The cage cart was locked, but Mara simply twisted the hasp out of the wood it was fastened to with a splintering crack. Inside were six women in very bad shape. They had been used a lot. There were also three men tied to the padeyes fitted to the bed of the cart.
“Christ…we killed them too fast.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. “He was hitting you pretty hard..”
“I’m fine. I’m not as tough as an…a soc, but I can take a hit or two. You?”
“One of them shot me, but no real damage. What is this vest made of?”
“SynSilk.” Well, that meant nothing to me. “I don’t remember what the trauma plate is made of…some composite or other.”
Trauma plate? I looked down at the vest and remembered the plate she had handed me and that I had stuffed in the front pouch. If just the vest’s cloth could stop a snaplock ball, what could that thick and rigid plate stop?
As we had been talking, I had slung my rifle and was cutting the bindings. Mara had opened her visor, and the women looked a lot calmer after seeing another woman’s face as one of their rescuers. I opened my visor as well before helping the men and women out of the cage cart. Mara immediately began acting like some kind of doctor and began examining their injuries while I took the opportunity to get the bodies out and away from the camp. You wouldn’t want to bring the scavengers close after all.
When I was done, I returned to find Mara seated on a log with her helmet off, “Well?”
“All of them are traumatized. The men have poorly healing broken bones…the women…” she was quiet for a moment. “I think three of them are probably pregnant. One of the others was pregnant before she was captured…she’s not now. Miscarried three days ago, according to her mother…” She looked me in the eyes, “Two of them are only 11 and 12 years old. We killed them far too fast.”
As we sat there, one of the men hobbled over, “Lord…Lady…thank you…thank you…” he tried to say more but began to cry.
I took my own helmet off and patted him on the shoulder, “It’s okay. You’re safe now…Right?” I looked at Mara, who nodded. “I’m Bonchance, and this is Mara. We’re not going to hurt you.”
He nodded and gulped a few breaths, to calm himself probably, then straightened up and looked at us both, “I’m Peter, Peter Gallway; this is my family…what’s left of it.”
“An honor to meet you, sir,” I replied.
“What can we do to repay you?”
“Repay?” Mara sounded almost offended. “This was trash pickup; I like to keep where I live tidy. You don’t owe me or him anything.”
“These are your lands, Lady Mara?”
“Uh…” she looked dumbfounded.
“What is the name of your estate?”
She looked at me for help, but I just shrugged. This was amusing.
She gave me a glare, then said, “Ceedo. This is the Independent Duchy of Ceedo.”
Ceedo? Oh! I remembered the ‘CDO’ marked on so many things, including the patches on the shoulders of the clothes we were wearing.
“Your lands, so you are the Duchess?”
“She is, Master Peter,” I said before Mara could respond. “Lady Mara, Duchess Edgerton of Ceedo.” For that, I received another glare. “Master Peter, where were you taken from?”
“Our farm is to the south and east. We have been traveling for two weeks. There were two more of us…my youngest brother and my eldest son…they were slain and put in the stew pot.”
“Cannibals?” Mara gasped. “These fuckheads are cannibals too?”
Peter looked surprised at the language of her outburst. I wasn’t. She was a soldier, and every soldier I had ever met spoke like that regardless of rank if sufficiently provoked.
“Master Peter, Lady Mara is a warrior born. She speaks in the same way on occasion.”
“Ah! You command armies?”
“Not at the moment,” Mara said. “Peter, if you take that cart, can you get home safely?”
“We could get where home was. The other cart is filled with whatever they could plunder; they torched the rest.”
“Seven days southeast is deep into the Duchy of the North Star. Why didn’t Duke North Star’s border patrols intercept them coming in or, more importantly, going out?” I asked. “Those carts were not moving quickly or stealthily.”
“The Empire has been taxing the Duke and demanding troops for his war with the Southlands.”
“Southlands?” Mara asked.
“The Royal Administration of the Southern Reaches,” I explained. “They’ve been skirmishing with the Empire as long as I’ve been alive. Nothing truly severe, just border conflicts.”
“Oh no!” Peter exclaimed. “You haven’t heard?”
“For the last month, I’ve been in the northern fringes,” I replied. “Heard what?”
“I was in the town of Rice a few days before we were attacked; they have a railhead and a telegraph office. The news was that the Southlands had come up the Old East Road and struck Arrington almost a month ago. It’s war.”
Arrington was the capital of the Duchy of Lantern, the most southern domain of the Empire.
Mara looked at Peter, “So your place is gone, and everything you own?”
He nodded.
She turned to me, “Lord Bonchance.”
“Yes, milady?” I replied, and she rolled her eyes. “You can drive that cart, correct?”
“Yes?”
“Scavenge everything you can that those muppety assholes left behind and is worth scavenging. Load it on the carts along with Peter’s family and take them up the road to the old cabin just outside the Surface entrance. I’m going to take the bike and go ahead to dig some stuff out of the warehouse.”
“Up to the bunker?”
“Up to my castle!” she replied with a smile. “Master Peter, if I provide protection and work, would I become your Lady?”
He looked surprised, “What do you mean?”
“You’ll see. Bonchance, you know what to do.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Yes, milady. See you at the Surface.”
She jogged off, and I put my helmet back on, “Mara?”
“Go ahead.”
“What’s going on?”
“First, I’m going to wipe a bunch of slaver-slash-cannibals off the face of the planet. Then, I’m going to find the command bunker in Harrisburg. If a war is going on, getting close to the capital of the Empire is going to be tricky, but if an independent Duchy offers assistance, maybe a diplomatic mission can slip in.”
“But first, that independent Duchy has to exist,” I was getting it now.
“Exactly.”
“So a Duchy with a population of…eleven?”
“I have to start somewhere.”
After clearing the worst stuff off the carts, one of Peter’s sons, Cal, who wasn’t as battered as his father or his older brother John, took the lead on driving the oxen, pulling the cage cart. While I drove the other cart. I hadn’t driven a cart in a while, but it came back to me fairly quickly, and eventually, we found the road uphill to the ridge.
Mara had obviously been clearing out the broken branches and logs that we had been avoiding on our trip down, so the only real issue was navigating in the moonlight. With the helmet visor, I was fine, so I told Cal to follow right behind me and not to worry. Peter sat next to me on the bench, “So what is your Duchy like?”
“Unusual, like the Duchess. There will be a lot to explain, I’m certain, and she will want to think about some things…”
“Absolutely,” came through my head, “I need to think about some things…On the other stuff, first, I have the drone above you, and it doesn’t look like anybody else is nearby. At your current rate of travel, you should be up here in an hour.”
“So what should I tell Peter?” I said quietly.
“Nothing. Stall, and I’ll do the talking.”
“Yes, milady.”
“I’ll get you for that.”
At last, we reached the crest and the old cabin. Mara was standing next to a fabric tent that slightly shimmered and faded into the background. There was also a metal table and a stack of opened meals, along with a water jug. She was not wearing her helmet or vest.
“Lord Bonchance, show them how the meals work. I’m going to see what I can do about their injuries. I’m no Doc, but I have some training.”
“Yes, milady.”
“One of the women, Fran, Peter’s wife, looked at me, “You are her bondsman?”
“Yes….Yes, I am,” I replied. I suppose I was now.
“She is a good woman.”
“I hope so.”
“Where is her Lord, the Duke?”
Smiling, I looked at Mara as she was cleaning and sealing up some nasty-looking whip marks on John, “She has no Lord, and she needs no Duke. This Duchy is hers, and hers alone.”
Fran just stared at Mara, “How?”
All I could do was shrug, “That’s her story to tell; I would never be so rude to tell tales on my Lady. Now, would you like some Beef Stew?”
After they had been fed and Mara had treated as much of their injuries as possible, she had disappeared back inside the bunker while I placed bedding in the tent for her new subjects.
“Don’t want them inside?” I had asked in passing.
“Not until it’s been safed. Now that it’s powered up, parts can be dangerous if you don’t have permission. You do.”
She finally returned, pushing a cart with two large boxes on it.
“What are those?” I asked as she removed four spindly metal contraptions and four more sturdy-looking devices.
“Perimeter defense system, think of them as very fast firing rifles, with senses like the inside of your helmet visor or the tacti-shades…uh, tactical vision device, that I gave you inside,” as she spoke she had finished setting up one of the spindly looking units and was now connecting with a cable to a sturdy unit before placing the sturdy unit behind some brush by the edge of the road.
After about half an hour, she had all four set up on the most likely approaches. When she was done, she looked at me. The Galway family were all asleep by now. “Even though this body doesn’t sweat or get thirsty, I still feel like I need a shower and a beer.”
“Is there any beer here?” I asked.
She shook her head, “And it wouldn’t affect me either. I still do need to cool down, though, and you must be exhausted.”
Nodding, I had to agree, “Now that all the excitement’s done.”
“Come on, Lord Bonchance, time for a nap.”
“Yes, milady.”
_____________________________________________________
Waking up, I felt a lot better and took a shower, scrubbing away the grime. On the chair next to my bunk were a couple more jumpsuits; these had tapes with the same ‘R-34’ on the left breast side that Mara had, but with nothing on the right. There were also some sets of underclothes and some more socks. I got dressed and headed into the kitchen, where Mara was holding one of those flat screens in her hand.
“Good morning, milady.”
“When are you going to stop that?”
“When it stops amusing me.”
She sighed, “So now I need to know everything about the politics of the Empire and the…Southlands?”
I nodded.
“And you need to know everything about as much of the equipment as possible…but first, we have my subjects to deal with, Lord Bonchance.”
“After you, Duchess.”
We headed into the elevator and rode up to SURFACE. In the large open area between all the covered shapes were a few more crates.
“What’s in those?”
“Tools. We need to build a place for the Galway household.
“Are we going to have to use the oxen to pull the trees up to here?”
“Oh hell no…not when we have an Ape..” she walked over to a large covered item. Unfastening the straps at the bottom, she pulled it off, revealing a hunched-over, nine-foot-tall, metal man-like skeleton. In the center of the torso was a seat with straps. Reaching up, Mara grabbed a bar fitted just under the thing’s ‘chin’ and pulled herself up into the seat. Then she began fastening the straps before slipping her helmet on.
“Stand clear…”
I stepped away as the thing shuddered, and the stand it was on lowered to the floor. Walking on the knuckles of its three-fingered ‘hands’ and crouching its legs, it made its way to the entrance door, which slid open as it approached.
“Roll the tool crates outside. I already unsealed them.”
As she moved away, I pushed at one of the crates. There was a moment of hesitation, and it began moving forward easily as long as I kept pushing. The moment I stopped, it did, too, and it then took a moment to respond to my pushing again. The Galways were staring in shock at the mechanical monster that Mara was using as it moved outside. Time for a distraction, “Excuse me! Master Peter, can I get some assistance?”
He looked at me pushing, and then back at Mara, “What is that?”
“Uh, the Duchess calls it an…Ape. She will explain it later. First, we need to get the other crate out from inside.”
“What are they?”
“Tools to build your new home.”
He looked shocked, “Are you a carpenter?”
This was a pleasure to say, “I have been, and a very good one. I was trained in all the engineering crafts at the Imperial Academy. Oh, how are you feeling now?”
“A lot better, Lord Bonchance. The Duchess is an excellent doctor,” he lifted his arm, which had been splinted. “She gave me some medicine, told me this would feel strange, and straightened out the break.”
“Strange?”
It was broken two days ago, and the pain was horrible. Now it’s just a tingling ache even when she pulled on it. Then she drained the sores on Cal’s back and painted them with some kind of medicine, and they stopped weeping.
There was a faint grinding crash in the distance, and I heard Mara say, “Oh! I safed the security systems so that you can take them inside. They can have showers, and I pulled out a stack of coveralls in a few sizes in the second bunk room. There are also bags to cover the splints and such.”
I looked at Peter, “Has your family finished their breakfasts?”
He nodded.
“Gather them up. We are going into the Duchess’s home so you can get cleaned up and get some new clothes.”
“Like yours? Is that the Duchy’s colors?”
Looking down at the black coveralls, I shrugged, “These are day-to-day wear. Not fancy.”
He nodded and walked over to his wife. Soon, I was ferrying the first three down to M2, Telling them to wait in the kitchen until I got the others. By the time I had finished, the littlest girl, Cal’s youngest daughter Evelyn, was opening cabinets and drawers. I told the men to wait and showed the women the gang shower and how to use it, along with where the bottles of soap were. Mara had left thin waterproof bags made of that Old World plastic and a spool of some sort of tape, so they were able to keep the bandages dry.
I showed Fran where the clean coveralls were and returned to the kitchen.
“What is this place?”
“Lady Mara’s estate.”
“These furnishings, all these items…this is Old World, isn’t it?”
“It is. Lady Mara will have to explain, though.”
Eventually, the women finished, and the men could take their turn. Evelyn had had to have the cuff and sleeves rolled up on one of the smallest sets of coveralls, but she seemed quite happy with them anyway. Fran looked at me as I sat down at the table and enjoyed a cup of ‘bug juice’, as Mara called the orange liquid.
“Lord Bonchance,” she began.
“You really don’t need to call me Lord in an informal situation like this…Hey you, will work,” I said with a smile.
“What is this place?”
“As I told your husband, think of this as Mara’s estate. Yes, it’s Old World, and she will need to explain because, in some ways, I am not sure..”
The men finished up and came out, also in clean coveralls, so I called Mara, “They’re all clean and dressed.”
“Bring them up; I have the first logs ready.”
After we were all on the surface, I saw Mara in the Ape carving up a log into rough planks with a saw mounted on one of its arms. She stopped after she finished the cut and shut down the machine before unstrapping and climbing down.
“What is that thing?” John asked.
“That’s an Ape…it’s a combat engineering rig. It’s pretty handy for this kind of thing,” she gestured at the stack of logs and planks. “So, Mister Galway, is your family doing better now?”
Peter nodded, “Lady Mara, you’ve been so generous.”
Mara made a shooing motion with her hand, “It’s all good. You needed help; I could give it. Now before we get to building something that’s not as blatantly Old World as my ‘Estate’,” she looked at me. “You want answers, okay. I can give them.”