mustard gas

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 5.2 Palace Intrigue, part 4 of 5

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Artie, Lincoln and Alexis kept the horses.  They had left the open ground where they camped, giving the appearance that they intended to leave by the gate and continue their journey.  Huyak’s wife and daughters even came out to wave good-bye, along with Huyak’s married son, the chief gate guard, who eyed them suspiciously.

“The city has several gates,” Lincoln told them, having looked it up in the database.  “No reason Huyak’s son should expect us to leave the city by the same gate we entered.”

Lockhart understood, and when they crossed the main road bridge, it did appear like they were headed for one of the other gates.  They paused on the other side of the river, at the base of the bridge, where some stalls, no doubt dependent on river traffic, had some items of interest.  But in fact, they were looking to see if perhaps they were being followed or spied upon.

Katie pointed out that sending poor men to slink around the city and spy on enemies for the price of a small loaf of bread or a fish was not unheard of, even as far in the past as they were.  But soon enough, they decided the way was safe, so they cut off the main road and on to the back roads and alleys.

Elder Stow’s scanner pulled up a three-dimensional map of the streets.  It showed a red dot where there were people.  He saved a bright yellow dot for zombies.  “Yellow being the sign of stop, danger.”

“We use red,” Alexis said.  Elder Stow did not understand.  “Humans use red for stop and for danger,” Alexis corrected herself about the ‘we’.

“That is nonsense,” Eder Stow responded.  “Red is not a good color in the dark.  Yellow is a bright color that can be seen, even on the darkest night.”

Alexis shrugged as Boston spoke.  “Humans use red for danger.”

“Homo sapiens do everything backwards,” Elder Stow grumped.  “On my sensible map, red dots are people.  Yellow is reserved for the undead.”

“Some of those red dots may be dangerous,” Decker said, and to their unspoken questions, he said, “Daytime guards.”

Elder Stow guided them to a secluded place in the shadow between two buildings.  The warehouse and manufacturing place could be seen on the other side of a grassy area.  It appeared that the building had an open area all around and was isolated from the rest of the city.

“Ripe for making WMDs,” Decker said.

Lockhart got everyone to turn their horses around so they would be pointed away from the building for a possible quick getaway.  They still did not know what they might find, but they all had begun to strongly suspect gas canisters, probably glass balls like they had a hundred years ago, in Balor’s day, and gas making equipment.

“The formula for mustard gas is not hard,” Boston repeated herself.  “All it takes is for someone to discover it.”

“Sulfur is one thing,” Lockhart said.  “Worse would be if they combined it with charcoal and salt-peter.”

“The Masters try that,” Lincoln admitted.  “Several times throughout history.”

Alexis suggested she and Boston could become invisible and go to the building, unseen.  They could open a window to let the others in, but Lockhart nixed that idea.  He was not risking their healer.  She might be needed.  He said nothing about Boston, because he knew she would come, especially if he said she should stay behind.

“Besides,” he said.  “If the goddess is still around and watching, I don’t imagine you will stay invisible for long.”  Alexis did not argue.

“I could go invisible,” Elder Stow suggested.

“No.  We need you to be ready to put a wall screen up,” Lockhart said.  “Mustard gas is a slow creeper, but if there is gas in there, and it gets free, we should be able to get out, but it will probably be right behind us.  We will need the wall to keep it contained until we can ride free.

So, Artie and Alexis kept the horses, with Lincoln presumably watching over the women, and Elder Stow stayed behind to work on his screen device.

The wall in the building that faced the travelers had no windows.  The other three walls had several.  Decker and Boston crept along one side of the building to a window that would let them into a small room.  The shutters were closed and barred from the inside.  Boston got to pull her wand and magically lift the bar to let them in.  It was an outhouse room, but they held their breath.  Decker thought it smelled worse than the mustard gas, but he didn’t say anything.

Lockhart and Katie crept down the other side of the building.  They had to crawl under one window that was open, before they could get to the small room on their side of the building.  They also found the shutters closed, but not barred.  The hinges, no more than strips of leather, made no sound.  Katie got in easily, but Lockhart got half-way through the window when a man came into the room.  The man immediately shouted, but the shout got drowned out by the sound of Katie’s handgun.  The man collapsed, and Katie and Lockhart took a moment to ready Katie’s rifle and Lockhart’s shotgun.  They pulled back the curtain and Katie pointed her weapon to the left while Lockhart pointed to the right.

On one side, there were tables, equipment, and a very sophisticated looking furnace with a chimney that went straight to the roof.  Great glass and metal vats of various chemicals lined the wall, and several catapult-sized empty glass balls looked ready to be filled with a hand pump.  One man worked there at present.  He looked covered, head to toe, in something like burlap.

On the other side, where the big front doors stood at the actual front of the building, a whole rack of filled glass balls looked ready for shipment.  Katie could hardly guess where they might be used.  She imagined the gas would devastate some walled city, with narrow streets that would trap the gas at ground level, and take a long time to dissipate.  Men, maybe a dozen guards armed with big spears, came into the building from that side.

Decker’s and Boston’s heads peeked out from a curtain on the other side.  Decker fired at the men, so Katie added her fire from the other side.  The guards fell rapidly, though the two did not fire long.  Some of the guards survived by ducking behind the mustard gas glass balls.  Not smart.

The man by the work table picked up a small glass ball, but Boston had her Beretta out and shot the man just before Lockhart blasted him with his shotgun.  The little glass ball fell and broke, and no one doubted what the sickly green gas was that seeped out.

One moment of silence followed, and Decker filled it with his shout.  “Get out.  Grenades.”  Boston’s head disappeared.  Katie and Lockhart ran to the window, and did not stop until they reached the horses.  Decker lobbed one grende toward the work area, and the other toward the balls ready for shipment, balls that were probably already cracked by the bullets.  He dove out of the window, and joined Boston, who deliberately ran slow so Decker could keep up.

They all heard the explosions, one, then the other.  The end of the building facing the group collapsed, and they all imagined the gas seeping out and chasing them down the road.  But they mounted and rode.  Elder Stow never had to activate his screen.

When they reached the gate, they found Huyak’s eldest son there with many guards, prepared to block the way.  Katie, up front, raised her rifle and fired several five-shot bursts of bullets as she rode.  The guards either fell or jumped out of the way of the galloping horses.  The travelers burst into the open, but Huyak’s son had men on the walls.  Fortunately, Elder Stow came at the back of the pack, and he switched on the wall screen as they exited the city.  The men on the walls fired on the travelers, but the arrows bounced off Elder Stows screens.  Then they got in the clear.

“The Kairos?” Lockhart asked.  He knew they would have to confess what they had done before they left that time zone.

“My prototype amulet is no good for that,” Katie said.

“That way,” Boston pointed.  “And he appears to be coming our way.”

“She,” Lincoln said quietly.

Boston and Alexis went out front for the time being.  Lockhart and Lincoln switched places with Katie and Artie so they could bring up the rear while Katie and Artie stayed in the center.  Of course, Decker and Elder Stow still had the wings.

Artie talked as they rode.  “That was exciting, and scary, and dangerous…” she thought of every way she could describe the events, and Katie just smiled.  Lockhart smiled, too, but he tried not to show it.  Lincoln went back to reading in the database.

Avalon 5.0 Invading Armies, part 2 of 6

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Alexis, Lincoln, Boston, and Lockhart stayed up with Ed and Artie while the others slept and the sun went down.  After sunset, Boston wandered the perimeter of the camp now and then, to let her refined elf senses reach out into the dark, just in case.  They half expected an Anazi rescue ship in the dark.  Elder Stow set the screen device in his scanner to deploy impenetrable screens as soon as something came in overhead.  Organic material, like birds, would be ignored, but anything else in the air would trigger the screens.  Boston and the others felt safe enough, but Boston walked all the same.

Artie, with a little help from Alexis, explained everything she could think of to Ed; too much, really.  She talked, sometimes rapid fire, and everyone saw plainly both how human, and in a way, how female Artie had become in the months since being liberated from Anazi control.

Apart from many questions, and not grasping certain concepts, Ed seemed most taken by the idea that he should be male.  Lincoln and Lockhart tried to fill in things from a male point of view, including when they confessed they did not understand how women saw some things the way they did, either.

“I think I best be male,” Ed admitted at one point.  “It seems much less complicated.”  Then he offered a free thought, something he just started to learn how to do.  “I accessed the program in my system that includes your faces and specifications on several occasions, since we came here to your earth.  Most of it made no sense, even when I had contact with humans like you.  But now, having met the living images, and having scanned you, and most of all, having spoken to you…” he paused before he continued.  “…and listened to you, freely, it begins to make sense.”  He paused again, and everyone waited, having seen that same expression on Artie’s face.  He was thinking, or reviewing data as Elder Stow insisted.  Even Artie waited patiently for him to speak again.  “I say, I felt more attracted to Lincoln’s face and form than any others.  There is no explaining it.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Decker interrupted as he came out of his tent.  “It was bad enough when the Shemsu among the Olmec people carved my helmeted head in giant blocks of stone down in the Yucatan.  Now, to have a bunch of androids running around the universe bearing my image.  No.  That would be too much.”

“Did we wake you?” Alexis asked by way of apology.

“Shift change,” Decker said.  “Midnight.”  Decker cradled his rifle and pulled up a seat by the fire.

“Well, I’m tired,” Boston said with a yawn.  She had become a light elf, not given to night hours like a human.  But then, she slept alone in her own tent, since her husband Roland went missing, and her father Mingus disappeared in that great flash of light, and Katie opted to room with Artie.  Sometimes, the prospect of being alone kept Boston awake.  Lockhart, Decker, and Elder Stow also slept alone.  Elder Stow, in particular; at first because no one trusted the Gott-Druk, but later because he snored so badly.

Boston imagined she would be rooming with Artie.  She had thought Katie and Lockhart would be together by then.  She watched when Katie got up to take Alexis’ place beside Artie, even though Katie and Artie did not have to be up until the three to six in the morning shift.

“I suppose I better get to bed as well,” Lockhart said, and looked at his tent.

“So, where are we in the discussion of life, liberty and all?” Katie asked, looking at the fire.

“Goodnight,” Lockhart said, turning toward Katie, but making a general statement.

“Goodnight,” Katie said, more-or-less in Lockhart’s direction, but just to add her voice to the chorus.

Katie and Lockhart appeared to pause, but then Lockhart went into his tent, Katie sat by the fire, and Boston, an empathetic elf, went to bed, sad.

###

Around three, Katie walked.  She had taken up Boston’s routine of walking the perimeter now and then, just to be sure.   As an Elect, a one in a million-warrior woman, designed by the goddesses in ancient days to protect the home and families when the men went off to war, her senses and intuition were highly refined.  She could sense danger and an enemy at a great distance, and what she senses at three triggered a red flag in her mind.  She yelled.

“Incoming.”

In only minutes, something buzzed overhead.  Alexis and Boston got up, groggy, but managed to combine their magic and form a magical disguise around Artie and Ed.  They had no idea if the glamour would fool the Anazi scanners.  Alexis suspected it would not.  She suggested it would fool an Anazi’s visual perception, but probably would not even fool other androids.

They waited.

The ship, a transport looking thing, stopped overhead.  It got a good look at them and their camp, though Elder Stow had activated the particle and energy screens around the camp in case the Anazi ship took a shot at them.  Everyone felt surprised when the ship rose in the sky, turned around, and left the area.

Something crashed through the treetops.  It landed some distance from the camp.  Artie shrieked.  Elder Stow tuned his scanner quickly to examine and study the crashed object.  He swore, something he never did, and adjusted the screens accordingly.

I made the screens extra-large and solid,” he explained.  “I sliced through some trees on the outer edge, but made it tall enough to take in the camp, horses and the trees in the immediate area.”

“Won’t those cut trees on the edge fall on us when we turn it off to begin moving in the morning?” Katie asked, as she moved several steps in one direction, but heard what Elder Stow said.

A second something overshot the camp.

“We won’t be going anywhere for a while,” Elder Stow said, and frowned

“Gas.”  Ed said the word a moment before Artie could identify it.

“What you call mustard gas,” Elder Stow agreed.  “It will fall to the ground and creep along for several hours before it dissipates, but the screens should easily keep it out.”

A third something fell behind them all.

“Not very good shots,” Artie concluded.

“They don’t have to be with mustard gas,” Katie said.

“Let me look,” Decker suggested.  Katie pointed in the direction she sensed was the source of the gas.  Decker nodded and stepped aside to a place where he could sit and meditate.  He let his spirit rise-up, carried by his eagle totem.  He saw no sign of the Anazi ship.  It had vacated the area.  From overhead, he spied a small catapult, moon lit, and a dozen men using it.  He saw the wagons, but as he circled around, he saw other men, more like thirty with chariots, about to charge the catapult.  Decker figured the catapult men were shooting in the dark, assuming the campfire belonged to their enemies.  They were in for a rude awakening when the chariot men charged.  Decker came back to earth in time to hear Katie squawk.

“Who the hell is making mustard gas in seventeen hundred, BC?”

“Not the Anazi.  We may never know,” Decker said, to verbalize Elder Stow’s shrug.

“Should we wake the others?” Artie asked.

“Why?”  Decker responded with the question, while Katie retook her seat beside Artie and spoke.

“The others need a chance to rest, and as Elder Stow said, we won’t be going anywhere for a while.”

“You ask these humans and do what they say?” Ed sounded surprised, even if he had not yet figured out what surprise was other than in a military context.

“Oh, yes,” Artie said.  “I have learned.  We act as a team.  Everyone has things to contribute, and these humans have knowledge and abilities that we do not have.  The best judgment is not always a simple weighing of the facts.  There is wisdom in listening, and these people have much experience that again, we do not have.”

“But to do what someone else says?  Is that not slavery?”

“Not when it is a free choice,” Artie responded.

“Only an immature child always wants his or her way,” Katie added.  “Elders can be wrong at times, but wisdom says the young should listen to their elders, and not resist them, especially those that care about you.  That is how children learn.”

“I have over fifty years of experience to draw on,” Elder Stow said.  “I understand Lockhart has seventy years of experience.  We have determined that Artie has about five years of experience, though she does not count the four years she lived under Anazi domination.  I suspect you are also about four or five years old.”

“Young soldiers listen to their seasoned sergeant and their commanding officer,” Decker added.  “Not only because they have pledged to listen, but because listening to their experienced words, and obeying orders, is the way young soldiers stay alive.”

“And you have not listened much to Lockhart, my mother,” Elder Stow spoke to Katie who he called the mother of the group, after his Neanderthal fashion, as he called Lockhart the father of the group.  “It seems he is an elder worth listening to.”

Katie said nothing, so Decker mumbled, “Only a child always wants her way.”

Katie stood.  “Excuse me.  I have a perimeter to walk.”  She left the fire and Artie spoke.

“Love is something I am still working on.”  She turned to Ed.  “It is very, very complicated.”