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  THE PROTECTORATE WARS:

  Rise

  S.A. Shaffer, Esq.

  The Protectorate Wars : Rise

  Copyright © 2019 by S. A. Shaffer, Esq.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher, except for brief excerpts in reviews.

  Cover Art by Austin Reddington (AustinReddington.com)

  1nd edition

  All character and events in this book, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Map Of The Fertile Plains

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  REPRESENTING DEPRAVITY

  ANSWERS AND QUESTIONS

  CAUGHT IN THE ACT

  THE SILENT PRAYER

  EQUIPMENT UPGRADE

  OLD FRIENDS

  THE EVERPINE RESORT

  HAVOC

  VICE

  BURDEN OF PROOF

  FEEDING THE ANIMALS

  SILENCE IS BROKEN

  RISE

  A NEW HOPE

  THE SIXTH DISTRICT

  THE OLD CITY

  THE FORGOTTEN

  ANOTHER KIND OF LEVERAGE

  THE INQUIRY

  VETERAN SHIPYARDS

  THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

  SACRIFICES

  A WOMAN'S TOUCH

  A NIGHT IN THE CLOUDS

  SPEAKER OF THE HOUSELANDS

  EPILOGUE

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  “Yoni, you give Mercy back this instant, or I’m telling father!” Mercedes said, stamping her foot so hard her auburn trusses danced across her forehead. She put on her most fierce pout, bunching up her eyebrows and crossing her arms over her chest. Why did she have to be so little? It wasn’t fair that the boys were bigger than her.

  “I’ll give her back, I promise. I just want to borrow her for a minute. I’m using her as a test dummy for my new rocket!” Yoni, her brother and a few cycles older, wore his thick black goggles and oversized lab coat. He held the doll just out of reach as Mercedes stood on her tiptoes, hopping around him. While her hair was a deep red, his had mellowed with time, softening into a copper brown. They argued in a field on the outskirts of Armstad, just beyond notice of any casual observer.

  “You will not.” She said as she danced around him. “Last time you used Eleanor and burnt off all her hair.”

  “A simple miscalculation in my fuel mixtures. It won’t happen again.” Yoni held her back as he strapped the doll into a wooden seat at the top of a fathom long cylinder, a cylinder that looked rather like a missile.

  “That’s what you said when you put Alexandra in your air cannon. It blew all of her clothes off, and I still can’t find them.” She rested her fists on her hips and stamped her foot again for emphasis.

  “But she came back all in one piece, just like I said she would.” Yoni finished tying the doll into the rocket and then, taking Mercedes by the hand, he walked back a few dozen paces.

  “…one piece completely covered in mud. Yoni, you give her back or… or… or I will never speak to you again.” Mercedes looked at him in earnest, lip quivering. She wondered if she had gone too far.

  “Well, if this is our last conversation, I should ask you if I can borrow Lorraine tomorrow when I test my concept focus lens. I think I’ve really got it this time.”

  Mercedes gasped, mouth falling open in absolute shock. Then she closed her eyes and sniffed, pointedly turning away from Yoni.

  Yoni bent down and fiddled on an intricate device with several buttons and triggers. He extended an antenna and then nudged Mercedes with an extra pair of goggles.

  She ignored him. She said she would never speak to him again, and she meant it. Yoni continued to nudge her with the goggles.

  “I’m not speaking to you.” she whispered without looking at him, for everybody knew that whispers didn’t count as speaking. She heard him sigh and pocket the extra goggles. Then he began the count down.

  “Launching in three, two, one!”

  Mercedes turned at the last moment and looked at her poor doll. Her brother pressed a button and sucked in his breath with excited anticipation. Nothing happened.

  “Ha! It didn’t work, now give her here!” Then Mercedes remembered her vow. “I mean, I’m not talking to you.” she whispered as she shut her eyes and looked away. However, she kept one eye squinted, so she could see if Yoni would give her back her doll.

  “I can’t understand it. It should have—”

  Suddenly the rocket shot off the ground, propelled by a jet of flame. It reached a dozen fathoms, broke apart and exploded into a spectacular ball of fire. Mercedes’ eyes shot open as she looked on in shock, wondering which one of the falling pieces of debris was her doll. Yoni whooped as he jumped up and down. Evidently, that was what his latest contraption was supposed to do.

  “Look!” He said, pointing at one of the larger pieces that fell into some of the longer grass. He grabbed Mercedes’ hand and dragged her after him.

  “I told you.” Yoni said as he bent down and picked up a splintered piece of wood and pulled something off of it. He held up her doll in a triumphant fist. It looked all right, but for the smoke wafting from its head.

  “You see, good as new!”

  Then the head rolled off. Mercedes screamed. She screamed louder than she ever had before. She screamed, and she screamed, and she screamed.

  In retrospect, she probably overdid it. As it turned out, the combination of Yoni’s rocket exploding and her screams convinced a nearby patrol station that the second Protectorate War had finally begun. Within minutes Armstad sprang to action. A citywide claxon rang out, and not just any claxon, the high alert claxon. Such were the circumstances that the city guard forewent the two proceeding levels of alert and implemented a full evacuation. People began the well-rehearsed procedures, filing into lines that led to their famed fortresses. They lived in constant fear of invasion, and that fear granted considerable motivation.

  However, the general populous was not alone in their fervor. Airships filled the sky and spread out to forestall the supposed invasion. Airships filled with young men prepared to trade their lives for the safety of their country, trade them to give the people a few more precious moments to find shelter. The local militia loaded bunkers and manned flack cannons. The Prime Minister’s office even sent a message off to the Houselands of Alönia, requesting aide.

  It didn’t take the Armstad Armada very long to find the would-be-invaders: a wide-eyed boy and a hysterical little girl. But by that time, it was too late to call off the national emergency.

  The cost of the false alarm was impossible to calculate in money and resources: the loss of business, the expenditure of fuel, and all the other incidentals that result from shutting down and relocating an entire populous. Whatever the cost may have been, it could not compare to the resultant shock and pandemonium in the hearts and minds of the locals.

  But Mercedes didn’t know any of this. She didn’t know why some soldiers herded her and her brother into a gunship and flew them to the Megiddo Fortress. Or why the Armada General personally escorted them home that day and stayed to speak with her father. As she watched her father take Yoni by the arm and lead him back into his bedroom, she only felt sorry. She cried when she heard the four, sharp smacks and saw Yoni walking out of the bedroom holding his backside. She didn’t care about the doll, that much; she still had three others. And as they sat down to dinner, she couldn’t meet Yoni’s eyes, choosing instead to look at her lap. Binyamin sat across from her, silent, as always, but keeping a constant vigil with his quick dark eyes. He was the next eldest above Yonatan. His hands fidgeted, as always, spinning his fork betwe
en his fingers.

  Mercedes cheered up a bit when Corvin arrived home and slammed the door behind himself.

  “Father! Father, did you hear, it was all a false alarm.” He ran into the dining room, his long legs carrying him across the house in a matter of seconds.

  “It was a false alarm! Some idiot kid lit off a bomb on the outskirts of the city and scared the devil out of a little… What?” Corvin faltered as everyone looked at him.

  “It’s already been addressed, Corvin.” Father said. “No need to rehash the past.”

  Corvin looked around the room, head on a swivel until he spotted Yoni, who was at that moment trying to disappear into his chair, eyes still teary.

  “Yoni! Not again! That’s the third time.”

  “Let it be, Corvin.” Father said as he poured juice and passed it around the table. “Now sit down. Your mother is bringing in the dinner.”

  Corvin looked like he wanted to say more on the topic, but he held his tongue and sat with a huff.

  “How was class?” Father asked as he straightened the cutlery next to his plate.

  “Other than the evacuation?” Corvin asked.

  Father rolled his eyes and gave him a stern look.

  “Right,” Corvin said with a wince. “Well, my linguistics instructor passed me on Viörn and transferred me into Bergish.”

  “You’re fluent?” Mother asked as she entered the room carrying a tray of roasted Mountain Lamb.

  Corvin nodded. “Got my certificate this morning. Professor Rubin said it was the fastest certification he’d ever seen.”

  “Well, it doesn’t surprise me one bit.” Mother said as she walked back into the kitchen. “You always did have a knack for languages.”

  “True,” Father said with a nod, “… and, now that you have Viörn out of the way, you can spend more time on your Alönian.”

  “What’s wrong with my Alönian?” Corvin asked with an indignant look.

  Yoni snorted as he took a drink of juice and some of it shot out his nose. He coughed a few times before saying, “Even Mercedes’ Alönian is better than yours.”

  “That’s because she’s an intelligent young lady.” Corvin said with a nod at his sister, to which Mercedes blushed. “Even so,” Corvin continued, “what good will Alönian do me. They aren’t our enemy.”

  “Communication is the fuel of friendship.” Father said. “How do you expect them to remain our ally if we do not speak to them?”

  “Father,” Corvin said in exasperation. “Everyone in Armstad is fluent in Alönian. If one citizen speaks with an accent, I’m not sure how that will lead to the breakdown of a 50-cycle-old alliance.”

  “Corvin,” Father began in a matter-of-fact tone, “it does no good to learn something half-heartedly. If you are going to learn Alönian, learn it with all your might.”

  Corvin looked down and nodded.

  Father continued. “Your aspirations to join the Sneaks is noble, and I have no doubt Armstad will be better for it, but it does not excuse you from pursuing a well-rounded education.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “How about you Binyamin?” Father said as he turned to his second oldest. “How was your day? When’s that hand-to-hand tournament?”

  Binyamin looked up from the platter of Mountain Lamb that his eyes were already devouring. “Tomorrow.” he said, and then looked back at the lamb. He always seemed hungry these days, an ever half-starved-look on his face, and no matter how much he ate, he never seemed satisfied.

  Father nodded, apparently satisfied with the exchange. He looked at Yoni next and pursed his lips. Yoni tried to look up and down at the same time in a self-deprecating manner.

  Father cleared his throat before speaking. “Yoni, was your experiment successful?”

  Yoni lit up with the question. “I achieved what I wanted to. It didn’t explode until it was at least fifty feet in the air.”

  “Well, you know I want you to continue your experiments, but I trust you will never again forget to wait for me before testing them.” Father didn’t shout, he didn’t even look stern, but his words had a way of resonating in your ears.

  Yoni looked down again. “Yes, Father.” he said.

  “And how about you, Mercedes? Did you practice numbers today?”

  Mercedes looked at her father as her mother brought in the rest of the food.

  “Yes, father. Three times, just like you asked.”

  “Good girl. What else did you do today?”

  “I watched Yoni blow up my doll and knock her head off, but it's ok, I forgive him.” And she meant it, for she did not want Yoni to receive any further punishment. She wondered if she had said something she shouldn’t have when Yoni slouched even further in his chair. Corvin choked on some of his water, and father glared at Yoni, who offered a half-smile, half-shrug.

  Mother pursed her lips as she started dishing everyone up.

  “We will get you another doll.” Father said.

  Mercedes felt herself smile, but as mother dished up her plate with Mountain Lamb, Sea-Grass salad, freshly baked tuber, and Skyfish skewers, it transformed into a frown. She hated Skyfish.

  “Mercedes?” Mother asked with a stern look. “What did I tell you about making faces at your food?”

  “Yes, Mother.” Mercedes said as she forced a smile back onto her face.

  “That’s better.” Her mother said, nodding as she sat down.

  With a nod from father, the family held hands, bowed their heads, and her father prayed. He prayed as he always did, thanking Jeshua for his many blessings and his wondrous creation, asking for continued protection for their small country. He asked for wisdom for their leaders and confusion to their enemies. In all, he prayed for peace.

  While Mercedes may have been young, missing or misunderstanding much of what happened around her, she knew the fear in which her family lived and the dangers they faced every day. So as she went to sleep that night, she said her own prayers. She prayed for her family, the people she loved the most in all the Fertile Plains, and she vowed with the tenacity of a girl in her sixth season that she would do anything to keep them safe.

  REPRESENTING DEPRAVITY

  It could have been the high whine of the Vielle or the garish laughter from intoxicated patrons. Then again, it might have been the fawning words of sycophants and the general clamor of flattery. Whatever it was, it made David feel uncomfortable as he sat in the middle of the Speaker’s Gala of the New Cycle. His head ached with the sparkle of gold and crystal and gems, and he jumped every time someone barked out a boisterous laugh at an unamusing joke. Hundreds of women flitted around in thousand sterling gowns wearing ten thousand sterling jewelry—gold rings in pigs’ snouts. The older women buried their sorrows in wine glasses, drowning out the ghosts of their wild youths. The younger women pretended to be intoxicated, as they prowled and prattled about the high-profile husbands of the older women. The men, whether young or old, stalked the banquet with loose lips, loose hands, and looser morals. It seemed that here debauchery reigned supreme.

  This cycle the Chateau de Bolitona, a luxurious residence on the Braxton coastland, hosted the Gala. Grand dining rooms and luscious gardens overlooked staggering views of ocean waves and far away storms. Rumor had it that this was the most expensive Speaker’s Gala in Alönian history, an ironic achievement for the Equalist party. Even more ironic, Alönia’s generous taxpayers funded the entire event. The longer David worked amongst Equalists, the more he felt he uncovered hypocrisy. Perhaps the condition ran deeper than Blythe. Their ideology seemed well and good, but at some point along its implementation, the message distorted.

  David longed to leave the saturnalia, but things were not as they used to be. He could not slip into the background as he once did. People knew him now, at least, they knew of him. They knew he was Blythe’s aide, and more than one bootlicker had tried flattering him in hopes of meeting the speaker, as if he were some sort of gatekeeper. How little they understood. David would
give anything to have never known the speaker, anything to undo the past cycles’ events that catapulted him into the highest tier of society and placed a murderer in the speakership. Yes, people knew him now, but they did not respect him, not for who he really was. A casual glance around the room convinced David that very little respect suffered this banquet. Most didn’t even know the meaning of the word. It was a collection of individuals seeking to use other individuals for their individual gain. Was that all they were? Greedy, selfish, licentious people? Did they even know the constituents their offices represented? What of all those people? David supported the Equalist party because they helped people. Yet, all this extravagance gave him pause. He’d always blamed the greedy Pragmatics for the underfunded social assistance programs, but was the problem elsewhere? Perhaps the issue was not the lack of water in the bucket, but rather too many holes in its base.

  He thought this and many other things as he sat at the speaker’s table, rubbing the top of his wine goblet yet never lifting it to his lips. This table really bore no difference to any other table, despite its title, as the speaker had not graced it since the evening began. Speaker Blythe intermingled with his guests, shaking their hands and speaking their names, all of their names. Somehow he remembered every single one. Not for the first time, David marveled at the man’s ability to play the crowd. Then again, he really didn’t have to play this crowd. They were putty in his hands the moment he took the speaker’s oath a season and a half ago. The man was an entertainer, and no one could take that away from him.

  A beautiful young woman clung to his arm, the latest in a long line of young ladies accompanying the speaker, though anyone privy to the situation knew that she was little more than an escort. Regardless, this one made David ache as she flitted around sending her deep auburn tresses through the air in wisps. Her pleasing face and matching figure complimented her magenta gown. David shut his eyes, reminiscing on a time long past.