Princess Rescue Inc (128 page)

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At
midnight on New Year’s Eve Cecily and Max were wed in a quiet ceremony in the
castle chapel. All the gaijin were there of course, along with the royal
family, Cecily's parents and all of Max's students. Sue, Wanda, a couple of the
engineering girls and Zara acted as bridesmaids. Scooter stood in as best man.
“See, now this is how a wedding is supposed to be performed,” Ryans said out of
the side of his mouth to Deidra. She'd dimpled and smacked him on the stomach.
He smirked at her until she blushed and turned away.

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Perry
smiled as he admired the new shiny locomotive. It was full sized, complete with
cow catcher. “Nice Max, Scooter, each of you and your crews have outdone
yourselves,” he said nodding to the men. He smiled leaning back as they
acknowledged the praise. They had, the damn thing was big and shiny since
they'd added a lot of chromium to the steel. The copper was already turning
green. He wondered if they were going to clear coat the thing to keep the
copper nice or were they just going to let it age? After a while it'd start to
look like the statue of liberty.

“Well,
wasn't like we had a whole hell of a lot to do all freakin' winter,” Max's
voice echoed from the cab. There was a clatter of metal on metal, then the
window opened.

That
was true Perry thought. They'd had a hell of a long boring winter. His men had
been a handful; he'd had to come down on gambling and drinking in the barracks
monthly. The Silent Knights had been busy though, he'd had Gunny Paris out
training them in winter ops off and on. To date they'd only lost a couple of
toes to frostbite.

Now
that it was spring things were looking up. It was an early spring; some of the
natives were worried about a last minute change in the weather but so far so
good. They had an extra month of spring to deal with. More mud, cold rain, and
muck.

Max
leaned out of the cab. Perry snorted. The beefy engineer was dressed as a rail
road engineer, complete with denim overalls and a cap. “Ayup, she's a beaut
isn't she?” he grinned. “I can't wait to get her going. We've got a rail line
going in between here and Bixby mine now that the snows cleared. Spent all
winter figuring out how to make rail and spikes. Stockpiled a crap load but
it's going out damn slow! I was hoping to get things rolling but it's going a
tad slow.” He shook his head in annoyance. “I forgot about the damn rail road
ties,” he finally grumbled.

“What
about them?” Perry asked in confusion.

“They're
made of trees remember?” Max asked testily, shaking his head. “We gotta have a
hell of a lot of them. Either that or plastic ones,” he growled. Max leaned
against the window. “I'm using iron spacers, plywood, even a rebar and cement
thing someone cooked up.”

Perry
nodded. “Whatever works.”

“Yeah
well, we found out the hard way that the native plywood doesn't,” Scooter said
dryly. “We need to work on the glue some more. Maybe a kiln or something,” he
grimaced.

“Whatever,”
Perry said shaking his head and smiling.

“We
can make do with that though.” Scooter pointed to the hand car on the test
track. Ryans was on it with Deidra. He was pushing up and down with her as the
crowd watched. A few pumps and the car, really just a wheel truck with a
plywood platform on top began to move slowly and then faster. Deidra was
smiling despite the work out.

“Nice.
Real get up and go. I'd hate to try it on a hill though. How are we set for
autos?” Perry asked.

“One
thing at a time!” Cecily said in exasperation, leaning out beside Max. She was dressed
just like Max but had some soot on her nose and right cheek. “I just finished
the valves on this monstrosity, give us a break!” She rubbed her belly. From
the scuttlebutt that was floating around she was pregnant. That was hard to
believe since they were all fixed. Unless the big machinist had gone to Doc to
get it reversed he mused. Possible, quite possible.

“Sure,
which vertebra?” Perry asked. Max grinned. He opened his mouth to reply but his
new wife elbowed him firmly and then dragged him away from the window. Perry
snorted. The two of them were living in the castle still but Max had a
townhouse under construction in the capital. Deidra and the House of Lords had
deeded the land over to him, no taxes on the land for his remaining life.

“You’re
in good spirits,” Ryans said coming over. He was a little sweaty. He ran his
hand through his hair and then used a purple towel with the royal crest on it
draped over his shoulders to wipe the sweat. It was still pretty chilly but a
lot better than it had been a month ago. He didn't want to get sick, Deidra
would kill him. That was if Sue didn't first.

“Sure.
We're making good progress. Spring has sprung, and we've got most of the
military turned around. No problems on the horizon now, so why not be chipper?”
Perry asked. What really had him in a good mood was the immanent capture of the
vortex. It was now stable and the machinery was charging. Now they needed the
right window to return home. Plus there was a bit of other good news.

“Good
point. Take things one day at a time,” Ryans smiled politely, turning to his
wife a short ways away. She was talking with some of the lords. A few of the
teens were on the hand car, giving it a try. Lord Appleworthy looked ready to
have a go with young Zara. Zara climbed on with his help and then started it
going. They'd better get their fun in now; the two of them were due to leave
for Duluth soon. The advanced parties of Silent Knights and diplomats had
already left yesterday.

“Well,
there's that, but then there's the news I got.”

“Oh?”

“Vortex
watch got a signal this morning,” Perry said with a grin.

“You’re
kidding!” Ryans said smiling. Deidra looked up at him and then turned back to
the lords with a slight frown. He felt a weight lift off his shoulders.
Something that had bothered him in the back of his mind was that the vortex
would somehow shift to another world. Silly since the MALPS had come back and
forth through it, but it was a nagging worry. One he could now apparently put
to rest.

Perry
shook his head. “Nope. We pinpointed the location of the vortex. It's coming
back, just like you said.”

“And
you got a signal through?”

Perry
nodded. “Yup. Which means our side is primed. We've got a couple of months
before we enter into the sun's highest sunspot cycle though.”

“How'd
you figure that?” Ryans asked wrinkling his nose. Sergio was their amateur
astronomer. He was working with the Da-Vinci’s lone son to build a better scope
since the elderly couple had died in the epidemic. The astronomer merchants
were out and about, already running caravans. Apparently they wanted to take
advantage of the cold and lack of snow before the thaw really took hold and the
grounds totally melted and the muck made roads impassable for a month.

“Sydney.
He got the inkling from compiling the records in the library.”

“I
was actually building an almanac. Or at least trying to do so. They don't have
barometric or temperature readings though so it's not accurate,” Sydney
explained, coming over.

The
two men turned to him. Sydney of course had a camera out, ready to document the
event for posterity. Hopefully it would go better than the garden locomotive.
There was one good thing, Scooter wasn't driving this time. “But you instituted
it now so we've got something to build on,” Perry replied.

“Weather
forecasting looks really important here. They're going to need it. Those summer
storms were hairy,” Sydney said. He shivered. “Don't even get me started on the
winter blizzards,” he said firmly. Both men nodded. The blizzards had been
nasty, like living in the arctic back home. It made one yearn to move south for
warmer pastures. Preferably beach front property.

“You
think it's bad here away from the coast, try it on the ocean,” Deidra said
shaking her head. “Father told us of a bad blow when he took his one and only
trip on the seas,” she replied wrinkling her nose She grimaced as she hugged
herself to Ryans. “He said half of the fleet was lost. The rest were
scattered.”

“Well,
since they were using square sails and boats with a light draft I can believe
it. Those things are death traps. Mediterranean designs, not something you can
use in deep water,” Sydney replied shaking his head. “It'd be interesting to
get some shots of the triremes though. Wait....If he took one trip how'd he get
back?” he asked.

She
shrugged. “He said it was the return trip.”

“Oh,”
Sydney shook his head. Ryans snorted.

“Well,
we've got a couple of months before they can get things sorted out with the
vortex Sydney. If you want a trip to the coast, I'll see if we can arrange
something,” Ryans said.

“I'd
like that,” the historian said and then nodded. He glanced at Perry.

The
lieutenant held his hands up. “Don't look at me. I'm going to be busy enough as
it is. We've had our winter vacation. Time to get back to work.”

“My
sentiments exactly,” Deidra said smiling.

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Perry
smiled at Ryans as Answorth and Coji came in. The teenagers had changed since
they had started out as pages assigned to Perry and Ryans a year ago. Now they
looked more like Terrans than natives.

Both
were dressed in denim jeans, complete with a hardy long sleeved shirt in the
red and gold of the royal house.

“Have
a seat fellas,” Ryans said pointing to the bench. The boys looked at each other
then sat. “As you know Perry and the military contingent are heading out soon.
That means we're at a crossroads.”

“Yes
my lord,” they both nodded. They glanced at each other. Neither was sure where
this was going.

“Coji,
you're um, eight? That's sixteen standard on Patria?” Perry asked.

The
young man looked a little confused and then nodded slowly. “In a month my lord
if my reckoning is right.”

“That's
about as close as Terran standard as you can get with a five day week and the
longer year,” Perry grimaced. “And you still want to be a knight? Or an
officer?” The young man paused, and then nodded again.

“Okay,
since we've got the time we've extended the boot camp to the full seventeen
weeks it was supposed to be too begin with. We've also set up the additional
training and a six month OCS training course for those who have leadership
potential. Right now it's doing double duty training officers as well as
noncoms,” he said and then grimaced thoughtfully. There were a hundred and one
million things left undone and they were about to leave. Somehow it didn't feel
right to go. Ryans nodded.

“Since
you've proven yourself kid, I'm going to give you an early shot at the
shortened boot program, with a straight shot to advanced and OCS if you can
hack it. Think you can?” Perry asked.

The
young man nodded. “Yes sir.” He gulped a little though. He had seen the courses
the trainers had put the men through. The physical part would be tough.

“All
right then. You're in,” Perry said simply. He nodded and then glanced to Ryans.

“Answorth,
your fifteen Terran standards so we can't exactly get you in right now. You
still have a bit of growing to do before you're ready. So, you've got a couple
of choices,” he said.

The
young man nodded but looked a little crestfallen. “Have you decided on what
career path you want?” Perry asked. “I mean military, engineering, or
whatever?”

The
young man paused, looked thoughtful for a moment then shook his head.

“All
right, since you aren't sure we're going to send you to college,” Ryans said.
Perry smiled. “One year of college with a general education. If anything
strikes your fancy you can talk to your counselor to take that career path.
Once the year is up you can decide to follow in Coji's footsteps or take a
different path. The choice will be up to you.”

“Thank
you Dominus,” Answorth nodded. “My father... I mean Duke Emroy expects me to
have squire and knight training. As well as training in management though.”

“Me
too,” Coji said, hand upraised.

“Well,
you've done a good job handling our schedules and keeping up with us despite
all we threw at you. I'll say you've got the mindset. As far as squire is
concerned... that and being a knight are in a state of... confusion I guess you
could say. At least for the moment, you know how things are changing,” Perry
explained. Both teens nodded. “Times change with new technology, and the roles
in society must adapt or be left at the wayside.”

Ryans
nodded. “There's a management course Answorth, and there are a few courses you
can take that go along with that, including history. Also, let’s see, law, and
a course on agriculture. Mary is handing that off to her TA before she leaves I
think.”

The
boys nodded. “We've both taken the law courses sir.”

Ryans
nodded in response. “Good, good to know. All right, Coji, once you’re out of OCS
you can take a couple of college courses, or you can take a couple before going
into OCS, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Suits?” Ryans asked.