Apocalyptic Visions Super Boxset (193 page)

***

The air had a chill to it, even in the summer, but the view of the shoreline and land from the boat made the cold worth the trip. Mountains stretched into the sky, preceded by open fields and the magnificent blue-and-white glaciers that shimmered in the sunlight.

Dean rubbed his gloved hands together, the stitches in the palm starting to separate, letting some of the cool air inside. He watched the ship pull into dock, maneuvering around the chunks of ice that floated in the bay year round. In just a few short months, the entire port would be inaccessible. While Dean’s men started the unloading of the provisions, he took a moment to savor the sight.

The harbormaster worked the port alone, seeing as the only ones who used it frequently were the dozen fishermen brave enough to chance the waters and the rough environment that was the Alaskan wilderness. What the terrain held in beauty, it delivered in brutality twice as hard. It wasn’t an easy life for the men and women who chose to live up here, but the fisheries were vital not just to their trade with the clans in the wastelands, but also to their future partnership with Australia and Brazil.

“Governor, it’s good to see you again, sir.” Thomas’s belly almost poked out from under the front of his shirt. The man’s girth was as wide as his mouth, from which he never had a shortage of words to bend your ear. “I wish you had sent word. We would have brought out the fine china.” He slapped Dean on the back so hard it nearly knocked him over, and his gut jiggled when he laughed.

“I’m sure the regular silverware will be just fine.” Dean rotated his shoulder where Tom had smacked him, and the two started the walk to his log cabin just off the shore. “When was the last check-in you had with the fisheries up the coast?”

Tom rubbed the flabby flesh under his neck and tried to catch his breath as they continued their walk. “I believe we had a correspondence from them last week. Usually comes every Thursday. We should be getting this week’s letter any day now. Nate Stone’s boy usually comes down with any news and an empty basket to restock on any supplies they might need.”

If the Russians had horses, then a week would have given them plenty of time to march down through the wilderness and into his region. “I’ll need to go up and see them immediately. Make sure everything’s running smoothly.”

“Of course.” Tom stopped at the door, blocking Dean from entering. “Is there something going on, Governor?”

“I just want to make sure everything’s in order for the new trade agreements my brothers are setting up. Our seafood here will play an important role in that.” Dean smiled but then watched Tom’s eyes hover to the unit of soldiers Dean had brought with him.

“Right,” Tom said, stepping inside.

It took Dean’s men less than an hour to prepare for the trip north. They would have sailed, but the waters were too dangerous for a captain that didn’t know the area, and he didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.

It was a full day’s ride, and Dean and his forty men saw the outskirts of the village just before sunset. But the closer they moved to the village, the more Dean realized something was wrong. The nets around the fishing nurseries had been destroyed, and what cabins the villagers had managed to construct had their doors kicked in and their belongings flung outside.

Dean reached for the rifle in his satchel and quickly dismounted the horse, his men following his lead without a single word. They spread out in six-man teams, scouring the small structures, but each unit of men that searched the houses found nothing.

They couldn’t have just vanished into thin air. For a moment, Dean let himself believe that they were all out on their ships or went out into the forests to search for food or timber. A storm could have done this, but when one of Dean’s lieutenants shouted from the back, he could hear it in the man’s voice that his hopes were off track.

“I found them, sir.” The lieutenant scrunched his face in an effort to keep his lunch from coming up but ultimately lost the battle as it spilled onto the frosty earth.

The bodies in the pile were mangled and charred, stacked on top of one another carelessly. The wind had blown the stench of the bodies north, which prevented Dean and his men from smelling the carnage on their travels from the south. Tracks of hooves and boots headed southwest into the woods. Dean pressed his fingers into the imprinted snow; they weren’t older than a day. “Lieutenant!”

“Yes, Governor.” The man had wiped his mouth and stumbled back over, doing his best to avoid having to look at the bodies once more.

“I want the dead buried. Identify them if you can and take a unit of six men back to the harbormaster to tell him what’s happened, then I want you to scout farther north to check on the remaining fisheries.” Dean rose, his eyes scanning the tree line in the distance. “It was a small party, no more than twenty men, most likely to scout for a good position to set up a forward operating base.”

The more Dean thought about it, the more he believed that it truly was the Russians, and the longer that thought lingered, the more he worried about his wife back home and his brothers abroad. If this was war, he’d need all of them safe back home.

The combined strength of Lance’s men and the Australians arrived at Sydney’s port lighter than they’d left. Only one of Danny’s ships had survived the retreat with half of the crew members on board alive. Even the Sani limped into port after the wrath of the Chinese fleet. It’d been a while since she’d seen any warring, and the seas refused to cooperate on the return trip, as they usually did in such moments of danger.

Lance had studied the maps he’d stolen from the Chinese camp the entire trip back, but something didn’t make sense. After the Island Wars, the sanctions landed against the Chinese required the destruction of their fleet, along with most of their armory. But with the number of ships that the map suggested, and the number of places where they’d kept them hidden, it didn’t match up.

Even if the Chinese had started rebuilding the day after the treaties were signed, it still wouldn’t have given them enough time to do what the map suggested. And the resources involved in designing iron ships were massive. Which meant the Chinese had help.

Canice made her way up the stairs and joined Lance at the map. She traced her fingertips over the weathered parchment and shook her head. “I’ve got the wounded ready for transport once we dock. Once they’re clear, I’ll have the rest of the crew start reloading provisions.”

“We’ll have to negotiate with the Aussies on what they can spare in terms of ammo. Trade the cattle if you have to.” Lance looked to the horizon, where he felt the churn of the warships closing in on them. He smelled the lead and salt water, and the blood that inevitably followed. He smacked the wheel and cursed. “I told my brother we needed to keep a closer eye on them.” Lance never understood or had time for diplomacy; those were Dean’s affairs, and the primary reason he turned down the governorship of the northwest.

“You need to contact Jason,” Canice said. “If this is as bad as we think, then he could be in trouble. It’s no secret the Chinese have huddled close with Brazil ever since the treaties were signed after the Island Wars.”

Lance shook his head. “It’ll take at least a week for the fleet to gather, and that’s if Jason is still in the southwest.” While the Australians had a navy of their own, Lance knew their military had softened during the peace after the Island Wars.

“You know what trading the cattle will do back home?” Canice kept her voice low. “We lose that now, and there’s no guarantee when the Australians will be able to deliver again if the Chinese decide to attack.”

“The cattle won’t matter if the Chinese decide to turn their sights on us. Those were warships, Canice. We don’t have a lot of options right now.” The two could argue until they were blue in the face, but it was one of the reasons Lance worked with her. He needed someone to challenge him, let him know when he was wrong. But despite her protest, he knew he was right this time.

Once on the docks, Lance ran his hand across the exposed hull of the ship where the crew was busy repairing some of the damage. He felt the rough metal, the dents and grooves a life at sea had given her. Each of those blemishes was hard earned, and behind them memories of what was possible.

“Captain Mars?” The voice came from a small messenger boy clustered between the growing crowds at the docks. The boy wiggled his way through and extended a piece of parchment. “The message read Urgent, so I came as soon as I saw your ship in the bay.”

The seal on the paper was Dean’s, and Lance took it warily, the boy waiting for his reply. He scanned the words, the news of Fred, and Jason’s trip to Brazil. He reread the line of Fred’s death a half dozen times before it finally sank in. He crunched the paper up, his heart rate jacked.

“Captain Mars?” The messenger boy’s voice had a hint of fear. “Do you have a reply?”

Lance slammed his fist into the side of the ship, the powerful blow offering nothing more than a dull thud against the thick steel. The hit caused two of his knuckles to bloody. He uncurled his fist and unrumpled the paper inside. When he turned, the boy jolted backward. “Take me to the communication post.”

The boy nodded with his mouth hanging loosely and quickly turned on his heel, maneuvering through the crowded docks, where Lance ran into Danny. The Aussie’s eyes were weary, and his shoulders sagged. The loss of so many of his men knocked the wind out of him. Lance grabbed his arm and pulled him along. “You need to get the military officials together now and start making preparations. The Chinese may have turned back, but you can bet they’ve already started maneuvering their main fleet. Now that they don’t have the element of surprise, they’ll be looking to strike quickly. We need to be ready.”

Danny stopped, dragging Lance with him. “Lance, most of our fleet is escorting a shipment of supplies from the Chilean coast. We won’t be able to withstand an attack if the Chinese come.”

Lance looked dumbfounded. “Why would you have your fleet escorting merchant ships?”

“We’ve been having a lot of raids happen in the southern Pacific routes. Pirates, marauders. We were losing too much cargo. President Ruiz suggested an armed escort to ensure the deliveries arrived without incident.”

The dots started to connect. “Ruiz suggested it?” The Brazilians had wealth and the best engineers in the world living within their borders. If the Brazilians shared any of their technology in helping build the Chinese ships, then they could be in over their heads. And that meant Jason was in the heart of the lion’s den.

***

The dozens of piles of scrolls stacked around Delun Ren’s desk looked as though they had imprisoned him in paper. Candlelight flickered inside the flapping walls of the tent where Delun sat hunched over a new parchment, writing. He dipped his pen in the black ink and carefully scratched the tip of the pen against the paper until he reached the end of the page, completing his journal for the day.

Delun set the parchment aside, letting the ink dry, and stroked the thin wisps of a beard that sprouted from his chin. His jet-black hair was streaked with grey, offering the only signs of his age. His skin was tanned and still tight across his face, showing no wrinkles or blemishes.

The front side of Delun’s tent flapped open, and his chamber’s silence was broken briefly from the noise of the men in camp. The soldier who entered removed his helmet and bent to his knee, where he waited for Delun to speak. “What news do you bring, Hong?”

Hong had the same taut face as Delun’s, but more broad and flat, with nothing but a small point that was his nose jutting from his face. The man was short but built like an ox, with the tenacity of a bull. Delun had seen the sword master take on a dozen men at a time and win. “My Emperor, we have received word from our fleet south of the Dead Island. Three ships located the fleet; we managed to sink one of them.”

The news wasn’t unexpected. With their assets growing, it was simply a matter of time before they were found out, and with Delun’s fleet finally finished, he wasn’t worried. “The other ships, do we know where they were from?”

“One flew the colors of the Australian Navy, the second was North American.”

“So, the old alliances are still alive.” Delun walked to one of the piles of scrolls and picked one from the top. He unrolled it, reading the marks and symbols of his people’s language. There had only been a handful of scribes left in all of China after the Island Wars. Delun had the privilege of learning from one of them as a child, and so began his thirst for knowledge.

Books and scrolls were of little concern to most people, who were more interested in putting a bowl of food in their bellies every day than worrying about what some piece of paper written by a man long dead hundreds of years ago said.

Delun knew that most books had been lost in the Great War that happened a generation before he was even born, but throughout the years, he’d collected as many books as he could get his hands on. Anywhere he traveled, if he found something that could be read, no matter what it was, he took it. And now, with the power of his people behind him and with the aid of his army and navy, he’d begun the process of offering those works to the people. He didn’t just want to build an empire; he wanted to educate his people, have them learn the value of knowledge, as he did. This was to be the dawn of a new era. But first, there was the matter of war. “Send a message to the American governors. Tell them we wish for no conflict between our two countries.”

“The Russians will be making their move soon,” Hong said.

“Exactly. All we have to do is play coy with the Americans until they realize it’s too late. No doubt the ship’s captain has already sent word to his people, and with one of the American governors in Brazil, they will be too slow to react. The only fallout we have to worry about is with the Australians.” Who Delun knew lacked their full naval strength. Delun would storm the southern islands and retake what should have belonged to the Chinese a decade ago.

“Emperor,” Hong began, struggling to find the words, “there is more news that we received.”

It went against Hong’s nature to be timid, and the fact that the seasoned warrior was apprehensive was concerning. “Tell me.”

“The officer camp at the island where our men were stationed was raided, no doubt scouting to try and obtain information. During the raid, the enemy managed to steal one of our strategic maps.” Hong kept his head bowed the entire story, afraid of looking his emperor in the eye to tell him such news.

Delun kept his immediate thoughts to himself for a moment, shielding Hong from his emotions. Everything Delun experienced, all of his decisions and choices, they trickled down to his people, and he refused to let fear and doubt seep into the roots that held him in power. “How long have they been in possession of the map?”

“Less than a day,” Hong answered, still keeping his eyes on the floor. “The admirals sent word the moment it was taken.”

Still not enough time for the news to reach the American governors. “Contact Rodion, inform him about the Americans’ newfound knowledge, and tell our admirals our home fleet will rendezvous with them at the blade’s edge. The time for war is upon us.”

“As you will, Emperor.” Hong gave another deep bow and swiftly left.

Deceit was only effective as long as the reach of your arms. Once that façade had been lifted, your world was susceptible to the follies of those who did not share the same vision. However, Delun had long outgrown the deception that he offered to the west: years of dodging and darting the inspections and trade restrictions the Australians and Americans had set upon them, establishing new alliances, and rebuilding the infrastructure for his people after the devastating loss in the Island Wars that had crippled his nation so much.

It was a foolish endeavor of his predecessors all those years ago to try and take the southern islands and then challenge the west. They spread themselves too thin, unprepared for the family of war that had sprouted from the Americas. The Mars family. He’d studied and learned as much as he could about them. Even now, he knew they would be the final test of his military’s strength and his own diplomatic efforts once the war was over.

Delun walked over to a particular set of books, sealed inside a glass case. He opened the door gently, selecting the very first book in the row, handling the tome like it was a child. The cover had completely worn off, leaving nothing but faded blotches of where the lettering and illustration used to lie, and the pages were brittle and warped. He opened the book and gently ran his fingers over the title, which was barely visible in the faded letters. Sun Tzu: The Art of War.

It was this that would give Delun and his commanders their victory. Everything he learned within this book had allowed him to build the empire he firmly grasped. He’d built it through deception and treachery, and as such had laid traps for his enemies. All warfare is based on deception. And now it was time for the offensive.