Perilous Siege Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Also by C. P. Odom

  A Most Civil Proposal

  Consequences

  Pride, Prejudice & Secrets

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Perilous Siege

  Copyright © 2019 by C. P. Odom

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any format whatsoever. For information: P.O. Box 34, Oysterville WA 98641

  ISBN: 978-1-68131-030-5

  Cover design by C. P. Odom

  Layout by Ellen Pickels

  Dedication

  Dedicated, as always, to my family,

  especially my dear wife, Jeanine,

  for putting up with me when

  the writing bug gets its claws into me

  and I go into hyper-focus mode

  Introduction

  While history is often regarded as a mere a collection of facts, people, and dates, a closer inspection reveals that many events could easily have had dramatically different outcomes. What if, for example, Julius Caesar had heeded the warning of the soothsayer about the Ides of March and stayed home from the Senate? What if Britain had won the Revolutionary War and kept control of the North American colonies? Then there’s the most intriguing supposition to ponder (in the US at least): What if the South had won the Civil War?

  These speculations have been explored extensively in the alternative history genre of science fiction in which the usual approach is to restrict the historical change to a single critical event or decision. All subsequent happenings hew as close to the demonstrated characteristics of the characters and their situation as the author can manage.

  In my three previously published novels, all set in the imaginary world of Jane Austen’s signature work, Pride and Prejudice, I’ve used a similar approach by changing a critical point in the storyline (Jane does give us quite a few, after all) and then continuing from that point, trying to keep the characters true to her novel.

  My approach in this present novel was partly similar and quite different at the same time. I tried to maintain Austen’s characters and their motivations, but I stirred the plot by mixing in the idea of a limitless number of parallel universes and bringing in a refugee fleeing an apocalyptic doom in the near future of our own world. Naturally, I used artistic license to have my refugee familiar with Austen’s works, so he quickly discovers he has been transported from imminent death in his own world to a world populated by real-life, flesh and blood Austen characters. This puts certain limitations on what he can and can’t do since he obviously can’t say, “All you guys are fantasy creations from a writer back in my world! You shouldn’t exist!”

  Now, one might say, “Wait a minute! Didn’t Mark Twain do something similar in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court? My answer is a qualified yes, but his was a comedy and satire against romanticized ideas about chivalry contrasting with the ingenuity and democratic values of his visitor from the future. Also, his character is put to sleep by Merlin for 1,300 years and wakes up in the modern era of Twain’s time. In my novel, I’m just trying to tell a story, and the refugee can’t get home. The path through the infinity of universes is strictly a one-way trip.

  A tip of the hat does go to Andre (née Alice Mary) Norton, a science fiction and fantasy writer whose books were a staple of the local libraries where I spent a lot of time in my teenage years. In one of her most famous novels, Witch World, she used the mechanism of the Siege Perilous from the King Arthur legend to transport her hero to a parallel world—the world that would be a fit for a person who didn’t belong in this present world. When I first devised the bare bones idea for this novel, the Siege Perilous instantly popped into my mind as the way to get my protagonist from our world to the parallel, fantasy world of Jane Austen’s most famous characters. I know Miss Norton didn’t conceive the Siege Perilous—it is a legend, after all—but I have to credit her for giving me the idea.

  All these thoughts were in my mind when I crafted the following tale although I also had fun imagining some less likely possibilities without (hopefully) causing the affected players to break character too dramatically. I will leave it up to the reader to determine how well my efforts succeeded. Above all, have fun with this modest effort. I did when I wrote it.

  — C. P. Odom

  Prologue

  Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.

  — Isaiah 13:9

  Tuesday, October 10, 2045

  Cornwall, England, 0830 hours

  “Back to your beloved chick-lit, Gunny?”

  Major (brevet) Edward McDunn, USMCR—one-time Gunnery Sergeant McDunn, USMC—looked up at the tall, lithe brunette. In woodland camo battle dress with corporal’s chevrons at her collar-points, she gracefully squatted beside him. PFC Smith stood behind her wearing his usual expression that always made McDunn want to reach for his wallet to make sure it was still there. Unlike the duo, McDunn’s battle dress was desert issue, shades of brown and tan rather than the green and brown more suitable for the Cornish countryside.

  He gave Corporal Sandra Desmond what he intended to be a stern expression. She was one of several original corpsmen of Bravo Company and was now the only surviving unit corpsman of a greatly depleted second battalion of the equally depleted Second (Tarawa) Regiment, the advance element of the Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB). But his expression, as usual, had no effect on his irreverent corporal, causing McDunn to sigh in fond resignation.

  Corpsmen get away with murder in the Corps, he thought—always have, always will. Assuming there still is a Corps, of course!

  “By this time, you should know better, Dancer,” he said mildly, waving his electronic tablet at her and responding to her jibe with equal, if strained, lightheartedness. “Pride and Prejudice is a classic of English literature and is not, by any stretch of the imagination, reserved solely for those of the female persuasion.”

  Sandra rolled her eyes expressively, the mischief in them plain to see.

  “Anyway,” McDunn said, warming to his topic, “I haven’t read this story in years. Haven’t had the time.”

  “And you have the time now?” She grinned wryly, gesturing toward the raw earth fortifications to their left and right.

  “What else do I have to do? I inspected the troops and equipment at 0530. Everything’s done that can be done. Everyone’s dug in, communications are set up, and we’ve done all the contingency pla
nning we have the resources for. In a situation as stark as this, everyone knows what to do. The troops don’t need me spooking around them, wasting their time. Why shouldn’t I get reacquainted with an old friend?”

  “But you have read it before, right? And you’ve read all the other books by the same author?”

  McDunn responded to Sandra’s sly look with an expression crafted into inscrutability by a thousand late night poker games. “Well, yes,” he finally admitted. “They were a particular favorite of my sainted grandmother.”

  “Chick lit, like I said! But don’t worry. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Thanks ever so much, Dancer,” he said sarcastically. “Except Smitty here, of course.”

  “Any time, Gunny, any time,” she said, giving him a crooked smile and patting him consolingly on the shoulder. “And Smitty won’t tell anyone because he knows what’ll happen to him if he opens his mouth before I tell him to.”

  Then, before he could think of a suitable rejoinder, she abruptly changed the subject.

  “I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news, Major. Which do you want first?”

  McDunn sighed and powered down his personal tablet, securing it in its ruggedized case before taking a USMC-issued tablet from the field pack at his side. The tablet wasn’t really his. He had his own issue tablet, the version given to all enlisted men, but he hadn’t used it in months. It was buried somewhere deep in his pack.

  This one he’d inherited after their first engagement when Gunnery Sergeant McDunn, USMC, became Captain (brevet) McDunn, USMCR, commander of Bravo Company in a battlefield promotion—an officer and a gentleman though he hadn’t any idea how to command a company, much less be an officer or a gentleman. Commanding the weapons platoon of Bravo had been something he knew how to do, and he had done his best.

  ***

  Sandra looked on quietly as he powered on the device and went through the security protocols in his steady, methodical manner. Her quick eyes flitted approvingly over his rugged frame, much sturdier than her own. His face matched his body, tanned and weathered with crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes and deeper brackets at his lips, despite his youth. Both features owed as much to good humor as they did to grimness though the situation at the moment was grim enough to make even Pollyanna despair. He looked older than his twenty-three years, but she thought his face was one of the ageless ones. It would look the same at sixty as it did now.

  As though any of us are going to see sixty! she thought in despair, feeling the familiar knot of grief in her chest at the thought of what they all faced.

  She didn’t so much fear dying herself, but she ached at the thought of McDunn’s death. She had said as much in the privacy of her prayers, wishing desperately he might somehow miraculously survive but not able to convince herself he would.

  At least he doesn’t suspect how I feel. If we’d had some time, any time at all, since coming to this godforsaken country, I might have found a way to talk to him—to let him know how I feel. But it didn’t happen, and it’s too late now. It would just distract him when he needs to focus on what we’re facing. When we all do.

  Her thoughts were no more visible on her face than were McDunn’s but for a different reason. In Sandra Desmond’s short, arduous life before joining the Corps, she’d become highly adept at dissembling and concealing her emotions. It had been a survival trait on the streets of New Orleans, and those who didn’t learn the lesson invariably came to bad ends. She’d learned and survived.

  ***

  McDunn wasn’t offended by Sandra calling him “Gunny” even though he was now an officer. A major, by God, even if it was only a brevet rank—temporary during the current emergency unless or until permanently ratified by higher authority. But all those who were left from the original Bravo Company usually called him Gunny. He didn’t mind it in the least.

  He actually had been a real, sure-enough gunnery sergeant once, a feat rather remarkable for a marine who was barely twenty years old and on his first enlistment. But it was a feat possibly explained by almost four years of intense combat in various locales around the fringes of the embattled United States, engaging a bewildering variety of terrorist and paramilitary groups trying to exploit the turmoil roiling the entire continent.

  The Corps had been significantly impressed and had offered to send him to college and then to OCS, but he’d wanted to be a civilian again. He’d wanted to go to college on his own nickel, chase girls, drink beer, and go to football games. He’d done his time, and he’d seen all the combat he ever wanted to see. He’d wanted the freedom to make his own decisions rather than have them made by the Corps.

  College had looked much safer than the Corps, and so it proved for two years and a few months while he completed his degree in industrial engineering in record time and headed off to graduate school. The first indications of impending disaster had been the appearance of the Blight bioweapon in Middle Eastern croplands near the Iraq-Iran border. Then the long-dreaded nuclear attack from Iran had exploded with the launch of twenty medium-range ICBMs aimed at Israel. While eighteen of the missiles had either been intercepted or gone astray, two detonated above the economic and technical center of Israel.

  Israel’s counterattack had been devastating, and Iran virtually ceased to exist. After that, the whole Middle East exploded in a series of retaliatory strikes, and much of the area and its oil-producing capabilities were devastated. Almost unnoticed in the middle of the nuclear catastrophe had been the satellite imagery showing the spread of the Blight as brown areas grew to eclipse green croplands.

  With population centers devastated, radioactive fallout posing unknown hazards, and croplands disappearing, millions of refugees began to flee the Middle East. The overwhelming majority of them headed toward the countries around the Mediterranean, most of which had little remaining military capability to resist the surge even if they’d had the political will.

  This included America’s long-time ally, the United Kingdom, whose new king had appealed for US military assistance. His military had become a shell, almost completely depleted by successive governments attempting to buy votes with money the government no longer possessed.

  Despite the horrifying news screamed from every media outlet, McDunn had still been rather shocked to receive a special delivery letter in January at his Texas A&M grad student office. He’d ripped it open to find that the president had declared a state of emergency and thus recalled him “to active duty in the USMC for the duration of the present emergency plus six months.”

  His discharge, evidently, hadn’t been as final as he’d thought, or so said a lawyer he consulted.

  And here I am, he thought tiredly. Back in the Corps and part of the understrength lead element of the mostly non-existent Marine Expeditionary Brigade, sent over to help the Brits stave off the oncoming horde of refugees fleeing from what’s left of the Middle East as well as what seemed to be an equal number of radical terrorists from any number of European countries. And all of those, refugees and terrorists alike, appeared bound and determined to make a new home for themselves in Merrie Olde England by the tried-and-true method of taking it away from the present owners.

  His tablet gave a ping at the conclusion of start-up, and he looked up at Sandra and Smitty, who were waiting patiently for him.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “So, let’s have the bad news first as usual.”

  “It’s both good and bad. Smitty got a full ammo loadout from what we laughingly call our supply section, and we just passed it out. Here’s yours.” She passed him an almost empty canvas bag that clinked with the sound of rifle magazines.

  He looked inside and counted twenty fully loaded M-36 magazines—six hundred rounds—plus ten grenades.

  “A full loadout?” he asked, looking up. With ammunition so scarce, they’d been getting half-loads for a couple of we
eks.

  “Yup. Full load of ammo and grenades. Like I said, Smitty and I passed it out.”

  “Okay, that’s really good news. What happened? Did we stumble across another old Brit armory?”

  The expression in her eyes penetrated his understanding, and he sighed. “Okay, I should have known. You said the news was good and bad. So what’s the rest?”

  “The bad news is the ammo we just got is all the ammo remaining. All of it. The cupboard is bare.”

  “All gone?” McDunn asked flatly.

  “Yup. There’s no need to hold back anything for a rainy day. If we don’t survive today, there won’t be another day. If we do survive, we’ll have to try to scrounge weapons and ammo from the enemy—the dead ones, of course. I’m sure none of them will be interested in surrendering, not that we’d accept it. Not after what we learned.”

  “Yeah, I know. Man, I hate kamikazes! But all the ammo! I knew it was coming, but I’d hoped it wouldn’t come quite this soon.”

  “The group who hit us last week soaked up a lot more of our available firepower than we’d hoped, even with everyone on semi-auto as much as possible, as well as using captured AK-47s until they ran dry. Anyway, Sergeant Cleary—excuse me, Lieutenant Cleary—gave me the latest poop about what’s coming at us.”

  “Yeah, the colonel passed it to me also. We don’t know a whole lot about this latest group. They somehow took out our drone—our next-to-last one, by the way—a lot farther out than they should’ve been able to, so all we know is there were a whole shit-pot of them heading our way and about thirty-five klicks[1] out as of three days ago. Probably about six or seven klicks away now, from what our patrols could see. The colonel doesn’t want to commit his last drone until they get closer. And no more patrolling. Our forward lookouts should be enough. It’s not as though any of these barbs have any military smarts. They just come at us and keep coming unless we kill ’em.”

  [1] Kilometers.