Perilous Siege

by C. P. Odom

“Yup. Naturally. So I joined the Marines, and Davis also had made the Navy change the rules so the Marines could have their own corpsmen. So I went to the Navy Pharmacist Mate school and then eventually came to Bravo Company after a bunch of time in the hospital in San Diego. Bravo Company became the only home I’d ever known, and I was happy—really, really happy, Eddie. I was even happy when they sent us over here. It wasn’t until the crazies back home nuked DC and New York in the Massacre that it started to get bad.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So anyway, Bravo Company was my home, and you were the Bravo CO after the captain bought it in the first firefight, and then I started to really lust after your bod.”

  “You what?” McDunn exclaimed.

  “You heard me, Eddie, even if you were too slow to figure it out. I may not have had much experience, but I was going to trip you into a bed if I ever got a chance. But there was never a real opportunity, and the company kept getting smaller and smaller until the whole blessed battalion was about half the size of Bravo when we came over. Then we all got killed on the last day except you and me. So the weird guy, the Druid—”

  “I keep calling him a Druid too, at least in my mind, but I don’t think he was.”

  “Anyway, the Druid said he thought you’d be okay when you went through the portal. You might die of something once you got where you were going, but your wounds belonged to our old world, not the one where you were going.”

  “He was right, too. My clothes were bloody and ripped, but I was perfectly fine. I didn’t even have scars.”

  “So, assuming you’d be okay on the other side of the Siege portal, you were the only part of Bravo left. The only part of my home. So, all I wanted was to go where you’d gone. You were my only chance, my only link to the only place where I was happy.”

  “You have a home now, Dancer,” McDunn said, folding her in his arms and hugging her fiercely. “And if our courtship was exceedingly unusual and one of the briefest on record, it would be par for the course since I’ve been in this place. But I’m happier at this moment than I ever thought I’d be, despite all the exceptionally good luck I’ve had here. And I’ll make you happy. Trust me on that.”

  “I do,” Sandra said, her head on his shoulder, then she immediately sat bolt upright.

  “Is there any possibility of getting fed in this place? I know I had a huge dinner, but satisfying your carnal lusts has left me famished!”

  “So it’s my carnal lusts, is it?” McDunn said.

  “Now, don’t be petty, Eddie,” she said. “What about some food?”

  “I think something might be arranged. Maybe some bread and water or something similar.”

  At her stricken look, he said, “Just kidding, Dancer. I’ll ring for a servant.”

  “Great!” Sandra exclaimed, jumping out of bed in one of those lithe movements that had caused him to award her the nickname.

  “Now, where’d my nightgown get to? You better not have ripped it, you Neanderthal!”

  “Regardless of your low opinion of my skill in undressing women,” McDunn said smugly, “you’d better put on one of my robes before a servant arrives. And there’s your nightgown. You were lying on it, and it looks just as good as new.”

  He held it out to her and she snatched it out of his hand, examining it carefully, seemingly unconscious of her nudity. McDunn had the distinct feeling she was deliberately showing off for his benefit.

  Well, if so, she’ll have to wait for a while, he thought with a sigh as he got up and crossed back to his room where he found a pair of robes for both of them. Not only is someone coming to answer my ring, but this woman has worn me out. I couldn’t summon an ounce of energy if my life depended on it.

  However, as he watched the graceful way in which Sandra slid into the robe he held for her while smiling lasciviously over her shoulder, he amended his thought.

  At least, I don’t think I could…but then, who knows?

  ***

  It was, all in all, almost a perfect night as McDunn did, in fact, recover a modicum of energy. The only mar to perfection came when fatigue finally drove him to slumber only to have it disturbed by his oft-repeated nightmare—of his distant relations trapped in a Britain seemingly doomed to the same cultural suicide that claimed his own lost world.

  Chapter 29

  What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

  — Thomas Paine, English-born

  American political activist and

  one of the Founding Fathers

  of the United States

  Sunday, October 11, 1812

  Pemberley, Derbyshire

  Over the next few days, McDunn and Sandra hardly left their rooms. It was not as if they spent the whole time making love, though they did that often enough as was usual for newly married couples. McDunn found Sandra as enthusiastic at sex as she was at everything she did though she had no hesitation in admitting her relative inexperience. Sandra was a happy, wholehearted lover, and both of them were very much in exploratory and discovery mode, as well as being happier—especially in Sandra’s case—than they’d been in their lives.

  They talked about their lives before joining the Corps and the events that had taken place while he was in this world for three years. They decided to call it the New World, to differentiate it from the one they had left behind—but only between themselves.

  Sandra found McDunn’s lengthy and detailed descriptions of solutions the main participants had found that were similar to those Austen imagined—but nothing like the way she had written them—were especially entertaining, and she had him repeat Darcy and Elizabeth’s tale again and again.

  McDunn explained in greater detail all the experiences he’d had in the three years before she arrived. He told her of the inventions he’d introduced with Darcy’s invaluable assistance—from the telegraph to the steam locomotive to the bicycle—and of his frustration that the multitude of details associated with making the locomotive profitable were preventing him from working on his next project.

  “I’d like to work on something like an electric carriage for London since cleaning up after the horses is a problem, and it’s going to get worse. However, I’ve got to find a way to generate electricity at low cost to make the idea at all possible. And I also have a prototype of a bolt-action rifle I made up that Fitzwilliam is lusting after, but it’s not going to be very useful until I figure out a way to make cartridges for it. Even though Fitzwilliam’s convinced such a rifle would be a really great idea for their infantry, there’s just no money for it at the present time. And since I’m not going to sell it outside Britain, it’s kind of a dead end for now.”

  He grew somber and was silent for a long minute. “One worry that won’t go away is the length of time my computer tablets will last. I’m depending heavily on them as we consider which projects to work on and in what order. I’ve thought long and hard about finding some way to make a permanent record of a lot of important technical information, but I’m at my wit’s end. The gap between today and a future world that takes computers for granted is just too great.”

  “Well, I brought my own tablet, the one they gave us enlisted pukes. It’s ruggedized, but it doesn’t have much free storage space.”

  “And that will really help. I know how to take care of the storage problem, Dancer. I had to erase all the useless stuff the Corps put on it before I could back up my personal tablet, which has all my technical data.”

  “And I also have Murchison’s tablet, which evidently he bought himself.”

  “Really? That’s great news.”

  “I didn’t mention it before now, but his tablet isn’t nearly as ruggedized
as the Corps tablet, but it has a massive internal memory—most of which is filled with porn, by the way.”

  “Maybe we could take a look at it and get some ideas—ow!”

  Sandra giggled at his expression as he rubbed his side. “Be careful, Eddie! I’m not in the Corps any more. I’m a respectable married lady with nothing but the finest of sensibilities.”

  “Still, we better erase it immediately. We don’t want Georgiana to stumble across it!”

  “No, indeed. I wouldn’t have guessed it of Murchison, but he was a good guy.”

  “Good marine,” McDunn said, which was the highest compliment he could pay. “I didn’t know him all that well. All the snipers were kind of loners. But it’ll give us another backup of the tech database my parents gave me.”

  Pain showed on his face, and Sandra reached out to cup his cheek in her palm. “I know, Eddie,” she whispered. “I’m here for you now.”

  “And we did it all to ourselves. But we were fixing things up.”

  “Our world just ran out of time, that’s all,” she said soothingly, but she was startled as he suddenly sat bolt upright.

  His face bore a look much as if he’d just seen a miracle. “That’s it,” he said softly. “That’s what we need to do.”

  “Do what, darling?”

  “I know what we need to do, Dancer,” he said as though he looked into a world only he could see. A world of miraculous things. “I know what we need to do—what we have to do to save this New World so it doesn’t tear itself apart like our world did. It’s not a perfect solution, and what I have in mind will likely have all kinds of problems, but it’ll work! If we can just bring it about.”

  Then he told her, his words tumbling out as he described what had flashed into his mind virtually full blown. He knew it was the way intuition worked, that his subconscious had been chewing on problems of the future when he was concentrating on his current difficulties.

  But it can be done, he thought triumphantly. We can do it. Maybe it’s not a perfect solution, but we know what happens if we let this New World trundle down the same path ours did. This is my world now, mine and Dancer’s and my friends’ and all our children’s, and I will not stand idly by and let our descendants make the same mistakes we did. Not if I can help it. We’ll likely find new mistakes to make, but we have to do our best.

  ***

  Monday, November 9, 1812

  Pemberley, Derbyshire

  It was a quiet night at Pemberley when the Darcys, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and Georgiana joined the McDunns in the room where they usually met. McDunn served his guests their favorite libation.

  My friends, McDunn thought warmly. More than friends—my beloved and trusted brothers and sisters. I’ve never loved or trusted anyone in the world as I do these gentlemen and ladies.

  They’ve come to believe what I’ve told them and what Dancer has confirmed. But I’ve got to give them more details and facts from the future in order to have any chance of convincing them my plan is something other than a pipe dream—especially since I’m planning nothing less than a conspiracy for a mere half-dozen individuals to change the entire future of the world.

  “I know you’re wondering why I asked you here with most of the staff off at the harvest festival and the rest given orders to remain in other parts of the house so we can have the strictest privacy. The concept of this kind of security is unknown at this time, yet it’s unfortunately going to be a necessary part of our lives from now on. If, that is, I can convince you to join me in this endeavor.”

  “That sounds ominous, McDunn,” Fitzwilliam said, sprawled in the overstuffed chair he loved. “But then, nothing about you has been exactly…ah, respectable. No, that’s not quite right. Predictable? That’s better, but it still doesn’t quite capture the essence. I’ll think of the right word by and by, but go on.”

  “If you think I’ve been unpredictable before, just wait. Because I come to you tonight as one of the lowest forms of life—as nothing less than a conspirator.”

  He looked around at them seriously before he continued. “And I want to convince you to join my conspiracy—to become conspirators too.”

  Elizabeth wrinkled her brow as she looked back and forth between McDunn and his wife, both of whom looked most unnaturally solemn and quiet. “A conspirator at what?”

  “A conspiracy to change the world,” he said simply and sat back to wait for the exclamations and questions to subside.

  “More precisely,” McDunn said, leaning forward earnestly, “I want to convince you to follow me and my secret plan to alter the future.”

  He gazed around the room solemnly again. “This is something I’ve been thinking on since I arrived here so suddenly. I kept thinking about what’s likely to occur between now and two centuries in the future, and I wanted to figure out some way to keep it from happening. It’s also something that has been causing me to have recurrent nightmares in which my distant kin were trapped in an England headed down the same path as my own world. In short, I’m convinced that, left unchecked, this 1812 world of ours is going to take the same path leading to those catastrophic debacles Dancer and I’ve described—a path that destroyed our world and resulted in the two of us being here with you tonight. Our goal is to make the future take a different path, one that I think offers a more stable and wholesome future.”

  No one said anything, so McDunn took another sip of his Scotch before continuing.

  “I consider myself a patriotic American, one who should have died in a small, meaningless conflict that future historians would not even mention when they chronicled the utter downfall and extinguishing of our civilization—assuming any historians remain to write the story, which I rather doubt. The victorious barbarians are probably already busy cutting off heads everywhere, and that’s the future I think the world—our world of 1812—is headed for in a little more than two hundred years. In addition, all of human life might be exterminated by the Blight, which was spreading when our regiment was sent to England. And it’s what I want to change.”

  “But can the future truly be altered?” Georgiana asked quietly.

  “I think so since the scientific innovations we’ve introduced, such as the telegraph and the new steam locomotives, weren’t mentioned in the history of my time. Not by such an early date and not by us. Some people have speculated that time is not just a single path but a multitude of possible alternatives. Change a critical decision or event, and time forks and leads to a different outcome. And that’s what I propose doing.

  “We have to. I was proud of the direction my country took at its inception, which was a refinement of what the British had done in establishing the concept of the freedom of the individual. America’s Constitution stressed freedom and the rights of the individual as well as limited government. But my country turned out to have fatal flaws in its makeup, ones that led to disaster. It had all the necessary characteristics and attributes of a country that could have led the world, and it turned away from its responsibility because it lacked the will to lead. It chose instead to think only of the guilt associated with its mistakes and to ignore the successes. It set off down a path leading to a political vacuum of leadership…and the barbarians I’ve described rushed in to take the role my America discarded.”

  “Heavy stuff, Eddie,” Sandra said softly.

  “Heavy indeed, Dancer, but you and I have discussed the subject to death during the last month. Now, all of you know that Dancer and I came here from the future, and I’ve already told you Great Britain and its allies are on the verge of defeating Napoleon. But those allies couldn’t defeat him themselves. Napoleon simply is too good, both politically and militarily, and they needed Britain. So, let’s accept the defeat of Napoleon as a given and move on to a point I don’t think I’ve mentioned before. Your Great Britain is on the verge, over the next fifty years or so, of
establishing an empire—a world-wide empire.”

  McDunn took in the incredulous looks on their faces. “It won’t be an empire based solely on military conquests. There will be military victories, of course, but trade and maritime commerce, along with political determination, will have more to do with the formation of this empire than pure military prowess though the Royal Navy will dominate the seas for more than a century. And I’ll be quite blunt in saying the history books in my world accurately pointed out that your empire wasn’t perfect. There were injustices and cruelties at times, and the opinion of the world eventually turned against the whole concept of imperialism and especially against the British Empire.”

  McDunn leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “If events proceed as they did in my world, Great Britain will step away from imperialism and lose most of its power and influence. It will abandon its role as a leader, much as my America will do later.”

  “Interesting,” Darcy said, raising his glass to his lips.

  “But do you believe it?” McDunn asked.

  “I believe it,” Elizabeth said. “You could not know what you have told us if you did not come from the future you describe. Though I am convinced you have told us only a portion of what you do know.”

  “And I can see that the war with the Corsican has elevated the horizons of people in the military and in Parliament,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “They are not simply thinking of bringing the war to an end. They are looking at the world at large in a much different way—taking a much grander and far-reaching view than they did when my father was a serving officer. He has even noticed as much and mentioned it to me a time or two.”

  McDunn nodded then said, quite slowly, “Did you know English influence was so extensive at one time that it was said the sun never set on the British Empire? More to the point, I have concluded, based on my readings of the time, that the end of the British Empire was a disaster for virtually every colony and territory it left. Virtually all of them were far worse off ten years later, which is a fact the so-called experts of my time—virtually all of whom, by the way, would disagree with me—refused to face.”