“Sir?”

“Listen carefully, Dar,” his father said, leaning forward. “You were just part of an overall effort at retaking the stead, got it?” When Dar nodded, he continued. “You were a very minor part of the assault, and you don’t know much more than what your part was supposed to be, got it? Don’t try to make anything up, don’t embellish. You don’t know anything beyond your personal task, which was to get into the house and release the hostages. If you don’t say anything else, you won’t have anything else to keep track of.”

“What if he asks me about what happened inside?”

“Tell him,” Marty smiled. “Just tell the truth. With a few minor exceptions. Don’t, whatever you do, mention anything about Group. Got it?”

Dar snorted. “That won’t be hard,” he said. I don’t know anything about Group.”

“Just don’t even mention it,” Marty reiterated. “Nothing. Nothing about Black Sun or any of the other names Av told you. Nothing about Av or me at all. You don’t know what part, if any, we played. You were just supposed to sneak in through the manure pit and get into the house. Got it?”

“Got i—”

He was interrupted by his mother’s entrance into the room, sweeping in before a very erect, impeccably dressed man who strode into the room, cap clamped tightly beneath his arm, only to bring up short with a scowl at sight of Marty Palin rising up from the chair beside the bed.

“You!” he said.

“Me,” Marty smiled.

“And this is—?” gesturing to the young man in the bed.

“My son.”

Wesley-Smythe scowled the deeper, looking back and forth between man and boy, noting the resemblance. “And you didn’t think it worth mentioning at the inquest that it had been your son who’d seen the supposed air battle?” he asked dryly.

“Air battle?” Marty seemed genuinely confused. “Who said anything about anybody seeing an air battle?”

“Right!” the commodore snapped, turning to the bed. “And who might you be, young man?” he asked mock brightly.

Dar glanced towards his father for the scantest moment before turning his eyes back to the tall man in the shining white linen. “Darnan Palanna, Sir,” he said quietly.

“And how old are you, young Mister Palanna?”

Dar was confused. “Sir?”

“How old are you?” the commodore repeated. “Simple enough question, what?”

“Er... eighteen, Sir,” Dar replied.

“Eighteen.” Wesley-Smythe turned to the elder Palin. “Eighteen.”

Marty’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What are you trying to get at?” he asked, tensing, noting absently how the marines in the hallway moved in response.

But Wesley-Smythe ignored him, turning back to Dar. “And how many of those eighteen years, young sonny-me-lad,” he asked dryly, “did you spend training for the blade?”

Dar looked over at his father, who nodded. “Since I was eight, Sir.”

Wesley-Smythe found himself taken somewhat a-back. He’d not expected to receive a straight answer, and certainly not that straight answer. He turned to the father, eyebrow arching.

“Not me,” Marty told him.

“Who then?” back to Dar.

Another nod from his father. “My... grandfather.” Dar said quietly.

Back to the father. “Not my father,” Marty told him. “My father-in-law.”

Wesley-Smythe cleared his throat softly. “I see,” he said. “Quite the family you have there, Mister Palanna,” he observed. “And where might this stalwart be found?”

Marty shrugged.

Wesley-Smythe turned back to the boy, who repeated his father’s gesture, although somewhat more stiffly.

“I see,” Wesley-Smythe repeated softly. Turning to the elder Palanna, he inclined his head, gesturing to the door. “Mister Palanna, if you don’t mind?”

“Actually,” Marty started, “I do.”

“Sergeant?” Wesley-Smythe didn’t raise his voice.

A pair of royal marines hustled into the room, rifles held at port arms. “I’m afraid I must insist,” the commodore said around them.

Marty raised an eyebrow, as if to say, only two?

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“I’ll be fine, Pop,” Dar said before his father could do more than note relative positions and possible trajectories. “What’s he gonna do, eat me?”

Wesley-Smythe stiffened at the barb, but did not deign to turn to the boy. He watched the elder Palanna being ushered out and waited for the door to close before turning back towards the bed. “And now, young sir,” he pasted a smile across his angular face. “Suppose you regale me with the tale of how you bested a seasoned swordsman in a small room?”

“Right, then,” Wesley-Smythe growled to himself, striding out into the stead yard. His mood was foul and the day still not done. What’s more, he expected things to get worse before they got better.

The debrief of the wounded youth had proved entirely unsatisfying. Oh, the lad had seemed forthcoming enough concerning his so-called duel, difficult as the circumstances of that event had been to believe.

Nor could he really doubt the lad’s story on that account. He’d enough time behind a blade to ascertain that the lad did indeed know at least what he was talking about. And the legion of cuts he bore.... He wanted to view Heinemann’s body one more time to read the other end of that dance.

No, he told himself, the trouble did not lay in the story of the lad’s bout with the late Fregattenkapitän. The trouble lay in that the lad had seemed singularly ignorant of anything not involving that particular room. As though the entirety of the action had been divorced in some way from his consciousness.

The two versions of the boy didn’t really match, but he hadn’t been able to shake him from them in the hour he’d managed before the lad’s mother had breached the room in the company of the local doctor and suggested sternly that the interview was over.

He could, he supposed, have ignored them and carried on. The purview of his orders included nearly unlimited freedom of action so long as he maintained a low profile. On the other hand, the deeper he delved into this mess, the deeper his confusion grew, and he could no longer say exactly what sorts of gyrations the profile of this fiasco might take were he to press overmuch. He must proceed carefully here, both for his own sake and the sakes of those to whom he answered.

He was already stifling an ungentlemanly curse when he espied the subaltern racing across the dusty yard towards him. He bit down on the angry shout he felt rise alongside the aforementioned curse. What in hell was the lad thinking breaking decorum like that?

The young leftenant skidded to a halt immediately before him, snapping a picture perfect salute even as he snapped to attention, the stomp of his foot raising yet more dust.

Wesley-Smythe regarded him morosely as the cloud of dust the boy had dragged in his wake settled over them both. Even then, he looked down to observe the fresh coat of island soil his dress whites now wore before once more regarding the subaltern. His return salute was every bit as perfect, but executed much more deliberately.

“I trust that you—?” he began.

Without allowing the commodore to finish, the subaltern thrust a large manila envelope towards him. “Begging the Commodore’s pardon, Sir,” he panted. “But this is just in from RNAS Bigsby!” He snapped back to attention, eyes front.

Wesley Smythe regarded the thick envelope without a twitch. Can’t be anything good, of course, he thought to himself. The question was how bad was it?

“Very well, Leftenant,” he said. “That will be all.”

“Begging the Commodore’s pardon, Sir,” the Leftenant wheezed. “But I was ordered to await his reply.”

“Ordered?” Wesley-Smythe demanded, brow rising. “By whom, pray tell?”

“Captain Aldridge, Sir,” the leftenant said “Relayed from Admiral Smedley, Sir.”

Smedley? What in hell was Smedley doing issuing orders to him? Who did he think he was?

“I see,” his voice hadn’t raised, nor given away any emotion but calm. That not for the lesser grades, what?

He opened the manila slowly, withdrawing its contents as though they were poisoned. His face paled as he read. Of all the...! Looking to the subaltern, he grated, “you’re sure of this?” he wasn’t quite able to completely unclench his jaw.

“Quite sure, Sir,” the leftenant replied. “Sparks decoded it twice and CCO Ballistar as well, Sir.”

“Very well, Leftenant,” he sighed. “Convey my regards to Admiral Smedley and inform him that I’ve received the communiqué and will alter my plans accordingly.”

“Sir?”

“Just so, Leftenant. That is my reply.”

“Bu—” the subaltern stammered. Then, “yes Sir! Very good Sir!” Another salute and he was pelting across the yard in the other direction.

Wesley Smythe glared up at the red airship, jaw clenching anew. Prize of war indeed! His glare shifted back to the flimsies stuffing the envelope. ‘Taken in an act of aggression. Prize crew put aboard. Taken in tow behind CMV Abigail. Towed to safe harbor. Prize claim submitted this fourteenth day of.....’

What manner of nonsense was this? Safe port? And what in hell had they towed her behind? She wasn’t a sailing vessel, and this was a bloody floating island, not the Atlantic bleeding ocean! She would have to have been taken in tow by something both heavy and slow enough to move her mass without tearing either her or itself apart. That meant an airship.

He hadn’t seen an indigenous airship anywhere on the island, nor had his patrols reported any such. Nor had the skies anywhere nearby contained anything large enough to take a three hundred foot commerce raider under tow.

CMV Abigail? And what sort of designation was ‘CMV,’ anyway?

And the name on the claim? The bloody mayor! Cheeky bastard! He switched his glare to the stead house, his eyes narrowing to merest slits. The nerve of the bugger!

But then one eyebrow slowly raised and his chin lowered as he came to a realization. Not cheek nor nerve was the issue here, he decided.

Back to Katzbalger, squatting over the forest of shattered stakes filling the yard. Knowledge was the issue. This chap Entigh had got the claim into the Admiralty Court, all its i’s dotted, its t’s crossed, and in a manner acceptable to the clerks in something under ten hours. From eleven hundred miles distant.

Was no one on this bloody island who they seemed?

“Right, then!” he straightened abruptly, turning to bring himself to squarely face the front gate and the small Royal Marine contingent gathered there.

“Colour Sergeant!” he bellowed in a voice which would have done any drill sergeant in the army proud.

The colour sergeant was there before him even as the echo of his voice was dying, snapping to attention amid his own dust cloud, foot stamping. “Sah!”

“I want a guard on that blasted ship this instant, Colour,” Wesley-Smythe ordered. “But do not board. And lock this bloody place down! Until further orders, this ranch stead is property of the Crown!”

“Sah!” Another salute and the colour sergeant was gone, shouting orders to those of his men present and ordering his radioman to bring more marines down from Indomitable to finish securing the property.

Wesley-Smythe stood there rigidly for another long hundred count, glaring to no particular end. Then, “Right!”

He about faced and reentered the house, moving to the stead’s office where he’d already set up his temporary command. “Corporal,” he ordered as he passed the small desk they’d placed in the hallway for the orderly’s use.

“Sah!” the corporal measured himself before the late Roland Pascal’s desk as Wesley-Smythe seated himself behind it, stamping his off foot and throwing a salute sharp enough to have cut mild steel. Thankfully, he was not accompanied by a dust cloud.

“I’ll want every soul who took part in the counter-attack on this pest hole in that saloon within the hour,” Wesley-Smythe ordered curtly. “And I’ll have them in here one at a time for debrief. Every manjack of them, Corporal.”

“Sah!” the corporal repeated his salute, about faced and moved to comply with the new orders.