by S A Shaffer
“I did it, Mother.” David said. “I did it!” A tear rolled down his cheek, glistening in the sunlight.
He heard the sound of the door closing and turned as Mercy walked around one of the planter boxes. The wind blew her auburn hair like tongues of flame, and her face shined with the last light of the sun. They smiled at each other, but neither said anything as she walked up and joined him on the rail.
“Remember the last time you found me watching the sunset,” David asked after a few moments.
Mercy nodded. “You thought I was a hallucination.” She said and then laughed.
David smiled and nodded. “You’re the girl of my dreams; a hallucination is not that far removed.”
Mercy blushed so deep it blended with her hair. She looked down and smiled, but David lifted her chin. He brushed her hair out of her face and looked into her eyes.
“Do you know that you’re the most beautiful girl in all the Fertile Plains, and that I love you very, very much?”
She stopped breathing for a pair of heartbeats. “Oh, I… I didn’t.” She said. She obviously did know, but she seemed shocked to hear him say it.
David nodded. “It’s true.” Then he did something he’d never done before, but something he’d always wanted to try. He leaned forward and kissed her. She stiffened, apparently surprised, but she did not pull away, and after a moment, she wrapped her arms around his waist in an embrace. The sun glinted off the orbital and bathed the couple and the clouds around in brilliant hues of red and orange, reflecting off the brass railing and every single one of the Alönian star’s thirteen points. A terrible war approached, a war to overshadow all other wars; but in that moment as the sun set, the only thing David cared about was the woman in his arms.
EPILOGUE
David knocked on a large metal door with pieces of wood covering up broken out panels of glass.
“Enter.” A voice said.
He pushed open the door and walked into Speaker Johnson’s orbital office. He saw the man on the far end of the office tapping a pen against his head with his eyes pinched shut.
“Ah, David.” Johnson said once he’d opened his eyes. “Thank you for coming.” He made a mark on the piece of paper and placed the pen on the desk.
“Of course sir.” David said and crossed the office to sit in the large leather chair opposite Johnson.
“I wanted to meet with you to ask you a favor.” Johnson leaned forward.
“Ever since Blythe took the speakership, we lost contact with our outlander friends in the north. We can only assume that Blythe discovered our secret relationship with them and cut it off. Either that, or the outlanders were only interested in working with the head of the Houselands.”
David nodded.
“Well, now that we are back in possession of the speakership, we’d like to re-establish communications. You see, they are working on a very important operation.”
“What operation, sir?” David asked.
“Something that might even the odds when the war finally comes.” Johnson said. “Something that has never before been attempted in the Fertile Plains: a tunnel beneath the Rorand Mountains.”
David smirked. “A tunnel? Beneath the mountains?” But Johnson didn’t smile back.
“Rather ingenious, isn’t it?” Jonson said. “An old idea of your grandfather’s, actually.”
“But… but that would take cycles.” David said, trying to conceal his disbelief. Johnson had to be joking.
“Ten cycles, to be precise.” Johnson said. “At least, according to the original project plan.”
“You’re serious? How long has this been going on?”
“Ever since we made peace with the outlanders, say about six and a half cycles ago. The fact is: we need that tunnel more than anything now. It would allow us to sneak behind Berg and cripple them from the inside out. Unfortunately, we haven’t heard from our project manager in the outlands for a few seasons now. If progress has stopped, it could mean the loss of vital time.”
David nodded, but couldn’t help his frown. “Yes, but what do the outlanders have to do with the tunnel?”
“They’re the best miners in the Fertile Plains. Who better to punch a hole through more than a hundred grandfathoms of solid rock?”
“But they’re outlanders, wild and uncivilized. I can’t imagine them accomplishing anything so monstrous.”
“I’ll admit they are a bit wild, non-existent table manners and habitual brawlers, but we managed to pacify them, a little. After that, they were more than willing to do some work for us at only slightly above a standard cost. It all has to do with their political structure, which is why I think you would be a perfect envoy to check up on them and see how things are going.”
“But I know nothing of outlanders,” David said. “or their political structure. I didn’t even know we’d made peace with them until a few seasons ago. Why not send someone more informed of the situation.”
Johnson paused. “There is another reason I want you to go.” He pursed his lips and chose his next words carefully. “What do you know of your father’s work in the outlands?”
“I know he served two seasons there as a hunter. He destroyed so many prowlers that the outlanders lost interest in Alönian raids.”
“Not exactly,” Johnson said. “Not even the armada knew the extent of his work there, and it has been a closely guarded secret ever since. There are some things you need to know about your father and his last seasons as an Alönian captain.”
◆◆◆
Distance made the journey wearisome, distance and the sweltering heat of the barren valleys. It might not have been so bad, if a majority of the journey had not progressed on foot—grandfathoms and grandfathoms and grandfathoms of endless walking. Within no time at all, clothes disintegrated, and shoes dissolved beneath the stress of the march. How could a country survive when everything was trying to eat you? Millions of biting or stinging insects filled the air. Nothing but snakes, thorns, and carnivorous plants inhabited the jungles. They had thought the cool streams refreshing until they discovered the leaches.
They smelled the city long before they saw it. The thick air carried the heavy sent of refuse with it. Then they saw the famed junk piles of Viörn spanning as far as they could see. After a few conflicts with territorial Junkers, they decided to travel at night using the light of glowing mushrooms as a dense smog concealed any star.
But, at long last they’d arrived at their destination, Xiang city. Blythe climbed the wooden steps inside the intricate building, leaving Hans and Gerald at the entrance. Each step felt like a mountain. He reached the top and stumbled toward a door between two guards, half the size of his own but no less deadly. They looked at him, but not in concern. He looked too haggard for that. He lifted his fist and knocked twice on the door.
A man said something from within, and Blythe presumed it was permission. Mustering his remaining strength and pride, he pushed the door open and stumbled inside. A man stood on the opposite end of the octagonal office looking through an octagonal window behind an octagonal table atop an octagonal rug adorned with octagonal patterns. Octagonal paintings hung on the walls displaying eight airships flying in a formation. Blythe walked across the room, but the man did not turn to look. Blythe moistened his dry mouth to speak, but the man cut him off.
“William, you are an imbecilic fool.” He said. “You had every advantage, every support, and still you managed to fail by tripping on the finish line.”
The man turned and glared at Blythe with his peoples’ naturally narrowed eyes. His tanned skin contrasted with his red uniform. He stepped away from the window and looked up at Blythe from behind his desk, a full foot separating their difference in height.
“As a result,” The man continued, “I’ve had to move my entire timetable backward after we had already begun to mobilize. Do you know how much money that cost us? Not to mention how close we were to forfeiting the entire operation. You failed on every count. What use
are you to us now, especially now that I know you are incapable of achieving the smallest challenge.”
He never shouted; in fact, he appeared as calm as a man reprimanding a wayward child. Blythe hated it. He hated the humiliation of a sniveling man, half his size, treating him like a fool. It reminded him of his first days as an aide, penniless and pitiful, surviving on the goodwill and good fortune of his superiors. He would never return to that state, not after how far he had risen. But, for the moment, he bit his tongue and endured. He had but one card to play, and he had to play it well.
“Why should I shelter you?” the man asked. “Answer me that? Why shouldn’t I behead you and write you off as a failed investment.”
Blythe swallowed hard. He knew that, despite the man’s tone, beheading was a very real possibility.
“Did you think I would come to you empty handed.” Blythe asked. “If I truly was as much of a failure as you’ve described, I would have thrown myself from the orbital and saved you the trouble of a beheading, but I didn’t. I knew I had a bargaining chip, something valuable enough to balance the loss of your investments.” Blythe paused, choosing his words carefully. If he played his card to quickly, the man would simply take it and order his death. Blythe had to convince him of his future value.
“I know the costs of a future war with Alönia and Armstad.” Blythe said. “I know their strengths and weaknesses. I’ve seen their armadas and fortifications, and I can exploit their weaknesses.”
The man snickered. “Prove it. Tell me something I don’t already know, and I’ll let you live.”
Blythe smiled with dry lips. Then he reached inside his coat and pulled out a tight roll of documents. Unlike the rest of him, the documents looked clean. He’d handled them with extreme care the entire journey across the channel and across Armstad, while patrols chased them across the countryside. He’d kept them out of the dust and wind after their airship ran out of fuel, and the three of them were forced to walk across the Viörn wastes until they reached the city of Xiang.
He handed the documents across the desk, and the Viörn unrolled and examined them. He glanced briefly and turned the page to the next document and looked at it, and the next few after that.
He looked up at Blythe. “This is all of them?” he asked.
Blythe nodded. The Viörn sat and began looking through the papers again, slower this time. “You’ve regained my favor. These documents are worth cycles of planning. You have purchased a life in Viörn, and if you ensure our operation is successful, a place in my new government. Fail me again, and we will torture every last bit of information out of your brain until you die a miserable failure.”
Only then did Blythe relax enough to sit on the chair opposite the Viörn. “I won’t fail you again. There won’t be any Ike’s around to foil me this time.”
The Viörn laughed. “A poorly planned life has many surprises. You had the last living member of the Ike legend in your office, and you didn’t even know it.”
“It had nothing to do with poor planning. I presumed the family dead.” Blythe said with a meaningful look at the Viörn.
“Never presume anything about your enemies.” The Viörn said. “It is ironic, though. The Ikes threatened our operations, so we snuffed them out like a spark before it became a blaze. But we missed one, and he rose from the ashes a stronger man. The irony is that we gave him the very position, which led to our undoing. Fate can be fickle.”
Blythe frowned. “If your men had done a better job of destroying that airship, he would have died with his father.”
The Viörn’s eyes flicked up in a look of condescension. “If you would have killed all your staff like I suggested when you suspected a traitor, we would not be in this position. But you were too busy in your bedroom to bother yourself.”
Blythe smiled and conceded the point, but he balled his fists behind the desk. The truth was, he hadn’t the stomach for blood, but his lust for power allowed him to appreciate its results. So he used others to do the job for him while he could pursue other ventures with clean hands. He’d let the staff live for personal reasons. David and Francisco ran his campaign. Bethany would have, at some point, filled an interim between mistresses, and Mercy would have been one of those mistresses, willingly or not.
“It is of no matter anymore.” The Viörn said. “Though the next time we have dealings with David Ike, we will not leave him alive. Come, we must call a meeting with our allies.” The Viörn said as he stood and walked around his desk. “Our Bergish friends will be very interested in the new advantage you’ve given us.”
The two of them left the office, neither fully trusting the other. They left the documents on the table, documents of invaluable worth to Armstad, and in turn, Alönia. Lines crisscrossed the papers forming the precise blueprint of the, as of yet, impregnable Armstad mountain fortifications. They displayed gun emplacements, lines of fire, secret tunnels, communication towers, supply lines, all of the fortification’s strengths… and weaknesses.
THE END
FROM THE AUTHOR
I love writing fiction, but more than that, I want you to love my fiction. Write a review on amazon and help me improve my craft. If you are looking for updates on future books or just want to chat, contact me through my website at sashaffer.com
S.A. Shaffer