and musty scents battling.

“We’ll go in rapid succession. I’ll go straight in, you buttonhook to the left. I saw nothing right in front of me, so I’m assuming the girl must be in the back of the room. The layout appeared fairly straightforward. Very little furniture so we shouldn’t have any real surprises. I also noticed what appear to be a few basins or small tubs. Hard to tell in the dim lighting.”

Pete shook his head. “You got all that from a quick peek?”

“Let’s go.” Jasper moved with purpose into the room. “Police, hands up! Let’s see ’em!”

Pete moved in gun raised at eye level on Jasper’s left. “Hands up, now!”

Both men stood. They’d been huddled in the corner. Average height, both had dark hair cut in the same manner, and remarkably similar looks. Their odd choice of clothing, however, didn’t make sense — they both wore what looked like checkered shirts beneath a knee length robe. The material was thick, like the canvas of a martial arts gi, and similarly fastened with a belt. An odd fold created a pocket of sorts in front of their stomachs. Both men stood shoulder to shoulder with their arms hanging at their sides.

“Put your hands up, fingers spread and way over your head. Come on, now,” Pete said.

Jasper kept his mouth shut and eyes on the men. If either of them reached into those odd pockets he’d have no option but to shoot.

The men stepped toward the middle of the room in unison, as if they shared some hive mind way of doing things.

Jasper glanced about, looking for a reason for their odd behavior, but the room was otherwise empty.

“Stop right there!” Pete said, and took a step toward them. “See this?” He waved his gun. “That means you stop when I say stop and you do what I say. We’re police, and we’re looking for a little girl. It’s simple. Speak English? Either of you?” After a moment he added, “Habla español?”

The men stared back blankly.

“You think they’re on something?” Pete asked.

“This whole situation is on drugs if you ask me,” Jasper said. “We need to get them under control, and fast.”

The two men had paused at Pete’s last command, but now they took steps sideways. They had an odd-looking way of moving. Jasper glanced over, noticing unpolished stone basins, like the sort someone might have washed clothes in, or if they’d been metal, had at a picnic filled with ice and beer. Jasper kept his Glock up and moved toward the basins. The two men halted.

“That’s right,” Jasper said. “What’s in those basins that you’re so eager to get to? Huh?”

The two men looked at each other and then at Jasper.

Pete triangulated with Jasper on the two men, weapon raised. His face was red and rivulets of sweat wended down his cheeks. The mustache riding his upper lip glistened.

“You okay?” Jasper asked.

“Just tired of this bullshit.” Pete never took his eyes from the men. “You two, separate from each other slowly. You need to be two paces apart from one another. If you don’t have the girl then this shouldn’t be a big deal, but we heard a whimper.”

“A girl’s whimper,” Jasper said.

“Yes,” Pete said, “and if you cooperate this whole deal will go much easier for you.”

Pete eased off a bit. Heaven forbid some hidden camera was filming this and Pete lost control or Jasper shot one of them and the two men were unarmed. Jasper shivered. It was still damned cold in this basement.

“No. Please.” A little girl’s voice came from the back of the room. He couldn’t see her, though. Was there a closet he couldn’t make out? Or another room?

“Where is she?” Jasper asked. “You two are heading for trouble. Answer me.”

Pete moved for the men. “Get down. On your knees, and interlock your fingers atop your heads, and lace those fingers into your hair.”

The men stared, faces blank and devoid of emotion.

“What do we do?” Pete asked.

The men continued edging for the basins. Jasper glanced in. White powder, apparently a pretty thick layer, filled the basin about halfway. Cocaine or drugs of some sort? A bath mat, glistening as if it were wet, rested before each basin. Jasper stepped away from the basins. An ill feeling overtook him. If any of them came into contact with a drug like PCP, this mess would become a lot messier and a lot more dangerous.

“What is that?” Jasper asked. “Drugs?”

Both men shook their heads.

“You two can speak, can’t you?” Jasper asked.

The two men now stood roughly three feet from the basins and were still inching forward. Jasper raised his weapon.

“Stop, or I’ll assume what is in those basins is a weapon of mass destruction.” Perhaps that would get their attention. For all he knew, the basins’ contents were a concoction aimed at destruction.

The men each stepped onto one of the mats with an audible squish. A clear liquid oozed between their toes, coating them and the sides of their feet.

“Don’t take another step, or –”

Both men hopped into their respective basins with both feet.

Two cones of white flame erupted, shooting up each man’s body. One of them screamed. Jasper fell backward, not from a blast, but from the intense heat thrown off by the men. Pete ran forward, but from about ten feet away he threw his arms up to cover his face.

“Don’t!” Jasper shouted. “It’s too late.” He glanced up at the ceiling, scanning for scorch marks, but the flames were confined to the men. The one on the right dropped to his knees, or perhaps the lower part of his legs had been incinerated. A foul scent of seared flesh mixed with acrid smoke and sulfur smacked his nose.

Except for that one short scream, the two men hadn’t cried out or shown any emotion; but then, they hadn’t had any time for such. Jasper wasn’t positive, but he thought he was seeing thermite at work. They’d been trained in the Marines to use thermite grenades to disable artillery. The thermite he was familiar with hadn’t looked like the stuff the men had jumped into, but if he remembered right thermite came in several different varieties.

Jasper watched as the two men glowed white, their forms barely discernible now, melting or disintegrating as the heat intensified. He was reminded of the scene toward the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Nazis’ skin and flesh melted away exposing the skeletons beneath. Only this reaction tore these two men down to a pile of atoms in the bottom of stone basins.

He’d never witnessed such a thing before. They hadn’t worked that much with thermite in the Marines, and never against humans. The sad part was that this wasn’t even gruesome or gory. The two men had lit up like human sparklers.

“What the fuck?” Pete laid a hand on Jasper’s shoulder, and he realized he hadn’t gotten up off the ground.

“Yeah,” Jasper said. “What. The. Fuck.”

What was left of the two men sank into the now disintegrating basins, a shower of white-hot flame and the heat rippling the air like some twisted mirage. The white flames turned yellow and dwindled. Smoke hung in the air, acrid and mingling with incense. The smell of burning flesh and singed hair barely touched his nose. The destruction of the men had been too rapid. The flame feasted on them like some ravenous predator, disposing of the bodies within seconds.

The girl.

“Pete,” Jasper said. “Teresa Ramirez. She’s close by.”

“There might be a trap back there.”

“Yeah, I know. But we’ve got to look for her.” Jasper squinted through swirling smoke. Was he breathing in dust from the dead men? He coughed and brought a hand to his mouth.

“You okay?” Pete asked.

“Yeah, it’s nothing. Let’s go.” Jasper pointed with his gun hand toward the back wall.

 

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 27

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 27

Chapter 9

Bridge, Queen of the Sea

October 15

It was midnight when Apprentice Deck Officer Doug Warren came on watch. Adrian Scott filled him in. Not much out of the ordinary had happened. “They finished up the day’s loading of supplies about sunset, and traffic in the harbor has been fairly light except for a small fleet of triremes that’s headed to Carthage. Dinocrates says it’s some sort of ‘show the flag’ mission.” Adrian waved a hand at the radar screen. “We’re tracking them to try and calibrate the radar for the local’s ships.”

Doug nodded. Ships were small and the ocean was big. Even back in the twenty-first century when the small craft carried radar reflectors to make it easy to see them, they got missed a lot.

Two hours later, Doug yawned and sipped his coffee as he noted the change in direction of the radar blips that represented the fleet of triremes. The radar reflection from the wooden ships was very weak, so the computer was augmenting the signal and filtering. They didn’t appear dim on the display, but the databox made it clear just how weak the return signal was.

Doug took another sip of the coffee. Sort of coffee. Doug, the captain said, liked a little coffee in his cream. Doug was a stocky lad to begin with, and the rich, sweet brew was probably not helping. But the bridge crew still got coffee, even if it was a restricted resource now.

It was a little after two AM. He had the triremes on radar as they made the turn. They were…he checked his radar readings…they were 3.4 knots out to the west northwest.

It was the dark of the night and there was a light mist. To the locals, it must be pitch black. It was a good thing the Queen had plenty of sea room. Doug wasn’t frightened, or even worried. He was just mildly curious, but kept the radar focused on the triremes. By about four in the morning, it was starting to get a little weird. They were less than a knot from the Queen, so they ought to be able to see her lights. It looked like the triremes were shifting course to intercept. He reported it to Julio on the Reliance. It was standard practice to share observations.

Reliance

4:32 AM

Dag rubbed his eyes. The ship was moving. That was wrong. The Queen shouldn’t be moving. Then he remembered he wasn’t on the Queen. He was on the Reliance. He had been in charge of a work party that was helping set up the toilets for the tents they set up on the deck of the Reliance. Because they would be back at it early in the morning, they had stayed the night. It was then that Dag’s sleep-fogged brain finally snapped to the fact that the Reliance shouldn’t be moving either.

Dag got up and headed for the pilot house. It took him two minutes to get there and by then the Reliance was a hundred feet from the Queen and turning away.

“I don’t take orders from you, you little asshole!” Kugan was in a shouting match with Doug Warren on the Queen.

“What’s going on, Captain?” Dag asked.

Kugan whirled on Dag. “Those ships you told me not to worry about? They are headed right for us. A dozen galleys, with some sort of rigging on them. My guess is scaling ladders. And they sailed out, and came around to come at us from seaward, so they could get the Reliance even if they didn’t get the Queen.”

“Let me talk to Doug, please, Captain,” Dag said. He had told Joe Kugan that the ships were on their way to Carthage, just as he had been told they were when the Queen’s bridge watch saw them leave.

“Go for it. Maybe you can pound some sense into the stupid dick.”

“What have you got, Doug?” Dag asked.

“Eleven galleys, triremes. They sailed out of harbor for about three knots, then turned around, and headed back. I don’t think it’s anything important. Maybe they forgot something. And they will come pretty close, but they aren’t headed right for us. I think they’re using the Queen as a lighthouse. There was no reason for Captain Kugan to panic.”

Dag’s common sense and his education were screaming at each other too. His education said this was impossible and Ptolemy would know that there was no way any ship from Alexandria could attack the Queen. It would be suicide. His common sense and experience with these people was screaming just as loudly that this was an attack. It couldn’t be anything else, and the locals were all total nut job tough SOBs who would kill you over a penny in the street.

It was a short fight. Dag had been dealing with the locals since they got to Alexandria. “On my authority, Doug, wake Captain Floden and Daniel Lang.” He turned to Captain Kugan. “The cannon will be armed, Captain. The safest place for the Reliance is tucked in close to the Queen.”

“Bullshit, Dag,” Kugan said. “The safest place for my ship is out of the line of fire. Besides, it’s too late anyway.” He pointed at a screen. It was showing a feed from the radar on the Queen. Two of the galleys had shifted course and were following the Reliance.

“Captain Kugan, I’ve seen those suckers move. They can get up to fifteen knots in a sprint.”

“Which is why we’re running at full power. I’m just hoping we can keep ahead of them long enough to wear out the rowers.”

“You’d be safer back with the Queen.”

Kugan looked at him, and Dag could see the fear on the man’s face. But all Kugan did was shake his head.

* * *

Daniel Lang and Captain Floden reached the bridge at almost the same time. The captain got a quick report and waved at the comm rating. “All hail channel.” Then he picked up the mike. “All hands, prepare for boarding from seaside. Man the steam cannons. All watches to stations.”

“When do we act, Captain? We don’t have proof they are attacking till they do something, and by then it’s going to be hard for steam cannon to depress enough to hit them.”

“I’m not waiting. Weigh anchor just in case, but if those ships get within five hundred meters, we will open fire on them.”

“Captain, you have to at least warn them,” Doug Warren blurted, then blushed at Staff Captain Dahl’s look.

Daniel couldn’t help but sympathize with the kid. Doug Warren had never been shot at in anger, and he had a deep belief in fairness and the rule of law. Daniel agreed that the rules were what kept people civilized. That was why he was a cop. “He’s right, Captain.”

Captain Floden looked at them. “You have a good point, Doug, but my first concern must be the passengers and crew on this ship. We’ll use the loud hailer to warn them off. But if they don’t heed the warning, we will destroy those ships.”

Daniel looked at the comm rating. “Get Marie Easley up here to deliver that warning.”

* * *

General Gorgias watched the ship as they approached. It was still showing lights, but fewer than it had the first night it arrived. They were conserving the LED lights, not the electricity that powered them. Besides, at this time of night, they would mostly be asleep, and they were not soldiers, to wake ready to fight at the sergeant’s call. They were sheep who would spend hours bleating at each other before they worked themselves up to acting. Kugan was quicker to respond than Gorgias hoped, so that meant that both ships knew they were coming. Their best hope now was speed. He had to get his forces aboard both ships fast.

Then, on the night, there came a voice to frighten a god. At least in its volume. Gorgias knew that voice. It was the voice of the scholar, Marie Easley. “Go back! Any galley that approaches within three stadia of the Queen of the Sea without prior authorization will be sunk!” Marie was using Greek units of measurement since the metric system meant nothing to the people she was hailing. Three stadia was about five hundred and fifty meters.

Gorgias turned to the timekeeper. “Increase the rate. We want to get in fast.” Then he turned to the artillerists. “Load the catapult with jars of Greek fire. If they have some sort of weapon, we will need to silence them. It won’t damage that steel monster. Just clear the decks for our boarders.”

* * *

“They aren’t turning, Captain,” Daniel said.

“I can see that. Call the gunners and have them put a shot across their bows.”

The shot went out and made a splash about a hundred feet in front of the lead galley. By now, lights were coming on all over the ship. Passengers looked out their windows, and then headed for the Promenade Deck to see what was going on.