by Scott McKay
That setback saddened Patrick, because the owner of the airship line was that same Sebastian Cross who’d circled the globe in a hot air balloon eight years before, and Patrick was a great admirer of the man. In any event, technology was the order of the day in Ardenia, and it paid to embrace it where one could so as to avoid being left behind.
However, the neighbors to the south embraced nothing but death, depredation and dysfunction, and Patrick was frustrated by the fruitless, violent stupidity he saw from the Udar along the Watkins Gulf sea-lanes.
Patrick had begun to feel differently about the situation in Watkins Gulf now that he commanded Adelaide. It was a superior ship to Tuttle, for sure, and its engagements with the enemy were infinitely more lopsided. Moreover, they were less frequent, as it appeared the Udar pirates had slowed, though hardly stopped, their activity on the seas in the past six months or so. Patrick attributed that to Adelaide and the four other steam frigates now patrolling Watkins Gulf, and he was of the feeling that real peace was finally, after 1700 years, beginning to descend on the region.
At least, that’s what he hoped. After six years of blowing pirates out of the water, Patrick was ready for a bit more productive reality to set in.
Similar technological and military advantages on land, proven out in the lopsided result of Dunnan’s War 25 years ago, were why Dunnan’s Claim was the site of the mad land rush making such quick fortunes in Patrick’s new hometown. For the first time Ardenians could come south without mortal fear, and they embraced the adventure and opportunity as only such an intrepid people as his countrymen would.
And today, the sixth of the tenth, Adelaide was putting into port at Dunnansport’s newly-upgraded naval wharf after a six-week voyage around Watkins Gulf, beginning with a “milk run” mission to deliver munitions to the Ardenian citadel at Strongstead. Strongstead, built in a notch of the Rogers Range along the coast of Watkins Gulf in a bay named for Francis Leopold, the first elected president in Ardenian history, was a bulwark against Udar war parties east of The Throat since Dunnan’s War. Its high walls and chain gun and cannon emplacements made it virtually impregnable, and attempts to come through it impossible. Closing The Throat was a national-security imperative, and on that basis four fortresses were in various stages of unfortunately and inexplicably slow progress to go with Strongstead. When all were complete, the Ardenians expected to seal off Uris Udar completely.
After the delivery, Adelaide then transported a delegation from the Strongstead garrison to the port at Adams Island, on the north end of Watkins Gulf just off the mainland and south of Dunnan’s Claim. From there, Patrick’s crew escorted the coal ship Charles Town, carrying coal from the Adams Island mines, back to the Adelaide’s homestead at Dunnansport.
It would be good to be home. Patrick had begun courting a lovely girl in Dunnansport and couldn’t wait to see her. Alice Wade, the daughter of a cotton merchant of sizable fortune from Belgarden, was a widow, but she was only Patrick’s age. She had a three-year-old son, Joseph, from her marriage to a barrister who died in a carriage accident two years earlier, and while Alice was outwardly standoffish and silent, she secretly possessed a razor-sharp intellect and a wicked, delightful sense of humor which unfurled in the presence of her close associates.
It took some time for Patrick to get to know Alice. Once he had, nonetheless, he’d fallen, and hard. And little Joseph, having lost his father, was someone Patrick felt an obligation to take under his wing. He knew Alice felt similarly about Patrick; she’d been dropping hints about a long-term future for the past four months. Patrick’s frequent and lengthy deployments had hampered the growth of the relationship, though, and he worried he’d lose his best chance at building the family he’d never really had.
At some point, he thought, he would want to actually make a home in Dunnansport. Patrick had opted to save his salary rather than to buy property in the new city and was thus inhabiting a pair of rooms at a boarding house near the wharf. Alice chided him relentlessly over that choice, opining that it had been “wrong in every particular.”
“You’re a naval commander,” she said, “and you’re not even a full citizen with voting rights because you don’t own property. That’s a scandal. You’ve got a dispensation as an officer worth twenty thousand decirans against a real estate purchase, which could buy you that entire boarding house you’re living in or easily be enough for a down payment on a mansion in Tweade Landing. And how can you keep the station of a ship’s captain without a land-cabin?”
The deciran was the Ardenian unit of currency, so named for its value established as 1/10th that of an ounce of gold.
“I have you for that,” he responded. “You’re my connection to society on land.”
“But you don’t have me,” she noted. “We aren’t married. And even if we were, I’m not moving into some boarding-house.”
“Of course not,” Patrick said. “We would live at your place.”
“Oh, no!” Alice let him have it. “You don’t get off so easily. My house is enough for me and little Joseph,” she lectured, “but moving in some naval commander and all his globes and maps and trophies from the deep blue will fill it from the floors to the ceilings. And there would be more children besides; if you think I’m going to keep an overcrowded sty like that you have another thing coming!”
He loved her with every ounce of his being, and he knew she was right. But Alice’s harangues about his commercial profile made him queasy. Patrick had no experience as a land speculator or householder; he’d never owned much of anything in his entire life, and he’d barely even given it thought. He had a safety deposit box at the Maritime Bank in Port Excelsior containing a cotton bag with 46 sizable diamonds from the Taravel beaches in it, and he had an inkling that bag would make him a fairly rich man were he to convert the stones to currency.
It was his plan to have one of the diamonds cut and set in an engagement ring for Alice when Adelaide next docked at Port Excelsior, but he’d kept his mouth shut about that knowing her fondness for surprises and her weakness for impatience. That was a weakness his status as a ship commander, with the frequent and lengthy absences that entailed, did enough to inflame as it was. It was better Alice didn’t know what he had planned.
Patrick did think it was time to meet her halfway. If he wasn’t ready to buy a house just yet, perhaps while he was in port this time it would be a good idea to sink his dispensation into some property in Dunnansport as an investment. Patrick had made friends with one of the young city’s most prominent businessmen David Stuart, whose company stored and brokered commodities of every kind in a complex of warehouses near the wharves, and he decided he’d seek David’s advice on buying a strategic piece of property in town that could be rented out or developed into a moneymaking investment. He had his eye on some land on the western edge of town between the train station under construction and the riverbank, because at some point that land might be a good place to store items to be transferred between steamship and locomotive as Dunnansport took its place as a trading center.
At least if he did that, he’d go on the rolls as a voter, which would make Alice happy. Patrick cared not a whit for politics. As far as he was concerned, the Peace Party which had dominated the government in Principia for a decade, had been quite sparing with military expenditures in service to its preference for land giveaways and farm subsidies – sometimes breathtakingly corrupt land giveaways and farm subsidies, from what Patrick could tell – in the country’s west and south, wasn’t losing power anytime soom. Patrick thought the Peace Party was a collection of fancy boys from the metropolitan north and east, none of whom had ever met an Udar up close or had the faintest understanding of what dangers Ardenia invited by not keeping a proper vigil against that enemy.
Rather than affiliate himself, though, with either the Territorialists or the Prosperitans, two squabbling minor parties which had split from what had been the majority party following Dunnan’s War, Patrick had just opted out alt
ogether. Buying property he’d barely see while out defending the sea lanes just so he could choose from among politicians who couldn’t or wouldn’t do the right things seemed to him a sucker’s play and a waste of his resources and attention.
But Alice, who was a proud Peace Party member and in consideration for a spot on the Dunnansport Council of Delegates in the elections the next autumn, was quite political. Patrick wanted to placate her – not to mention he figured if she thought he’d taken enough of an interest to become a full citizen she might actually listen to him when he told her how daffy her party’s platform was when it came to national security and the Udar.
Lots to do in port this time, he thought as the ship turned into the mouth of the Tweade and passed the 50-foot bronze statue of Henry Dunnan overlooking the new city from the south side of the river.
Adelaide pulled into the wharf, and as the commander of the ship Patrick was the lead officer down the gangplank by custom. Just as his foot touched dry land, however, he was accosted by a young Marine corporal who hurriedly saluted as he ran to the front of the receiving line.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Commander, but there’s a message over the teletext from Barley Point.”
The marine handed over a slip of paper. It read…
ALARM TO ALL FORCES ALONG THE TWEADE…UDAR WAR PARTIES ATTACKING FARMS FROM BATTLEFORD EAST TO BARLEY POINT…POSSIBLE ACTION AT FARMS SOUTH OF DUNNANSPORT…MUSTER ALL AVAILABLE FORCES FOR COUNTERATTACK
“Has Port William given a directive?” Patrick asked.
“I don’t know, sir,” said the Marine, “but the Commodore needs you straight away.”
“All right, then. Lead on.”
Patrick then turned to his First Mate, Lt. Commander Jack Rawer, an older officer who had served in Dunnan’s War before Patrick was born. “I hate to say it, Jack,” he said, “but I don’t think we’ll be doing shore leave this time.”
“Agreed, sir,” said Rawer, having read the teletext message. “I’ll get us back ship-shape and await your orders.”
Patrick then followed the young Marine, who scampered toward the Naval Munitions building just off the wharf where the Commodore awaited.
…
SIX
Belgarden – Afternoon (First Day)
Sebastian Cross was a national hero in Ardenia and perhaps the most famous man in the world, but at present that meant very little to the prematurely-graying aviator and corporate executive.
Cross had the distinction of being the first man to circumnavigate the planet via the skies. He’d achieved that feat by piloting a hot-air balloon from Gold Harbor across the Great Sea to the Lerian port of Arouz, then over the Siverne Sea to the great city-state of Revarcha, then east over the active volcanoes of the Thengreve Archipelago, then drifting past the vast fields of Cavol. It would have been unwise to set down inside that large nation’s borders and risk an unfriendly reception from the Mottled Men, so Cross’s expedition continued without stopping for the long journey over the Sunset Sea and back to Ardenia, landing at the northwest port of Brenwick. That occasioned a hero’s reception which repeated itself at Stelhurst, Crestham and Middleston before the winds deposited him, amazingly, on the rail line just forty miles north of his point of embarkation. The entire journey took him and his partner 35 days and was considered a miracle of technological advancement which set the whole world afire with possibilities.
That journey was eight years ago, when Cross was 30 and his partner, Winford Gresham, was 28. In truth, Gresham was the real innovator of the two. It was Gresham who’d designed the balloon and its revolutionary propulsion/navigation system, which relied on aluminum rocket cylinders packed with sugar and saltpeter. Gresham lacked the persona to carry off the public end of the mission, though; that was Cross’ specialty, seeing as though he’d been the captain of the Principia Elks rugby team and had the rugged good looks and easy charisma expected from the scion of a large Morgan Valley estate. Cross’ family sat upon 10,000 acres of prime wheatland west of Principia, and as one of the richest clans in all of Ardenia they were able to dabble in whatever commercial and technological fads struck their fancy.
So when Cross took a shoulder to his knee as he scored the winning try to give the Elks victory over the Belgarden Cannoneers for the Landon Cup, he knew it was time to move on to bigger and better things. The knee ultimately healed, though Cross certainly wasn’t the runner he’d been. Before he knew it he’d made the acquaintance of Gresham through the latter’s cousin Bernadette, a stunning beauty who’d been on the dance line at the famous Helverose theater in Principia’s swanky Elkstrand entertainment district.
As Cross was a regular and a chronic invitee backstage, Bernadette and he had struck up a friendship of sorts. While he never thought of her as wife material, owing to her tragically common upbringing – his family would never take to her because of that, not to mention her inelegant manners and Ackerton District East Principia brogue – Cross had been desperate to avail himself of her feminine charms.
Bernadette had something else in mind, however, and after one particularly ribald post-party following a performance at the Helverose, she had dragged Cross to a nearby after-hours joint where he’d met her cousin Winford. While Cross’ attention was initially much more intently focused on the area between Bernadette’s legs, as he made polite conversation with the young scientist that focus began to change toward what was between Winford’s ears.
Because Gresham, at the time just 24 years old and a self-taught clerk in the Principia custom exchange with little formal education, was explaining to Cross the ins and outs of how air travel could be perfected and turned into a major international industry worth billions of decirans.
Cross was infatuated with the idea of striking out into financial superstardom, seeing as though his athletic career was rapidly winding down and the last thing he wanted for himself was the languor of life as a Morgan River Valley heir, drinking whisky naturals on verandas while the hired hands worked the land and getting statements of stock dividends via post on the twelfth of each month. He craved far more excitement than that future before him, and as his conversations with Gresham continued, he saw his destiny in the skies.
Cross therefore invested a large chunk of his personal fortune, prevailing on his father to liquidate the trust in his name and having his solicitor deliver a bank draft for two million decirans for the purpose, into Gresham’s idea for a hot air balloon that would traverse the planet. Cross’s conditions for the investment were that he would be a majority owner, that the endeavor would publicly be his show, that he would do the interviews for the broadsheets, and that he would bear the title of Chief Executive Officer for the project.
Gresham, six inches shorter, dirt broke and cursed with a nose resembling that of a cistern rat, was in no position to demand any public face in an around-the-world balloon ride. He agreed, and the two set up a company to conquer the skies.
The prototype began with the cabin, which was made of a pinewood-plank floor surrounded by a cage of aluminum. Gresham built the walls and ceiling of the cabin with a thick, resin-coated canvas, and for the envelope he contracted with a silk loom in the southern city of Shadegarden for an alum resin-coated taffeta fabric which would hold the air with a minimum of leakage.
The burner, critical to the success of any long-distance air journey, used cannisters of coal dust tinged with white phosphorous – not the safest fuel mixture, but durable enough to heat and lift the envelope over a long duration. Gresham also used the invention of sugar-based steering rockets to keep the balloon on course; those had to be used sparingly, but they were quite effective in short bursts.
It was a phenomenally expensive prototype, burning through three-quarters of Cross’ investment. He suspected Gresham was raking off the top of the assembly contracts as it was being built, but didn’t ask many questions so long as progress continued.
After nine months of design and assembly, peppered with a few doses of instructive trial and
error, the Airbound Corporation’s balloon was ready for its initial flight. Cross and Gresham took off from Grand Park on the north side of the Morgan, just across the river from the capitol district in Principia, and flew 45 miles north to Merrow along the Castoria River, landing on the rugby field in the middle of that city’s posh Greathaven district. It was a grand public success, and the duo became stars in all the broadsheets for weeks thereafter. The publicity, and the fees earned in flying the prototype from town to town, earned Cross’ investment back in the course of only a year.
Shortly after that came the trip around the world, which made them superstars.
Along the way, the vision for this enterprise of theirs became further refined. Gresham had drawn up plans to combine the design of the prototype with the screw propellers that had begun predominating in the shipping industry and figured that the propellers would be a more efficient instrument for steering an airship than rockets, which burned through their fuel too quickly for long-distance navigation. To support a larger cabin, necessary for the transport of passengers, more than one inflated envelope would be needed.
Accordingly, within two years he’d finished plans for a true airship. As Gresham presented it to Cross, this would involve a wood cabin sitting under a fuel source comprised of a different mix of coal, phosphorous and wood chips in four bins underneath balloon envelopes similar to the one from the initial prototype, and that inflated core was encased in an aluminum structure wrapped in a canvas outer shell.
After securing an investment of ten million decirans from four Principia businessmen, Cross and Gresham built three airships – the Clyde, the Ann Marie and the Justice. The plan was to establish regular flights from Principia to Ardenia’s next three largest cities, and then grow the company’s flight lines as demand and additional airships warranted.
There was a regular line to Port Excelsior, a commuter line to Belgarden and a luxury line to the sparkling city of Alvedorne along the Great Mountain Lake. Each airship was capable of travel at unheard-of speeds: the Clyde had been clocked at 48 miles per hour, as fast as the fastest locomotive in service, but functionally faster, since its trips contained no stops.