Eric Flint's Blog, page 173

Iron Angels – Snippet 03

Iron Angels – Snippet 03

“I noticed from the front a courtyard with trees and shrubs obscuring another entrance into the hotel,” Jasper said.

“That makes sense. Come look.” Pete gestured toward a door set in the brick wall lining the alleyway.

“That a hallway or just an entrance into the courtyard, you think?” Jasper asked.

“We’ll find out,” Pete said. “See that handle and the wood of the door?”

“Yep, been used recently. It open or locked?”

“It’s open. I tried the knob, it turns freely, and the keyhole appears to have been used. It’s not gunked up at all.”

“So the place isn’t completely abandoned. You think the owner of the Euclid is somehow involved?”

Pete shrugged.

“Let’s go,” Jasper said.

He hadn’t put on his Kevlar, and Pete appeared to be unencumbered as well. Jasper did have a flashlight with him, a small Surefire that’d almost burn the hair off a person’s head with its focused solar-flare-like beam. Beside that and his handcuffs and Glock with extra mags he went light. Pete had cuffs and his weapon as well.

Jasper pulled his Glock, as did Pete, and they entered the courtyard. To his surprise the door didn’t creak. Once on the inside he saw the hinges had been oiled recently. He pointed at the hinges for Pete’s information, who nodded in reply.

Jasper would have said that vagrants or a homeless person had set up camp in the courtyard or within the Euclid, but the well-oiled hinges and shiny keyhole suggested otherwise. He supposed the owner could have been through, but that didn’t seem likely. Why wouldn’t he have used one of the main entrances to gain entry rather than the alley and courtyard?

A fire lit in Jasper’s belly, warming him. His ears felt like they were reddening too. He was pretty sure the girl was close by and in danger.

He didn’t like the feel of the situation one bit, though. The Bureau had strict protocols in place for nearly every situation, and preferred to enter a situation with as much intelligence as possible. But in dynamic situations where there was an imminent threat to life, creativity and alternate solutions were often called upon. The playbook was tossed out the window with only the training and muscle memory of the agents in play. That was where experience paid off: experience and instincts. Begging forgiveness later for spontaneity and creativity was something taught him by his training agent who had long since retired.

The shrubs and trees blocked most of the back entrance of the hotel, but for a thin path of matted grass and weeds. A broken branch was the only other sign someone else had been through here recently. They pulled aside the vegetation as they entered the path; a few feet in and they reached two concrete steps leading below to a door. A padlock hung on the loop, open and with the clasp slung back on its hinge.

Pete looked back at Jasper and nodded for him to get in position. He stacked up behind Pete against the wall and placed a hand on his shoulder so he knew he was right there and would move with him.

Pete grasped the knob and pulled. The door swung open easily and without any noise into the courtyard. Pete button-hooked left through the door, and Jasper button-hooked right into —

— inky blackness save for the cone of light from the open door.

“Damn,” Jasper whispered. The hotel was eerily quiet. “You smell that?”

“Incense?” Pete whispered back.

“I think so. Mixed with a damp, musty smell like a stack of newspapers. But I can’t see a thing beyond the entry.”

Green tile, like that of a hospital or government building, covered the floor of the entry. A splintered door, once painted white but now hopelessly chipped and cracked, stood directly ahead. To Jasper’s right was an open door where a damp, musty smell oozed up the concrete steps descending into a cellar. Jasper clicked on his flashlight and eased the entry door shut.

“We should close that door as well,” Pete said. “That one leading down to the cellar. It’d be better to clear the main and second floors first, don’t you think?”

“I’m hesitant –”

But Pete had already begun moving the cellar door.

A long, slow creak echoed, followed by a crack. Jasper winced.

Pete’s face screwed into one of tortuous pain, his mustache scrunched up like a caterpillar. He ceased pulling the door and gingerly released the knob. “Sorry.”

Scurrying sounds like that of a small animal scrambling and scratching a wood floor to get away, sounded from below them. Other than that, the cellar remained silent and without a hint of life.

“Well, it appears we didn’t disturb anything other than an animal down there,” Jasper said, pointing with the barrel of the Glock.

“I bet this lead is a dead end.”

“Maybe, but let’s leave the cellar for now — and leave the door as it is — and clear the rest of the hotel first.”

Pete nodded. “You first, I don’t want to mess things up by causing a rocket.”

“You mean racket?”

“Yeah, like I said, rocket.”

Jasper grinned. “That door sounded more like an old car door creaking shut followed by a backfire of an old carbureted engine.”

“Indeed.” Pete flashed a grin, but it faded quickly, as if he remembered why they were here: to find a missing girl.

“Yeah, let’s go.” Jasper edged past Pete and brought up his Glock and flashlight. He moved toward the closed door in front of them that he assumed led into the hotel proper.

Jasper’s soft-soled shoes produced little sound against the entry’s tile flooring. Pete wore boots that were similarly soled. Jasper took a few steps toward the closed door before them and grasped the knob.

“Wait,” Pete whispered, and placed a hand on Jasper’s shoulder.

“What is it?”

“You hear that?” Pete asked.

Jasper turned and aimed the flashlight away from Pete’s face, but not at the steps leading down to the cellar. “I don’t.”

“Perhaps it’s nothing, only my imagination.”

“Let’s hold up a second then,” Jasper said, and pointed toward the cellar.

Pete nodded.

Jasper pointed at his flashlight and chopped with his hand, hoping Pete understood he was about to douse the flashlight.

Pete nodded again.

Jasper leaned against the jamb of the door leading into the cellar and killed his flashlight. They stood in darkness. Jasper strained his eyes and ears for any hint of movement or signs of other people within the abandoned hotel.

Each breath seemed to echo and fill his ears. The black hitting his eyes felt as if he were swimming underwater in a lake on a moonless, starless night. But slowly, a vague outline of the doorway presented itself, as did a few of the steps leading down. He turned, and saw Pete, more a shadow than a man, and Jasper’s skin crawled and he shivered.

Two thumps echoed from deep under the hotel.

Jasper clicked on his Surefire flashlight and raised his Glock. “Let’s go, that wasn’t the building simply settling. There’s someone down there.”

“Should we call for backup?” Pete asked.

Jasper shook his head. “No, if that little girl is down there I don’t want to waste any more time.”

“I agree.”

Jasper descended the steps, but at a slow and deliberate pace. At the bottom, the cellar likely opened left based on his back pressing against what he presumed to be the outer wall of the building. The brick wall scraped and pulled his shirt, a faded olive green t-shirt from his days in the Marine Corps. His last girlfriend had referred to the shirt as part of his lounging uniform. He loved these shirts and found they worked in quite a few situations, but never wore them into the office because the FBI preferred business-like attire. He appreciated that, and understood the general public’s image of a Special Agent was that of a clean-cut man dressed in a dark suit and wearing a white shirt with a conservative tie. That worked for normal day-to-day operations, but not when doing dirty work such as dumpster diving, meeting human sources in certain rough areas, and situations such as this: trying to locate a little girl who was likely kidnapped. And the local police often dressed down when working on the task forces with the bureau. FBI Special Agents often dressed according to the violations they worked, but in a smaller Resident Agency, agents wore many hats and worked many violations.

A sliver of light peered from under another door at the bottom of the steps. The gap under the door was also apparently where the incense escaped. The scent had grown stronger, but the mustiness had as well. Despite the heat of the day, the cellar’s atmosphere was cold, as if the temperature was being manipulated on purpose. The difference from the main floor to just — what, ten, twelve feet down — was obvious. It felt like they were entering a refrigerator — no, more like a walk-in freezer.

“It’s cold,” Pete said quietly. “Way too cold for this time of year, even in a cellar.”

Jasper nodded. “See that light?” he whispered.

“Si.”

The light darkened, lightened, and darkened in quick succession. Something moved within. It had to be a person, since that was likely two legs. Jasper shivered again. The feel of the dark, musty old hotel was creepy and unsettling, regardless of the gun in his hand.

“Someone is inside there.” Jasper kept the light aimed high so the beam didn’t hit the bottom of the door and cast flickers and shadows under the door. He pointed to his ear and then the door.

Pete nodded.

Jasper edged toward the door, but kept his feet back and the light aimed away. He could hear muffled voices now, the words indiscernible and unintelligible, speaking in hushed monotones.

He pulled back from the door. “Sounds like two people having a muffled conversation behind that door — two men — but I could be mistaken.”

Pete sighed. “That’s one too many.”

“It may not be the abductor.”

“I’m betting it is — and so are you, Zee. But if there are more than two unsubs in there this could get ugly. It could get ugly with just one person.”

“True.”

A shuffling noise, as if someone were being dragged, oozed from under the door. A whimper, almost like that of a dog, followed the shuffling.

A distant and weak, but distinct “no” hit Jasper’s ears. That was no dog.

“We have to go in.” Jasper stared at Pete, who nodded grimly, his eyes glistening in the Surefire’s light.

Jasper brought the light and gun up before him and stood off to the side and nodded at Pete to open the door.

Pete reached forward, but the door flung inward with force.

Jasper and Pete jumped back.

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 02

Iron Angels – Snippet 02

Chapter 1

The tips on the missing ten-year old girl had come in within fifteen minutes of each other. One was from an Hispanic male whose daughter had seen a van pull up to where her friend had been standing across the railroad tracks, and the other from a concerned woman who had seen a strange man enter an abandoned building. Crimes against children got the Federal Bureau of Investigation hopping, especially a missing child the locals asked for assistance in locating.

Z. Jasper Wilde leveled his Glock, the larger of the .40 caliber models, on the vehicle suspected in the kidnapping. The late 90s Ford Econoline van had been reported stolen yesterday according to Jasper’s East Chicago cop buddy, Pedro Hernandez. Pete was a Safe Streets Task Force officer he worked with often and now stood before the van with.

“What you think, Zee?” Pete asked. He spoke fluent English but his Puerto Rican accent was still heavy despite decades of living way north of the island. The neighborhood in which he lived had slowly become more and more Latino over the years, thereby maintaining the accent rather than softening it. Only Pete called him Zee, and never Zeke: Jasper hated that name.

“I think it’s empty,” Jasper said, “but there may be evidence.”

“Call in the evidence team?”

“No time, we can handle this. Maybe later.”

“It’s your show, Zee.”

Not really, but Jasper didn’t argue. Pete was usually ready to let the Fed take the lead — and the fall — on most joint investigations. He was closer to retirement age by a landslide.

From a distance of ten feet or so, Jasper could see beneath the van. There were no drips from air conditioning, but that didn’t mean much. This jalopy wasn’t likely to have working AC. He peered over at Pete who raised his gun in response.

Jasper nodded and approached. He reached out for the hood — warm, but from the sun, not from being run in the past two hours or so. No taps from a cooling engine.

“Unlocked doors and a drawn curtain behind the front seats.”

“That mean closed or open?” Pete asked.

“Closed.”

“Oh. But it can mean open?”

“I suppose, but this one is shut. That better?” Jasper shook his head. The girl could be behind the curtain. A bad guy could be hiding behind the curtain, but he doubted that. A hurt or, God forbid, dead girl could be back there. His ears grew hot, and a sheen of sweat coated his forehead. The heat and humidity were brutal today, but this was anger oozing from his pores.

Pete worked his way around to where Jasper stood, covering him as he reached for the sliding side door. The handle gave way as Jasper yanked and the door slid wide open, the door’s wheel grinding against the track in a metallic glissando. The stench of cigarette smoke poured forth, overwhelming his senses — he enjoyed an occasional cigar, but the stale smell was nasty. From the amount of it, someone had smoked up a storm in there. Half a pack of cigarettes or more.

Pete dropped to a knee and flashed a light inside the darkened van. “I see nothing, my friend,” he said.

Jasper peered from around the open door and into the van, keeping his weapon close. He wasn’t a fan of the limited penetration technique, called a limited pen. The limited pen had the person clearing the house, car, whatever, forced into a situation where they thrust their gun hand and arm into an open area, but kept their body out. At the same time, they peeked into the space, but hopefully with one eye. The downside was that a baddie could grab the arm if the room hadn’t been at least partially cleared first.

A quick peek worked better, but there was no need since Pete had flashed the light in and had taken a great look. The downside for Pete was that he had been exposed when Jasper had ripped the door open. Pete holstered his weapon.

“There’s nothing,” he said.

Jasper sighed. “I was afraid we’d find the girl in there.”

“I was hoping we’d find the girl in there — alive, of course. Now we’re back at the beginning.” Pete peered inside the van. “Looks clean to me. No clothes, no obvious evidence.”

“I have an evidence kit in my bucar,” Jasper said. “But I don’t want to waste any time. I’ll check the front of the van for obvious clues or evidence left behind. Check out the back.”

Pete nodded.

Jasper donned latex gloves and went through the driver and passenger sides of the van. Cigarette butts littered an overflowing ashtray.

“I’m getting lung cancer back here,” Pete said.

“Yeah. It isn’t any better up here,” Jasper said. “The cigarettes are likely the owner’s.”

“Right.”

“I got nothing,” Jasper said, as he searched the glove compartment and console.

“Same here.”

“All right. Call for some of your people to process the van, okay?”

Pete nodded. “Sure thing,” he grinned, “still having trouble with what’s-his-name?”

“With Morris?” Jasper rolled his eyes. The Indianapolis Field Office Evidence Recovery Team Senior Team Leader was a pain in the ass, unreasonable and unyielding. Jasper’s blood pressure rose every time the man popped into his thoughts or conversation. “You could say that. I got kicked off the Evidence Response Team after not showing for the last call out, even though the crime scene was in southern Indiana and would have required me to — oh, hell, let’s move on to the next lead. It isn’t far from here, right?” He hadn’t recognized the name of the hotel, the Euclid.

“Sorry I brought it up,” Pete said. “But the Euclid is close.”

“Enough that someone could walk to it from here with a little girl? Or carry a little girl?”

Pete shrugged. “I guess. You know it’s abandoned, right? Has been for decades.”

“I do now. No wonder I’ve never heard of it. Call in for assistance. I don’t want to leave this van here unguarded.”

The sun was falling rapidly, and soon they’d be working into the night searching for the girl. It was never a good thing when a kidnapping went overnight and into another full day. Recovery was most likely to occur right off or probably not at all — and then if they did find the victim, they were usually in a field somewhere, dead.

Pete got on his radio and within two minutes a marked East Chicago Police cruiser rolled up and blocked the van. The problem with the FBI’s manpower was that out in the suburbs, away from the main field offices, the help was scarce and spread out. Relying on task force officers was critical and necessary. Those were local cops like Pete, but detailed to the FBI for a specific purpose like the Safe Streets and Metro Gang Task Forces.

The uniformed officers nodded at Jasper and approached Pete. They spoke for a few minutes and Pete walked for his vehicle, an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria. Jasper dropped into his bucar, a dark gray Dodge Charger, and followed. Pete didn’t go lights and sirens, since there was no use alerting anyone who was possibly holed up in the Euclid Hotel with a frightened little girl.

The Euclid was only a few blocks away on Chicago Avenue. That was a busy stretch of road, with cars and trucks moving in both directions, but from the standpoint of foot traffic it might as well be deserted. There were very few residences nearby. It was mostly an industrial area whose salad days were long gone. More than half of the buildings — machine shops, once, many of them, along with industrial and electrical supply houses — were now abandoned.

Pete pulled up to a crumbling curb at the corner of Chicago and Euclid and Jasper aped the action. He guessed the building on the northwest corner was the hotel. The daylight, though fading, still factored into their search in a positive way. The abandoned hotel’s interior would benefit from the natural light, and also expose anyone moving about the hotel proper. Unless secreted in some dark room or closet, Jasper and Pete’s job would be easier.

Catty-corner to the hotel was a tank farm, a large field surrounded by a tall wire fence and filled with squat white cylinders most likely filled with petroleum. That belonged to one of the petrochemical corporations in the area. Lake County, the northwestern Indiana county that butted right up against Chicago, was one of the nation’s premier industrial areas. A big percentage of U.S. steel production took place within fifteen miles of where they were standing, in the huge steel mills stretched out across the southern shore of Lake Michigan.

The area had a major petrochemical industry also. Less than a mile away was a large plant producing liquid oxygen, and just a short distance from there was one of BP’s biggest oil refineries. Humid, chemical-laden air invaded Jasper’s nose. Even after all these years, six in his current assignment with the FBI’s Merrillville Resident Agency — part of the larger FBI Indianapolis Field Office — he’d never really acclimated to the smell. It wasn’t too bad in the winter, but Midwest summers weren’t much less hot and humid than those of Alabama or Georgia.

Jasper trotted over to Pete’s vehicle. “We know the owner of this place?”

“Can’t get a hold of him,” Pete said. “I had the station try.”

“We try the businesses next door?”

“Closed.”

Jasper sighed. “Would have been nice to get a rudimentary layout, or at least consent to enter from the owner. Let’s take a look around, perhaps we’ll have some legitimate reason to enter.”

Pete nodded.

Jasper took in the building’s front. A red-bricked building, still in fairly good repair, it stood two stories tall and had an entrance on the corner, as well as one about half-way down the block. An alleyway ran along the side of the hotel, separating it from another brick building.

Euclid Hotel was spelled out in brick above the mid-block entry. Jasper walked around the corner entrance and saw the hotel was one long building with only a slight ell. A chain link fence blocked off entry to the courtyard in front. The gate was padlocked, but in the back of the courtyard he could see a door that appeared to open onto the back alley. There was also an entrance into the hotel from the courtyard itself, but he couldn’t see it very well. That door was mostly shrouded by an overgrown cluster of shrubs and trees growing out of the cracked paving of the courtyard.

The place had obviously been abandoned for a long time. Jasper walked back to the mid-block entrance. Pete popped out from the alley and motioned for Jasper. “Over here.”

 

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 26

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 26

* * *

“Alert! Riot on the Promenade Deck!” came over the speakers.

Daniel Lang ran for the elevators, cursing Al Wiley under his breath. The congressman had promised to keep a lid on things. He’d been campaigning for an American colony since they got to Alexandria. At this point, Daniel would be just as happy to put the passengers off the Queen, but you didn’t just drop a colony. It needed support. People needed housing and weapons, seeds and plows, fishing boats and more weapons. And, so far, there was damn little of any of that.

By the time Daniel Lang got there, closely followed by Dag, Lorraine Hebert and Chris Louie had almost restored order, and Congressman Wiley was trying to help them calm things down.

“It wasn’t the congressman’s fault,” Lorraine said in her Cajun-accented English. “He was trying to keep things cool. It was the counter-demonstration by the Jerusalemites.”

The Jerusalemites were a coalition faction made up of the “Clear the way for Christ” people and the group of Jews who wanted to discover the true Judaism of the Second Temple before it was lost. That group was headed by Rabbi Benyamin Abrahamson, who had seemed a perfectly reasonable sort till he had met Atum’s guard commander and the two had gotten into an argument about what was and was not in the Torah and what was meant by it. For instance ṭoṭafot, according to the guard commander, simply meant armor, though it was often inscribed with holy script for added safety. Now Abrahamson had to see for himself.

The Jerusalemites wanted a colony, but they wanted to put it in Israel, at Ashdod. And they didn’t seem the least concerned that there were already people living there and the local Jews were a bunch of mercenaries. No. They wanted to use the Queen as a permanent fort to keep the locals in line while they did their religious thing.

“We’re trying, people,” Al Wiley was saying, “but two colonies would mean almost twice as much work. And each colony, being smaller, would be at greater risk. There is no oil to feed the Queen’s engines in Israel and the oil in the rest of the Middle East is, for the most part, both deeper and farther from shore.”

“The Queen has flex fuel engines!” shouted one of the Jerusalemites. “She’ll burn alcohol.”

“Yes, she would. If we had the distilled alcohol she needed. But all the beer in Egypt wouldn’t be enough. Even if we could distill it, which we can’t.”

That wasn’t entirely true. There was a whole lot of beer in Egypt. But it was damn sure true that they couldn’t distill enough to keep the Queen’s tanks full. Alcohol wasn’t as energy dense as oil and it took more of it — almost twice as much — to get the same amount of power out of the engines. Among other things, that would decrease the Queen’s range. Not that that mattered to the Jerusalemites. They didn’t want the Queen to move, except to Ashdod.

Once the incipient riot had been quelled for the moment Daniel moved over to Wiley. “Congressman, we have to put a stop to this sort of thing.”

“The only thing that will put a stop to it is setting up a colony and giving these people room to breathe, Mr. Lang.”

* * *

Marie Easley didn’t even look up when the alert came through. She was in a private room off the forward internet cafe, working with Cathy Joe Chohan on adjustments to the translation app that the ship had a license on. It was voice to voice, but the Greek it started out speaking was twenty-first-century Greek, not third-century-BCE Greek. Pronunciations, however, were the least of the problems. This time’s Greek didn’t have words for a lot of the concepts that twenty-first-century English had. In this case, the water pump. Even Archimedes and his screw was a hundred years in the future. What they used in the here-and-now were buckets. Often buckets mounted on wheels and other quite ingenious rigs. But still they were moving water one bucketful at a time. Crates had been entranced by the notion of a water pump. Now they were working on flow rate and one of Eleanor Kinney’s people was trying to get them to buy a low-temperature steam engine to power the pumps. Or a windmill. Or anything at all except slaves on bicycles.

The locals weren’t willing to spring for the steam engine, though. Slaves were cheaper. At least, in the short run. The slaves who were carrying the buckets and treading on the treadwheel that lifted the buckets were already paid for and they were going to have to be fed anyway. The steam engine would be a new expense and the fuel to power it another.

Eleanor Kinney’s assistant purser’s suggestion that they manumit the slaves didn’t go over well. It was hard enough just getting them to buy the pumps and the pipes to get the water up to a water tank.

Royal Lounge, Queen of the Sea

October 10

“When can we go to America?” Al Wiley asked the captain. “This ship is a powder keg and it’s getting worse. Most of these people are working people. They have spent their lives working. A vacation is one thing. Sitting in a stateroom that is about the size of a prison cell with nothing to do is something else.”

“We could leave today if you want us to drop the passengers with nothing but the luggage they brought on the cruise.” Captain Floden waved a hand in apology. “I’m sorry, Congressman, but the issues and the time frame are the same as they were yesterday and the day before.” He turned to the staff captain. “Anders, where are we on the necessary equipment for the colony?”

Anders Dahl tapped an icon on his slate computer, calling up a spreadsheet. “Two hundred pounds of black powder and fifteen flintlock rifles that we’ve made since we got here. It’s a lot harder to make a rifle barrel than you might think. We’re doing better on the crossbows. We have forty of them and they are good, Captain. Their rate of fire sucks, but it’s still better than the flintlocks. They have spring steel bows and…Well, never mind. It’s still only forty for a colony of three thousand.”

Dag took a drink of the local beer. He knew the reasoning behind the colony size. Some of the passengers were simply too old for life in a colony. Some had skills that were vital to the ship, but not to a new colony that would have very limited electronics, at least at first. So it wouldn’t be all the passengers who were debarking. About half of the staff side crew was going to go with the colony. The rest were staying on board.

Dag looked out the big picture windows. There were a lot of people on the pool deck but they mostly weren’t swimming or laying out to get a tan. They were working at the induction furnace, or processing furs and fabrics from Alexandria.

The vacation was over, but there wasn’t enough room to do all the jobs that needed doing. Meanwhile, the locals were watching everything and word was spreading faster than he would have believed possible before The Event. He wondered if they had heard of crossbows in Tyre yet. If not, they would soon.

Tyre

October 11

Roxanne looked out at the Mediterranean Sea as her personal attendant combed her long black hair. Roxane had been looking out to sea a lot since they got to Tyre. She had hoped that Attalus would be better than his brother-in-law Perdiccas, but the pressures of the situation seemed to be making him less stable rather than more. Besides, Attalus was on his way to the coast of Caria and Metello was on his way to Alexandria harbor, leaving her in the care of under officers, who saw her as a playing piece or a bit of loot. Even the Silver Shields who had taken over guarding her were more concerned with their pay than her safety.

One of the Silver Shields came in then. “Nedelko is here.”

Roxane turned away from the window in time to see the commander of the Greek forces in Tyre enter the room. “Well, Commander, what did you think of the drawings?” A couple of days before, a ship from Alexandria had arrived, carrying some sketches. There was a bow mounted on a cross piece, a gear with pedals and a chain that could fit over the gear to, as the notes said, “do useful work,” and a new sort of table called a desk that a chair could slide under to make it easier for scribes to work. Roxane barely got a look at them before Nedelko snatched them away to give to Tyrian craftsmen.

Nedelko stopped at her tone. Which was good. He needed to know that she wasn’t pleased. But he didn’t apologize, which wasn’t good. Instead he looked at her, then said, “I will bring them back, Your Majesty, once the craftsmen have had a chance to study them and make examples of what they show. My guess is that the new scribe’s table will be the most useful. I don’t see the advantage of tying a bow onto a stick. And keeping the bow bent can’t be good for it. The geared wheel is interesting, but slaves work fine and I’m not convinced that letting them lift a bucket with their feet instead of their hands will be any great advantage. The one-wheeled cart might be useful in certain very limited conditions — hard packed flat ground or paved streets, if the cobbles are even enough. But I don’t see what Crates is so excited about. I’m more concerned about Eurydice’s latest pronouncement. She’s claiming that Philip was the true heir to Alexander’s throne. And because Alexander IV wasn’t born when the crown passed, he couldn’t be the heir.”

“You must realize those proclamations are made under the eye of Antigonus One-eye.” Roxane grimaced. “Just as my proclamations are made under Attalus’ eye. You know he’s claiming Alexander is the only true heir, even if he hasn’t insisted that I sign a proclamation to that effect. At least not yet.”

She might have to, even if Attalus didn’t force her, just to counter Eurydice’s proclamation. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Sending Eurydice off with the other army provided additional security for them both. And it had worked fairly well, at least as far as Roxane was concerned. But there were unintended consequences. Aside from claiming that Philip III was the only true heir, the latest word received had Eurydice endorsing Antigonus One-eye as regent. Something that Roxane knew had to be under duress.

She changed the subject. “Where is Metello now?”

“Sailing. It will be another few days before he gets to Alexandria.”

 

Iron Angels – Snippet 01

Iron Angels – Snippet 01

Iron Angels

By Eric Flint and Alistair Kimble

Prologue

Samyaza was not oblivious to the swelling cincture. No one of his nature could be, not even one who had been shrouded with a name in the hell world. But for the moment, he ignored the danger. The bordure was distant; the marges and purls of the bloating monstrosity still only cirrose. Long before the sprues could lay down their strakes and begin gyving the Nephilim within their reach, he would have phaged again. When he returned, his armature and plexus would blazon. His selve would spume; his labrum, coil into a fearsome torse.

The sprues would flichter away, searching for Nephilim without name or gender. Weak ones, unlike he.

For Samyaza was the greatest and mightiest of them all. Only Armaros neared him in size — but his irresolution made him mascle. Armaros was a mere tressure, almost beneath notice. His luster was vitreous and gyrose where Samyaza’s was fusil and true.

Finally, Samyaza spotted what he had been seeking. A raddling fess that indicated a flue forming in the orle. He swept toward it, his filigree extending and his sensilla straining to detect the apertures in the weave.

The moment, now, yes! He swept through the mesh, lacing the perils with the ease of experience.

****

Armaros bided while the passagers grabbled the courses and flues of the orleweave. They could not be rushed, being barely more than branchers — and haggards all, of course. There was no chance of harnessing them until they were gendered and named by lorraine heralds in the hell world.

In the distance — great distance; care had to be taken — he averred Samyaza luffing the flues of passage. Envy swelled; roiled; rankled. The slive had grown monstrously great, purpure-swollen and mighty. Yet so dull a sensorium! Duller, it seemed, with each maunch and lappet.

But there was no chance of reducing the pheon now. Not while he was alert and gule-braced. So Armaros returned to his creance.

****

For an instant, as Samyaza made the passage into the hell world, he was almost overwhelmed by the gule beyond. So much! So much! Enough power here to challenge the cincture itself and drive back its bourns, could he engulf the moictier — or even a tell fractus.

But there was risk also, greater than the dangers of the traverse between the worlds. So great was the gule, and so much of it threaded, sutured or even foamed. The cacophony was half-maddening; if he lost clear sense of the verges, he could easily lose his way — perhaps never to find the skein of return.

And there was worse still. In places — here, there, it was hard to detect surely; the sensorium beset by treachery on all sides — the gule was laced with impurities. All of those deborted estates were a source of flurry and confusion; and some were deadly. Sable and argent both.

Samyaza extended his estoile, searching for the alleluia. Difficult, so difficult! The lorraines dwelt in the most roiling guleries, for reasons unknown. There chaos, there confusion — there peril and plight. But with the tumult came the great savors also. The most purpure gule, the most increscent fleurs. Naiant and hauriant; dulia in full measure.

He sensed the heralds. Weak, their clarions, but still certain. Again, the risk had justified itself. Where there were lorraine heralds, there was sure to be the purest and most potent gule as well. Untainted; unmixed; tierce-ready; immortal-rich.

He swept down, ready — but! The heralds flared! The oblation…

Gone.

Where?

He searched, probed. But there was a great shaking of his sensorium. Vast sommes of gule were passant nearby. Neither dangerous nor ragule, though not gustace either; but so heltered! Disarray, dentilly and dancetty jumbled, everything rayonne and nebuly.

He could find nothing in this shimmery. And might lose too much of his filigree if he remained. Then — lost, adrift in the hell world! Dismay, sure to come; disaster…

Might even be possible.

He fled.

But the tumult had weakened him. The confusion and skelter, vouchsafed his resolution and wauched his will.

Frantic now, he scanned and pulsed, probed and searched. His whittle swept past mound after mound of gule — but it was inert, hollow, useless. With no lorraines feak or creance, his estoile was growing helminth and addorsed.

But there! Purpure! The unmistakable fume of a saltire of the hell world!

Samyaza engulfed it. An instant for the tierce. Then, the feast.

For a moment, he wondered if the saltire felt dismay, or fear, or despair. But the moment was passing. He was the greatest of the Nephilim. He cared nothing for the girdle of lesser modes and entelechs.

 

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 25

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 25

Royal Palace, Alexandria

October 3

Ptolemy looked out at the ship and worried. He had been on board her several times now and everything about the thing screamed disaster waiting to happen. There was disaffection among the passengers and no weapons to speak of. Even if they made weapons, none of them knew how to use a sword or a pike. He doubted most of them could survive a tavern brawl, much less a real battle. There didn’t seem to be a real soldier on the ship, not any. Even their so-called “security forces” would faint like women if they faced a Macedonian phalanx.

But in the hands of a competent general with good troops, that ship could take and hold the coast of Egypt. And holding the coast, it would control all of Egypt. He turned back to Gorgias. “If you fail, I will deny you. Hang you myself, if need be.”

“Yes, Satrap. And if I succeed?”

“Carthage to the pillars of Hercules as your own satrapy.” He gave his general a hard look. “Don’t get greedy once you have the ship. I will have people watching you.”

Gorgias nodded.

Ptolemy asked, “How long?”

“Another week. We have the galleys ready, and the towers are half built.”

“They should have let me provide them with guards,” Ptolemy said and Gorgias was silent. Ptolemy knew that any troops he put on the ship would be his hands and control of the ship would be his, not Captain Floden’s. Still, it would have made things easier for everyone.

He looked over at his general. “Very well. I don’t want to see you until it’s over.”

* * *

Gorgias smiled as he left the royal apartments. In fact, he knew just who Ptolemy had watching him, and his watchers were going to have some very bad accidents once the Queen was his.

Tyre

October 3

Roxane looked out the window at the Mediterranean Sea as Attalus discussed the options. Among the news that they had gotten from the future ship was the information that Attalus would lose to the Rhodians when he tried to gain control of Caria. Though, with the generals in disarray, the Rhodians might not be so quick to fight.

“We still need the link to Eumenes,” said Attalus’ sea commander, a Carthaginian named Metello. “And we should be able to take the Rhodians. It must have been bad luck in that other time. Assuming the tale of an alternate past where Antipater became regent is true and not just a clever ruse.” There was, in fact, almost no information about the fight between Attalus’ navy and the Rhodians, except for the fact that it was over Caria.

“Well, what makes you think we will have better luck this time?” Roxane asked the Carthaginian, ignoring the comment about it being a ruse.

“Attalus had better luck at Triparadisus,” Metello said. “The army is divided and the orders for his execution have been rescinded, at least for this army. The same for Eumenes and the rest. We’re still collecting more forces. We will have a bigger army.”

“Eumenes is not nearly so important now that the ship from the future is here,” Roxane said. “We need contact with them.”

“We need both,” Attalus said. “Metello, you go to the coast of Caria and be polite to — No. I will go to Caria. You will go to Alexandria. Stay out to sea, but send a boat into the harbor to make contact with the ship people. Polite contact.”

That made sense to Roxane, as she thought about it. Metello was a Carthaginian, and the Rhodians were supporting the other side in the conflict in Sicily. Metello wasn’t fond of the Rhodians, and the Greeks weren’t overly fond of Carthaginians in general. Metello was probably not the right man to negotiate with a Rhodian admiral. Still, Roxane was more interested in the Queen of the Sea. The knowledge of the future had already proven vital. More knowledge might well prove the difference between death and survival for her and her son. “I will go with Metello to visit the Queen of the Sea.”

“No! The risk is too great. I won’t put you in Ptolemy’s grasp again.”

“Why not? He wasn’t interested in keeping me last time he had me in his hands.”

“The only reason he let you go was that he wasn’t ready to try for the throne. I suspect that now he is. With the failure of Triparadisus leaving no clear successor to Alexander and no clear regent, Ptolemy will make his bid soon. I want you behind walls with an ocean between you and his army. It took Alexander himself over a year to take this island. You’re safe here.”

“But…”

“No, I said. You have had your say and I listened, but I will not risk the heir or his mother in this.”

Roxane sat silent. She had lost the argument and she knew it. There had never been much chance that she would win it. She and Eurydice were still counters in the game of empire more than players, whatever Eurydice thought.

* * *

It took a couple more days, but soon enough Roxane stood on a balcony and watched two fleets leave. Then she turned, picked up her son, and went inside to wait.

Queen of the Sea

October 10

“How’s it coming, Mom?” Josette Easley asked as she entered the corner that had been set aside for Marie Easley’s use in one of the ship’s internet cafes.

“Tediously. I hadn’t realized how much misinformation was in the electronic record. Britannica is as bad as Wikipedia. It’s not the outline that they get wrong, but the most recent studies are often missing and –” Marie stopped herself. That they could affect history had already been demonstrated. The butterfly effect — the unintentional effect of their mere presence, or the things they said and ideas they promulgated intentionally or not — was less fully confirmed, but seemed highly probable from the results her warnings had produced in Triparadisus. The exact nature of those results couldn’t be predicted in detail, but Marie believed strongly that more knowledge would, as a rule, produce better results than less knowledge. Based on that belief, she had been preparing a book on what was known about this period of history.

“Well, Doctor Miles has a section she wants you to include,” Josette said. “A basic outline of germ theory and how to clean wounds. Dag Jakobsen wants something on canning food and handling sewage.”

Marie considered. Adding the information was reasonable and made sense, but there were issues. Especially with Dag’s part. Canning and canned goods were a marketable product for the ship. She wouldn’t prevent Dag from making his own book, in fact she would help him later. But translating canning and sewage processing information was going to take time that she just didn’t have. The translation programs were adequate for conversational purposes, where confusion or mistranslation could be questioned and corrected. But a book took greater precision and understanding. That meant that Marie and a few Greek speakers were going to have to translate every word. And even the Greek speakers, like Panos Katsaros, spoke modern Greek, not Ptolemaic Macedonian Greek. On the other hand, leaving out Doctor Miles’ section on germ theory would be criminal. “We will include the doctor’s section if she can keep it short.”

* * *

“The steel team has made its first successful pour,” Dag reported to Eleanor Kinney. They were in her office and it was just her, Bernt Carlson and Dag, mostly because the chief engineer and all the other engineers were too busy with their work to get away for this meeting. Bernt Carlson was the ship safety officer and between them, he and Dag as environmental officer, were effectively OSHA for the ship, while Eleanor Kinney was the banker.

They were buying food and raw materials. Iron, copper, zinc, lead and other metals in ore form. Also wood, charcoal, hides and hooves, medicinal plants and other stuff. The Queen of the Seas had an impressive industrial capacity, but in the nature of things cruise liners don’t haul around a lot of raw materials.

Jackie Ward, the chief electrical engineer, with the help of a couple of retired engineers who were on the cruise and a team of engineering ratings, had come up with an induction furnace and blowers to turn iron ore and charcoal into steel. Well, they had come up with the designs, and as of about two hours ago had a small pilot plant running on the pool deck.

They also had a small plant that was — quietly and with no fanfare — starting to use the lead they were buying to make bullets for the steam cannons. But that production process was being done in a compartment, not out in the open where anyone could see it.

“We need more room,” Bernt said. “Putting a steel plant on the pool deck isn’t a good idea.”

It wasn’t a new complaint. Bernt had been making it almost since they arrived in Alexandria. The infrastructure for an industrial base was located on the Queen of the Sea, but it wasn’t readily transferable. They had the power lines and the electrical capacity to power a small city, but they couldn’t pull it out of the ship without effectively destroying the ship. That meant the factories and shops of their small city had to be located on the Queen. And there wasn’t enough room. It was an ongoing health and safety hazard for the workers and the passengers. It was also not something they could do anything about, and Eleanor Kinney was even more tired of hearing about it than Dag was.

“Rodriguez says they have another load of padded leather chairs,” Dag said quickly before it turned into yet another argument between Bernt and Eleanor.

The ship’s carpenter was turning out modern furniture for sale to the locals and daily maintenance was being pushed back. Several of the passengers were hired as extra hands for the carpentry shop, but there were only so many saws and planes and sanders.

Eleanor Kinney nodded at Dag, and made a note. “Good. Atum has a list of buyers for it, including His Nibs, who wants a lazyboy for the palace. Between that, the laundry, and other projects that the crew and passengers have started, we’ll be buying our food without eating more of our irreplaceable twenty-first century gear.”

“If we don’t kill people with the risks we’re…”

“Alert! Riot on the Promenade Deck!” came over the speakers.

Dag was up in a heartbeat. He ran for the elevators.

 

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 24

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 24

Chapter 8

Mount Ida

September 29

Eumenes sat at a camp stool doing the books. He was making a record of the horses he had taken from the royal herds. He had kept the Argead royal family’s books honestly since he was thirteen years old and wasn’t about to stop now. It was all coming apart and all he could do was keep the books as the pieces fell. He had defeated Neoptolemus twice and killed the traitorous bastard the second time. Unfortunately, he had had to kill Craterus in that second battle and Craterus was a good and well-respected Macedonian general. The Macedonians hadn’t liked that — even his own troops, who had been right there with him. Word was that the troops who had betrayed Perdiccas to Ptolemy had declared him traitor for having the gall to win against Macedonians.

He was making another entry when a knock came. “Enter!”

“A message, General,” said Dardaos, one of his Thracians.

“From who?”

“We’re getting it from Apelles. He got it from Alexandria.”

“What? Ptolemy hates Apelles’ guts.”

“Ptolemy is in Memphis. The message is from Dinocrates. Well, Crates, but…”

Eumenes held up a hand. “Give me the message.”

Dardaos handed over the scrolls and Eumenes started to read.

Out of fond memories of our time together in Philip’s court, I decided to forward this to you, risking Ptolemy’s wrath. It is unlikely that anything will make him more angry at me than he already is. That man has no sense of humor.

Eumenes remembered the sketch that Apelles had made of Ptolemy trying unsuccessfully to sexually mount a bull. The look of bored disgust on the bull’s face had been particularly well done. Still, on balance, he thought that Ptolemy might be justified in his upset. He went back to reading.

Crates writes to tell me of a ship that came to Alexandria harbor on the eighteenth of September. The next day he had occasion to board it, and he dictated a detailed report to his scribes. I would think that he had taken to drink, but I know Crates and he is a careful and meticulous man. I believe what he wrote to be true and accurate, though I can’t explain it.

He sent off several copies and as we have been friends for years, I got one. I am staying here in Colophon with Nausiphanes, a friend and a great wit, if his humor can be a bit cruel, which is why I happened to be so close by. I send you the letter I got from Crates and ask that when you have finished reading it, you send it back. I would go to Alexandria to see for myself, but that would be almost as unwise for me as it would for you.

Eumenes nodded to himself. There had been rumblings in his own army when Craterus died, and even now his hold on the Macedonian soldiers was not firm. Some of the Silver Shields had come to his defence and had kept the core of the infantry from abandoning him. But the Macedonians, especially the Macedonian nobility, still resented him. That was why he had recruited additional cavalry and why he was taking horses from the royal herds to mount them. “What do you think, Dardaos?”

“I don’t know, sir. My gut tells me this changes everything, but I have no idea how.”

“All right. Here’s what we’re going to do. You make two copies of all of this, then send one copy to Cleopatra. I’ll write a note to go with it, asking for another meeting.”

Eumenes went back to his work, but his mind — all on its own — tried to imagine a ship as tall as a lighthouse.

Queen of the Sea, Alexandria Harbor

October 3

Allison Gouch, the sommelier on the Queen of the Sea, went over the wine list with considerable dismay. The Queen had been in Alexandria for fifteen days now, and the holds were full of food. Not of the quality or the variety that the passengers or even the crew was used to, but edible food nevertheless. Ground grains, frozen meats, local fruits and vegetables. But the wines of half-built Alexandria were not up to twenty-first-century standards. On the other hand, Egyptian beer was a sweet, rich brew, only mildly alcoholic but rich in flavor and nutrients.

Meanwhile, the passengers and more than a few of the crew were getting restless. Two weeks stuck on a ship with little to do but study Greek and look at primitive Alexandria while the food got worse and the crew got less attentive hadn’t made the passengers happy. But it had made them thirstier. Before they got to Alexandria the cost of spirits on ship had more than doubled, and now a shot of good whisky cost a small fortune. Ship wines were still for sale, but the price had gone through the roof. It had to. There would be no new rieslings for the foreseeable future. Allison knew that the lack of good wine was among the least of their troubles.

The first of the drugs were running out. The birth control pills were gone, either into the purses of private individuals or used up. Anticoagulants like warfarin were getting low. The insulin was gone, but retired scientists on board and doctors using the ship’s mirror of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica were trying to use jerrybuilt centrifuges to purify insulin from cattle and pig pancreas. They thought they would be able to do it. Whether it would be in time to keep the diabetics on board alive was another question. Two of the Type One diabetics had already died, which was another reason the passengers were restive.

There had been a dozen fights that security had had to break up. In the worst instance, one man had wrested a gun from one of the security guards and had to be shot when he tried to hijack the Queen and force it to take him back to Miami.

So far at least, the troubles had all been isolated incidents, but there were almost constant rumblings about holding elections, and signs showing Wiley for President were appearing on the ship. Allison was getting scared.

She was also disgusted. There was no question now. Hadn’t been since the first. The builders of Alexandria were slaves, dmōs in Greek, which Marie Easley said meant “slaves captured in war,” but other kinds as well. There was even a word for “human-footed livestock.” Like people were cows or goats! Allison wasn’t the only one upset. Her husband Pat, who ran the excursions, or had before The Event, was normally an easygoing guy. But what he’d seen while he was trying to arrange a safe excursion for the passengers in Alexandria left him furious.

The problem wasn’t the abstract injustice of slavery, either. Even more, it was being forced to witness the actual fact of it in front of their noses. The level of casual, almost unthinking, brutality visited on the slaves was simply astonishing to people brought up in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Astonishing — and outrageous. In the world they’d come from, even police officers or prison guards caught inflicting that level of violence on convicted felons would be charged with criminal behavior.

Dag Jakobsen and Romi Clarke were ready to kill the Greeks and start the revolution. Romi was just looking for an excuse to use the new steam cannons on the promenade deck.

* * *

“You’re worrying over nothing, Professor,” Daniel Lang said. “I’ve been looking at the tactics these guys employ. They’re toast if they try anything. I don’t doubt that individually they are some tough SOBs, but they use pikes. Not even pikes and muskets, or pikes and arrows, just frigging pikes. A hundred guys with crossbows and they are toast.”

“Even if you’re right — which I doubt — you don’t have a hundred guys with crossbows,” replied Marie Easley. “You don’t have a hundred crossbows. You have twenty-seven. Granted, they are excellent crossbows, low carbon steel bows and machined parts. But still each one had to be individually made and the people and machines that made them had to fit them in between other work.”

“We have the steam cannons.”

“All four of them. One on the port bow, one on the starboard, and two at the stern. And even at that, Captain Kugan is screaming bloody murder about the Reliance being shorted. And not without reason. He has none of the guns and none of the crossbows.”

Daniel gritted his teeth. Marie Easley could be irritating. She was one of those people who read all the time and had an excellent command of the facts. What Daniel wasn’t convinced of was that she understood the implications of those facts as well as she thought she did. Sure, the Macedonians and their allies had kicked the crap out of all the other late-Bronze early-Iron age countries in their neck of the woods. But even Alexander had started incorporating mounted bowmen, and his Macedonian phalanx had never faced even Henry’s bowmen from Agincourt, much less a machine gun. Warfighting technology had moved on. Ptolemy had to realize that without them wasting ammunition or giving away their tricks.

Daniel had people working on a design for a reloader and others looking for ways of making modern gunpowder, but those projects were going to take a while. They would need a lot of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre even to make black powder. They would probably need some sort of land-based industrial complex to make what they were going to need. In the meantime, every round of twentieth-century ammunition they had was likely to be needed to keep control over the increasingly restive passengers and staff.

Most of the crew were okay. They had jobs and they knew it. But the staff who took care of passengers lacked a lot of the skills that were needed to run the ship. Truth be told, once the passengers were off loaded, they weren’t going to need four thousand beds made every day. A lot of the staff weren’t needed by the Queen unless it was acting as a floating luxury resort. That was the real danger Daniel had to deal with, not some phantom army of hoplites.

 

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 23

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 23

“Why, certainly, we will. Home to Macedonia.”

And there was the threat, all but open, all without saying anything that she could point to as a threat. Eurydice clamped her mouth shut on her rage.

Roxane moved next to Eurydice and leaned in. Putting her mouth next to Eurydice’s ear, she said, “Perhaps it would be best if you went with them. That way each army has one king and neither army can afford to let their king die.”

And there she was again. The wife of Alexander the Great, the woman who might not be as brave as Alexander, but was certainly as smart. The subtle bedroom adviser who had encouraged the marriages to Persian wives, whatever the rumors said about what happened later.

“I will go to my husband.” Eurydice considered. Perhaps if Plistarch was held as hostage for her safety…Then she looked at Cassander. No safety there. “Let Plistarch go home to his family as well, Attalus. I ask this in the name of my husband, the king.”

“And I affirm the request in the name of my son, the king,” Roxane added quickly.

Attalus looked at Eurydice, then at Roxane, and after a moment smiled. In a voice that could be heard across battlefields, he proclaimed, “The king’s regents being in accord on this matter, I yield to their will.”

Eurydice smiled, but that smile hid fear. Now the kings would be separated and there were those stories about Roxane. Stories that she had connived with Perdiccas to murder Alexander’s other wives. How hard would it be for her to send an assassin?

“Come, sister,” Roxane said, for the first time using that familiar name. “Let’s go pack. You will not go to your husband and king empty-handed, with no good clothing.”

* * *

Philip was held tight by the blanket and the ropes. He couldn’t move, and in strange way that made him less tense. But he was scared. Very, very scared. As scared as he had been when his father had wanted to marry him to that Persian girl. Alexander had stopped that and taken care of Philip. After Alexander died, Eurydice came and took care of him. He had to marry her too, but that wasn’t so bad. She knew him and knew he didn’t like being touched. He’d even been trying to let her touch him since they were married, but it always made him feel tense. Like he needed to get out of his skin. Now he was scared that they would hurt her. She understood and he needed someone who understood, because most people didn’t. And without that understanding, they would kill him.

Philip had always known that he was different. Aristotle had seen what he could do, as well as what he couldn’t. Aristotle had shown Alexander, and after that Alexander looked after him and kept him close.

He had to save Eurydice, but he didn’t know how. He could calculate the volume of a cube. He could figure out the weight of the world, if he had the tools. He could look at Aris, wandering the heavens and know where it would appear in a week or a year. But he couldn’t find the numbers to tell him how to save Eurydice.

His thoughts ran in circles, and he couldn’t control where they went.

* * *

“That was clever of you, Eurydice,” Roxane said as they mounted the steps. “They can’t –”

“I heard you the first time,” Eurydice said, fear clearly making her angry. “But you could always send assassins to kill me.”

“But I won’t. Because once you’re dead, I lose half my value.” It was true too. Not quite as true as Roxane tried to make it sound, but still true. If Eurydice and Philip were to die, Roxane would still have value as a symbol of royal authority. But as long as Eurydice was alive somewhere, losing her would lose Attalus all claim of legitimacy. “Attalus might want you dead, Eurydice. So might Olympias or Cleopatra. But I don’t. You, alive and hale, are the best hope for my safety and comfort.

“We need a way to prove to one another that a message we receive is from the other. Something that Attalus or Antigonus can’t counterfeit. Because, you must realize, Antigonus and Cassander will want me dead.”

Eurydice was looking at her in surprise. “Why should we want to contact each other? Fine, I am safer while you’re alive and you’re safer while I’m alive. But –”

“To send warnings, of course. I am your best spy in Attalus’ army and you’re my best spy in Antigonus’ army.”

“Fine. All we need now is a spy in Eumenes’.”

“Cleopatra,” they both said together. They started packing. Roxane pulled out a set of gold bracelets that Alexander had given her in Babylon and slipped them to Eurydice. “In case of emergencies.”

It wasn’t a talent of gold. Barely two pounds in a dozen bracelets, with uncut gems on them. But it was something, something that Eurydice could use to bribe a guard if she needed to.

Suddenly Eurydice’s head came up. “I have it.” She went to a chest and pulled out several sheets of papyrus, at least twenty. Each sheet was blank on one side and had numbers and formula on the other. “They are Philip’s. Put anything you would write me on the back, and I will know it’s from you. When I write you, I will use Philip’s scribblings on the other side to prove it’s from me.”

* * *

When Roxane and Eurydice came back outside, they found a syntagma, two hundred fifty-six men of the Silver Shields arrayed before the lodge. The force was divided in half. Roxane looked over at Kleitos and lifted an eyebrow.

“They have appointed themselves your bodyguards,” Kleitos explained, and Roxane looked out at them. They were grizzled men, these soldiers who had fought for Philip II before Alexander, and for Alexander all the way from Macedonia to India and back. Hard men, who had grown old on campaign.

“Mine?”

“Well, half yours and little Alexander’s, half Eurydice and Philip’s.”

“Who’s paying them?” Eurydice asked.

“I’ll be paying the men guarding Roxane,” Attalus said. “Cassander will be paying the ones guarding Eurydice.”

Eurydice and Roxane looked at each other and each gave a very small nod. It wasn’t that Attalus or Cassander were trustworthy, but Cassander would want Eurydice safe as long as Roxane lived and Attalus would keep Roxane safe as long as Eurydice lived. Everyone understood. The rules would change as soon as one of them died.

* * *

For two more days the two armies sat on opposite banks of the little river. For two days, soldiers defected from each to the other. Arrhidaeus and Peithon both crossed to Antigonus’ side of the river on the twenty-seventh and almost a thousand men had followed them since. On the other hand, almost eight hundred of the men who had followed Antipater to this river crossed over to Attalus’ side.

At this point, Attalus had seven thousand men in his army. Antigonus had five thousand in his, and Cassander had four thousand who were officially under the command of his little brother Plistarch, and at least half under the command of Arrhidaeus and Peithon. Seleucus had a couple of thousand of the men in Antigonus’ army who would follow him. Together they had a larger force than Attalus, but their command and control was weaker without the old general Antipater to hold them together.

The armies separated. Attalus heading southwest to the coast and the island of Tyre, Antigonus and the rest heading north to face Eumenes.

 

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 22

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 22

Chapter 7

Triparadisus

September 28

King Philip III of Macedonia was restrained. Wrapped in a blanket and tied up. He had been biting. He was also crying for Eurydice and thereby raising dissension in the ranks. Cassander seriously considered having the idiot strangled. Partly in revenge for the death of his father, but also because the screaming tantrum of the king wasn’t good for their legitimacy. Word was all over the camp that Antipater was dead and the army was in an ugly mood, half of it wanting to attack the Silver Shields across the river, and half of it wanting to go home to Macedonia.

He turned back to the tent where Antigonus One-eye was drying off and Seleucus was having his wounds tended. Who would command his father’s army was anyone’s guess, but it wouldn’t be Cassander. No, never. Cassander, who did all the work and was from a good family. Never Cassander, because Cassander had never gone out in the woods by himself and killed a stupid boar. I don’t even like pork. Why should I kill a boar?

In the tent, Antigonus was dry, proving that a good fire could dry out even a bale of wool, given enough time. Seleucus was not in such good shape. One of the arrows had gone into the muscle and lodged in the bone of his shoulder. They had pulled it out, but it was a barbed arrow and did more damage coming out than going in.

“What shall we do with Philip? He won’t shut up about Eurydice.”

“We give him what he wants,” Antigonus said. “If we have to, we give him back to them. I am not such a fool that I would kill the one true-blooded king of Macedonia. Even if he is an idiot and a bastard. And having him screaming against us is almost as bad. So we give Eurydice what we have to, to get her here to shut him up.”

“Be careful, Antigonus,” Seleucus said. “You haven’t had to deal with her like I have. Eurydice is smart and a powerful speaker. You give her enough rope and she’s liable to hang us all.”

“Maybe so. But what we give, we can take away again, once we get both kings in our hands.”

“And what makes you think that the Silver Shields will let us have both kings? Or, for that matter, that they will let Eurydice leave?” Cassander asked.

“Eurydice doesn’t matter that much. Not without Philip.” Antigonus frowned. “You probably have a point about the rest of it. But we can always claim that Philip is the legitimate king.”

“That’s fine as far as it goes,” Seleucus said. “But if Roxane and Alexander are in Attalus’ hands, we can’t afford to let Philip have an accident. With that threat off the table, Eurydice is going to be even harder to handle.”

“Just because Philip can’t have an accident,” Cassander said, “doesn’t mean Eurydice can’t.”

“That won’t work,” Seleucus said angrily. “I’ve had to deal with her. She’s a wolf bitch, guarding Philip like he’s her pup. It was only the threat to him that held her in check.”

“If we have to, that accident can be more than a threat.”

“No, it can’t,” Antigonus said. “Not unless you want our ‘legitimate king’ crying for our heads on pikes.”

“So who goes to talk to Attalus?” Cassander asked.

“It can’t be me,” Seleucus said. “That bastard wants me dead and, at this point, I want him dead just as much.”

“And I don’t think Eurydice is going to willingly come over to me.” Antigonus laughed. “Not after I dropped the bitch in the river.”

“Well, that means me, then. But I want my father’s satrapy. I want Macedonia,” Cassander said.

“What!” roared Seleucus, then winced as his sudden motion pained his wounds. “What makes you think you can hold Macedonia?”

“I have an army,” Cassander said. “My father’s army. Your army is across the river, selling itself to Attalus.”

“Actually, Cassander, I have your father’s army now that he’s gone. It will follow me. You have never commanded an army in the field, and they won’t follow you without your father to order them to. They would follow your idiot of a little brother first.”

“If he’s still alive.”

“Well, why don’t you go to the bridge and ask them?” said Seleucus.

* * *

Eurydice had spent the night crying. The last thing she wanted was for Philip to be hurt. She had always liked him more than his glamorous half-brother Alexander. He was kind and gentle most of the time, if you treated him right. She knew when her mother arranged the marriage that Philip would be her responsibility. She didn’t want him hurt and now he was in the hands of Antigonus and they didn’t even have Antipater to trade for him.

There was a knock on her door, and a guard called, “Cassander is on the bridge, asking to talk to Attalus.”

Eurydice’s head came up, and she was all business. “I’ll be out in a minute.” Quickly she dried her eyes and went out in the main room. Roxane was already dressed and a nurse was watching little Alexander.

“Shall we go see what he wants?” Roxane asked, and Eurydice nodded.

Outside, they walked to the bridge, and there was Attalus. He had Plistarch with him. All of Antipater’s guard had been untouched, because Seleucus had only stolen one horse. Only he and Antipater rode into the ambush. Plistarch was looking red-eyed at the death of their father, but Cassander was dry-eyed, almost pleased-looking.

“I’m relieved that you survived the treachery, brother,” Cassander said, oily smooth. “But how is it you weren’t with Father?”

“There was only the one horse,” Plistarch said. Then, choking on the words, “I urged him to take it, but I didn’t know…”

“Of course, you didn’t,” Cassander said, just a little too quickly. “How could you expect such treachery?” Now Cassander was looking at Attalus.

“Treachery?” Attalus snorted. “What treachery? He tried to escape. Rode down his guards and got killed for his trouble.”

“Escape? My father was the ranking general of the army. The natural successor to the regency. Who had the authority to arrest him?”

“I did!” said Eurydice. “In the name of my husband. Roxane did, in the name of her son. And so did the army. He was no more than the satrap of Macedonia, not the regent. It is you and your armies who are in rebellion, not us.”

“And who made you regent?” Cassander grated.

“Perdiccas was the only legitimate regent. With him dead, I am my husband’s regent. And Roxane is Alexander’s. At least until the army declares another. You have ignored my husband’s wishes in waging war against his chosen regent, and winning a battle isn’t winning a war.”

Roxane sniffed. “Murdering Perdiccas didn’t mean that Peithon and Arrhidaeus or your Seleucus should inherit his rank, any more than poisoning Alexander would make you Alexander.”

Cassander turned white. The charge that he had poisoned Alexander the Great had never been advanced publicly, but it was still widespread in the army. “Are you accusing me –”

“I made no accusations,” Roxane said. “There is no proof that I have seen, but there are rumors, disturbing rumors.”

Cassander turned away from Roxane to look at Attalus. “I came for my brother.”

“And what of my husband?” Eurydice shouted. She hadn’t meant to shout like that. She was both more angry and more frightened than she had realized.

“He cries for you, and will not be quieted,” Cassander said. “Will you leave him alone without the comfort of his wife? What sort of regent is that?”

“Bring him home!”

 

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 21

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 21

Triparadisus

September 27

Eurydice listened to the report of the maid, and as she listened a fury grew in her heart. She had trusted Seleucus. He was an older man and had seemed to understand what she was going through with Philip, and what she was trying to do with the army and the regency. But he had been agreeing with Antipater, calling her a spoiled child and a flighty little girl, too stupid to be anything but a mattress, and not pretty enough for a good mattress.

Now, she believed. Now, she believed every word Attalus said about the ship. “He shall not cross!”

“What?” the maid asked. “Who shall not cross?”

“Never mind, Damaris. You have done well.” Eurydice gave the girl a silver coin. The who was Antigonus One-eye, even now marching his army up to the river. She now understood that if Antigonus crossed that little creek, she would lose her bid for power. She couldn’t count on Seleucus.

“Damaris, have my armor brought. And call my personal guards.” As the girl turned to go, Eurydice added one more command. “Quietly, Damaris. No fuss, no fanfare.”

* * *

Two hours later, dressed in his armor, Antigonus One-eye rode toward the little bridge with a dozen picked men following him. And there across the bridge, came a girl on a large chestnut charger. It had to be Eurydice. What did the girl think she was doing?

He reached the bridge and was met on the other side by twenty horsemen, with Eurydice in the lead, wearing full armor.

“Clear the path, girl. I’ll speak to the army.”

“Not unless you have their pay with you, you won’t!” shouted the girl. “We’re tired of false promises!”

Ignoring her, Antigonus walked his horse onto the bridge. She did the same. The bridge was only ten feet wide. There was barely room for two horses to pass one another, if both were cooperating. And Eurydice wasn’t cooperating. She angled her horse so that he would have to go through her to go on. Antigonus was six foot two and heavy, all of it muscle. He had one eye, and in armor he made an impressive figure.

Eurydice was sixteen years old and barely over five feet tall. She too wore armor, but the difference in size made her stand all the more impressive to the watchers. Also, her horse was just as big as his, and it wasn’t going to be pushed aside, not with her on its back. He would have to knock her down to move the horse and he could see the troops behind her. They would have given way before him, but with the tiny girl sitting her horse before them unmoved, they wouldn’t.

He knew all that, and it just added to his frustration. Antigonus was not a man to be balked. He felt the anger building, but he didn’t try to control it. He reveled in it.

“Get out of my way, you spoiled little whore!” he bellowed.

She just sat there. Then she grinned at him like she had tricked him. Like she was winning.

He lifted his mace and swung. She brought up her shield cat fast, but it made no difference. Antigonus was every bit as strong as he looked. His mace hit the shield and knocked her off her horse. There was a loud splash as Eurydice hit the water below the bridge.

“Traitor!” shouted a voice. “He attacked my wife!” It was Philip, the idiot who mumbled numbers at state dinners, bellowing like he was Alexander. He even sounded like Alexander, at least a little bit. And he was running at Antigonus, having somehow escaped his caretakers.

Then it was a melee at the bridge. Antigonus had just enough rationality left to order Philip captured before he was in the fight.

With Eurydice in the water, no one knowing how badly injured, and his troops holding onto Philip, the army was in no mood to hear anything Antigonus might want to say.

They wanted his blood.

First were the horsemen who had been with Eurydice. They charged the bridge and when they couldn’t get across because Antigonus was in the way, they went into the creek and chopped at his horse’s legs. One of them reached down, grabbed Eurydice and pulled her back to their side of the creek. And suddenly Antigonus was going into the water, as his horse reared with a spear in its gut.

* * *

“What’s happening?” Seleucus shouted. He had seen Antigonus approaching the river and moved to the porch to be there when Antigonus got there. The porch was where they would stand to address the army. Then Eurydice had ridden by, heading for the bridge in full armor and he realized the plan had gone awry. Now it sounded like a battle had broken out next to the bridge. “Fuck.” He turned and ran to where the troops were holding Antipater.

Everything had gone all wrong, but in the confusion he could get Antipater back across the river to his army. And then the old man would owe him. He’d pay too. Seleucus would see to that.

He reached the holding area and the guards were as distracted as he could hope. He grabbed a second horse, and told Antipater, “Come on! Now, if you want to live!”

Antipater looked at his son who was looking scared, but still said, “Go, Father!”

Antipater climbed up on the horse. By now the guards were noticing. He and Seleucus rode them down, the ones in the way, and headed for the creek.

* * *

“Shoot!” shouted Attalus. He had a dozen bowmen waiting for just this. He had almost lost them when whatever it was had happened at the bridge, but he had managed to keep them here.

Now, as the two riders came galloping at them, the bowmen fired. They hit the men, but the men were in armor and the wounds were shallow. One shot hit the horse Antipater rode, however. It went down and rolled over the old man.

* * *

Antipater lay on the ground after the horse rolled off him, and tried to breathe. Blood bubbled out of his mouth as he exhaled. He couldn’t feel his legs, but his chest hurt and his head hurt.

Then the darkness came and nothing hurt anymore.

* * *

Seleucus started to turn his horse, saw the mess that was Antipater, and rode for his life. He saw Attalus and the bowmen. He started to turn toward them, then he saw Attalus’ face and fled.

That man wanted him dead. He might have killed Antipater for politics, but he wanted Seleucus dead with a passion that Seleucus had rarely seen in years of bloody war.

He turned his horse and sprinted for the river. He took two arrows before he got there and his horse died crossing the river, but he made it.

* * *

Antigonus came up with a bellow and looked around. He was still angry, but he had spent years as a general of Alexander. He could think through rage.

It was over.

He wasn’t going to get across the river, and neither were the others. By now, the Silver Shields who had remained with Perdiccas would be forming on the far side of the river and nothing was going to cross the river in the face of those men. Bellowing his rage, he turned his back and made his muddy way out of the river on his side.

 

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 20

Alexander Inheritance – Snippet 20

Plistarch rode up. “You wanted me, Father?”

Antipater nodded, then shifted in the saddle. His butt hurt. “Get Matelus, Leonidas and Theron. We’re going to go have a talk with the army.”

“Yes, Father,” Plistarch agreed excitedly.

* * *

Eurydice watched the old man ride up with his third son. Plistarch wasn’t as creepy as Cassander. He was just a bully. Eurydice had known the whole family since she was a girl. She was standing on the front porch and the small group of horsemen escorting Antipater were let through by the army. She was almost surprised that Attalus hadn’t tried to block them, even though she had told him not to. The army was no longer a cohesive whole. It was fractured into separate groups under their own commanders and sub-commanders.

Antipater climbed down off his horse and she could almost hear his bones creaking. Then he stomped up the stairs.

“Well, you’ve made a mess of things, little girl, with your tantrums and complaining. But I’m here now, so you can behave yourself.” He didn’t say it quietly. It wasn’t quite a shout, but he was an old soldier with an old soldier’s ability to send his voice out to an army in the midst of a battle. There was no battle now, and at least a hundred men heard him.

“You haven’t bowed, cousin. Perhaps your old bones make it difficult. Or have you forgotten courtesy in your dotage?” Eurydice said just as loudly.

“Not too old to turn a spoiled brat of a girl over my knee!” This time Antipater did shout, and stepped forward as though to carry out his threat. One of her guards started forward, and she could have strangled the man. If old Antipater laid hands on her, it would be a fatal blunder. But the guard’s response reminded him of where they were, and he stopped.

He turned around, ignoring Eurydice, and shouted to the army. “Is this what you’ve been brought to? Ignoring your lawful superiors and listening to the prattlings of a girl?”

“Where’s our money?” came back from somewhere in the crowd of soldiers.

“Money! What about your honor? You’re supposed to be the army of Macedonia. Have you forgotten your place?”

“Have you forgotten our pay chests?” shouted another voice from the army. “Alexander promised us a talent of silver each. Where is your honor? You berate us, but give us no pay! You betray Alexander’s promise!”

Eurydice kept her smile hidden. She knew that the soldier was right. Alexander had promised them a talent of silver each, back in Babylon. She hadn’t been there, but Roxane had. The generals might equivocate about it — and they all had, from Perdiccas on — but Roxane had been there, not three feet from Alexander, when he had promised the troops that bonus. And the troops weren’t going to forget it. Alexander might have gotten away with putting them off, but this old man wasn’t Alexander.

“The money’s in Babylon. It will take time to bring it.”

“Why didn’t you bring it with you?” came from the crowd. It was a reasonable enough question. There had been good opportunity for Antipater or Antigonus to send for the money the men were owed. Eurydice knew why they hadn’t too. It was standard practice to delay large payments as long as possible. It was part of keeping the treasury full. Even more important, people you owed money had a better reason to stay with you than people who had already been paid. That was a point she had made to the army on their trip back from Egypt, and Antipater was playing this wrong.

It went on like that. In minutes, Antipater had gone from berating to pleading poverty, and the troops weren’t buying it. He tried another round of berating, harping on the foolishness of listening to a girl about matters that should be between men, and got back where’s our money? again.

By then, Antipater was truly angry. “Get out of my way, you stupid puppy, before I have you whipped back to your kennel!” he shouted at a man on the steps.

The man he said that to was twenty-eight and had been promoted to sub-commander by Alexander himself after a bit of gallantry in Persia. “Try it, you old bastard, and I’ll gut you like a pig!”

Antipater carried a riding crop, and now he raised it to strike the man.

That was it.

Swords came out of their sheaths, and Eurydice watched as the blood drained from Antipater’s face. The old man had never believed, in his worst nightmare, that soldiers of Alexander might stand up to a Macedonian general.

He should have known better, Eurydice thought. After all, they had acquiesced to the murder of Perdiccas.

Antipater and his son, as well as the others with him, were taken into custody. Arrested by the army, for crimes against the army and not having the pay they were promised.

Not all the army agreed. Seleucus’ faction opposed the arrest, and it almost came to blows until the men Attalus had paid came down on the side of the captors.

* * *

Roxane watched the whole thing from inside the hunting lodge. She nodded. “All right, Kleitos. Go fetch my co-queen. Attalus was right.”

Kleitos grunted sourly, but headed out onto the porch. In a few moments, he was back with Eurydice and her guards. Another guard was sent to bring Attalus, who had carefully stayed out of the direct fight. Attalus was popular with part of the army, but very unpopular with other parts of it.

It took a few minutes for Attalus to get there, and Eurydice and Roxane waited in silence.

“Seleucus is busy making sure that Antipater doesn’t suffer an unfortunate accident,” Attalus said as he entered.

“That’s wise,” Eurydice said. “Murdering Antipater would enrage his army. Look at what happened when Eumenes killed Craterus. And that was in battle, not while he was a prisoner.”

“Perhaps,” Roxane said, “but remember Eumenes is the son of a wagoneer. I think Seleucus may have another reason.”

Eurydice looked at Roxane curiously, and with what Roxane recognized as suspicion mixed with more than a little resentment.

“It’s Attalus’ story,” Roxane said. “I’ll let him tell it.”

Eurydice turned her suspicious eyes on Attalus and he began to speak. He explained about the messages from the ship from the future, and waiting for the arrest of Antipater as confirmation of those predictions. “What happens next is that Antigonus gets here, comes across the river with just a small contingent, and keeps the army distracted by a long-winded speech while Antipater escapes. Seleucus is bribed with the satrapy of Babylon to make sure it works out that way. Then they get the army to go over to them and you, Roxane, Philip, and little Alexander go back into custody. I get away, but get defeated at Rhodes. Eventually, all four of you are murdered as the factions fight over you.”

“I don’t believe it,” Eurydice said. “How do I know you aren’t making it all up?”

“I didn’t believe it, either,” Roxane said. “Not that I trusted Seleucus, but it just seemed too weird to credit. However, we tested it. And it’s true.”

“Send someone to watch Seleucus,” said Kleitos. “Find out what he’s saying to Antipater, and what Antipater is saying to him.”

For a moment Eurydice looked at Kleitos as though the furniture had talked, but then she got a considering look. She called over one of her guards and whispered in his ear. He left.