by Eric Flint
“Eumenes was Philip’s man. He was a wagoner’s son King Philip took a liking to. He was always loyal to Philip II, and he studied with Alexander and Philip III under Aristotle. He knew about Philip III and he knew that the king loved him and so did Alexander. But Philip II was willing to put aside his love for his children for the dynasty. Eumenes will do the same. Philip and Eurydice are both Argead and Philip’s mother is Macedonian. That puts Philip’s son, if he were to have one, closer to the Argead royal house than my son, at least the way most Macedonians see it and probably Eumenes as well. Olympias, on the other hand, hates Philip III because he is the result of Philip II’s infidelity to her. And even if she doesn’t think I’m good enough for Alexander, I am the mother of her grandson so she will come down on my side. I’m not sure how Cleopatra will decide. She doesn’t hate Philip III, but she was devoted to her brother Alexander. In any case, I have no desire to be left in Eumenes’ custody. I feel a lot safer endorsing him from a distance.”
“Historically, Olympias had Philip murdered and forced Eurydice to commit suicide.”
“That’s because Olympias doesn’t care about the Argeads as much as she cares about her own blood lines. That’s Alexander and Cleopatra, no one else.”
“What about Heracles?” Marie Easley asked.
“Who?”
“Barsine’s son, Heracles?”
“What about him?” Roxane asked, confusion on her face.
“It was reported,” Marie said cautiously, “that Heracles is Alexander’s illegitimate son.”
“Alexander and Barsine?” Roxane’s eyes were wide in shock, then she started laughing. “Alexander would have rather stuck it in a thorn bush. I actually sort of like Barsine, but the woman does have a tongue like a kopis. Heracles is a nice child and practical, but like most Rhodians, he’s all about ships.”
“Tell me about Antigonus,” Marie said.
“He doesn’t think anyone who isn’t a Macedonian is quite a person. That applied to me, and even to my son Aristotle. At a guess, right now he’s going after Eumenes. In fact, that was already decided. He’ll probably be in Cappadocia in another month or so.”
“What about Eurydice and Philip?”
“She’ll be endorsing him. She doesn’t really have any choice. And, knowing Eurydice and Antigonus, he probably has her locked up by now. Antigonus keeps to his wife, but Stratonice is the twisty one of that pair. Antigonus doesn’t trust women, except Stratonice.”
“Why does that mean he’ll lock up Eurydice?”
“She will want a say in the government. In truth, what she really wants is to be a ruling queen. Antigonus will never agree to that. So she will make speeches and he will lock her up.”
Marie nodded. They had already discussed Philip. He seemed to have something of an autism spectrum disorder, and was perhaps some sort of savant into the bargain.
Queen of the Sea, North Atlantic
November 3
Tyrimmas watched the girl and fumed. He had taken her in a battle four years ago and she had been his. But the ship people had stolen her, and now she was swimming in the artificial pool, flaunting herself in front of him. They were thieves, that’s what they were. She was Tyrimmas’ wench to do with as he pleased, not a citizen. Who ever heard of a woman citizen? But at fifty-eight and as a veteran of the Silver Shields under Philip II and Alexander, he knew discipline. He forced his eyes away from the bitch and looked around the pool deck, looking for doors and access ways. This was a prize like no prize ever seen, and whoever controlled the bridge would control the ship.
☆ ☆ ☆
Daniel Lang looked at the roster and worried. They’d gotten a lot of the malcontents off when the Reliance left, but quite of few of the younger passengers—the sort to be recruited into the ship’s security contingent—were among the three hundred who left. Meanwhile, Daniel had ten security guards, most of whom had never fired a shot in anger. They examined IDs and ran people through the metal detectors. They weren’t the frigging Marine Corps.
He wanted to recruit from the passengers. There were two hundred eighty-two veterans among the passengers, but two hundred fourteen of them were over sixty-five. Of the remaining sixty-eight, only three were active, and none of them were in combat arms military occupational specialties. Two were cooks and one a truck driver. There were half a dozen vets under sixty-five with combat experience, and about twice that number who had combat arms training, but had never been in combat.
For the battles using the steam cannon they had used regular crew, and his people had done a good job of rounding up the prisoners and keeping them locked up while the Queen made her way to Tyre. There they had picked up not just Queen Roxane and the baby king, but a contingent of Alexander the Great’s elite infantry.
That was what Daniel needed. The Silver Shields. They had experience in combat, decades of it, and it was the combat of this time. He took one last look at the spreadsheet on his computer and called the bridge. “I need to talk to the captain.”
☆ ☆ ☆
“We should have stayed on Tyre,” Evgenij told Roxane as she paced around the room. Even a luxury suite just wasn’t large enough for a good pace. It was bigger than anything there would have been on any ship she had ever seen before now, but you couldn’t go very far before you had to turn back around.
Roxane wanted to agree with Evgenij. She was furious with Dag for not warning her about the crazy laws the ship people had, and even more the ridiculous notion that she—Roxane, Alexander’s widow—would be required to abide by them. At the same time, Roxane understood the political situation back in the empire better than Evgenij did. She believed Marie Easley’s book about what would have happened to her and to the Silver Shields. The changes that the ship people had made were as likely to make things worse for her and the Shields as they were to make them better. “Perhaps we should have. But we are here now and we need to deal with this situation. All they have taken is the slaves. The ship restaurants serve food, the laundries…”
“That’s not the point. Those slaves were a good part of our wealth. An ongoing source of funds. We put them to work or rented them out. Now that’s gone.”
“I know. I lost my slaves too, at least the ones that were with us.” The truth was that Roxane owned hundreds of slaves back on her father’s lands. Also in Babylon and other places around the empire. Alexander had been generous with her whole family, and he had a great deal of booty, including slaves. She just hadn’t had that many with her in Tyre. And now that she knew, those slaves weren’t coming anywhere near the Queen of the Sea.
The Silver Shields, on the other hand, carried all their booty—including the slaves—with them. And the slaves were at least half the wealth of most of them.
“Give me some time, Evgenij. Let me try to figure something out.”
Evgenij opened his mouth, then closed it and nodded. There was something in that nod that made Roxane nervous, but she wasn’t sure what it meant.
“What about this offer of employment?”
“Yes, take it as long as there are enough left over for my personal guard contingent.” Roxane and Alexander IV had five guards with them at all times, like a Secret Service detail, though Roxane had never heard of the Secret Service until Dag mentioned it. But that only took a small number of the force at any given time. “Learn what you can of the way they make war.”
☆ ☆ ☆
Daniel Lang didn’t speak Greek, so he wasn’t following the comments made by the Silver Shields as he showed them around the ship. Tyrimmas, who was a leader of sixty—something between a sergeant and a lieutenant—seemed all business, though. Looking for access points and potential blocking points. Every once in awhile he would raise his hand and gesture for Daniel to use the translation app and ask pertinent questions.
Good questions. Sometimes questions Daniel hadn’t thought of. He answered them as well as he could, and gained a respect for the man’s abilities while he did.
�
�� ☆ ☆
Amateurs, Tyrimmas thought, as he followed the white-suited but unarmored man around the ship. The place was a maze, but Lang had conveniently provided him with a map.
It would be hard to take this ship. Harder than he had thought before the tour, but not because of the crew. Just because of the size of the ship, and the number of narrow passageways. Passageways that would let one or two men with shield and spear hold back an army for hours or days. Tyrimmas smiled to himself. Once they took the ship, they would be able to hold it, as few as the Shields were.
☆ ☆ ☆
“Captain, this is insane!” protested Marie Easley, doing her best to keep her temper under control. “You might as well recruit tigers or lions—hungry ones, fresh from the jungle or savannah—to your security force. I keep telling you, these people are not civilized. Not in the sense of the term that you and I mean by it, at any rate. And to make things still worse, the Silver Shields think they have a grievance against you—us—because we stripped them of their slaves. From our standpoint, that was simply social justice. From theirs, it was outright theft. And they are people for whom theft isn’t even a ‘crime,’ it’s just another element that’s added or subtracted to their ledgers of acquisition and revenge.”
Lars Floden wiped his face with a hand. In that moment, he looked inexpressively weary and Marie had a moment of sympathy for him. Great sympathy, in fact. The man had been under tremendous pressure since The Event and, all things considered, had handled it extraordinarily well. But the moment was still brief. This was a disaster in the making.
“I am sorry, Marie, but I don’t see where I have much choice. Daniel Lang is insistent and it’s not just him—our entire security force is feeling completely overwhelmed. There aren’t enough of them, it’s as simple as that. And they were never trained for this kind of an emergency.”
Marie pursued the matter for a few more minutes, but the captain wouldn’t see reason. As much as she respected Floden—was coming to like him personally, too, more and more as time passed—he could be as stubborn as the proverbial Swede, even if he was Norwegian.
So, eventually, she left off the argument. And went in search of a sane Frenchwoman.
☆ ☆ ☆
“How well do you shoot? I know you were in the French navy.”
Elise Beaulieu cocked her head and studied Marie for a moment. “I shoot extremely well, as it happens. Especially with a sidearm, where I was at competition level when I was a young woman. Why?”
“Because the captain—meaning no disrespect—has lost his…ah, what’s the way to put it?”
Beaulieu smiled a little. “You think he and Daniel are being incautious, allowing Silver Shields to join the security force?”
“Not exactly the term I would choose. ‘Incautious’ is sticking your head into the gaping jaws of a crocodile. Letting Silver Shields into the security force is utter recklessness.”
Beaulieu’s tips tightened. “I have doubts myself. But the fact remains that Lars Floden is the captain, and I am not. And the fact also remains that I am not at all inclined toward mutiny.”
Marie waved her hand in a downward, patting motion. “No, no, of course not. I am not suggesting that you be in any way insubordinate. Just make sure you have your sidearm with you at all times.”
The Frenchwoman shook her head. “I can’t walk around carrying a holstered sidearm.” She looked away, her expression thoughtful. “What I will do, however, is make sure that I have it available whenever I’m on the bridge.”
“And keep one in your stateroom as well.”
Elise smiled more widely. “Marie, pistols—good ones, which mine certainly is—are expensive. I am not one of your American—what are they called?—‘gun nuts,’ I believe. I only own one pistol.”
Marie looked grim. “I’ll get you another one.”
☆ ☆ ☆
“Captain, I insist. I know Lang has some spares available.”
Floden’s smile was very crooked. That was not like him at all.
“Fine, Marie. I will order him to provide a pistol to Officer Beaulieu. But on one condition. No, two.”
“What?”
“Call me ‘Lars,’ please. And join me for dinner tonight. I could use…” He made a gesture with his hand that could mean most anything. “Company.”
Marie stared at him. “But…I’m considerably older than you are. Lars.”
The captain’s smile got more crooked still. “Your passport is on file with us. You are exactly five years, one month and three days older than I am, Marie. Not so much, really. Not even in the world we came from—much less this madhouse.”
Queen of the Sea, North Atlantic
November 4
One of each guard contingent was a ship person and one was a Silver Shield. The ship person was armed with a pistol and the Silver Shield was armed with a short spear, six feet long instead of ten, and a shield. This let the ship’s personnel instruct the Silver Shields in ship procedures. The first day they were checking in every few minutes, not because Daniel didn’t trust the Silver Shields, but just because they weren’t trained.
The day went smoothly, with only a few incidents where passengers approached the pair of guards and the Silver Shield responded more belligerently than Daniel would have preferred. But he reminded himself these were infantrymen, not professional security from the twenty-first century. They hadn’t been trained in “firm but polite.”
Daniel shut down his phone and went to talk to the captain.
☆ ☆ ☆
“I think we should start training them on the crossbows, sir,” Daniel said as soon as he got to the wardroom.
“Is there any hurry, Daniel?” Captain Floden asked. “I have heard some rumblings. They aren’t fully reconciled to the loss of their slaves. I think it might be better to give them a few weeks to become more acclimated to the new situation.”
“In that case we shouldn’t have them guarding passageways,” Daniel said. “I passed two of them on the way to the wardroom.”
“I know. But your people have been overworked since The Event.” On a normal cruise there wouldn’t be any sort of a watch on the hatches or passageways on the ship because there wouldn’t be any need for such a watch. But between the dissidents among the passengers and the external threats, Daniel and the captain had agreed that they needed more than just the cameras and smart cards.
Queen of the Sea, North Atlantic
November 5
The group of eight Silver Shields walked to the door from passenger country to crew country, and the ship person guard stood up, along with the other Silver Shield at that post.
“Everything under control here?” Tyrimmas asked in Greek, and was answered with a nod and grin.
The ship person, a girl who looked absurdly young, pulled out her phone, probably to access the translation app. But as she did, her fellow guard reached out and grabbed her arm. As she turned, he showed her his other hand, the one with the knife in it. He put the knife against her throat and backed her to the wall. Then he reached down, unbuckled her gun belt, and tossed the gun, belt and all, to Tyrimmas, who put it on.
The ship people were about to learn that there were consequences to robbing Silver Shields.
The guard opened the door to crew quarters with the smart card and the small party slipped through. Then he grabbed the girl by her ponytail, took her into crew quarters, locked her in a broom closet, and went back to stand watch on the door.
A light blinked on a short time later in the security room and Rui Jorge, the second deputy security officer, noted it in his log but didn’t call the guard post. That same door had opened and closed fifteen times since he came on shift. Each time it was a crewman going back to crew quarters after having a meal in passenger country.
Just a minute later, the light came on again. And again two more times. The Queen of the Sea had clocks and the Silver Shields had learned to use them. The concept of a coordinated attack was anythin
g but new to them. They were all veterans with plenty of combat experience. Four of the stichos, eight-man squads, were involved in the attempt. Not all the Silver Shields were as incensed about the freeing—as they saw it, stealing—of their slaves.
Koinos watched as Tyrimmas led his two squads to the forward elevators. He was nervous about this and had argued for waiting, but Tyrimmas outranked him and was a mean bastard besides. Koinos wasn’t going to go up against Tyrimmas, not when it would mean betraying the men in his squad as well. Koinos waved and his two squads headed aft toward the elevators that would take them to the engine room. “Don’t kill anyone you don’t have to,” he said again. “The Gaul was right when he said even the floor moppers might know things we need to find out. Besides, a ship person slave will bring a high price.”
“We know, Koinos,” Archelaus said. “You’ve said it before.”
Koinos wasn’t ambivalent about the plan because of any warm fuzzy feelings for the former slaves or the ship people who had taken them. He was just afraid that thirty-two men weren’t enough to take and keep control of the ship. Tyrimmas had assured them that once they got control, the rest of the Shields and even Roxane would come over to their side. Koinos didn’t doubt that. He just wasn’t sure that even all of them together and their families were enough to keep the ship. It bothered him how quickly their slaves had abandoned them when the ship people emancipated them. He expected more loyalty. Less than half the slaves chose to stay with them, and even the ones who had had mostly insisted on getting paid.