A line of Marines covered the eastern approach to the Nantucketer base, waiting with their rifles ready behind low sangars of stone. O'Rourke nodded approval. Beyond that the little base was bustling; several Conestoga wagons and native two-wheel oxcarts, pyramids of boxed supplies, of barley in sacks and wicker baskets and big pottery storage pithoi. Working parties bustled about, Marines in khaki trousers and boots and T-shirts, Hittite auxiliaries in kilts and callused bare feet.
A wiry twentysomething woman with a brown crew cut came up and saluted; he'd have thought her indecently young for the rank, if he hadn't rocketed up from captain to colonel in about two years himself. Between the breakneck expansion of the Corps in the last couple of years, casualties, and officers getting siphoned off for everything from training local allied troops to running crude-oil stills, promotions were rapid if you had what it took. He was a little short of thirty himself, and Brigadier Hollard only a few years his senior, and this baby captain wouldn't have been twelve when the Event hit-he couldn't remember if she was Island-born or an adoptee.
"Captain Cecilie Barnes, Colonel. First Combat Engineers," she said; the bare skin of arms and neck glistened with sweat, her cotton T-shirt stuck to what it covered, and she was as dirt-streaked as her command. "Is the battalion close behind? We're about ready to start on the bridge, the river's nearly breast-deep already, and once the rains get going…"
He returned the salute, then swung down from the saddle and stripped off his gloves. A Marine from the escort came up to take the bridle; before the man led the horse away O'Rourke stroked Fancy's nose and fed him a couple of candied dates to keep him out of a snapping-and-kicking mood.
"There'll be no battalion, Captain," he said. "And no bridge."
"Sir, we were told to get ready for-
"I know. The enemy got frisky a little north of here, and we had to put the battalion in to stop them-quite a shindy. The siege of Troy isn't going well. Not enough weapons or supplies in the city. That's freeing up enemy forces to probe inland. If the city falls, the fertilizer hits the winnowing fan for true."
Barnes frowned. "Sir?" she said hopefully. "We've seen the Emancipator taking in equipment for Troy…"
"Only a few tons at a time, and we can't risk any more flights-too much else for it to do and too hard to replace. Walker's been bringing in more of his troops, and more of those Ringapi devils. Giving them more guns, as well, which is how he's getting them here. I dropped by to-"
The heliograph blinked from the hillside again. O'Rourke could read the message as well as any… enemy force in sight, numbers several hundred.
"-to give you a hand setting up the defenses," he said. This base had just gone from a forward supply depot to the penultimate front line.
The garrison in Troy was supposed to be buying time for the First Marines; the First was in the westlands to buy time for the expeditionary force as a whole. He only hoped the people back home were doing something valuable with it.
"Heather! Lucy!" Chief Executive Officer Jared Cofflin yelled. "Marian! Junior! Jenny! Sam!"
You had to be specific; just "kids!" didn't get their attention. The children had burst into the Chiefs House, home from school, and were in the middle of some game that involved thundering up and down stairs and whooping like a Zarthani war party doing a scalp dance, with a couple of barking Irish setters in attendance. Cold autumnal wind blew through the opened door, along with a flutter of yellow-gold leaves and a smell of damp earth, damp dog, woodsmoke, and sea-salt.
"Quiet, 1 said!" he bellowed, and snagged one setter by the collar. It wagged its tail and looked sheepish, trying to turn and lick his hand, hitting his elbow instead, putting a wet muddy paw on his leg. "You too, you fool dog."
"Yes, Uncle Jared?" Lucy asked sweetly.
She looked like a picture of innocence carved from milk chocolate, dressed in jeans and indigo-dyed sweater, twisting a lock of her loose-curled black hair around a finger as she rubbed a foot on the calf of the other leg. Her sister Heather stopped beside her with an identical angelic expression, red-hair-and-freckles version. They were both adopted from Alba, of course. Heather's parents had been villagers killed by one of Walker's raiding parties-Swindapa had found her crying in a clump of trees not far from their bodies. And Lucy's Alban birth-mother had died in childbirth; her father had been one of Walker's renegades, a black Coast Guard cadet from Tennessee. The Islanders had found her in the remains of Walker's base after the Battle of the Downs; by now he had to remind himself occasionally that they weren't really twins.
Both brought their school satchels around and hugged the strapped-together books and lunch box and wood-rimmed slateboards with studied nonchalance, a gesture aimed at his subconscious, where the memory of their excellent marks presumably hid ready to float up and restrain his temper.
Might have fooled me, he thought, trying to school his face into something formidable. Fooled me back before the Event. Back then he'd been a widower, and childless. Here he was married and father of four, two of them also adopted from Alba. I should be insulted. They don't try this act on Marian or 'dapa, much.
"What did I say about running around inside the house?" Cofflin asked.
Usually sternness came naturally to him; he had the dour Yankee visage common among the descendants of the seventeenth-century migrations that had settled Nantucket, bleak blue eyes, long face on a long skull, thinning sandy-blond hair streaked with gray. But it was hard to look po-faced at a kid having fun, especially with a close friend's daughter who'd been in and out of your house all her life.
"Sorry, Uncle Jared," they said together; and yes, they'd seen the twinkle he'd tried to bury. "Sorry, Dad," his own added, in antiphonal chorus-ages ten to six, but they played together and stuck together.
Good kids, he thought, and made his voice gruff for: "Well you should be sorry. You especially, Lucy and Heather. You don't get to run wild because your mothers are away."
"Can we go over to Guard House and play till dinner?"
Cridzywelfa, the Alston-Kurlelo's housekeeper, was looking after it while Marian and Swindapa were off with the expeditionary force. Which was fine, but…
"All right, as long as you don't wheedle too big a snack out of her and spoil your supper. Be warned!"
Cridzywelfa had been a slave among the Irauna, back before the Alban War. Many of the newly freed had moved to Nantucket, after the founding of the Alliance and compulsory emancipation; entry-level jobs here looked good to people from that background, without kin or land. She'd learned English and settled in well, and she spoiled her employers' kids rotten, but wasn't what you'd call self-assertive.
On the other hand, her own two, they might as well be American teenagers. Or Nantucketers, to be more accurate. The melting pot was bubbling away merrily around here, of which he heartily approved, but not all the seasoning came from the local shelves.
The pack of them took off, with the dogs bouncing around them. The door banged shut, and the sound of children's feet and voices faded down the brick sidewalk.
"Sorry," he said to his two guests as he led them down the hallway.
Sam Macy grinned and shook his head. "Heck, I've got five of my own, Jared."
Emma Carson smiled politely-it didn't reach her eyes, which were the same pale gray as her short hair-and accompanied the two men into the sitting room. The Chiefs House had been a small hotel before the Event, and long before that a whaling skipper's mansion, back in the glory days of Nantucket's pre-Civil War supremacy in the baleen and boiled-blubber trades. Given a few modifications, that had made it ideal for his new job; among other things, it had a couple of public rooms on the first floor that did fine for meetings, business and quasi-business and the sort of hospitality that someone in his position had to lay on.