Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion (31 page)

A long oval table hosted eleven persons in garb ranging from formal dress to military tunics to the clothes of farmers. Yet the way they sat formal and rigid—their icy stares at the newcomer—the confidence in their eyes—Trevor knew they may wear different dress, but all were cut from the same cloth.

Alexander turned to Trevor and told him, “Welcome to Camelot.”

No trumpets. No applause. No cheers.

Stares. Judging eyes. One tapped his thumb on a table top. Another absently stroked her hair.

They waited for Trevor to speak. He turned first to Alexander who remained by his side. Armand moved to one wall and casually leaned with a smirk that suggested he enjoyed the moment of awkwardness.

“English,” Alexander told him. “English is the language we use in groups.”

“Do you know why?” Armand asked but he answered his own question: “Because for years in most of our countries we got to know English as a second language so that we could sell you cars and wine and take money from your annoying tourists every summer.”

It was Jorgie who spoke to the group first, ignoring Armand’s venom.

“Hello!” And he waved with his arm that did not clutch Bunny. “This is a really neat castle you have here. Is it really the Camelot castle from the days of King Arthur?”

Trevor nearly did not recognize his son’s voice, not with all the enthusiasm and ordinary-kid awe in his tone. Such things did not come from JB’s lips. In an instant, Trevor understood that his boy—his nine year old son—had taken the lead in breaking the ice.

And it worked.

“Um, well, no,” answered an elderly man with a white beard wearing a sport jacket. “That was in England, and no one really knows exactly where. Besides, we have many of these places. Camelot is no longer one castle or building, but an idea.”

“My name is Jorgie,” the boy spoke directly to this man with the white beard and balding head. “What is yours?”

Alexander answered for the man, “You are addressing Sir Hadwin. He represents the survivors in England. The southern stretch of the British Isles, that is.”

“I thought that would have been you,” Trevor said to Alexander.

A young woman—perhaps mid-twenties—with short red hair, freckles, and fiery green eyes answered with—surprising for her looks—a gentleness in her voice, “Alexander did represent that territory at one time, but we elected him to lead.”

Alexander provided a verbal nameplate for the speaker: “Lady Tarah, of—”

Trevor cut Alexander off with a smile, “Ireland, of course.”

Alexander nodded and returned the smile, albeit not so heartily.

One of the other men at the table—a strong-looking fellow with shoulder-length blond hair—broke up the cordial conversation. “Where are the giant flying air ships? Where are your panzer brigades and jet air craft? I see only a man and a boy here. This is not what we expected.”

Alexander: “Sir Tobias, representing a confederation of clans in Austria and refugees from the Czech Republic.”

Trevor met the man’s glaring eyes and replied, “Things changed drastically for us last summer. We had—well—the enemy has hit us with surprising strength. All of our resources are committed to the battle.”

“So what are you saying?”

Armand, from his position along the wall, gave that answer, “It means this is all we get, a father and his son. We have been waiting around for the Americans all this time and they have made us more empty promises.”

“That’s not fair,” a defense came from a middle aged athletic-looking woman with a muscular build and deep voice. “We have been receiving supplies from the Americans for several years as well as technical advisors and intelligence.”

“Lady Verena,” Alexander whispered. “Of Switzerland.”

Armand protested, “I have been saying for years that we should not wait for them. That we should have been doing more. But you kept telling me to wait. Well what has it gotten us? Now we cannot fight back like we could have last year. Wasted time!”

One of the women at the table—a lovely girl with shiny black hair that stretched all the way down to her waist—waved for Armand to approach her. He did and as she spoke quietly to him she stroked his arm in a gesture of familiarity and warmth. He nodded his head, as if relenting in some fashion, then returned to his position against the wall.

Trevor asked Alexander, “What is he talking about?”

“Of course, you do not know,” Alexander answered. “Most of our radios had to be shut down and apparently you were—um—dead last year.”

A stocky man with a complexion that suggested a hint of Caribbean in his background offered an explanation, “Last year the group which calls themselves The Order launched a major offensive against our villages in central Europe. They, and the Duass, wiped out an armored division we had been building for years. Many of the spare parts and fuel you sent us were destroyed in this offensive.”

“That is Sir Jef, representing Belgium and survivors in parts of the lowlands.”

A young man—maybe twenty-one at best—but with the build of a football player, chimed in, “Those tanks were planned to be a critical part of the offensive we were supposed to launch when you sent one of those air ships over here. We had an opportunity to take back areas of the continent from the enemy, but we were told to wait for your reinforcements.”

“Lukas is correct,” broke in a tall man of middle age with a shaved head, “the Americans made promises and we waited—for what?”

Armand jumped, “Same old thing. Wait around to see what the Americans want to do. I say we do not need them. We never have.” A disapproving glance from the woman with the long black hair stopped Armand’s rant. He seemed to slump against the wall as if trying to disappear.

Trevor asked, “What happened?”

“They hit us very hard,” the man with the shaved head explained in an accent Trevor identified as Scandinavian, perhaps Norwegian. “We had taken back much of the countryside and some cities from the Duass. We developed communications links with survivors in eastern Europe, Spain, and even Turkey.”

Alexander continued, “Then they came at us. Very violent. Very fast. The Order led the way with the Duass mopping up pockets of resistance. They hit areas where our population gathered in significant numbers—slaughtered civilians without regard.”

“The worst,” Lady Verena of Switzerland added her deep voice, “was that they found and hit our largest military concentrations. We had two operational air bases and nearly a dozen jet fighters combat ready. Both gone in the first day of the assault.”

“Our armor and heavy infantry units suffered the brunt of the attack,” Alexander said.

Armand spit on the floor with disgust and in French boasted, “We made them pay a high price.”

“But not enough,” Jef of Belgium spoke in English but obviously understood Armand. “We have been set back five years! All in no more than three weeks of fighting. Now we are like caged animals.”

“What?” Trevor asked. “What does that mean? Caged?”

Armand moved away from his position against the wall and strolled toward Trevor in a gait he could think of only as a slink. A cocky and angry slink.

“You want to know, American? Those dumb ducks have occupied the big cities and placed road blocks all through France and Europe. They have cut off our lines of communication. It took us days to get all of the knights here to meet you. My cavalry brought them here at great risk. I lost ten of my best men in the Ruhr valley and two of Sir Hadwin’s escort ships were blown to pieces crossing the channel.”

Alexander said, “We were forming up, becoming a nation until last summer. Now we are back to small groups of survivors holding out in the mountains, the forests—piecemeal.”

Armand stopped in front of Trevor, jabbed a finger into his chest, and growled, “For what? Huh? Tell me, American.”

“I told you, I’m not an American,” Trevor kept his calm. “If you keep thinking like that, you’re more piecemeal than you know.”

“What I know? What I know is that you sat over there on the other side of the ocean and told us what to do but it was not what was best for us, it was best for
you.
Well to hell with you. We never needed you. We still—“

“Armand!”

The shout stopped his words in mid-sentence. That shout came from the woman with long, black hair who rose to her feet to accentuate her command.

Armand did not look at her; he kept his eyes on Trevor who could feel snorts of breath from his sharp nose like a dragon puffing when it would prefer to blow flames. Nonetheless, Armand retreated a step.

The woman with the dark hair walked slowly—gracefully—from the table to where Trevor and JB stood. She smiled warmly.

“My name is Cai. It is a pleasure to meet you, Emperor.”

And she bowed her head in the slightest; a sincere show of respect.

Trevor did not know what to say.

Jorgie spoke instead, “Where are your people from, Lady Cai?”

She knelt before the boy and studied him the way a mother might examine her newborn; searching for the answers of life in his eyes with both warmth and wonder.

“I represent the people of Wales. It is a beautiful place. I wish you would come and visit there with me some day.”

“I would like that.”

“Please excuse our selfishness, Master Jorgie. In our haste to share our troubles, we have neglected to ask about your people. I sense things are not well where you come from.”

Jorgie admitted, “Bad things are happening. People are dying.”

While Cai remained on a knee studying JB, Trevor shared with the room in a humble voice, “From what you tell me, I believe the attack against your positions was a prelude to what is happening in North America. The Order launched a full-scale invasion on our western coast. They had planned an invasion on the east as well, but we managed to stop that before it started. Point is, they hit you hard enough to knock you back into place before they came after us full bore. Now my military is on the verge of breaking. We’ve lost tens of thousands of soldiers and as many civilians. The Order hit you good to slow you down and is now intent on destroying us.”

An Italian man with a prickly beard and wearing a sport snap cap asked, “What is it that makes you think
you
are the first priority of this Order?”

“Simple. We’re further along than you folks. This time last year we had secured the heart of North America and were prepared to hit alien positions in Mexico. Our industry was running great thanks to some alien technology, we no longer had major shortages of anything, and we had developed the means to project power anywhere on the globe. To put it bluntly, we were winning. None of the alien races could stop us; not since we shut down the gateways a few years ago.”

“That’s what you told us,” Sir Kaarle—the man with the shaved head—of Scandinavia countered, “but then The Order attacks us with an entire army. Right now there are large formations of Voggoth’s forces supporting the Duass and penning us in.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, Trevor,” Alexander confirmed. “That is so.”

“There is a lot we don’t know,” Lady Cai—still sharing smiles with JB—interrupted. “And you’re here to tell us a great deal. Is that not true?”

Her hand reached out and touched JB’s cheek. She closed her eyes as if bathing in the child’s essence.

Armand stepped forward and in French asked her, “What is it, Cai? What is it with this boy?”

Trevor asked in English, “I don’t understand.”

Alexander shared, “Lady Cai—she—I’m not sure how to explain this…”

“I feel things,” she did the explaining for herself. “I have a very natural—oh, what would I call it? Sensitivity.”

Trevor—the man who spoke to dogs, periodically met with a mysterious old man in the woods, and had magically gained access to a library of genetic memories—asked in a skeptical tone, “What do you mean? A, like, psychic or something?”

“Father!”

Cai found that amusing. She exhaled a soft, comforting laugh.

“Nothing so exotic. Sometimes I feel things. Call it an understanding of people. Of things.”

“She sells herself short,” Armand said although the sneer in his voice showed that he did not like having to explain to the American. “She has had dreams of things to do, things to come. And she can tell a good heart from a bad one.”

Trevor remembered Stonewall McAllister. A vision had led him to the lakeside estate during that first year.

Cai jumped, “And Armand, what would you say if I tell you these two have good hearts? Would you stop projecting your frustrations onto them? Would you treat them as honored guests?”

Armand fidgeted but held his tongue.

The Lady then removed her hand from Jorgie’s cheek and addressed the boy in a soft one, “You are a very special child. But you know that, don’t you?”

He nodded. His eyes held the same fascination for her as she did for him; the same wonder.

She said, “I have thought about you before.”

Trevor asked, “You knew he would be coming?”

She corrected, “I knew he
should
come. Not that he would.”