BOOK TWO
Up From The Ashes
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The room in the Plubenda Constabulary headquarters normally served as a waiting area. In a district the size of Plubbetton, that meant that it wasn’t all that large.
Today, it had been temporarily re-purposed. A long table had been brought in and mismatched chairs arrayed along it, filling most of the room. Those chairs were now occupied, and the walls behind them lined. RN personnel mostly, crowding the vastly outnumbered locals in what was most assuredly a deliberate show of intimidation.
Despite the reasonably temperate climate outside the walls, the room was sweltering. At the moment, it was also quiet.
Overhead, the vast bulk of Indomitable cast its heavy shadow upon the proceedings, its fourteen hundred foot length dominating even the sweeping vista of New Victoria’s deeper than earth normal atmosphere. Though the physical shadow wasn’t all that large, the weight of the great ship’s mass pressed down upon the islanders like a thick layer of cement.
“Right, then,” the strange commodore broke the silence.
He didn’t seem quite the standard RN type, for all that his uniform was impeccable and exactly to spec down to the last thread and gleaming button. No mistake to be made, though, he was in charge.
He’d descended upon Plubenda like a storm cloud with his hail fall of Royal Marines behind him and assumed immediate command of the island. Admiralty rule such and such, rules of whatnot — he’d rattled it off so quickly that none present had really absorbed the number or the legitimacy, if any. No matter, though. None dared contest him in the face of the wall of rifles at his back or the floating fortress that crowned his head.
“Right, then,” he repeated. Let’s have another lash at understanding this lot, shall we?” he swept his gaze evenly across the assembly.
“Which of you was it claims to have seen this attack again?”
Hendrel Entigh, having once again buried the persona of Henry Entmann, sighed resignedly. Not for the first, nor for the last time. They’d been at this for going on three hours now and he had no real hope they were nearing the end. The Commodore seemed unwilling to absorb a single thing they said, insisting upon steering any dialog back into a preconceived path of his own devising.
“None of us saw the attack, Commodore,” he explained quietly in an almost word for word repetition of his last three answers to the same question, and with no more hope that it would be assimilated. “One of the island boys saw what he recognized as Kestrel and the Westerling packet passing by some hours before the attack came, and we extrapolated what must have happened from there.”
“So you’ve said,” the commodore replied. “And yet where is this boy? Why isn’t he here? This is an official inquiry, and all relevant parties are bound by admiralty law to attend.”
“Unconscious,” Hendrel told him, relieved at least to be hearing something new. “He was seriously injured in the counter-attack.”
The commodore blinked. “Rather convenient, don’t you think?”
“See here,” Hendrel hurried to reply, before Martin had the chance to answer. “There are people dead here — my people! Yes, and injured as well. And there isn’t anything convenient about any of it!”
The commodore steepled his fingers and dipped his chin, allowing the islander’s response to wash from his shoulders without stain. “It remains that the single witness you claim to have is not here present,” he said evenly. “And that poses a problem.”
Hendrel’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?” he demanded. “Are you really attempting to lay some sort of blame...?
“Look here,” he lowered his own chin and glared. “As the duly constituted authority for this half of the island, I’ve been doing my level best to accommodate your wishes throughout these proceedings, whatever they are. But I must demand to know just exactly what it is you’re investigating here! Is it an unwarranted attack by pirates on our island, or is it us?”
The commodore stared at him for a long moment. Then he dropped his pencil and leaned forward, placing his hands on the table. “Perhaps you should be the one answering that question,” he asked. “Who do you think I should be investigating?”
“I beg your pardon?”
The commodore sat back again, taking up his pencil with a sharp swipe. “You claim without any corroboration to have known the fate of one of His Majesty’s ships before RN so much as knew that it was missing,” he addressed him, voice clipped.
“You then claim that the offending vessel —a single two hundred ton airship, massing less than a fifth of her victim— attacked your island for no apparent reason after having destroyed that ship of the line?”
He tapped his pencil’s eraser end against the notes before him. “At which point, you claim that you, with your... force of island militia... somehow managed to slaughter this formidable force to the last man without suffering a single additional casualty.”
He paused for effect. “Quite the audacious tale, that, what?”
“We’ve claimed almost none of that,” Hendrel argued. “Only that we were attacked without provocation, and that we couldn’t see how Kestrel would have allowed that to happen had she remained aloft.”
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“And what makes you think that Kestrel was even aware of this ship’s presence in the area?” the commodore demanded. “She had business of her own to attend to, what? And that business was not a patrol sweep for pirates.”
Hendrel glanced to Martin, wondering if the man was planning on taking any part in this business at all. Wondering whether he hoped for such participation or not. The man was back in his Martal Palanna guise — back in his farmer’s clothes, leaning back in his own chair, no outward trace of Marty Palin left on him. Only in his demeanor, which remained by turns amused and angry, but thus far silent, did his true identity show. And, hopefully, only to those who knew him.
“We know that something had severely damaged the ship before it arrived, and that Kestrel was the only Royal Navy craft in the area.”
“And you know this precisely how, pray tell?”
“We....” Hendrel paused. For that matter, he didn’t know, did he? “But.... Then Kestrel is safe?”
“I’d like you to tell me,” the commodore demanded. “You’re the one who reported her destroyed. You do admit that you had it reported to RN Bigsby that Kestrel had been destroyed, do you not? As though you’d seen it?”
Hendrel shook his head. “I had it reported that Kestrel was probably gone based on the evidence of a hostile airship having attacked my island unchallenged.”
“Your island,” the commodore murmured. “But it’s not precisely yours, is it? Belongs to the Crown, what?”
“Actually, Hendrel smiled coldly, relieved to not be on the defensive for once. “It’s a private island, purchased from the crown by the island’s governor and sold piecemeal to those of us who’ve agreed to settle it. We recognize the Crown’s jurisdiction, but not its ownership.”
“I see.” Another series of taps and a few jotted notes. No trace of any unease at being caught misinformed on something.
“So your report was based on supposition, and not entirely accurate.”
“As accurate as your uniform,” Marty Palin stroked his mustache, leaning comfortably against the arm of his chair.
The commodore turned full on him, leaning forward. “Are you attempting to imply something, Mister... Palanna?” he demanded, checking his notes for the name.
“Why would I have any reason to do that?” Marty smiled disarmingly. “I was merely complementing you on your fine white uniform, with all its pretty buttons and ribbons.
The commodore eyed him evilly for several seconds, to no success. Leaning back, he jotted a few more notes. This one, he decided, he wanted to know more about.
“Yes, well...”
“The report was completely accurate,” Hendrel interjected, having composed himself during the short diversion. “As far as we were able to make it. I’ve the copy in writing and on recording wire if you’d like to hear it again.”
The dark eyes turned to him, narrowing. On wire? “You seem rather more cautious than your sort usually are.”
“My sort, Sir?” Hendrel leaned forward. “And what sort is that exactly?”
The commodore harrumphed and settled back into his seat, ignoring the question.
“About this ‘pirate’ airship, now?”
“I’d still like to know about Kestrel,” Hendrel pressed.
“And what business would that be of yours?” the commodore smiled oilily. “Royal Navy affairs and all that, what?”
“I’m being accused—”
“I’m merely trying to get to the bottom of this situation,” the commodore insisted. “I’m not accusing anyone of anything. Not just yet in any case.
“Now about the airship.”
“What about it?” Hendrel sighed.
“What makes you so sure that this ship had anything at all to do with Kestrel?” the commodore asked yet again. “Its crew could as easily have simply decided that you chaps promised a bit of sport, what?”
Hendrel scrubbed his hands over his face in frustration. “Yes, I suppose it could have been any ship that crippled it,” he admitted.
“Just so!” the commodore smiled.
“But it wasn’t,” Marty’s voice was calm but assured.
“What?” the commodore turned on him again.
“It wasn’t another ship, was it?” Martin ventured. “Kestrel has gone missing, and the packet with her, and you’re here to sweep the whole mess under the rug.”
The commodore was sitting bolt upright in his chair, staring coldly at the supposed farmer.
“Why?” Martin asked him. “Why is it so important that you badger us into thinking Kestrel is still around? Our only concern is the attack on our island and the murders of our citizens.”
“And what position do you hold in the local hierarchy, Mr. Palanna?” the commodore asked him. “Exactly?”
“Mr. Palanna—” Hendrel began,
“Has no authority whatsoever,” the commodore finished for him. “He appears to be a local rancher and freighter with no official position anywhere. Damned few credentials of any sort, in fact. Damned few!” He turned back to Hendrel. “So why is he at this table?”
“Why are you just now wondering?” Martin asked.
“What I’m just now wondering,” the commodore grated, “is why I’m not having you escorted out of this room under bloody guard!”
“That would certainly be an interesting exercise,” Martin admitted, his body tensing subtly.
The commodore did not miss this. He leaned back slightly, chin lowering just a bit. “And just how accurate is your uniform, Mr. Palanna?” he asked icily.
Martin smiled his full, predatory Pale Horse smile and the commodore paled just a little. “Accurate enough,” he said. “Though not so shiny white as yours, nor with so many pretty ribbons.”
Hendrel was watching the byplay worriedly. There was communication going on between the lines there that he couldn’t read. Even more worrying, it was of a sort that he felt he should be able to.
He was remembering more and more what it had been like hanging around Marty Palin in the bad old days when they’d been young and strong and wild, fighting a secret war against a secret enemy.
There were fifteen armed marines in this room alone —some of them already shifting nervously at the tension filling the atmosphere— while the four islanders had been disarmed before being led in.
Pale Horse wouldn’t let that worry him. Did he decide to go over the table at the commodore, not any of them would stop him, nor the great ship hanging over their heads. Not in spite of the twenty years he’d been imprisoned within the quiet farmer.
Almost, Hendrel was regretting waking that man up. But then he remembered Evie and the children. He closed his eyes for a long moment and sighed again, starting to think about which chair would be the easiest to wield when Marty made his move.
From the corner of his eye, the strange commodore caught the hint of movement and the sliding of resolve into the face of the local mayor. And now he was beginning to wonder new things about this whole mess that he’d been assigned to investigate and potentially clean up.
“This is not about Kestrel,” he insisted into the dangerous silence, declaring with that statement that he wasn’t ready just yet to have the conversation the dangerous looking rancher was offering.
Time enough for that when he’d determined who these men really were.
“We are merely trying to ascertain what transpired here,” he said coolly. “Perhaps if you’d thought to take prisoners....”
“Perhaps they didn’t think they wanted to swing,” Martin told him. “I’m not sure I wouldn’t make the same decision, was it me.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” the dark eyes narrowed anew. “For future reference.
“In any case,” he placed the pencil once more on the table, shuffling his notes together into a neat pile, his mind racing beneath the calm visage he portrayed to the room. “I believe that it is time to adjourn to the scene of the crime, as it were, what?”
He motioned for the marines to open the door and stood, his gaggle of officers —the lot of whom had remained silent as mummies throughout the entire affair— following suit.
Lo and behold, there were several armored cars bearing the insignia of the Royal Marines parked just outside the door, flanking an armored sedan with commodore’s flags on the front fenders. Hendrel rolled an eye at Martin as they exited the constabulary. The latter didn’t seem to notice.