“To whom?”
Courtney was growing agitated. “I pray His Majesty has survived, but clearly he must have been the target of this attack! Assuming that, who is the next- most-likely target?”
The officer’s face was not yet white with dust, but it suddenly drained of color. “Good Lord! The princess Rebecca!”
“Precisely! She remained on New Scotland while her parents came here to make this address today. She must be warned!”
With a final glance at the ruins of the Imperial Court of Directors and the small army now combing the rubble, the man grasped Courtney’s arm in turn. “Very well. My ship has no wireless set, but the instruments at the harbor master’s office have been completed, and I’m told they can signal Scapa Flow directly! The harbor master there can dispatch a warning and marshals to Government House within minutes! Come, I will take you there-and across to Scapa Flow myself, if I must!”
CHAPTER 13
New Scotland Island
Empire of the New Britain Isles
A shimmering, brightly feathered shape made a trilling, flupp ing sound as it exploded from the dense highland scrub and took to the air. Princess Rebecca Anne McDonald, barely thirteen years old and heir to the Empire of the New Britain Isles, immediately snatched the fine double-barrel fowling piece to her right shoulder, planted her left foot, put the bead on the nose of the rising creature, and fired. The target staggered in midair but didn’t fall. Without thinking, her finger found the rear trigger and she fired again. It was just windy enough to carry the smoke from her shots away and she saw the creature, now perfectly lifeless, drop like a stone.
“Well struck, Yer Highness!” boomed Sean “O’Casey” Bates, the Imperial Factor and Chief of Staff to Gerald McDonald. The big, one-armed man was behind and slightly to the right of her.
“Indeed!” complimented Lieutenant Ruik-Sor-Raa, the almost-blond-furred Lemurian commander of USS Simms, a Fil-pin-built steam frigate undergoing major repairs at Scapa Flow. The ship had followed Walker in after the naval battle off Saint Francis. She’d been the only American frigate able to make the long trip, and her consorts had been forced to seek repairs at the hard-pressed facilities at the continental colony where San Francisco would have been. “It rose so fast, I never had a chance!” Ruik continued. He carried a Fil-pin Armory version of a nineteenth-century smoothbore Springfield, and it was a heavy weapon for wing shooting. Its percussion-ignition system was more advanced than its Imperial counterpart, but even it was already obsolete compared to the newer weapons being made by the Alliance. Rifled breechloaders were in the pipeline now, but the Dom Front was at the end of a very long supply line, and the more pressing Grik Front had priority when it came to modern weapons.
Four men-Bigelow the gamekeeper, and some beaters he’d hired to flush game-politely applauded the shot, and the princess smiled at them. “Thank you, Mr. Bates. Lieutenant.” She looked at Sean. “I believe my shooting has benefitted much from your advice.”
“That may be, but poor Ruik’s at a disadvantage. No Marine musket’s the equal o’ a fine fowler-fer fowlin’! Leslie’s makes arms ta fit a body, not pile bodies on the ground.” He nodded at Ruik’s gleaming weapon. “An’ that one, with a fine, wicked bayonet, an’ a lively sort behind it, is a wee bit better fer that!”
Sean Bates appreciated good weapons for whatever they were designed to do. He couldn’t carry a common musket or fowler of any sort, but he did have an extremely long-barreled pistol-long enough, almost, for a cane-with a light, tapered barrel. Currently, the barrel rested on his right shoulder, but he was perfectly capable of hitting a bird or hare when the unusual weapon was loaded with small shot-or anything else within a reasonable range with a load of buck and ball. The only truly dangerous large animals on the island were other descendants of the passage that brought humans there-feral hogs-and the strange pistol worked well on all but the largest of those.
A peculiar creature, little bigger than the fallen prey and with many similar features, suddenly dashed ahead, leaping into the air and coasting over the shin-high scrub. It violently pounced on the dead lizard fowl.
“Now, Petey,” Rebecca scolded kindly after it, “be a dear and do take it to the gamekeeper.”
“Eat?” the creature pleaded, clutching the prize that so resembled him. He couldn’t fly, but the feathery membrane that joined his arms and legs allowed him to glide amazingly. He was obviously related to the lizard fowl in many not-so-subtle ways, but there were profound differences as well. For example, the game was omnivorous and Petey was most emphatically a carnivore.
“You will eat quite enough later,” Rebecca said sternly. “Perhaps if you are a good boy, Mr. Bigelow will give you the head to chew upon.” Reluctantly, and with a great show of sullen obedience, Petey did indeed drag the lizard fowl to the gamekeeper and solemnly left it in his charge with a warning hiss. Bigelow took the animal, careful of his fingers, and put it in the bag with several others. He was the only other armed man in the group, but his devotion to the princess kept him from murdering the obnoxious reptilian rodent she so doted on.
“Ye don’t think that ridiculous creature understands ye, Yer Highness!” Sean said. It wasn’t a question as much as an incredulous statement. Ruik chittered respectful amusement.
“Some,” Rebecca replied, a little huffy, beginning to reload her weapon. Mr. Bigelow’s offer to load for her had already been politely but firmly refused. Rebecca Anne McDonald had recently become very proficient with firelocks, and intended to stay in practice. “He obviously knows his name,” she continued, “and he did obey me. I’m sure he knows what ‘no’ means, and he is intelligent enough to sometimes pretend he doesn’t… Apparently, he knows ‘take’ and ‘later’ and possibly other words.” She chuckled. “He knows Mr. Bigelow has our other birds, particularly the parrots-he does like parrots! — and there is no doubt whatsoever he understands the meaning of ‘eat.’”
“Aye ta that,” Sean agreed. “The beastie’s a famous eater, an’ no mistake.” He glanced ahead, surveying the gradual slope of the mountain that reared high above the naval port city of Scapa Flow. The princess was in his personal care while her parents were in New London, and there were still shadowy elements, either Dom agents or Company loyalists forced into hiding, who posed a very real threat to the child’s safety. Bored out of her mind in Government House, with nothing to do but read or visit some of her friends in the Allied delegation, she’d talked him into this outing. She had no friends near her own age now that Abel Cook and Stuart Brassey had steamed back west with Walker. Even Dennis Silva, whom she considered a demented older brother, and her beloved Lawrence had left her. She could no longer relate to the few children she’d considered friends before her departure and long exile. Her girlfriends had become young ladies, preparing for the hopefully long, possibly happy, but certainly dull (in comparison) domestic lives that were expected of them. Perhaps it was unseemly, but she couldn’t help but pine a little “for the boys,” in general, and maybe Abel Cook in particular. She’d seen and endured too much to be content with what was expected of her in Imperial society. Hopefully, those expectations were about to undergo some radical revisions, but even if she hadn’t been heir to the Imperial throne, and therefore subject to fewer restraints than other girls, she’d tasted too much of life to just stop and settle down and wait for it to happen to her anymore.
Sean had finally relented to her pleas to get out for a while, hoping this little excursion might give her a brief taste of adventure and self-sufficiency for however short a time. Maybe it would help. But Sean Bates had been her protector for a long time, through a variety of terrifying adventures, and wasn’t about to let anything happen to her now that she was home again at last.
“I think ye’ve shot us quite a supper, yer highness,” he said. “Best we get on back to Guv’ment House an’ turn them birds over ta missis Carr afore they spoil. It’s cool up here, but they’ll ripen quick enough once we return to the carriage yonder.” He gestured down slope a mile or so, but then paused suddenly, squinting.
“There are armed horsemen at the carriage,” Rebecca stated, shading her eyes. “Half a dozen? More?”
“I think eight,” Ruik said seriously, his long tail swishing behind his blue Navy kilt. “I can’t see their dress, but they… are not Marines.”
“They ain’t in Guard or marshal livery neither, Your Highness,” said the sharp-eyed gamekeeper with a hint of concern.
The Guard was a small, elite security force dedicated to the protection of the Imperial family. The marshals were the much more numerous Imperial Police. Otherwise, the Empire had always relied on its powerful navy and a small but competent corps of Marines. There was no army. Instead of building an army from scratch, however, the
