Science Fiction

Avalon 9.5 Men in Black, part 4 of 6

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Elizabeth and her Men in Black ended up staying three days in Glasgow.  Elizabeth spoiled her children.  Erin and the children’s nursemaid did their fair share of spoiling as well.  Sir Leslie was very generous.  Jack Horner said something about sparing the rod and spoiling the child.  MacDonald and Campbell argued most of the time about stupid things, like which clan made the best haggis.  O’Neil, the Irishman laughed a lot.  Duchamp and DeWindt made peace with David, and found they had many things about which they could relate, not the least their all being from the continent and wanting nothing to do with haggis.  James and John watched over the women and children, but then, everyone had questions. In the evenings, Elizabeth did her best to answer the question she could.

Our Earth was formed about four and a half billion years ago.  The creation of the universe was more than twice that many years ago.  There are star-suns that have planets that are twice as old as Earth.  Some planets are just now forming around some star-suns.”

“What is a billion?” David asked what many wondered.  Elizabeth went through the numbers.

“One, ten, one hundred, one thousand.  One thousand, ten thousand one hundred thousand, one million.  One million, ten million, one hundred million, one billion.  One billion, four and a half billion when the earth was formed.  She showed with her hands and arms.  The universe was created more than ten billion years ago.”

“Good Lord,” Jack spouted at the incomprehensible number.  “But look.  The Holy Book tells us the age of the earth is six thousand years old.”

“The age of modern humans.  There were many ages before that.  In the beginning, in our beginning, a darkness was on the face of the earth and the Spirit of God moved across the waters.  The whole earth had been flooded.”

“Noah?” DeWindt asked.

“Not yet,” Elizabeth said and struggled to find the best way to explain it all.  “The Earth entered a cold spell and much of the land became covered with ice.  The seabed lowered.  It is a long story, but basically, the ice all melted at once.  A moon, not our moon and not Venus, bumped the earth roughly on the north pole and set it to wobbling.  The Earth cracked and erupted if you know what a volcano is.  The ice all melted at once and the sky filled with steam, ash, dust, and smoke, so the world fell into darkness.  I mean dark as night, not an evil darkness, though it may have been that as well.”

“Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light,” Jack recited.

“The sky cleared,” Elizabeth continued with a nod.  “And some men were saved through that flood, though I am not at liberty to say how.  The other people who were made on this world were taken off world to planets of their own.”

“Wait…” Sir Leslie wanted to object but Elizabeth held up her hand.

“This is a Genesis planet, one of only half a dozen in this galaxy—in this area of space.  You know what Genesis means.  I should not have to explain that.  But in four and a half billion years, many people have been made here.  After the meltdown, flood, and let there be light, only humans remained, mostly.  People built a world-wide culture, all speaking the same language.  It was a garden-like existence, for sure, but the people screwed it up.  You know, like Adam and Eve.   The earth began to freeze over again until the asteroids, some comets trailing after the little moon that hit and glanced off the north pole, caught up with us and smashed into several places, notably Greenland.  Everything melted suddenly again.  That was Noah.”

“But the age of the earth…”  Jack was not for giving up.

“Six thousand years ago, or a little more, there was another change event.  Nimrod the moron built a tower.  In Scripture it is called the Tower of Babel, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.  And God said he would never again destroy the Earth by waters of a flood for as long as the Earth abides.  Let me say, the ages represented in the Bible are correct, only there is some missing information not meant for the general public in this day and age.  Basically, after Noah, people stopped living for eight hundred years and eventually started living eighty.  But that was gradual, and there are scientific reasons for that which I am not prepared to go into.  A narrowed population will do that.  But consider this, all the men mentioned in the Book of Hebrews trusted God, though they never witnessed the promise when the Messiah walked among us.  They lived faithfully, though they did not know the whole story.  So, let me just say the languages became confused after Babel, marking the beginning of modern man, and I was first born under that doomed tower to try and keep track of it all.”  She paused to let them digest that bit of information and was not disappointed by Jack.

“Good Lord.”

###

The travelers reached Perth on one of the few sunny days.  The road to Sterling would be a push if the weather turned, but they figured they might make it in a day.  It would be another day after that to reach Glasgow, which appeared to be where the Kairos settled.  Lincoln read about the alien encounters and the Men in Black that began in 1649, but as usual, he was not sure what it was safe to say until certain events played out.  He understood both Katie and Tony were past their era of expertise.  They would not necessarily know more than the others.  He wondered if it was safe to mention that Charles I, King of Scotland, England, and Ireland would be beheaded at the end of the month.  He would have to think about that.

Katie and Nanette noticed and confirmed a familiar face among the patrons in the inn.  The man sat with friends at a nearby table.  They confronted the man over supper in the big room, and Katie named the man.  “Bishop Pierre Cauchon.”

The man looked up from his seat.  They saw his face and imagined his mind raced through a hundred ways to deny what they called him, but in the end, he smiled and said, “You got me.”

“Lord Peter?” one of the men seated with him wondered what these women were talking about.

“It is Lord Peter Cameron, actually, and being a good covenanter, we will leave the bishop part in the past.”

Nanette remembered Joan of Arc, that lovely young girl they met so briefly in that day, and she spoke.  “Condemn any innocent young women for witchery lately?”  Her voice sounded hard and full of anger.

“Not lately,” the man said in a voice that suggested he may have used the charge of witchcraft at some point or other.  “I have been busy with my assignment, helping Scotland shatter to pieces.  We have Montrose, royalists, covenanters, engagers, clans fighting clans, and Argyll the stubborn fighting everyone.  I’ll admit, the battle of Sterling did not turn out the way I wanted.  I was hoping for all-out war, but we take what we can get.”

Lockhart and Decker came up to fetch the women to their table, and Katie spoke.  “Why would you want Scotland divided?  Though I assume the Masters would not want peace in general.”

Lord Peter smiled some more.  “Invasion,” he answered.  “Most of Scotland will stay home when the invasion comes.  They will not take up arms to fight alongside people who they count as enemies and traitors.  Scotland will fall to a military dictatorship, and it will happen centuries before Hitler.  And the Scottish will not rebel, so there will be no reason the greatly improved army should not invade the continent.  Soon enough, the army on the continent will make a pact with the Vassas and the Hapsburgs to fight the Ottomans, and we will have the First World War two hundred years ahead of time.  Of course, the Masters hope they beat each other senseless, but one can only hope.”

“Cromwell is not that kind of man,” Katie said, as Lord Peter stood and got his men up from their meal.

“A push here.  A whisper there.  Men are malleable,” he said, and marched for the door, his men following.

“What was that about?” Decker asked.

“Why did that man look familiar?” Lockhart asked.

“Bishop Pierre Cauchon who killed Joan of Arc.  Now, Lord Peter Cameron planning to turn Oliver Cromwell into Adolph Hitler and bring war to the entire continent and beyond.”

Lockhart looked at the door and reached for his handgun.  Decker ran to the door, but the man was not to be found.  He cursed when he returned.

“You should have killed him on the spot,” he said.

“Decker?” Nanette asked what he meant by that and only partly protested.

“Servant of the Masters and a repeat face that is not one of the good guys.  That is an enemy combatant.  You should have shot him immediately.”

“Decker?” Nanette asked again, not knowing what to ask, but Katie spoke.

“Yes.  I should have.”

###

Elizabeth said goodbye to her children in the morning and sent them on the way to Gray Havens.  In the afternoon, Sir Leslie and Jack Horner came up with another question.  Jack quoted the scriptures.

“It is appointed a man once to die and after this the judgment.”

Sir Leslie added, “I assume that goes for women, too.”

Elizabeth nodded.  “But that is just it.  God won’t let me die.  Oh, I feel all the pain and loss of death.  It is hard every time.  I get right up to the point of going over to the Heavenly shores, and my spirit gets stuck in another womb, like it or not.  I have no say in the matter, and nine months later, I get born somewhere new on the planet.  As a baby, I have no idea I ever lived before.  Those thoughts don’t occur to me until I am twelve…  Ten?  Thirteen or fourteen?  It varies.  But then I discover things are happening that will throw all of history off track unless I act.  So, we are acting.”

“That must be hard,” Sir Leslie said in his most sympathetic voice.  “To die again and again and never be allowed to go to heaven.”

“Who?” Jack asked, but she knew what he was asking.

“I call them friends in the future.  They may be angels deciding where I need to go.  In any case, they could only do such a thing under God’s watchful eye.”

“Assuredly,” Jack said.

Elizabeth stopped the group in front of a big house in the country.  She pulled a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes, before she got down and said, “The home of Bram Buchanan.  His son, Clyde evidently set the Wolv free.”

Avalon 9.5 Men in Black, part 3 of 6

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“When you say Wolv, I assume you don’t mean an ordinary wolf,” Sir Leslie said as he rode up beside Elizabeth.  It stopped raining for the time being, so Erin pulled her horse back to make room.

Elizabeth grinned.  “They can run on all fours, but their front paws can function like hands.  When they stand on their hind legs, they are maybe six or seven feet tall.  Their mouth is like something between a wolf and a bear—maybe a snub-nosed wolf, and the teeth are like daggers.  They are constantly hungry and strictly carnivores.  They eat people.”

“Sounds bad.”

“Oh, it is worse,” Elizabeth continued.  “They are intelligent.”

“They are clever?  Very clever?”

Elizbeth shook her head.  “Intelligent,” she said.  “They have a language and talk to one another, share ideas and so forth.  At one time, they had access to a technology more advanced than anything you would understand.  This one has probably been asleep for more than a thousand years.  It is a special kind of sleep where they don’t age.  The problem is the material they sleep in begins to break down and degrades after a thousand years or so.  Think of it like old bread that starts to get moldy, or milk that goes sour.  If the Wolv has been set free from rancid material, there is no telling what condition it may be in.  Mad, certainly, but that might be hard to tell from normal Wolv behavior.”

“And how did you get wind of this?” Sir Leslie asked before he shook his head.  “Of course, the fairies.”

“Not exactly,” Elizabeth said.  “There have been reports of wolf scares around the lake going back for centuries. That suggests an escape pod from a ship.  Something like a longboat with sailors needing rescue from a sunken ship.  The pod has an automatic distress signal limited only by the rechargeable power source.  Needs sunlight.  Not a problem in space.  It notes who is in stasis and projects that information in the distress.  It almost guarantees Lord so-and-so will be picked up by someone, and even if he is then held for ransom, at least he is alive.  Anyway, my guess is the projector malfunctioned in some way and it projected on the wetlands around the lake like a ghost image.”

“I had not heard of that,” Sir Leslie said.  “I heard of a monster in Loch Ness, but not Loch Lomond.”

“The projected image probably did not last long, and it would stop and take time to recharge, maybe decades, before it could send the message again.  That suggests the pod is buried or more likely, underwater, stuck in the mud where it gets at best very filtered sunlight.”

“But now the Wolv has gotten free.”  Jack Horner spoke from behind where he moved up next to Erin.

“Do we need to capture it?” Sir Leslie asked.

Elizabeth shook her head again.  “Sadly, there is no way to send it back into space, and some species are too dangerous to be left running free.”

“So, we hunt the Wolv and end its days,” Jack said.  “My powder is dry.”

Sir Leslie looked back at the man with a thought.  “But I have a feeling this is not all we are looking for.”  He turned to Elizabeth.  “Something you said.  What more is there?”

Elizabeth hesitated because she did not know what to say.  Finally, she came out with it. “Lights in the night sky.  Moving lights seen even when the sky is clouded over, and no stars are visible.  It clearly indicates something is up there flying around, checking us out, looking for a place to set down.”

“I don’t understand,” Sir Leslie admitted.  “What do you mean, set down?”

“Land,” she answered.  “Probably attracted to the distress call.  Listen, I have already used the ship at sea image.  Consider it a ship, but instead of floating on water, it floats on the air.  When a ship at sea makes landfall, they reach the shore and sometimes sail off the coast for a time looking for a good place to come ashore.  It is honestly no different with spaceships.  They fly close to the earth but stay in the air until they find the place where they want to land.”

“I see that.  It makes sense,” Sir Leslie thought about it.

“But what are these alien people looking for?” Jack asked.

Elizabeth shrugged.  “What does the Englishman want with the natives in New England or Virginia, or the Africans along the Gold and Ivory coasts?”

Sir Leslie grumbled.  “Gold and Ivory.  Every precious thing the people have.  Land, and most of all, slaves.”

Jack countered.  “We bring them civilization and the true faith.”

“They have their own civilization,” Elizabeth said.  “It is just different from our way of thinking.”

“They have slaves of their own,” Jack responded.  “Some of them are headhunters and cannibals.  I heard the natives in New Spain practiced human sacrifice.  They cut out people’s hearts.”

“And the celts used to build wicker cages for their enemies in order to sacrifice them to the flames.  The Romans used to crucify their enemies and criminals.  To this day, Moslems go to war in order to impose their prophet on the whole world, and we fine Englishmen, when someone won’t agree to our way and believe the way we believe, we chop their heads off.  What is your point?”

Jack fell silent, but Leslie had a thought, and another question.

“Basically, there is no way we can know what these alien people might want.”

Elizabeth shook her head once again.

“But say, where do these aliens come from?  You have not made that clear.”

Elizabeth had to think again as they climbed a hill.  She stopped at the top where the wagons and the others could go around.  They saw a village in the valley, and would stop there for the night, though at this rate it might take them three whole days to reach Glasgow, and maybe another two days to the loch, and another three for the children to reach home in Gray Havens.  Finally, Elizabeth spoke.

“Look down into the village.  There, in the center square.  What is that?”

Sir Leslie squinted.  He might need glasses.  Jack hesitated before he spoke.

“A tree.  Maybe an Elm.”

“Yes,” Sir Leslie nodded.  “A tree.  I can’t claim Elm.”

“It looks so small and hard to see because it is so far away.  It is no different when you look up into the night sky.  On a clear night, you might see some small lights in the sky, but you know, being educated, that a few of those small lights are actually planets, like the Earth, only they look small because they are so very far away.  We call them Venus, Jupiter, and Mars.”

“You are not suggesting these aliens are from Mars, are you?”

Elizabeth smiled.  “Martians would be too rich, but no, they come from much further away.  Do you know what the stars are?”

Sir Leslie nodded.  “I understand they are like sparks of the sun, or like the sun in some way.”

“They are suns.  Some are bigger than our sun.  They only look small to our eyes because they are so very far away, like the tree.”

“Good Lord,” Jack spouted.  “The distance must be enormous.”

“Indeed,” Elizabeth said.  “And it is only natural to assume those distant suns have planets of their own; planets like Earth where life exists and where some of that life has learned to fly, and even fly between the stars.  Some of the people from out there look like us, or similar to us, or like things that we have some familiarity with.  Like the Wolv.  Some look very different from us.  But here is the key point.  People come in both good and bad, and even some of the things that they may consider good for us, like civilization imposed on us primitives, may actually be violence against us.  Some may want to hunt and eat us like we hunt the deer in the forest, not thinking of deer as intelligent and worthy of respect.  Some may wish to enslave us, or experiment on us, or gather us and take us to their home world as exotic specimens.  Pray that they are good.  Some may encourage us, like a parent might encourage a child.  Some may want to defend us from other intruders, but that might be dangerous in itself.  Think of the English and Spanish fighting a pitched battle over a village of little or no consequences.  The village will probably be burned to the ground, and many innocent people, men, women, and children will be killed.”

“So, we can’t know ahead of time what they want, what they intend to do, or even how they think,” Sir Leslie mused.

“They may look like us, or not at all like us,” Jack added.  “People do come in all shapes and sizes, and all manner of good and evil.”

Elizabeth agreed.  “The main thing is they don’t belong here.  Our job will be to encourage them to leave this world alone, whatever their intentions.  We may ask them to leave.  Some we may have to force, but that will be difficult since they will have contraptions and greater power and weapons than we can imagine.  Think of native people who first faced artillery and muskets.”

“I get that idea,” Sir Leslie said.

“We are, in a way, much like children,” Elizabeth agreed. “We deserve a chance to grow in our own way and see what we may become.  But keeping intruders from interfering will be difficult.”  Elizabeth saw the wagon with her children pass her by and she added, “Speaking of children.  I must see to mine.  We will stop the night in the village below.  It looks like it may begin to rain again.  We will rest here, though at this rate it may take us a week to reach the Loch.”  She waited for the wagon to pass.  “You gentlemen can see how big the tree is up close when we arrive. Erin,” she called to her maid, and they moved in to follow the wagon.

###

The merchants found an inn on the road and took one of the two available rooms for the three of them.  Lockhart let Decker and Nanette have the other room, while he and Katie stayed with the rest of the crew in the main room downstairs, at two-thirds the price, paying only for supper and horse feed.

“I don’t mind,” Katie said.  “They are still like newlyweds.”

“It has been a while since the days of Helen and Robin Hood,” Lockhart said, but he nodded.

“My Father,” Sukki spoke up.  Both Elder Stow and Lockhart looked up, but in this case, she spoke to Lockhart.  “I checked the amulet several times today.  The Kairos is moving west.”  People understood, but they committed to the lowland road until Perth.  Then they would see.

The sky cleared that night, and everyone piled outside to see the northern lights, which looked spectacular, until it got interrupted.  Something distant and glowing shot across the sky.  Katie almost called it a shooting star, but it stopped overhead for a minute before it sped off to the south.  “A UFO,” Lockhart named it.  Lincoln frowned.  He would have to get out the database to see what mess the Kairos was into now.  Elder Stow got out his scanner, but the UFO had already moved out of range.

************************

MONDAY

Elizabeth and her men will confront the aliens around Loch Lomond, and the travelers will arrive there, maybe on time. Until Monday, Happy Reading

*

Avalon 9.5 Men in Black, part 2 of 6

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

“First, let me introduce the clan.   Please be seated.  Jack Horner, I believe there is a seat back in the corner, if you don’t mind.  Sorry. Only cake.  No Christmas pie.  Christmas was several weeks ago.”  Elizabeth smiled at her own joke which no one else understood.  She cleared her throat. “You may know James and John, my retainers.  Erin is my maid.  You gentlemen will see plenty of her over this next week.  The three big men seated behind are Conner O’Neil, an Irish Catholic, Duncan MacDonald, a royalist, and Stephen Campbell, a covenanter, who you may note are not killing each other.  In this group, there must be peace and petty squabbles are not allowed.”  She pointed at the three men.  Only the Irishman responded.

“You have my word.  I will not bother the Englishmen.”

“All right,” Elizabeth continued.  “The three in front are our guests.  Charles deWindt is Dutch Reformed.  Jean Duchamp is French, Catholic, and works with a few people in Paris.  David Wallace is German and Jewish.”  She paused to let the word Jewish sink in.  “David’s family took the name Wallach, but here in Scotland, Wallace fits better.  All three of these men have either experience in what we are facing, or stories from their parents or grandparents, or both, so they know something of the truth of what we will be facing.  We will leave for Loch Lomond in two days.  You may wish to question these men and hear their tales.”

“None from the Mediterranean, either Iberia or Italy?” Sir Leslie wondered.  The question was not entirely sarcastic.

“I have a small group in Jamaica, another in the Alps, and a group working in Toledo, keeping their eyes open since the 1490s, so they have several generations of watchfulness. I have a couple of small groups in East Asia, in Japan and China.  You get the idea.  Where we are going is not in the history books, and it needs to stay out of the history books.  What we will be doing is not for the public.  I am inviting you men and fully expect your wives to join the most secret society on earth.  You will be my Men in Black.  Eventually, I will have to set up small groups in southeast Asia, India and central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, north and south, as well as the Americas.”

“But what exactly would you have us do?” Sir Leslie asked, this time without the sarcasm.

Elizabeth fought the urge to grab a piece of cake.  She swallowed and came out with it.  “We will mostly watch and investigate what is strange and unusual.  We will be defending Planet Earth from people—aliens who are not native to this planet.  We will send them away in peace wherever possible.  Some we may have to fight.  Some we may have to call on Cromwell’s New Model Army.”

Jack stood in the back.  He was not the tallest of men, but Elizabeth noticed and paused to let him speak.  “Mister Cromwell mentioned something about that.”  He sat as Elizabeth nodded.

“One of those two times of supposedly saving his life was from the aliens I have dubbed the New Exterminators.”  She paused to get her thoughts in order and decided most questions could wait until tomorrow.  “We will meet here again the same time tomorrow.  You will have questions, and I will answer what I can.  For now, lest you think I am just making things up, or perhaps mad, let me share some evidence.  Erin.”  She reached back and Erin handed her something that the men recognized as a rifle of sorts.  Where Erin got it from, they could not say.  “Please follow me out back.  I would not want to fire this weapon indoors.”

When the men gathered around to watch, they saw a typical target set up some yards away.  It was the kind used for musket practice with which they were all familiar.  Elizabeth said nothing.  When she felt ready, she raised the rifle to her shoulder and spied down what functioned as a sight.  She slowly let her breath out like one used to firing a musket, though the rifle she held had no kick to it.  She squeezed the trigger and a red streak appeared.  It burned a hole through the target before the target exploded.  The metal sheet she had set up behind the target began to melt before she stopped firing.  James and John ran out with buckets of water to douse the flames and cool the metal, and Elizabeth spoke.

“The rifle was taken from the New Exterminators who were banished from this planet and will stay away if they know what is good for them.  Think on it.  Any of you who cannot keep your mouths shut in the general public, or who do not wish to be part of defending the Earth, you must decide now.  You may leave without penalty.  Tomorrow at this time, I will share some information which is not ever to be shared except between you and God in the privacy of your prayers.  Some may feel the need to share in confession, but even there I warn you to guard your tongue.  Once we leave for Loch Lomond, you will be committed for life, and not only you, but you will carefully have to select the next generation to follow after you.  Pray that you may spend your lives in watchfulness and investigating dead ends.  Given communication in this age, you will be mostly on your own for the next two or three hundred years.”

Erin stepped up to whisper.  “Lady.  I hear the children fussing.”

Elizabeth looked up at the second-floor window and nodded.  “Leslie, Sir Winthrop.”  She had to call him twice to get his attention.  He had to close his mouth.  “Jack Horner.  You will have to bunk in the barn with the big men.  No fighting.  Be nice to each other.” she shouted and turned to Leslie.  “Come.  I will take you to your room. We have three rooms that are serving as guest rooms.  DeWindt and Duchamp are sharing one.  David has one.  No one will room with him for fear that they might get Jewish cooties or something stupid.  You get the third.”

“Children?”  Leslie asked.

“Young Robert is six.  Bridget is nearly four.  That is what she will say.  Nearly four.”

“Makes you sound human enough.  But say, how did you ever get mixed up in this strange adventure?  And now I am afraid to ask what may be happening at Lake Lomond.”

“Loch,” Elizabeth said.  “Tomorrow.”

When tomorrow arrived, Elizabeth introduced the men to the Kairos.  She made Sir Leslie and Jack Horner hold her hands in an age-old tradition, and traded places with the Contessa Catherine of Aragon.  Leslie let go and shrieked.  Several men made noise. Jack held on because he promised, but he seriously began to sweat.

Catherine told about how in 1470, a servant of the Masters broadcasted a message into space.  That took some explaining, but basically the message invited aliens to come and invade the earth.  “That message is still echoing among the stars,” she said.  “It is time humanity had a group of people prepared for that.”

She changed to Hans and told some things about his day, including his experiments in chocolate.  He changed to Captain Hawk who winked at Charles DeWindt and spoke some in Dutch.  He confessed to being the Flying Dutchman and then told them about the spiders on Hispaniola.  He scared their stockings off, as any good pirate would in telling such a tale.  Elizabeth was not happy, but he said he did not want the men to misunderstand what they were signing up for.

When Elizabeth came back, she introduced Erin once again.  The men all said what a lovely young woman she was.  Then Elizabeth removed Erin’s glamour and reintroduced her as her elf maid.  Erin folded her hands in front of her dress, looked at the floor, and her face turned pink while her pointed ears turned red.  Elizabeth restored Erin’s glamour of humanity fairly quickly and was pleased to see no one jumped up and ran from the room, screaming.

“I have had the grace to have several elf maids over the millennia, all volunteers, and all lovely.  And I love Erin, dearly, so you men better treat her right or you will have to answer to Captain Hawk, or worse.”

“And I love my lady,” Erin whispered.  “Even when you embarrass me.”

“Millennia?” Sir Leslie could not resist the question.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said, but did not stop to properly answer him.  Instead, she looked up.  “Heather.  Please come down and sit on my shoulder.”  They all saw a streak of light come from the ceiling.  It hid in Elizabeth’s hair and Duncan and Stephen both spouted.

“A wee one.”

“Don’t usually see them until I’ve had a keg.”

“I should have said that,” Conner the Irishman protested while rubbing his beard, and all three men laughed.

Elizabeth was not finished.  “Lord Roan.  You have a report.”

Another fairy fluttered down and put his back to the men.  Then he surprised them all when he got big and looked like a well-dressed Lord.  He reported.  “The Wolv has got free.”

###

“It looks miserable out there,” Lincoln said.  “Can’t we just wait until Spring?”

People ignored him.

Angus set them up with three men who were merchants in fine woolen tartans.  Ewan and William Mackenzie and Graeme Grant would take the coastal road all the way to Perth.  They had two wagons full.  One for the Duncan clan, and the other had kilts for Hay, Lindsay, and Macduff.  The plan was four days to Aberdeen and three more to Perth.

“Three more days from there, through Stirling to Edinburgh,” Katie said.  “I checked the map.”

“That is nearly two weeks just to reach the Kairos,” Lockhart said, sounding like Lincoln complaining.  “I hope it is not another two weeks to the time gate.”

“We might move faster, but in this weather, it is not recommended, and who knows what weather obstacles we may encounter.”   Katie tried to be reasonable.

“Weather obstacles is what I am talking about,” Lincoln griped.

“I like all the travel and all the places we have been,” Nanette said.  “I never imagined doing that sort of thing before.  Taking a steamship to Rome was the most exotic and unexpected thing I ever did.”

Tony countered her thought.  “The thing is, the closer we get to home, the more impatient the men are becoming.”

“Amen to that,” Decker said.

Elder Stow added, “Ditto.”

“I agree with my sister,” Sukki protested.  “I am learning so much about history—about being human.  Lincoln lets me read about the places after we leave, and he is so nice to help me with some of the words.”  Lincoln shrugged.

“I love the adventure of it all,” Nanette agreed.

“If it wasn’t so cold,” Lincoln mumbled.

“The same guy who complained about Cuba being so hot,” Lockhart said.

“I would never retire to Florida,” Lincoln admitted.

Ewan stepped up as Katie finished the conversation.  “Ready to go?”

“William and Graeme have the wagons,” Ewan said.  “We are ready.”

“Lead on, Macduff,” Lockhart said.  “I always wanted to say that.”

“Ha,” Katie said, without laughing, and they headed out into the cold and wet.”

Avalon 9.5 Men in Black, part 1 of 6

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

After 1624 A.D. Scotland

Kairos lifetime 116: Lady Elizabeth Stewart MacLean of Gray Havens

Recording …

“Not fair,” Lincoln shouted.  “We are in the tropics, the Caribbean islands.  I expected to arrive or leave somewhere at sea, but we lucked out.  We arrived on Hispaniola and are leaving from Cuba with both time gates on land.  But no!  This gate has to be in the middle of a river.  That means we will come out in a body of water, probably the middle of the Irish Sea, given where we are going.  Not fair!”

“What?” Lockhart asked.  “Now that Boston is not here, you have taken over the role of chief complainer?”

“Well, someone has to do it,” Nanette said in her sarcastic best.  Her skin darkened from embarrassment, and she looked at Decker, like sarcasm was his thing.  Decker just smiled for her.

Katie also smiled at the couple becoming one as husband and wife, and she might have said something if Tony did not interrupt.  “Well, whatever we do, it should be quick.  Those natives don’t look friendly, and that Spaniard may be back soon with soldiers.”

“I’m ready,” Sukki said, and nodded to Elder Stow who told her to be careful.  She flew to the time gate, which she could do, and after a second of hesitation, she flew through the gate and into the darkness.  “Hey!” Sukki complained.  “It is nearly nine o’clock.  Why is it dark out?”

“The sun is rising,” a man said, but Sukki hardly heard as she flew up a thousand feet and saw the sun rising over the distant mountains.  She flew back down when the words registered in her ears, and she landed on the ice beside the man.  He had cut a hole in the ice and sat, wrapped in several wool blankets, holding a pole, the string let down into the hole.

“It’s cold here,” Sukki said.

“It has been a cold winter, and plenty wet besides.”  The man answered her but kept his eyes on the shimmering place in the air where she appeared.

“What is the date?”

“Wednesday,” the man answered.

Sukki put her hands to her hips and huffed.  “The date?”

“January thirteenth,” the man said, coming to himself.  “This is the Wool Farm on Mackenzie land.  Who are you and where did you come from?”  He looked again at the shimmering space on the ice.

“The year?”

“1649.”  The man stood. “Look, I would appreciate an answer.”

Sukki paused and answered quickly.  “We are coming from Cuba about forty-three years ago.  Don’t worry, we won’t stay long.”  She pulled out her amulet to check their direction.  Judging the sun, she said, “We will be headed south.”  She pointed before she asked, “Is the ice thick and strong enough to hold horses?”

The man pointed behind himself where a wagon and two mules had been pulled out on the ice.  The mules had blankets, but they looked cold.  “We?” the man asked.

“Do you have a name?  Is this an inlet of the sea?” Sukki asked, and just stopped herself from flying up to look.

“Angus Mackenzie, and yes—no.  It is Loch Broom, and it froze solid this winter but for the center and where it touches the sea.  Of course, there is some ice at sea as well.”

“Thanks,” Sukki grinned, and she lifted a bit off the ice, much to Mister Mackenzie’s surprise as he put that matter out of his mind.  She flew back through the time gate, and it took almost thirty minutes of hurried work to prepare everyone to come through.  They made it just before the Spanish showed up.  Most of the natives ran away when the travelers began to disappear in midair.

“It is cold,” Lincoln said right from the start.  They moved extra slow and careful on the slippery ice.  In the interim, Angus Mackenzie turned his wagon so they could follow in his trail to the shore.  He placed a pole with a flag to mark the hole in the ice so no one would fall in.  The shore was not far, and not much farther through the slushy snow to reach a big barn where they could all get out of the wind.  But it was far enough for everyone to look toward the sun.  It did not appear bright, like it might be obscured by clouds of some sort.  It also seemed too close to the mountains on the horizon in the southeast.  Much too close for nine-thirty in the morning.

Katie commented once they got inside the barn.  “We must be way up north in Scotland.  We might check Lincoln’s map.”

Lockhart had an unconnected thought.  “I thought Lake Broom was at area fifty-one.”

Katie rolled her eyes as Tony asked a question to the man.  “Why are you saddling a mule?”

The man stopped what he was doing and everyone else paused to listen.  “I figure it is up to me to take you safely off Mackenzie land.  The way between here and Inverness is treacherous.  It is not just the poor roads which you might lose in the winter weather.  It is other Mackenzies and other clansmen that might not appreciate your peaceful intentions.  Your intentions are peaceful, are they not?”

“Yes, yes.” people answered, and Sukki said, “Totally.”

“Inverness?” Lincoln asked.  He had the database out and was looking at the map.

“From there, you can take the low road that runs along the east coast and is well kept.  It will take you to Aberdeen, Dundee, and Perth, where it meets the highland road.  You can go to Edinburgh or Glasgow or further south from there.  How far south are you going?”

“Edinburgh, near as I can tell for now,” Lincoln said, having walked up to Sukki where she checked her amulet.  For once, he said nothing about Lady Elizabeth Stewart MacLean, or just Stewart if she had not married yet.

“Isn’t there a highland road that cuts off the big swing around the coast?” Katie asked.

“Aye,” the man said.  “But it is a rough road so not necessarily quicker.  Besides, there was much fighting there these past few years.  The MacDonalds remained loyal to King Charles Stuart, as we Mackenzies.  The Campbells are Covenanters and fought with the lowlanders.  The highland road goes right between the two, so it is not safe to be found a stranger there at present.” The man sighed.  “I was at Preston last August.  Lord Hamilton led us smack into the jaws of Cromwell’s army.  I barely escaped with my life.”

The sun grew dark as the clouds rolled in.  The sun never got terribly high in the sky to begin with and looked like it might set between three and four o’clock.  It started to drizzle, a cold wet rain that would soak through normal clothes.  The man, in his wool clothing, and his mule covered in a wool blanket would get soggy, but would survive the cold

“Care when the sun goes down” Angus shouted to warn them.  “This may turn to sleet or snow.”

“Understood,” Lockhart said.  The travelers all turned their fairy weave to thick slickers that repelled the rain.  They also had their horses and Ghost covered in fairy weave blankets of the same material.  Thick, warm, and water repellent seemed to do the trick.  As the sky darkened Angus offered some hope.

“There is a farm about an hour from here where we can shelter.  A cousin who has no interest in the wool business, though he may change his mind after the winter we have had.”

“Is there somewhere we can buy some food for super?” Katie asked.

“I am sure my cousin would not mind a few coins to feed you lot,” Angus responded.  “But no.  Food is growing scarce.  Unless the spring is good, there may be famine in places.”

“Not something to look forward to,” Lockhart said.

“Not just the weather.  It is the result of war and fighting. Men not home to grow and tend their crops, in some cases for several years.  Other crops being taken by the army or burned to prevent their being taken by the opposing army.  A real mess.”

“We have some coins,” Katie responded.  “Not many, but will your cousin take Spanish doubloons?”

Angus laughed.  “Gold and silver are always welcome.  Copper is not bad either and he won’t care whose face is on the coin.  Doubloons almost makes Cuba sound real.  Of course, I saw the girl fly, so what do I know?”  He laughed again before saying, “There is one thing.  My cousin is a strong royalist and catholic.  I never asked about your faith.  An oversite.”  He waited to hear what the travelers would admit.

“Lutheran,” Katie finally spoke, and Lockhart did not argue.  “Lincoln is Methodist…”

“A. M. E.” Nanette spoke up from behind.  She looked at Decker.  “We go together.”

“Now I go to church,” Decker said, but it was not clear if he was happy or resigned to that.

“Tony is Catholic,” Katie finished.  “He is Italian.”

“I’ve heard of Lutheran,” Angus said.  “Don’t know anything about it.  I assume the others are Christian churches.”

“Yes, yes.” the others said, and Sukki added, “Totally.”

Angus nodded and pushed out front.  Nanette spoke more softly to Lincoln when she felt it was safe.

“Tell us about Elizabeth.”

“Lady Elizabeth Stewart MacLean of Gray Havens,” he whispered in return.  “She became a widow at the battle of Preston, last August…”

###

“Lady Elizabeth, let me say, once again, how sorry I am for your loss.”  The man in the door removed his hat and looked sad.  “I only met Robert that one time, but he seemed a fine fellow.”

The tall red head squinted to let her green eyes focus on the man and the roundhead that stood behind, looking around his shoulder.  She spoke after she swallowed what she was chewing on.  “Thank you, Sir Leslie and unexpected guest, but I would rather you not bring it up again.  We have work to do and don’t need the distractions.”  She wiped one eye where a tear began to form.  “Come in.  Take your coats and hats off and come meet the others.  You are the last to arrive.  The staff made cake for my guests and if I don’t stop eating it you will have to change my name from MacLean to MacFat.”

“Very droll,” Sir Leslie said.

The men in the room all stood when Lady Elizabeth came in, and the room looked full.

“Sir Leslie Winthrop,” Elizabeth introduced her new guest.  “He is Anglican and a royalist, though I understand Cromwell is working on him to bring him around.”

“Yes.  Of course.”  Leslie patted his jacket.  He pulled a paper from an inner pocket and spoke more clearly.  “My companion is Jack Horner, a nonconformist as you may have guessed from his attire.  He brought this letter from Mister Cromwell.”  Elizabeth put out her hand, but Leslie held on to the letter.  “Addressed to me, I’m afraid.  But he said to tell you he has not forgotten how you twice saved his life and how he was sending his best man, Jack Horner, on the chance that he might save your life and make things more even.  He also said that whatever you are doing, it is likely far more important than our little squabbles over religion and the political order.  He said I should do whatever you ask without question.  But say, I cannot imagine anything more important than civil war in the three kingdoms.  Men have fought and died. Good men have died…”

“All in good time,” Elizabeth said.

Avalon 9.4 Broadside, part 6 of 6

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Most of the men, soldiers and sailors did not make it, but some did for two reasons.  Elder Stow, at the last minute, removed the wall setting and placed an invisible globe of force around the travelers, Captain Hawk and his immediate crew of officers, many Dutchmen, and some Spaniards.  He slowly expanded the bubble as he flew to the edge of the beach.  Once the travelers could wade out into the water, he let the bubble go.  They would have to swim a bit, and their weapons and rifles would need some care to be restored, but they would be safe.  Besides, they had help.  The other reason some made it to the ship.  Three hundred mermen came out of the bay.  They carried harpoons they could throw and trident-like pikes they could use to cut and stab from a distance.  The mermen, legs on, made a way through the spiders for men to get to the sea where the mermaids waited to carry them to the ship.  As frightening as the mermaids were for some of the sailors, the spiders were worse.

As Captain Hawk climbed aboard the ship, he realized the bay was full of his water sprites.  He understood then why the spiders had not overrun the Golden Hawk.  He saw that any spider that put so much as a foot in the water got grabbed and pulled under to drown.  The Mere people just made it so much worse for the spiders.

The mermen did not stay on land very long.  They quickly pulled back into the water, effectively abandoning the rest of the men to their fate.  By then, there were not many left alive.  The deck of the Golden Hawk was littered with men, soaking wet from the sea and from the sweat of fear.  It would be a long time before the nightmares went away.

The shoreline still teemed with spiders, but Inaros pointed to the edge of the woods where after a moment they heard musket fire and arrows began to bombard the spiders.  General Diego had arrived.  The Buccaneers were there to cut off escape to the north.  The natives pressed in from the south.  And now that the sea was certain death, it was only a matter of time before the spiders were finished.  They had nowhere to escape.  Half, or more of the men would die in the fight, but they would finish the job.  Captain Hawk knew his little ones would scour the whole island.  No spiders on the island would survive.

Inaros pointed up.  The old Agdaline transport had taken to the sky and was headed right toward them.

“Damn,” Decker noticed, and then everyone noticed.

Captain Hawk shouted.  “Mister Peevy!  Prepare the ship for flight.”

“Aye Captain,” came the response.

The captain spoke more quietly to Elder Stow.  “Can you project screens all around the ship?”  He explained for the others.  “Agdaline ships are big transports, not warships.  They only have… er, ray-guns to remove objects in space that might damage them or maybe to clear a landing site during planetfall.  Those systems, though, can be used as weapons, so we need protection.”

“Yes,” Elder Stow responded.  “But we will pick up a lot of water and anything that happens to be swimming in it.”

“Wait until we are high enough in the air.”

Elder Stow got out his scanner.  “I did not see any flight engines aboard.”

“Ready Captain,” Peevy shouted.

“Never mind about that.  Just get ready to set your screens,” Captain Hawk said before he returned the shout.  “Take her up.”

The ship rose right out of the water.  General Diego’s men who made it to the shore gawked, shouted, and pointed.  The Agdaline ship came overhead, and as expected, they fired their meteor deflectors.  Fortunately, Elder Stow got the screens up in time, so the makeshift weapon did not touch them.

“One moment,” Elder stow said, as he set his screen device down by the main mast.  He had his scanner out and his weapon.  Sukki said she was ready.  Captain Hawk talked to Lockhart and Katie.

“The thing is, there are probably a thousand or more spiders still aboard the ship in suspended animation or cryogenic sleep chambers, or whatever the current term of use may be.  They will have to be dealt with at some point, but I take back what I said about this day and age.  By brute force and with gunpowder, the human race might be able to fend off the spiders.  Of course, maybe not when the spiders are counted in the trillions.”  He shrugged.

“Let’s not let it get to that point, if you don’t mind.”  Lockhart said, as Katie interrupted.

“So you know.  I saw Captain Esteban and his officers taken by a dozen spiders.  It was while we were running.”

“I can confirm that,” Lockhart said.

“Sadly, there is still Don Fernando Delrio, the mastermind behind the idea of colonizing the Southern United States.  He is the one that mostly needs to be stopped, before the Atlanta Braves become the Bravos de Atlanta.”  Captain Hawk interrupted himself as he saw they were coming up alongside the Agdaline ship.  He anticipated what Elder Stow was working on and shouted.  “Mister Peevy!  Prepare a broadside.”

“Aye Captain.”

Elder Stow raised his weapon and fired, striking the Agdaline ship in three places.  The first shot took a moment to penetrate the Agdaline screens, but the second and third shots were swift.  Sukki, eyes on the scanner, confirmed the three shots struck home.  Elder Stow took the scanner to double check while Sukki explained to Lockhart and Katie.  Decker, Nanette, and Lincoln all walked up to listen.

“The first shot took out the Agdaline screens.  The second killed the weapons system.  The third damaged the engines in a way that would not explode.”

Elder Stow mumbled.  “I figured an atomic-level explosion was not a good idea.”  He looked up from his scanner and spoke more clearly.  “Hopefully, they will come down in the sea and all drown.”

Captain Hawk did not hear.  He was busy shouting, “Fire!”

The broadside from the Golden Hawk, in an equal and opposite reaction, pushed the ship away from the Agdaline transport and into a cloud that was both cold and wet.  The ship rocked a bit, and the deck became slippery to stand on, but at least no one fell overboard.  The little ones keeping the ship up in the air complained but things settled down quick enough.

They came out of the cloud in time to see the Agdaline ship head off to the north.  She had a dozen big dents in the side with a couple of loosened plates in the outer hull, and she had at least five holes in the ship, ruining the ship for spaceflight. Her engines were smoking, badly.  She would not stay aloft for very long.  In fact, she managed to fly all the way to the Delaware River where she sank, somewhat deliberately in the soft mud by the river.  She would awaken, and the spiders would make a mess in the future, but that is a different story.

Aboard the Golden Hawk, the captain shook his head.  “We can do up and down and sail some if we get a good tail wind, but it is very draining on the little ones keeping her up.  No way we can follow the ship and see where it lands.  That will have to be a future headache.”  He shouted again.  “Mister Peevy!  Get the boards and raise the Jolly Roger.”

The boards held the words, Flying Dutchman.  They effectively covered the ship name, Golden Hawk.  The flag had the expected skull and crossbones, but it was offset to make room for an hourglass.  “What do you think?” the captain asked.  “I’m about a hundred years ahead of time with the flag, but someone has to start it.”  He smiled for everyone, and Inaros said Argh…

The ship set down in the bay virtually in the same spot where it began, but now pointed out to sea.  They unloaded the surviving Spanish.  General Diego would take them back to Santo Domingo.  The Buccaneers, mostly French and some English, knew Captain Hawk and his crew, and they waved like they were all great friends.  They were not all great friends.  The native survivors did not appear to know what to think.  These Europeans were full of surprises.  But mostly, these spiders were creatures of nightmares.  Who knew what tales they might tell?

Once the deck was cleared, the ship set sail for Guantanamo Bay.  They would sail two days to get there, as long as the weather held.  The travelers would be able to rest there for a couple of days while Captain Hawk sailed back to Hispaniola.  Then they would travel half a day inland across Cuba to reach the time gate.  In all, about a five-day journey to the next time gate. That was not so bad, if the horses did not complain after all that rest and pampering.

************************

MONDAY

The travelers arrive in the frozen north and Lady Elizabeth of Gray Havens brings her recruits into a strange world. Monday. Men in Black. Happy reading.

*

Avalon 9.4 Broadside, part 5 of 6

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“You can see for yourself.”  Captain Esteban pointed behind him where the travelers waited.  “I have not damaged them.  I have treated them well.  They even have all their equipment.  I figured we will need their help to drive out whatever landed here in the west.  Do you think?”

“Spiders,” Captain Hawk said, confirming Lincoln’s word.

“As I feared,” Captain Esteban responded.

“We will begin by moving the travelers and their horses to the Golden Hawk.  Then we will discuss what we can do about the spiders.”

Nanette and Suki left off tending the Spanish wounded.  The Spanish were grateful for the help.  Tony had Ghost and the horses and found a dozen human looking men come to help him transfer the horses to the frigate.  They looked human enough, but Tony suspected they were not, given the way the horses readily responded to them.

“Sukki,” Captain Hawk called her and hugged her.  Lincoln had to ask.

“Peter van Dyke?”

“Captain Hawk,” Katie called him.

“It is all in the profile,” Captain Hawk said, and he lifted his eyes and showed the side of his face.  With his aquiline nose, he did look a bit like a bird of prey.

Captain Esteban let his hostages go without trouble.  He had no choice.  His crew had been damaged.  His ship shredded.  His company of soldiers remained intact, but they would all be needed if they indeed faced spiders from the stars.  Besides that, he would need the guns of the Dutchman and his soldiers, and the Dutchman’s ship if retreat became the only option.  If giving up his hostages ensured cooperation, he would do that.

“But look,” Captain Esteban said.  “Neither you nor the Masters want an invasion of alien spiders at this time.  You see my good faith in bringing the Travelers from Avalon to you unharmed.  Perhaps we can make a temporary truce until these spiders are taken care of.  You know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy,” Captain Hawk countered.  “I do not trust you, but I will use you and your men in this circumstance as I am sure you will use me and my men.”

Captain Esteban grinned before he nodded.  “I was told you are no fool.”

“But maybe I am.  Eh Inaros?” Captain Hawk grinned at his mate.  “General Diego has crossed through the mountains with three thousand men.  They are not all soldiers from Spain, but they all know how to fire a matchlock and can use spears and knives.  LeBlanc has brought around three thousand Buccaneers down from the north.  He has some English pirates with him as well.”

“I was not aware there were that many Buccaneers,” Captain Esteban interrupted with a pull on his beard.

Captain Hawk nodded.  “Then in the south, the Taino and Carib have made a temporary truce, like us, and they have come up with some three thousand more.  My spies tell me the circle is about closed.  The spiders have nowhere to go except this direction, or back to their ship.  Let us hope they retreat to their ship.”

“You are mad,” Captain Esteban said.

It did not take long for Ghost and the horses to be loaded on the Golden Hawk.  Captain Hawk gathered two hundred soldiers and sailors, leaving plenty of men to guard the ship.  He had a company of fifty well-disciplined Dutch regulars.  The rest were from the Netherlands, Holland, England, and some from Brittany, or they were little ones, at least a few, disguised as men.  Captain Esteban gathered two hundred and fifty soldiers and sailors still able to fight.  He left the wounded on the shore and smiled to think he had the numbers to pull a double-cross until a hundred more natives and pirates appeared in the woods.  Captain Esteban frowned at the turning of the odds.  The travelers guessed that these were all native little ones come to lend the Kairos a hand.  Katie guessed in their natural appearance they might look something between gnomes, elves, and dwarfs with a couple of ogre-trolls and maybe a few flyers, if not exactly fairies in the mix.

“Off to see the wizard,” Captain Hawk announced, and the men began to move in among the trees as quietly as they could.  “The wizardess,” Captain Hawk corrected himself.  “The chief spider is a female.”

Lockhart stood close and his old police instincts flared.  “Are you afraid Captain Esteban might make a deal of some sort with the spiders?”

Captain Hawk shook his head.  “He might have with some other species, but spiders do not deal.  They might let someone live a while if they are useful, but they will eventually be eaten.  Spiders don’t bargain.”

“But you said the female was especially intelligent.”

Captain Hawk nodded.  “They may have come here in an old Agdaline transport as Elder Stow has suggested. There may be ten thousand spiders aboard the ship, but most are likely still in suspension.  There is one female in charge and perhaps not a single fully adult male.  When the female’s eggs hatch, the females tend to eat the males.  You have to understand.  On their world everything has been eaten.  They might eventually die out and leave a barren world if people would stop landing explorer craft.”

“Okay,” Katie interrupted, catching up with the conversation.  “But why would they land here on an underpopulated island in the Caribbean?”

“To secure their foothold.  There is plenty to eat here, and not just humans.  Meanwhile, the female lays several hundred eggs at one time.  They hatch in six months, and by a year old, the babies are eating everything in sight.  It only takes three to five years before the females are mature enough to begin laying their own eggs.  By the time they invade Cuba, ten thousand might be a million, and by the time they invade Mexico, or maybe Florida or Venezuela, a million might be a billion, and they will increase exponentially.  Once they cross over to Africa, that will be the end of life on Earth other than spider life.”

“How long do you figure that will take?” Lockhart asked.

“A hundred years before Africa, maybe two hundred at most, but I don’t see the human race coming up with anything other than brute force to stop them, and frankly, if we can’t stop them here at the start, there may be no stopping them.”

“Hold up,” Katie whispered.  She was paying attention to where they were going.

They had not gone far, but they reached an open field, and the hundred natives and pirates that joined them at the last minute became agitated.  Most climbed the trees at the edge of the woods and the word spread among the men to get ready.  The Spanish and Dutch soldiers pushed to the front on either side of the natives.  They each formed two lines facing the field and waited.  The travelers, guns ready, crowded in the middle ground with the ship captains and their officers.  The natives in the trees pulled out bows and grasped their arrows in anticipation.  The sailors gathered behind the soldiers, matchlocks ready, though many held only pikes and swords of some sort.  They waited, but not for long.

Spiders came racing across the field, each one looking the size of a man.  The Spanish military captain panicked and yelled too soon.  “Fuego!”  Some of the shot fell short, but most hit something.  As long as the soldiers fired at ground level, it would have been impossible not to hit something, the way the spiders were massed together.

A few seconds later, the Dutch fired.  Spiders went down, but it hardly made a difference.  There were too many of them.  Most of the Spanish and Dutch soldiers got their matchlocks loaded for a second shot, but it was not a second volley.  The spiders came on as fast as a cavalry charge.  Lockhart admired the courage of the soldiers as many of the sailors already abandoned the fight and were racing back to the beach.  The soldiers put down their matchlocks and grabbed whatever pikes, swords, or knives they had or could find.

By far, the travelers took the biggest toll in the center.  The little ones overhead could fire a half-dozen arrows in the time it took a soldier to load and fire his matchlock once.  Decker and Katie had their military rifles set to automatic and fired hundreds of rounds in a short time.  The rest had handguns, including Nanette, who had Boston’s old Beretta. The handguns brought down plenty, but the spiders seemed endless.

Everything stopped when the spiders crashed into an invisible wall and could go no further.  Elder Stow held on through the crash, then he picked up his screen device, floated up about six feet in the air, and shouted to the travelers.  “It is a wall.  They will find a way around the edge.  I recommend retreat.”

Sukki floated up next to Elder Stow and she let her power pour from her hands.  The front row of spiders burned, but Sukki knew her strength would give out before the spiders stopped coming.

Men began to run back to the beach, and as predicted, the spiders soon found their way around the wall.  The spiders had to rush toward the center to get at the men, and some men got taken.  Elder Stow had to turn off the wall, race a couple hundred yards into the woods, and turn the wall on again.  This again stopped the spiders completely, if only temporarily.  He did this several times between the field and the beach, and most of the men made it to the shore.

What they found was hundreds of spiders crawling all over the shore.  The wounded Spaniards that Captain Esteban left there were all dead.  Some were partially eaten, but several canisters of Mustard gas had been opened.  It was suicide for the Spanish to do that, but the spiders shriveled under the gas.  Everyone avoided that end of the shoreline.

The spiders ignored the oncoming men at first.  They appeared to be scurrying about, looking for a way to cross the water and get to the Golden Hawk.  Captain Hawk had a thought.  “To the ship,” he yelled, but few heard him as the men had to fight their way to the water.

Avalon 9.4 Broadside, part 4 of 6

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Elder Stow determined that the spacecraft used old Agdaline energy sources.  That did not tell him much.  So many early ships and people new to space travel used the same strictly natural sources of energy.  “If they have managed to master gravitational forces, they might have faster than light craft,” he said.  “But if that is the case, they should be on the verge of discovering new and better energy sources.  We may assume a slower than light speed craft, at which point they may have cryogenic chambers,” he turned to Nanette and Tony.  “That is sleep chambers where the body functions are slowed to almost nothing while the ship travels the great distances between the stars.”

“It may be an actual Agdaline ship,” Lockhart said, hoping Elder Stow would contradict him., but Elder Stow agreed.

“The Agdaline fly in fleets of six or twelve.  The odds are hard to calculate where they lost five ships and only one survived.  Also, their normal destination would be Egypt at the place of the lion.  They would not come here unless they were followed by whatever destroyed the other five ships, and then they would hide.  Whatever landed here has made no effort to hide.  Besides, I spoke with Lincoln earlier.  He has assured me that the Agdaline stopped coming around the year one thousand.  There are no more Agdaline fleets out there.”

“And the Agdaline don’t eat people,” Katie said.

“So, the ship may have been hijacked,” Decker suggested.

“That would be some hijacking to overcome the andasmagora.”  Katie also turned to Nanette and Tony who were not with them back in the early days.  “Dragons,” she explained.

“Sounds like spiders to me,” Decker said, and he did not bother to spell out the idea that if an Agdaline ship or fleet landed on the spider planet, a million poisonous giant spiders might easily take the ship and overcome whatever dragons might be guarding the hallways.

“I was hoping it was not an actual Agdaline ship,” Lockhart said.

“Do you have any idea how many spiders that could carry?” Lincoln said and swallowed.

“Round, but the size of a big city block,” Katie explained to the others.

Lockhart, Decker, and Elder Stow all looked eye to eye, and Elder Stow said, “This way.”  He took them straight to the cabin where their guns and equipment were stored.  They got everything back, and Lockhart sent Tony and Lincoln to ready Ghost and the horses for a quick evacuation.  The others went up on deck.

Captain Esteban saw them, rearmed, but he said nothing.  His attention stayed on the fog that covered the bay.  The ship inched forward.  Only the lateen sail on the mizzenmast was deployed, and it sat limp in the dead calm.   They had oars, twelve to a side and three men to an oar.  In this way, they moved slowly toward the shore, a young officer on one side and the boatswain on the other taking soundings every minute.  They did not want to run aground on a sand bar, or worse, scrape against some rocks that might put a hole in their ship.

“No telling how close we are to the shore,” Captain Esteban said to Decker.  “Unless you can convince the Gott-Druk to scan the area ahead.  It would be for your safety that we do not wreck this ship.”  Both Decker and the captain looked through the mist to where Elder Stow and Sukki stood by the railing.  Elder Stow did appear to have something in his hands on which he concentrated.

“Father?” Sukki whispered.  Gott-Druk were not generally good at whispering, but Sukki made the effort to learn since she was made human.

“Hold on,” Elder Stow told her before he shouted the words, “Hold on!”

The whole ship shook as they heard a terrible scraping sound all along the port side.  It thundered horrendously through the hold where the horses screamed.  Regular cracking sounds came from below as great boards of seasoned oak split and spit out nails.  The captain did not have time to instruct the oarsmen to pull back as a different sort of scraping sound came from directly below.  Forward motion pushed the bow over the area before the ship jerked and shuddered to a stop, stuck fast on a sand bar amidship.

The crew sprang to action.  Men poured into the hold.  They worked the pumps and desperately tried to seal the wall where the water leaked in.  Men lowered the gate and set the horses free.  The gate made a ramp to the sand dune where the horses easily found their way to the shore.  Lincoln and Tony, having made their fairy weave clothes as waterproof as possible, slipped out with the horses.

Two boats got lowered and crews went to check the outside of the ship.  The carrack was long and wide, so not a fast ship, though it was stable in heavy seas.  The forecastle was smaller than the aft castle and they weighted down the stern of the ship to keep the bow raised a bit, but it still plodded along slowly in normal weather. When the report came back, they learned that the ship was salvageable, but it would take a week or more of hard work before they could sail back to Santo Domingo for better repairs.  Captain Esteban invited the travelers to shuttle to shore along with his hundred soldiers who would make the camp.  Of course, they found Lincoln and Tony already there, and found they corralled the horses, at least the traveler’s horses.

“Two hours since sunrise and the fog still has not lifted,” the first mate groused as he set about shouting orders to the men on shore.

“It feels more like a cloud has come to ground,” Katie said, and the captain wondered what she might be implying.  He got his answer after another hour.

Even as the soldiers got cooking fires burning to burn a late breakfast, the fog literally lifted.  It did not burn away in the morning sun, but like a cloud, it rose into the sky, like returning to the heavens from whence it came.  In that sudden clarity of vision, they all saw and gasped at the angle at which the carrack had run aground.  It was much closer to the shore than Captain Esteban imagined and turned about forty-five degrees, so its starboard side pointed out to sea.

Men shouted at the same time.  A second ship appeared in the harbor, and the captain barely got to say, “The Dutchman,” before a broadside from that ship tore down the whole length of the carrack, effectively destroying any guns that might have returned fire.  A second broadside came almost immediately and caused whatever remained of that side of the ship to collapse. All three masts got taken down and the ship began to list toward the openings in its side.  Much more water poured in from the starboard side than leaked in around the cracked and loosened planks on the port side.  The ship would still probably not sink, being grounded on the sand bar, but that did not prevent whatever sailors could from jumping overboard and abandoning ship.  The two longboats would row out later and see if there were any survivors.

The Dutch-built ship anchored in safe water.  Evidently, the Dutch captain knew that harbor and where it was safe to sail near to shore.  Besides, his ship did not draw nearly the water of the carrack.  He could easily slide over a sandy bottom, get close enough to take on cargo and back off the sand to reach deep water.

“The Dutchman?” Katie asked.

The captain pointed at the newly arrived ship.  “The Golden Hawk.  Dunkirker design out of Hoorn.  First of the ocean-going flyboats—shallow draft ships.  Well-armed but originally designed to ply the shallow waters around Zeeland and the Flemish coast.”  Captain Esteban clicked his tongue.  “It won’t be long before every navy starts building such ships.  By comparison, our carrack, and especially the great galleons of Spain are slow lumbering beasts.  These Dunkirkers are faster and more maneuverable.  They can swing around, fire a broadside, and sail out of range before the carrack can return fire.  Even if the Carrack is prepared, the slim, low-decked, narrow design and speed make these ships hard to hit, even by the best artillerymen.”

“Frigate,” Decker named the type of ship.

“The Flying Dutchman?” Nanette asked.

Captain Esteban laughed.  “I suppose he is.  The Dutch have not yet come here to the islands.  They are too busy fighting against Spain, their rightful rulers.  Captain Hawk has papers from the English Queen Elizabeth who died a couple of years ago. He claims to be a legitimate privateer, not a pirate, but in truth, he came on behalf of the Dutch to interrupt the flow of gold and silver to the Spanish coffers.  In this way, the Dutch hoped to make the prosecution of the war against the Netherlands too difficult and expensive for Spain to continue.  He has had some success.”  Captain Esteban shrugged.  “But he is Dutch.  There is a big price on his head, and he has no safe port where he can rest.  The French, and even the English interlopers in the islands do not welcome him for fear of Spanish reprisals.”  He shrugged again.

“A Dutchman in a fast, powerful ship that is unable to make port,” Nanette mused.

“Yes,” Katie agreed.  “I imagine many Spanish sailors hate to see his sails on the horizon as those sails bring death and destruction.”

“I suppose so,” Captain Esteban said and looked at the travelers as they watched the Golden Hawk let down four longboats and began to fill them with Dutch soldiers.  The Golden Hawk raised a white flag of truce.  At least they would talk before the shooting started.  “Be prepared to move inland,” the captain told Lockhart and Decker.  Meanwhile, the captain needed to check on his men.  They now had four longboats from the carrack, and they were full of wounded men.

Avalon 9.4 Broadside, part 3 of 6

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Captain Emilio Esteban proved to be a gregarious sort of man.  He had the travelers dine with him that night, offered plenty of wine, and kept the topics of conversation to pleasantries. The second night proved different.  When the travelers entered the captain’s cabin, they were met by soldiers who stripped them of their weapons and equipment.  Only Elder Stow managed to hang on to his things.  His personal screens went up and the soldiers could neither touch him nor his equipment.

“Hand over everything or we will have to hurt the others.”  The head soldier grabbed Sukki by the arm.  “This is your adopted daughter, is she not?”

“Try not to hurt him,” Elder Stow told Sukki.  She nodded before she removed the hand from her arm, grabbed the man by the shirt, and threw him down the hall to where he crashed into the stairs.  “My equipment stays on my person for now,” Elder Stow announced.  “You soldiers will just break it or push the wrong button and sink this ship by accident.”

“Fair enough,” Captain Esteban said.  He invited the travelers to his table set for twelve, where the first mate, second mate, and navigator were already waiting.  “We are entering Guanabo bay and passing the island of the same name.  I considered dropping you there.  The island is mostly barren, but the Taino people that have taken refuge there would probably help you escape so there would be no long-term benefit.”  The officers stood until the captain got seated.  “I decided you would serve better as hostages.  Of course, depending on who we run into, I might even be persuaded to temporarily return your weapons.  Let us hope the buccaneers leave us alone.”

Everyone sat with questions in their minds.  Katie was the first to frame those questions into words.  “What are you afraid of?” she asked.  “What are we headed into that a servant of the Masters might return our weapons to us?”

The ship’s stewards brought in plates of food for everyone.  The chief steward opened the wine and began to pour.  Captain Esteban sipped his to taste the wine before he spoke.  “It is not fear,” he said.  “The Masters are masters of fear, doubt, and pain.  Resistance is futile, to use the old expression.”  He looked at his plate of food but downed his glass of wine.  The chief steward filled it again while he thought.  Then he began.

“You know the north coast is full of buccaneers—French settlers who hunt and cut the trees.  They trade in leather and lumber and grow subsistence crops to make their daily bread.  But now, they are beginning to leak down into the western lands, looking for places where they can build plantations to grow tobacco, sugar cane, cotton, and other cash crops.  They are beginning to import slaves.  And as if that is not bad enough, they have given ports for French and English, privateers—men with papers from various monarchs and governments.  Some of them have begun to explore the island of Tortuga as a possible redoubt against us, should we raise the men and ships to drive them off.  For the present, though, the north is controlled by buccaneers and pirates.  It is not safe for plain farmers and families.”

“You said the south was full of cannibals,” Decker interjected.

“Natives,” the captain nodded.  “Many Taino have found refuge on the island of Guanabo, as they call it. But most remain in the south of Hispaniola, the southwest, away from the forts around Santo Domingo.  They have begun to protect their territory.  They are not slow to kill any Spanish they find in their land.  But they are not many or strong at this point, and they have been unable to fight off the Carib who have invaded the south coast.  The Carib do sometimes eat people.”

“Why don’t the Spanish fortify the center, here in the west?” Lincoln asked.  “I would think once the center is secure, turning to the north and south might be manageable.  You might even negotiate a peace with the natives and the French.”

Captain Esteban grinned.  Most of the others gave Lincoln hard looks, like he did not need to be helping the Masters.  “That was the plan,” the captain said.  “That, and fortifying Santiago against the English so we do not leave a strong enemy at our backs as we colonize the southern states of what will never be the United States.  Unfortunately, something has landed in the center.  Do you know what I mean, landed?”

“How do you know?” Lockhart asked, as Elder Stow began to fiddle with his scanner to see what he might pick up, long range.

“There are reports of whole villages, French and native, destroyed, not abandoned.  The people that have been found are said to have been drained of blood, and many eaten.  Both the pirates and the Carib are afraid to go there, and the governor of Santo Domingo is drawing up an order to insist the people move closer to the city and forts in the eastern part of the island.  It is for their own protection.”

“Depending on who we are talking about, I don’t see that anything in this age will protect the people,” Decker said, and looked at Nanette and Sukki, both of whom looked frightened, or at least uncertain.

“Yes,” the captain said with a sigh.  “Depending on what we find, I may have to return your weapons temporarily.  I know your weapons have been taken from you more than once in your journey, but I do not have time to train my men in their use and you have all the experience in both their use and in dealing with alien creatures.”

“Maybe the Flesh Eaters,” Tony suggested.  “I might say Wolv, but I am not aware of them draining the blood.”

“Maybe the New Exterminators Lady Catherine mentioned,” Nanette said.  “She did not give many details, so we don’t know what they are, exactly.”

“I hope they are not the arachnids… Panknos… the spiders,” Sukki said and shivered to think of it.

“We all hope they are not the spiders,” Katie agreed, and turned to Lincoln who had dug out the database.  He read for a second before he reported.

“Spiders,” he said.

“Let me see that.”  Captain Esteban reached out to Lincoln.  Lincoln hesitated, but two of the guards in the room stepped in his direction, so he handed it over.  The captain stared at the screen, tried touching the three buttons, and let the first mate have a look.  The man merely shrugged, so the captain handed the database back to Lincoln who adjusted the buttons to get back on the correct page.

“It is as I suspected,” the captain said with another big sigh.  “All we can see is fuzz and wavey lines.”

“The hedge of the gods,” Katie said.  “It prevents ears from hearing, or in this case, eyes from reading about the future.”

“Yes.”  The captain seemed to understand.  “But I have no such hedge.  There is nothing to prevent me from speaking about the future.  Sadly, hardly anyone understands what I am talking about.  When I mentioned the film Gone with the Wind, only Don Fernando smiled and said, “But now, there will be no Civil War, and the film will be in Spanish since we will hold on to California as well as Texas.”  Captain Esteban shrugged like it was a done deal.

“The Kairos might have something to say about that,” Elder Stow interjected.

“Ah, yes.  The other reason you are my prisoners.  You will lead me to the Kairos, and I will get to kill many birds with one stone, as the saying goes.”

Katie frowned.  “Assuming you don’t get eaten by whatever landed on Hispaniola.”

“Of course,” Captain Esteban said, and smiled.  “More wine?”

************************

MONDAY

The ship comes to land not far from where the aliens have landed, most likely the giant alien spiders. Until Monday, Happy Reading.

*

Avalon 9.4 Broadside, part 2 of 6

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Captain Emilio Esteban did not appear concerned about the travelers being fugitives.  As long as he got paid, he did not seem to be concerned about anything.  His ship El Diablo, a Spanish carrack of twenty-six guns, carried a crew of nearly four hundred sailors and mercenary soldiers with a dozen horses of their own.  They had enough food and feed to sail a month before they had to head for a port to resupply.  A quick trip from Santo Domingo to what would one day be Port-au-Prince would be easy money.  The captain said he was headed for Havana and dropping eight people on the west side of Hispaniola hardly amounted to a detour.

“Convenient to find a ship already stocked and ready to sail,” Decker mused and watched the morning crew scurry about the deck.

“Sometimes things work out,” Nanette responded.  “Santo Domingo is a main Spanish port here in the Caribbean.  It probably gets lots of traffic.”

Decker was not convinced.  Katie and Tony both had questions as well.  Katie talked to Lockhart about it.

“These are the days right before the English and French begin to build settlements on Tortuga.  The French have already settled the northern coast of Hispaniola and are moving into what will one day become Haiti.  The Spanish drive out the settlers three or four times between 1630 and 1650, but they keep coming back.  The French especially build plantations on Haiti and import more African slaves than they can handle.  The slaves eventually revolt, and well, that is all in the future.  Right now, it is about 1605.”

Lockhart asked.  “So, what is the difference between a pirate and a privateer?”

“The Spanish call them Buccaneers—the French on the north coast,” Katie answered, and looked at the captain and his officers on the deck above.  “A privateer is an independent contractor, usually having papers and supplies from a monarch, like the English, French, or Dutch parliament.  They are tasked with harassing Spanish shipping and taking the gold and silver, or cash crops like sugar cane or tobacco.  Some goes to the monarch.  The privateer gets to keep some.  It depends on the contract, which is carefully not spelled out.  They often sail under the country flag, and if they get caught, they are sometimes treated like enemy combatants, like prisoners of war, and held for ransom or exchange.  Of course, the country can always deny and say the captain was acting on his own and that was not according to the contract.  Then they are treated like pirates and usually get hung.  Pirates are completely independent ships that don’t work for anyone but themselves.”

“So, what is the difference?”

“On a practical level, not much.”

“So, do you think Captain Esteban is a pirate or privateer?”

Katie shook her head, but on further thought, she nodded. “Like a Spanish privateer paid to go after pirates, maybe.  Like an anti-pirate or pirate hunter, like a bounty hunter, maybe.”

Tony talked with Lincoln, Sukki, and Elder Stow.  They sat on some boxes along the starboard rail and tried to keep out of the way.  “Captain Esteban seems pretty anxious to take us where we need to go.  My guess is if the governor in Santo Domingo thinks we are pirates or connected to the pirates, Captain Esteban hopes we will lead him to the pirates.”

“The western coast of Hispaniola is mostly populated with Frenchmen,” Lincoln reported, holding up the database.  “Buccaneers, hunters and trapper mostly, and some lumber men.  Not much in the way of settlements yet.  There are some small villages, though mostly on the north coast.”

“You got the horses loaded and we got out of jail fairly easily,” Tony said.

“We were invisible,” Elder Stow said as if that explained it all.  He shifted Lincoln’s moneybag which he held in his lap.  He had a personal screen, turned on at the moment, which protected his belt full of devices.  While it could not be expanded to cover other people, like his officer’s device, he could expand it enough to cover the moneybag.  No pirate could steal their money, or even touch the bag.  “Invisible,” Elder Stow repeated.

“But no alarm got sounded when the horses vanished,” Tony countered that thought.

“It did take us a couple of hours to load the horses,” Sukki agreed.  “I was worried that whole time about what they might be doing to you.”

“We were fine,” Tony said.  “They ignored us.  But then we vanished and walked all the way across town, and no one sounded the alarm. We were not ignored that much.”

“I see what you mean,” Elder Stow admitted.  “It does appear as if they let us go.”

Up above, Decker asked and was granted permission to step on the quarterdeck.  Nanette followed and let Decker make his suggestion.

“Now that we are away from the city, you can drop us anywhere along the southern coast here.  We can go back to minding our own business, and you can get on to Cuba.  Just a thought.”

Captain Esteban smiled as he spoke.  “Clearly, you are new to this island.  I would guess the ship that brought you from Europe dumped you on the east coast before heading down into the Lesser Antilles.  You came into town like you did not expect to be noticed, two Africans riding on horses.  The others may claim to be German and Swedish, with one Italian, though he is not a priest.”  The captain shrugged.  “Such are not wanted here, either.”

“All the more reason to leave you to your business,” Decker suggested.

The captain shook his head.  “You see the coast.  It is very rough country for horses.  You would struggle to get over the hills.  Also, most of the native population has been wiped out, mostly by diseases and such, but the survivors have banded together along this shore.  They hate Europeans.  They will kill you on sight.  Then also, many Caribs have come up from the lesser islands where they have been driven out.  They will not only kill you; they will eat you.  And I haven’t even mentioned the Buccaneers.  Many French have begun to build settlements in the west, though mostly in the north to avoid the natives.  They are armed camps and hidden, and they don’t like strangers.”

“You make the whole island sound hostile,” Nanette said.

Captain Esteban looked at her and appreciated what he saw.  “The governor is planning to tell the Spanish population to move closer to Santo Domingo for their own protection.  He imagines the French and natives will wipe each other out and spare Spain the trouble.  I have argued against it.  He may lose the island, or at least the western part of it.  Still, that is a small matter.  Don Fernando Delrio in Havana has plans to colonize the whole north coast from Florida to Louisiana and up to the river they call Ohio.  The land is well suited to tobacco and other cash crops if we can import enough slaves to work the land.  I understand there is gold along Sugar Creek and the Cabarrus area in the Carolinas.  We shall see.”

“Looks like you have it all figured out,” Decker said.

“Yes.”  The captain smiled.  “And I will take you safely to your French friends.  I may even give them the west side of the island.  That way, the resources that are being wasted in Hispaniola may be diverted to the colonization project in the north.”  With that, he waved them off, and Decker was able to report what he learned to the others.

Lockhart said, “That will kill the future United States.”

Katie went a step further.  “There might not be a United States.”

The following day, the travelers acted on their suspicions, that maybe Captain Esteban was a servant of the Masters, or at least worked for them.  Lincoln spent the day trying to dig out the relevant information from the database.  Decker and Katie, both marines, spent the day watching the captain and his officers on the quarterdeck to see if anything seemed off in their behavior and conversation.  Lockhart, the former police officer, with Nanette’s help, searched as much of the ship as they were allowed, looking for clues.  They watched the crew but figured the sailors and soldiers aboard ship were pawns just there to follow orders.  Elder Stow kept his eyes on his scanner, marking their progress as they sailed along the coast of Hispaniola, and kept his eyes open for sudden energy signals that might pop up aboard ship or on the coast if the captain was leading them somewhere.  That left Tony and Sukki to watch over their horses, Ghost, and their equipment down in the hold.

Mid-afternoon, Tony came up from tending Ghost.  He had a question.  Sukki, Elder Stow, Lockhart, and Katie were all present at the moment.  He turned primarily to Katie.  “You know, my grasp of historical details ended with the fall of the Roman Empire.  I followed the east and Byzantines until they get overrun by the Turks, so I may be off base here.”

Katie smiled.  “I’ve been grasping at straws myself since Prudenza and the days of the plague.  My area is the ancient and medieval world.  I’m not studied in the modern, or pre-modern, or gunpowder age, or whatever you called it back in 1905.”

“Understood,” Tony said and returned the smile before he looked down and looked serious.

“What is your question?” Lockhart asked.

“Well…” Tony framed his thoughts.  “Several cannon balls, or what I thought were cannon balls got loose and some soldiers came to secure them.  I was tending Ghost.  I don’t think they knew I was there.  Anyway, the head man said be careful with those canisters.  There is enough gas in just one of them to kill everyone aboard the ship.  I did not know the Spanish in this age had poison gas filled canisters they could fire from their cannons.”

“They don’t,” Katie said.

“What kind of gas?” Sukki wondered out loud and turned to Elder Stow.  They all looked at the Gott-Druk.  He appeared to know something.

“Mustard gas,” he said without hesitation.  “I picked up the chemical signatures when I scanned the entire ship this morning.  I did not say anything because the chemicals might be used for other things.  I did not know.  But gas canisters makes sense of the data.”

“Mustard gas,” Katie repeated.  “That is strictly nineteenth century and did not get used until the first World War, as far as I know.  Sorry Tony.”  Tony waved off her concern while Lockhart summed things up.

“If the captain is not a servant of the Masters, he is certainly working for them.  We need to lay low until we reach our destination.  Meanwhile, maybe we can work on ways to make the compound inert.  I hope we don’t have to throw it all overboard.”

Avalon 9.4 Broadside, part 1 of 6

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After 1562 A.D. The Caribbean

Kairos lifetime 115: Peter van Dyke: Captain Hawk

Recording …

Elder Stow saw that the horses were cared for, including his own horse, Mudd.  He hated to disturb them, but they had no choice.  Only he and Sukki escaped, invisible.  They would have to break the others out of jail as soon as they got the horses loaded.

He looked at his adopted daughter, Sukki.  She tied the horses to the line in order to bring them all at once to the ship.  Lockhart’s big horse, and Katie’s led the string, followed by Lincoln’s horse and Sukki’s horse, Cocoa, before Mudd.  Elder Stow paused to grin.  The Kairos, Hans, broke into his precious stores of cocoa come all the way from the New World.  He made hot chocolate for everyone.  Sukki, who never tasted chocolate before, said it was better than she even imagined.  Elder Stow found it watery and bitter.  It would take some serious experimentation before the chocolate got really good.

“Father?” Sukki got his attention.  He waved her off and went to sit on a bale of hay.

“Keep working.  I’m fine.”  He watched her tie the last of the horses.  Decker’s big horse followed Mudd, then Nanette’s horse and Tony’s horse.  Ghost, the mule came last, but over the last several time zones, the mule had gotten used to following Tony’s horse.  Elder Stow marveled at how helpful and faithful these animals were.  Their journey through time would have been nearly impossible without them.  He sighed.  He had to admit these Homo Sapiens were no longer the primitive, ignorant apes his people still called them.  They were clever in their way.

Elder Stow thought about the Gott-Druk planet, his home.  It was a good world, but still too many of his people could not see that.  All they saw was Earth, and they counted Earth as their real home.  Over more than fourteen thousand years, various groups attempted to retake the Earth and remove or enslave the homo sapiens that now covered the world.  Sukki, herself, was the sole survivor of the very first expedition.  It had no chance for success. The people on that Agdaline ship were still cave men in their level of technological progress.  Sukki was raised a cave woman, as Lincoln called her at first.  She had come a long way.  She learned a lot over their travels.  But then she wanted to fit in better with her fellow travelers.  The gods remade her into a Homo Sapiens as one of their last acts before the dissolution of the gods.  Sukki remained his adopted daughter, but her being human and no longer Neanderthal brought questions to his mind.

‘Sukki,” he called.  Sukki paused after tying Tony’s horse to the line and turned her face to him to show she was listening.  Ghost waited patiently for his turn.  “Sukki,” he repeated.  “We are only about a half-dozen time zones away from home.  I have been wondering if you will be going with me to the Gott-Druk world, or if you will be staying with the humans.”

Sukki looked pained.  “I don’t know,” she said, not willing to give a straight answer.  “I am not sure I would fit in the home world.  Even with the gift of Athena I don’t understand half of the technology you carry around apart from theory—things that you call mere toys.  I’m learning all of this human history and human culture.  I’m having a hard enough time trying to understand what the twenty-first century will be like.  I don’t know.”

Elder Stow nodded and waved her off.  “Something to think about,” he said.  She would not say it, but she was becoming more human than Neanderthal.  Adopting her all those time zones ago was a very Gott-Druk thing to do.  He had no doubt it kept her alive and mentally stable, having a family connection with the group.  His Gott-Druk people framed everything in terms of family.  But now, she had a mother and father in Katie and Lockhart.  He, himself, often referred to them as the mother and father of the time traveling family.  She no longer needed him to be her father figure.

“Ready,” Sukki said, and Elder Stow got busy.  He was supposed to be tuning discs to the invisible spectrum.  He only had six done.  He needed three more.

“Almost,” he said.  He got to work while she checked the door to the stables to be sure no people were coming to disturb them.

Elder Stow thought about how much further they needed to go to get back to the twentieth century.  Only a few time zones.  He certainly had more than enough experience.  He could abandon the human travelers to their fate and should easily make it back to his time and his people.  He still had his scanner tuned to the peculiar time distortion of the time gates.  He could find them easily enough and maybe get back to his proper time faster on his own.  Maybe these hated Homo Sapiens who stole the Earth, the planet of his Gott-Druk origin, deserved to be imprisoned… But no.  The travelers had become like family for him, too.  He would never abandon them.

“Ready,” he said, and he attached a disc to the mule and each of the horses in turn until they all went invisible.  “Take the lead,” he told Sukki, and they all walked invisible out of the stables and through the early morning streets to the ship.  The sun would be up soon enough, and so would the tide they would need to take them out of the bay.  Once loaded, Elder Stow could retrieve his discs and fetch the others from their jail cell.  He imagined that being invisible might prevent their escape being noticed until after they were well away aboard the ship.

Loading the horses was not hard.  He collected the discs, so the horse became visible again and then the crew helped.  Threatening the captain so he did not sail off with free horses did not take long.  Soon, Elder Stow and Sukki hurried across town to set the prisoners free.  Elder Stow would not abandon the others, no matter how tempting it might be to just get home.

They had indeed become like his family.  Elder Stow had to admit it, and they were correct to some extent.  They were all humans—genus homo—Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis.  They were not that different, though on a personal level, Elder Stow wondered if all this time in close contact humanized him.  Having gone through so much of human history, he now understood that the Homo Sapiens belonged on the earth.  He had also come to realize his Gott-Druk home world was actually a very good world.  When he got home, he would talk against the extremists that wanted to retake Earth for a home.  He did not imagine he would become a member of the other side—a friend of the humans.  He expected he would settle down with the vast majority of Gott-Druk for whom it was no longer an issue.

###

Lockhart, the former policeman, sat in his jail cell trying to figure out how he could pick the skeleton lock in the door.  He needed something big enough and metal-like strong. He looked at Decker, but Decker shook his head.

“I am combat trained.  I know a few tricks, but I am not James Bond,” he said.

In the cell next door, Lincoln pulled out the database and sat quietly to read.  Tony paced with his eyes on their jailer.  The fat Spaniard sat at his desk and looked ready for a nap.  Tony said one thing.  “Are you at least going to feed us?”  The jailer shrugged.

In the third cell, Katie and Nanette waited patiently and talked quietly.

“I am not going to be sold as a slave,” Nanette said with a slight growl.  “My grandmother was emancipated by Mister Lincoln, and I am not going back there.”

“Not going to happen,” Katie agreed.  “We will probably be hung as pirates long before that thought occurs to them.  Besides, Elder Stow and Sukki are out there.  After they secure the horses, they will come for us.”

The women looked at each other, and Nanette said the thing they both felt concerned about.  “Elder Stow checked with Lincoln.  He knows after this zone, there are only five more between here and home.  He can still track the time gates on his equipment.  I think he may abandon us.”

“No,” Katie said.  “We are family, such as we are.  Family is most important to the Gott-Druk.  He will come for us.  Sukki will make sure of that.”

“He is a different species,” Nanette said.  “No telling what he thinks, or how he thinks.  He might not see it as abandoning us so much as returning to his real family.”

Katie shook her head.  “It seemed that way at first, and I felt that way for a long time after, but he has proved himself.  Besides, I have been convinced that he is essentially human.  There are serious cultural differences and maybe some instinctive differences, but he is mostly human.  I trust him, and more importantly, the Kairos trusts him.  If I have learned one thing on this journey, it is to trust the Kairos.”

“Very well said.”  Katie and Nanette were startled to hear Elder Stow’s voice, though of course they could not see him.  The door to the hall was open, so they figured he came in while they were talking.  No telling how much he heard.

“Rodrigo?” the man at the desk looked toward the door and wondered who was talking.  The man started to rise before he fell back into the chair and wiggled like a man being electrocuted.  He appeared to go unconscious, and they all heard Sukki.

“He isn’t dead.  Please don’t be dead.”

“Stand away from the door,” Elder Stow said.  They did, and one at a time, he melted all three locks.  The doors swung open.  “Here.”  he handed each of the travelers a disc still tuned to the invisible spectrum.  As soon as they went invisible, they saw Elder Stow and Sukki.  She tied the jailer to the chair and gagged him.  The jailer moaned a little as everyone retrieved their guns and knives from the table.  Then they hurried across town to the docks and managed to slip out into the bay, going out with the tide.