Generation Z (Book 6): The Queen Unchained

by Meredith, Peter

  “You have three days,” he said. “Three days or the girl gets a bath. I’ll lower her in an inch at a time. Do you understand?” Jillybean saw Leah out of the corner of her eye. She looked like she was about to puke.

  “I understand.”

  The Captain’s beaming smile came back. “Great. Now, I want the same set-up as you had back on Alcatraz. You know, we don’t want the left hand to know what the right is doing. Compartmentalization will be the key. And one last thing.” He leaned so close that she could smell his cologne and the mintiness of his breath. “I want to be in control of the rockets. Do you understand? Complete control.”

  Jillybean kept her face neutral. It couldn’t be more obvious: he didn’t trust his men. He was afraid they’d turn traitor and use his own rockets against him. Was this why he was rushing everything? Did he need to solidify his position, or had he made promises that were coming due?

  I bet it’s those new bandits of his, Eve said. She was squatting next to the vat, trying to stir up the flames with a stick. One way or another, you have a chance to exploit the situation. We can escape. Think about it. We’ll have access to explosives and tools and who knows what else. We can skip on out of here and let Jenn and Deanna take care of their own lot for a change.

  “Shut up,” Jillybean growled, before turning to the Captain. “Are you asking for something like a master switch? Radio-controlled, perhaps?”

  He was so used to her mumbling under her breath that he hadn’t batted an eye at her twitching and whispering. “That’s exactly what I want. It’s what you should’ve had with your torpedoes. Ha-ha! Now, I think you should get going, because three days goes fast. Start with a list of everything you’ll need and we’ll get this party started. And I should remind you not to try anything. You will watched like a hawk and searched before entering your cell every night and when I say searched, I mean thoroughly searched, inside and out. The little girl, too.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “Of course, I would and you only have yourself to blame. You can’t be trusted. It’s why the weights will stay on and it’s why you’ll have a guard standing over you twenty-four hours a day.”

  He grinned in that superior way of his, making Eve furious. She kicked at the fire, sending up a shower of sparks. Uncaring that her knee-high boots were in the flames, she stood seething, her white teeth clamped together, her breath coming harsh. With a will, she mastered herself. This is okay, right? We can still escape. You did it before. Remember the pit? No one could have gotten out of there, except for you. Just use your head and figure it out.

  “There’s nothing to figure out,” Jillybean answered, gazing at the flames crawling up Eve’s legs. “I can’t get out. And even if I could…” She lifted the chains, letting them clink. Cutting through the thick chains with a hacksaw would be the work of hours and at least two blades. She could picture dragging the weights from house to house in the dead of night to search for a hacksaw. There’d be no escape like that. The scraping metal would make a noise to wake the dead.

  You could muffle them or put them on a skateboard or something.

  “Do you see a skateboard just lying around?” Jillybean cried. “Face it, Eve, it’s not happening. There are no hacksaws. There are no skateboards. There’s nothing.”

  “And it’s going to stay that way,” the Captain said, studying her, looking for deception even within her crazy. “Tell Eve that if you try one more escape attempt, you’ll lose your left foot. I’ll take it right on the spot. I’ll use an old hacksaw. How does that sound?”

  It sounded slow and horrible. “Not good,” she admitted.

  The confident smile was back. “That’s an understatement. Now, what do you say? Should we begin? Those bombs aren’t going to build themselves and your time is already ticking away.”

  The immense stress upon her was turning her muscles into steel cables and reluctantly, she agreed with a stiff mechanical nod. She called for paper and pen, and sunk herself into the work of arming her greatest enemy, and as she did, her fears faded into the background. Eve went to sulk in the corner and Ipes stopped pointing out that what she was doing would eventually destroy her home and kill the few people left who loved her. Even Sadie couldn’t compete when Jillybean’s mind was fully engaged on a project.

  Five sheets of paper were quickly filled with diagrams and notes. Another seven were filled with what she considered to be crude equations, none of which were correct. She was missing something. “And I’ll never find it with all this noise!”

  Immersed as she was in the mental work, her imperious manner reasserted itself, dominating her fear. Slapping her palm down on the armrest of her throne, she demanded silence from the hundred or so spectators, and when their whispers kept creeping into her thoughts, she ordered the crowd away. Next, she called for food and drink, an actual desk and, “Pencils, and make them sharp. Pens are stupid. And I need more paper!” All of this was brought to her without question.

  The math involved was giving her fits, and the worst part: this wasn’t even advanced rocketry. There was no need for a secondary motor, a recovery system, or even a real avionics bay worthy of the name. All she had to do was fly a tube from A to B along a shallow hyperbolic arc. Yes, she had to find both the center of gravity and the center of pressure within the rocket, but she could rely on Barrowman equations for this.

  And she knew the five to one rule—initial launch thrust should be five times the weight of the total rocket, with the weight measured in kilograms and the thrust given in Newtons.

  Her problem stemmed from her inability to properly calculate the total thrust of the motor produced for the duration of its total burn time. Time and again, she scribbled out the basic formulation for the total impulse: I = ∫T F(t)dt 0, filled in her best estimates, and…cursed, scratching out the equation.

  You know that’s a truncated burn time, Sadie said, looking over her shoulder. You’re starting with imprecise data. Garbage in equals garbage out.

  “First off, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and second, you’re right. And third, stop peeking into my head.” She sat back and sighed.

  Well, are you going to ask for help?

  Jillybean hated asking for help, usually because it was a waste of time, but also being smart was her thing. It’s what made her different.

  “What choice do I have?” She couldn’t simply blurt out what she wanted, so she disguised what she needed by adding it to her long list of items. Ben took one look at the list, became flustered and called for the Captain.

  “What’s this about tools? Jagar says you have some suspicious items on your list.”

  She laughed. “I certainly hope they’re suspicious. I’m building missiles after all. Here’s a partial list of the things I’m going to need to start with.” The list took up an entire page and included two dozen C-clamps, four hand drills, hacksaws, heavy duty pots with lids, copper pipes of various lengths and widths, PVC piping, industrial caulking, charcoal, sulphur and saltpeter.

  “Saltpeter?” he asked, giving her a sharp look. “What is that? Is that a nice way of saying poison?”

  “As it’s potassium nitrate, I wouldn’t eat it if that’s what you’re asking. You’ll find it and the sulphur in any big box hardware store in the lawn care section. Have your guys look for stump remover with the highest percentage of potassium nitrate. Oh, and the charcoal should be the easy starting kind like Matchlight.”

  His smile wasn’t quite so confident. “You understand that I will have everything inventoried every day.”

  “Of course.”

  “And that the tools will be numbered and accounted for at each moment? And that your chains will be inspected periodically?”

  She shrugged having guessed something of the sort would happen. “Seems like sound precautions. I’m also going to need at least one ball mill. It has to be small enough to crank by hand. Oh, I forgot one thing, I’m going to need to be escorted to the community college in Sou
th Aberdeen. I just, uh, need some books.”

  “Just books?”

  Her chains rattled as she shrugged. “Yes, books. You give me too much credit. I may be smart, I may even be a genius, but I don’t have an eidetic memory. I haven’t memorized every chemical formula or mathematical equation known to man. Take for instance the formula for black powder. On the face of it, it’s exceedingly simple and yet if the percentage of each ingredient isn’t exact, it will change the burn rate, which may be the difference between the rocket blowing up in your face or flying as desired.”

  “Once again, you don’t give me enough credit for intelligence. I suppose you think I got where I am on my looks alone? Ha! Here’s what’s going to happen; you’ll give me a list of books to be picked up and they’ll get picked up. Trust me, your Highness, you’re not going to escape. I see this great act you’re putting on, but I know you. You’ve been planning to escape from the second I killed your boyfriend. And I’ve been planning to stop you. Would you care to wager on who will win this little competition of ours?”

  In essence, there was already a bet between them. If Jillybean lost and couldn’t escape, she would eventually be killed.

  But if we get free, we’ll kill HIM, Jillybean. Eve spat into the fire, enjoying the sizzle. I’ll let us hang around for that.

  “No,” she said, answering both of them. Her nerve had broken and she knew if she ever got free, she would run and not look back.

  “That’s what I thought,” the Captain said, pushing the paper back into her hand. Without looking up, she wrote out the textbooks she would need. When he was gone, she sighed and stood. The only way for her to stand completely upright was for her to leave her weights on the top step. Without the lead weighing her down, she almost felt human as she stretched. Almost, but not quite. With only the robe made from her dead lover’s flesh covering her, she would never be fully human.

  It would take hours before she received everything and those were hours she wasn’t going to waste.

  “Leah, honey, I need you to run some errands. I need a hundred slaves in here as quickly as possible. Make sure you bow to each Corsair you talk to…”

  “Bow?”

  “Yes, like this. Try it. Perfect. We bow because it makes them feel superior and when a man feels superior, he is far more likely to help. They’ll ask why I need the slaves and you tell them that I need the church cleared for the construction of the rockets.”

  The Corsairs, who did indeed feel superior, were naturally lazy and were all too happy to volunteer their slaves as labor. They knew that if they didn’t, they would be the ones moving the pews and emptying the horrid water from the huge vat. They leaned against the walls and cracked their jokes as the slaves worked.

  Jillybean oversaw the work from her throne. Her sharp eyes took in the condition of each of the poor creatures, many of whom were suffering from various ailments, diseases, improperly set fractures, and open wounds, some of which were infected. The Captain didn’t need rockets, he needed her to set up a working hospital.

  “Colleen!” So far, Colleen had sulked worse than Eve. She claimed to be the Captain’s slave and wasn’t going to toil like some brute. She jumped out of a doze at Jillybean’s sharp word. “Go fetch that older woman. The one with the swollen cheek. Do it before I get angry and let Eve do things to you.”

  Anyone with any sense was afraid of Eve, and Colleen had at least that much sense. The “older woman” was actually only twenty-two, although it wasn’t apparent, even close up. Since her capture six years before, her life had been especially tough; now it was a living hell. Her head throbbed endlessly and the fever had left her weak as a kitten. The pain had wizened her.

  “Will you open your mouth for me,” Jillybean asked, beckoning her. “Come closer. Hmm.” The smell of rot wafted from her mouth. “It’s what I thought. Point to your master. No don’t talk, just point. Colleen ask him to come over.”

  The Corsair didn’t know what to think of being so close to the Queen. He knew the Captain hated her, so he figured he should as well. “What?” His sneer was so prominent that it couldn’t possibly be missed or misinterpreted. It was practically a monument to sneers.

  “Your slave has a broken tooth. It’s infected and the infection has spread to her mandible; her jawbone. If it’s not treated soon, she will die. The only remedy available is for me to take the tooth out. Would you like me to?”

  The sneer remained fixed; however, his eyes took on an anxious cast. “Maybe. I guess. I don’t know if you’re allowed to. And what if she dies because of you?”

  Jillybean bowed. “I make no guarantees. The procedure itself will only take a few minutes. Although she needs much more extensive treatment, I doubt you have the amenities for anything more than just a quick extraction.” The Corsair started to hem and haw once again and she stopped him by adding, “It’s not something that can be done today. The swelling will need to be reduced before I start. If you wish I will ask the Captain for permission. In the meantime, you will need to make a paste comprised of one teaspoon of turmeric powder, with a half a teaspoon of salt and a half a teaspoon of mustard or sesame oil. Have her gargle and then rinse with saltwater before she gently rubs the paste on the affected area. Do that every three hours.”

  “Three hours?”

  “Yes, three hours. Saltwater rinse, then turmeric powder, salt and mustard or sesame oil, and you’ll have your slave back, good as new.” He grunted, shrugged, shot a look at some of the other Corsairs, and shrugged again before snapping his fingers and leading his slave out.

  The Queen called over three more slaves. “Let me see your arms,” she commanded. The three women were covered in small round circles; they were red, scaly and inflamed. “You have ringworm.”

  One of the women gasped. “Worms! Are they in my intestines? Will they come outta my butt? Or my skin?” She looked at her arm in horror as if the “worms” were going to erupt through the skin at any moment.

  “You’re thinking of a tapeworm. There isn’t an actual worm in ringworm. It’s actually a fungus in the Tinea family. It’s only lethal if left untreated. Can you please beg your masters to come here? Bow or kneel when you ask and make sure you say please.”

  Three Corsair masters at once was a challenge, since each had to be more flippant and disrespectful than the next. Jillybean suffered through their insults and pretended not to hear Eve as she screeched in righteous fury. She remained calm and even laughed at their better jokes.

  “But seriously,” she said, pretending to wipe away a tear, “ringworm is no laughing matter. If you three aren’t infected now you soon will be, and if left untreated, well, it isn’t pretty.”

  “Why?” one of the three asked, trying to act like he wasn’t concerned. “What will happen?”

  She called over the slave with the worst case. “Do you see how the skin is beginning to flake off? A lesion will form next. When that happens, the infection will enter the bloodstream. If the body can’t fight it off, the infection will become systemic and attack your organs, liquifying them.” The Corsairs went stiff, frozen in their nonchalance. “Luckily, the treatment is simple. In this case, cleanliness is truly close to Godliness. Everything you own should be tossed out or thoroughly cleaned. You and your slaves need to bathe daily and apply apple cider vinegar twice a day to each spot. Let it sit for thirty minutes at a time.”

  All three pulled their slaves and left right away.

  As the work of preparing the chapel progressed, more slaves were called over by Jillybean, one at a time. Most bowed to her, though some were desperate and knelt in front of the dais, where they begged for help. Sadly, Jillybean could only do so much, and then for just a handful of them. Despite this, they kept coming to her. Some simply stared at her; some whispered that they thought she was great.

  Some felt their hopes die at the sight of her. She was just a slave, like them. Her chains were heavier than most. Her eyes twittered on the verge of crazy. Her body was small, we
ak, beaten. She wasn’t what they had been expecting. The slaves had heard every rumor about her, and there were a hundred of those and counting.

  These had started with her being the “Girl Doctor,” which was clearly no longer a rumor.

  Then, there were her victories over the Captain. At first, the Corsairs wrote them off as accidents, happenstance, freakish bad luck and even witchcraft. Next, they pretended that there had been no losses. The slaves knew better. They could count as well as anyone. During the past few weeks, supposedly invincible fleets had gone south and each time, fewer and fewer boats had come back.

  What should have been moments of joy for the slaves were ruined as they suffered retribution at the hands of their masters with each defeat.

  And then the Captain had announced a huge victory. He declared that the defeats hadn’t been defeats at all. They had been his way of rooting out traitors and preparing the way for the final conquest of Bainbridge and Alcatraz. He had even managed to cage the Queen. The thin ray of hope had been extinguished.

  Some who came to her didn’t say a word even though they were dying. She could only prolong their agonies. These fatalistic members of the slave society were the loudest.

  “If she can’t save herself, how can she save us?” they asked anyone who would listen. They appeared to be proven correct when the materials she had asked for finally arrived. A rumor started that she was planning to build a bomb big enough to blow Hoquiam sky-high and then hold the Captain hostage with it.

  But she didn’t. She broke the teams into groups: the first set about building the rocket platforms. A second began the intricate process of cutting and forming the different sections of the rockets themselves: the nose, the body in two parts, and the fins. Another group worked on the propellant and another on the warhead.

  She oversaw the detonators and the simple electronics. And as night fell and the church became too dark to work, she and the other slaves underwent a thorough frisking that included a cavity search. It was a degradation they could expect on a daily basis.