by James Hunt
Kemena pressed the back of her hand against the boy’s forehead. He was so hot she thought he’d burst into flames. She muddled a mixture of herbs and placed a damp rag on his forehead to help cool him down. Once the herbs had been ground into a fine dust, she stirred them into water and lifted the boy’s head to have him drink. He barely opened his mouth and was only able to take a few sips before he had to lie back down.
The mother rushed to Kemena, who was still holding the cup of medicine in her hand. “Is he going to be all right?” The mother’s eyes were stressed, weary from nights of praying, hoping that the doctor would be able to come save her child.
Kemena placed the glass with her remedy in the mother’s hands. “Have him finish the rest of that. It’ll help keep the fever down.” She reached back into her bag and pulled out a small glass vial of powder. “Give a pinch of this to him every hour until it’s gone. If he’s still sick once he’s finished it, bring him into town. I won’t be able to do anything else for him here.”
The mother cried, clutching the medicine in her hands, then wrapped her arms around Kemena. “Thank you. Thank you so much for coming.”
Kemena gently patted the woman’s back. “You’re welcome. Once the fever breaks, he should be fine.” The woman’s husband came and peeled his wife off her and shook her hand as well. Before she left, she looked back at the child lying in the bed, hoping he’d pull through. But she knew better than anyone else the odds of a sick child.
The carriage driver waited for her outside, and she loaded the rest of her supplies in the back then found her own seat. Normally when she came into the smaller towns, she was flooded by requests of citizens rushing up to her, but the escort of soldiers that Dean had ordered to be with her at all times since his brother’s death seemed to intimidate the crowd.
While Kemena had studied and learned from an actual physician, the truth of the matter was they just didn’t have the necessary medicines and equipment to save everyone. It was a hard fact to swallow, especially after reading old textbooks from schools before the Great War.
There had been entire organizations dedicated to healing, helping. Now, it was all Kemena could do to keep fevers down and stitch up wounds from war or fighting amongst the local drunks. She looked down at her long, slender hands. Hands that were so sure of themselves and what they could accomplish, yet limited with the resources at her disposal.
She had determined long ago that she was born in the wrong time period, and the old doctor that trained her agreed. He fed her desires with stories from his teacher, who’d worked in the world of medicine just before the fighting that changed the face of civilization began.
Hardly a night went by that she didn’t dream of the world before the bombs were dropped. In those vivid dreams, she saved countless lives, cured diseases, operated on disabled men and women, and made them walk again.
The carriage dipped in a pothole, knocking the daydream from her vision. Here in this world, she had to keep both feet in reality. Early in her career, she had made the mistake of promising more than she could give. That’s why she refused to answer the mother’s question. Her desire to save someone didn’t necessarily correlate with success, no matter how bad she wanted it to come true.
The ride back was slow. A downpour of rain had caused a few of the roads to flood, forcing them onto back roads, which took twice as long. Each village, town, or camp that she passed, Kemena watched the faces look at her carriage. They knew who she was, who her husband was. Even though Dean had been chosen in an election, as was his brother Jason, they treated her family more like a monarchy than public officials.
War had been carved out in her husband’s family tree. Fred Mars, the eldest brother, along with his father and uncles, catapulted the Mars name into legend during the battle with the Chinese in the Island Wars years ago. While Dean didn’t join the fighting until he was slightly older, she could still hear the faint glaze of horror when he spoke about it, which wasn’t often. She’d determined long ago that the Mars men came with a powerful silence about them, especially the older ones. Jason, the youngest, was the only loud one among them, and even he bit his tongue on talks of war.
A chilly breeze blew through the carriage, and Kemena pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders. With everything that her husband and his brothers had been through, all of the fighting, death, and pain, she wasn’t sure if any of them could escape another war with their souls still intact. She’d seen enough of the battles during the war with the clansmen to know what it did to a man’s mind. Little by little, it twisted and exploited all of the good things you held dear and pure in your life until the only memories you saw were trails of death.
Kemena had seen enough death in her lifetime. She looked down to her belly and clutched her stomach protectively, where she knew a seed of life had begun to sprout. This will give him something to hold onto, something good. For both of us.
Chapter 9
Fists thrust into the air, and sea-worn faces flushed red hot with anger, shouting curses and war-riddled threats into the mangled structure that served as the port authority’s office. Lance sat in the back, his arms crossed and half of his body and face covered in darkness from the flickering candles, watching and listening to the Aussies squabble about their next move. It had been like this for over three hours, and every second wasted arguing was one more the Chinese had to move closer. Lance knew that the captain’s words would do little against the cannons of the Chinese. And the man who was loudest with his words just so happened to be the one with the least experience in war.
“All we have to go on is the words of a few dozen men. We don’t know what they saw, and it would be foolish to wage war where hundreds of thousands could die because of the false accusations of a few.” Cameron Davies was a merchant who’d made a fortune in selling cattle to the Brazilians. He stood out amongst the other sailors in the room with his new clothes and well-manicured head of hair he kept slick and stiff with oils and balms. His hands were too soft for a man who’d made a living at sea. “We should reach out to the Chinese, send word before we waste millions in gold, food, and materials for what could be no more than a figment of the imagination.”
The room’s divide widened between jeers and encouragement. Lance shifted uncomfortably in the back, Canice standing close by as she put a hand on his shoulder. He remained seated until he could take it no longer and jumped from his seat. “Have you not seen the holes in Danny’s ship, Cameron? Or the lack of vessels that returned?”
“I don’t doubt that you encountered troubles, Captain Mars, but there is no clear evidence that the ships that attacked you were Chinese military. Chinese, yes, but they could be pirates.”
“Pirates don’t have strategic maps outlining their fleets, nor do they have the type of numbers that me and my crew witnessed.” The crowd parted as Lance made his way to the front of the room, where Cameron and a few other privileged sailors sat at the high table.
Cameron brushed Lance’s words off as if they were a fly buzzing around his meal. “The sea can play tricks on your mind, Captain. Especially at night.”
“And one could argue that your greed has twisted yours.” Lance’s words flew back at Cameron with the foreboding sense of a volcano spewing ash before an eruption. The floor rattled with stomps, and the walls echoed the same split of dissent that had grown in the room.
Cameron stiffened in his chair then leaned forward, his eyes drilling into Lance. “Do not forget where you are, Captain Mars. While your word and your name carry a heavy weight in your own country, you are neither a soldier, nor a political ambassador. You are nothing more than a merchant with a ship. You are here out of the thoughtfulness of this committee. Don’t take that for granted.”
Lance raised his voice, cutting through the clamor of the room and silencing everyone. “I am here because of what I have done, and what me and my crew have sacrificed!” The words rumbled like thunder, and the space between Lance and the rest of the men in
the room grew. “You think that you have the choice to sit and decide whether to go to war, but that decision has already been made. The Chinese have turned their sights on your land once again, and this time they have the resources to take it.” Lance felt the heat coming off him, his eyes still locked on Cameron. “You sit there like a puppet master, pulling the strings of those you’ve paid off, but I will not stand here and do nothing and let your follies turn into the blood of my men being spilt!”
Before Cameron answered, the winding din of the harbor alarms wailed, and the silent stillness in the room erupted into a frenzied escape out the front doors, men squeezing through the cramped space all at once. Lance found Canice right by the edge of the dock, watching the horizon and the entrance of the harbor, but the moment she heard the faint echo of cannons, she was the first to the Sani, the crew flying into action.
Lance rushed back to Danny and the rest of the committee, seizing Danny by the collar. “You send a gunner ship out to the rest of your fleet abroad about the Chinese. You tell them to trust no one unless they bear your official seal.” Lance loosened his grip on Danny’s collar as Danny’s jaw dropped at the sight of the first dozen Chinese warships turning the corner of the harbor. He smacked Danny’s cheek, forcing the man to focus on him. “If we’re lucky, they split up their fleet, with half attacking the northern coast. We’ll need every ship that can hold cannons fitted immediately.”
Danny glanced back out at the seemingly endless line of ships that continued to flood the harbor. “It’s too many. Too many.” He repeated the words softly.
Lance felt the man break out in a cold sweat, and he shook Danny’s shoulders. “We can bottleneck them at the harbor’s entrance and keep pummeling them until reinforcements arrive.” Lance turned to the others. “We need a line of supply ships feeding us ammo and provisions. We can’t let our defensive line break. The moment we let one slip through, we’ll have too much on our hands to deal with. And get what mounted army you can to line the perimeter of the town. You can bet the Chinese already have landed ships farther north, and maybe even south, to come and flank us while our attention is at sea.”
The committee stood there, still gaping at the line of ships on the horizon. Finally, it was Cameron who broke them out of the stupor. “Do as the captain says. Send word to your subordinates, and bring the war provisions out of storage.”
The committee scattered, and Lance sprinted past the remaining ships at the docks, their crew members rushing to get their vessels ready, and hurried up the ramp to the Sani, where his ship was already prepared to depart. He thrust the engines into reverse just as the last mooring lines were flung from the deck.
The crew moved along the ship without the need for orders. They knew what was coming. The howl of wind brought with it the booming of the Chinese cannons growing louder and the massive pieces of lead growing closer.
The Sani cut through the bay chop with a sense of purpose, and Lance felt his hands mold onto the ship’s wheel. He looked down to Canice, the crew ready to strike. Salt spray splashed the deck and rolled to the walls, where it funneled out of the small portholes and back into the ocean.
It seemed like an endless cycle, one that Lance couldn’t find it in himself to break. This loop of war went on without end, and for a moment he wondered what fate the future held. The beating in his chest offered its opinion of immortality, but his mind gave a different vision, one that ended in black, and in that darkness he was left to roam in blindness, searching for anything to touch and feel against the tips of his fingers.
“Captain!”
Canice’s voice was cut short by the rippling cannon fire from the Chinese ships, now only a few hundred yards off the bow. Two shots grazed the port hull, and Lance felt the vibrations from the hits ripple through his grip on the wheel. “Fire bow cannons!”
Two black cylinder shafts thrust from the front of the Sani’s hull and returned a volley that connected against the lead Chinese ship, forcing its captain to maneuver into another lane that was already occupied by one of its comrades.
Lance watched the ripple effect of the ships turning and ordered another volley from the bow before he turned the Sani to its left, revealing the starboard cannons, which catapulted more metal into the advancing fleet. “They’re clustering!” But Canice had already noticed, ordering the crew to concentrate fire on the flanks.
The Chinese may have had numbers, but not the experience. With the number of ships, it was no doubt they were forced to promote green sailors up the ranks, and the inexperience of war festered a fear of it. It was small but something they could use to their advantage.
Two of the Chinese ships collided, the massive sheets of steel scraping against each other, and the ships desperately tried to prevent each other from sinking. A few ships tried sneaking close to the harbor’s rocky shoreline but ended up running aground in the unfamiliar shallow waters.
While Lance continued the barrage on the left flank of the approaching fleet, two of the Aussie ships finally joined him in the bay and focused their cannons on the right side, hammering the Chinese with a relentless barrage.
Lines of smoke from the cannon blasts covered the harbor like a morning fog, but instead of the sweet smell of salt air, it was filled with the harsh scent of metal, combined with the hot burst of steam. Sweat rolled down Lance’s forehead and cheeks, a few drops landing on his lips, tasting of salt and dirt.
Two ships set a dead heading course right for the Sani, and Lance adjusted to their movements, positioning his ship to intercept. The way the two Chinese vessels kept their distance in a constant parallel path told Lance one thing. “To arms! To arms!” They meant to board him.
Canice echoed the orders down the deck of the ship as the crew grabbed swords, pistols, clubs, and knives, anything and everything that they could use to defend themselves. Lance lined up the ship, keeping a dead heading to the Chinese vessel on the left. If he could maneuver close enough to the coastline, he knew he could get one of them to run aground.
Lance felt the waters shallowing, and twice the very bottom of the hull scraped against the top of the rocks below, but the strategy was working. In an attempt to surround him, the captain of the Chinese vessel closest to the coast moved farther toward the shallows, and Lance smiled as the ship came to a halt, taking on water.
Amid the shouts and cheers of his crew, with one of the vessels now distressed, Lance turned the Sani hard to starboard to flank the remaining Chinese ship. “Load the forward cannons!” Canice relayed Lance’s message with a hard shove into one of the crew members and marched them toward the bow.
Lance studied the stranded Chinese vessel on his port side, taking into account the number of cannons, men aboard, size of the ship, and materials. The ship had thick walls high on the hull, but it grew lighter toward the bottom. The cannons numbered twelve across on the port side, which fired in a feeble attempt to reach the Sani before it had completely passed by, and assumingly just as many on the starboard.
The Chinese captain still in pursuit made the mistake of slowing, and Lance used the opportunity to maneuver himself into a better position to have the enemy vessel on his port side. “At the ready! Aim for below the hull!” His crew crouched behind the cover of the armored siding that surrounded the entire deck. The grind of the cannons lowering coincided with Lance’s slowing speed.
The two ships coasted toward one another, although the Sani was distinctively quicker. Lance kept his hand raised, waiting for the moment just before the Chinese guns were within range.
The air around the ship seemed frozen, and the battle raging to their right with the gathering Chinese and Australian vessels felt a million miles away. Here in this moment, with his crew and his ship, there was only one enemy that needed to be dealt with. Then, when they won, they’d move on to the next, then the next, and the next. That was war, a grinding, bloody, truculent disease that spread through the world like a cancer, and the only way to beat it was one portion at a time, an
d keeping it from spreading to the rest of the body.
“Fire!” Lance dropped his arm, and the crew echoed his throaty order with the thunder of the guns on deck, blasting low into the Chinese hull and tearing the metal apart with each hit. The Chinese reciprocated, but the blasts were disjointed and uncoordinated as Lance’s crew boarded the ship and focused their steel on the flesh of the crew.
Harpoons thrust from both sides as the two vessels interlocked each other in a battle to the last man. Pistols were fired only in the beginning, and the sound of gunfire was quickly replaced with the clang of swords. With both ships locked in place, Lance descended from the wheel, joining Canice and the rest of the crew jumping back and forth over the narrow barrier between the vessels.
Splashes of blood laced the foaming salt water on the decks of both ships as men dropped to the hard metal surfaces, clutching their wounds and begging for whatever gods they prayed to for mercy.
Lance jumped onto the enemy ship just as one of its crew members thrust his sword forward, slicing the fabric of Lance’s shirt but missing his stomach. Lance parried back, nearly knocking the blade from the sailor’s hand. The young sailor barely kept his footing on the boat, still searching for his sea legs, sliding across the slick deck.
Lance’s right shoulder and arm burned with each smack of steel, his joints shaking off the rust a decade without war had crusted onto him. But with each slash, thrust, and block, Lance felt the familiarity of combat return, which was cemented with a quick stab into the young sailor’s belly, ending the dance and the boy’s life.
Red foam crusted the corner of the Chinese sailor’s mouth as he collapsed to the deck. Lance watched the young man stare up at him, his eyes glazed over with the wetness of tears and opened wide, taking in the last images of life he had left.
The front half of Lance’s blade dripped with blood, and before he could wipe it clean, another sailor was on him, and the war continued, as he killed another man, then another, and another. His crew cleared the deck of the Chinese vessel until the seawater dripping from the port holes was replaced with blood.