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Stories from the Verse
In Version
Chapter 109: Kondor 247
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 272
Kondor stood on the ridge with his back to the ocean, looking at the ruins of the once beautiful mansions that had overlooked the water. Through the cracks and spaces and collapsed sections he could see the somewhat lesser devastation beyond. It occurred to him that as bad as this was, had Derek crashed it into land somewhere it would be far worse, with a massive crater, shifting faults, and dust creating a nuclear winter around the world. No, this was severe, but it was manageable.
He turned to face the water. Somewhere out there, and down. was the sense of that other verser marking the location of the sunken spaceship. He had promised to contact that one again, but at this point he did not know what to say or what to ask. He just stared out there.
Something caught his eye.
“Zeke,” he said “what do you make of that?”
“Dunno, Cap. Ship, maybe?”
“Yeah, maybe. I’d wager this planet might have a few steel ships by now–but they won’t have any stainless steel ships. That’s a large chunk of rather shiny metal.”
He turned to the birds standing around, picked one for a language link, and another to ask, singing “Any idea what that is?”
The bird looked, and looked surprised. “That must be the spaceship!”
Kondor waited for more, but when it wasn’t coming he said, “Go on.” The Parakeet did.
“We shot down a spaceship. The town had bought one of the new gatling guns and mounted it,” he pointed down the ridge to a promontory badly damaged by the wave, “there. We captured one of the crew, and he was being held in the jail, but the flood washed him and his ship away. But I think that’s the ship.”
It made sense. Shifting back to English, he said to Zeke, “Once we’ve got this town in something close to self-sustaining shape, we’re going to want to figure out whether we can bring that ashore.”
Zeke nodded. “Too bad they lost the pilot, but at least we don’t have to figure out what to do with our POCs.”
Confused by the acronym, Kondor asked, “POCs?”
“You don’t have that term in your world? Prisoners of Combat?”
“Oh. We call them Prisoners of War, POWs. POC means something else entirely. But you’re right; they’re likely to be a problem. I hate to think that this one dying is a bright spot, but it’s not like we can talk about a prisoner exchange, and it wouldn’t really be right to execute them for being soldiers.”
He shook himself and turned back toward the town. “Well, one problem at a time. Let’s get some dinner and some rest, and pick this up tomorrow.” He began the hike back to the train.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #494: Warring Worlds. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
