The Search for the FourPage | 1
Jesse Pohlman
Valin’s eyes blinked in astonishment, and then he closed them while laughing to himself softly. His beautiful lips parted and he addressed her in a quiet, seductive voice. “Would your old position earn your compliance?”
It was Iona’s turn to simply smile and shake her head to the negative. “I have no intention of returning to that life, Valin,” she offered as she once again resumed the slow, patient readying of her weapon. “I am not clouded by vengeance or fear, hell spawn – I am now guided by righteousness, and I plan to smite you for the good of this world.”
The aftermath of her speech was broken as Valin applauded gently, nodding his head in approval. “Well,” he said with an idle grin, “My secondary objectives have been met, anyway!” Valin said as he rose to his feet atop the large stone. “While I certainly understand your frustration, I am afraid he does not.” Valin said as he pointed toward Iona. No, he pointed behind her.
Her body turned as her eyes focused upon the figure which Valin was directing her attention to. There, with his blue eyes widened and in absolute shock, stood Branden Frost…
Also By Jesse Pohlman
Pillars of the Kingdom, Volume 1:
The Forming
The exciting first installment of the Pillars of the Kingdom trilogy, and the book preceding this one! This novel establishes the Kingdom of Emor, our protagonists, and our world. If you don’t already have it, give it a look!
The Cassandra Cycle, and other Short Tales of Emor
A collection of ten short stories set in the Kingdom of Emor; five of them follow the legendary duo of Arcanics, the titular Cassandra Retholden and her accomplice, Shade. The other five…You’ll just have to see!
Pillars of the Kingdom, Volume Two:
The Search for The Four
Copyright
Jesse Pohlman
2009
Printed and distributed by: Lulu.com
Obligatory fine print: All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Oh, and all that copyright stuff; yeah, plagiarism and piracy mean the writers you love don’t get paid, and their work is bastardized, thus restricting your future entertainment! Don’t do it, okay? Thanks!
Cover Art Credits
Kevin Clark: Principal Art, front cover
Jennifer Hoover: Lettering on front, back cover.
To my mother, Joanne Pohlman,
I miss you so much,
But I know how proud you would be of me.
That’s what keeps me going; I won’t let you down.
Chapter One
Footsteps carried the middle-aged man through the hallway of the Yenohs Convention Center; the lights were dim, but the scent of carnival food was not far removed from the building. These halls held a myriad of events, from parties to conventions on city planning. It was not long ago, only a scant number of years, in fact, that the Kingdom of Emor had used the center’s smaller, more private meeting rooms for war councils when it wanted to keep the public in the dark about where and when such consultations on the fate of Gam took place.
He took a turn down the corridor on his left and scanned the rooms for their numbers. 22B, 23B, damn these walks, and damn these huge rooms, he thought to himself impatiently. What in the hell is the meaning of this, anyway? President Armous George was not a content man, not in any way. His control over his state had just been usurped and a royal envoy had just deposited a letter saying he was to meet at room 31B in the convention center, “post-haste.”
They cancelled my damn tee time at Craigsford, as well! How dare they? he thought in an irate tone. Were he less of a man, he’d be grasping the handle of his six-gun; the revolver he carried around for personal protection. A lesser man would not know such an expression would be futile. 26B, 27B, they think they’ll see me flustered, 28B, but they’re dead wrong!
Smugly, he took a moment to compose himself. The hallway curved and concealed him from seeing the currently-detested door. He straightened the tie on his blue suit, brushed his rapidly-graying hair back, and slowly exhaled. A placid look took his face; one with a hint of the grand confidence that got him elected in the first place. Time to make these royals look like tools.
He rounded the corner and the two Yenoharan army officials saluted him. They weren’t Hora or highly ranked, but they were supposed to be his men, and they’d clearly been appropriated. He returned the gesture, perhaps a touch too quickly for the ordinary social norms, and took another slow breath to steady himself before pushing the door open. On the precipice, he stood and observed the attendees.
Senator Connelly was seated on the left side of the table; she was the Secretary of the Interior and was almost always in the capital city, thus explaining why she was on hand. After all, it was her office that informed him of this encounter. The Secretary of Trade, Senator Gilles, looked appalled to be attending this meeting; he was the sort that lived in a high-rise apartment and rarely went to “common” affairs such as those the Convention Center hosted. He preferred wine-and-cheese parties with wealthy campaign contributors.
Others on his council who weren’t present, but had sent their junior officers in their place included the Secretary of the Treasury, who was in Castle Emor insuring the survival of various Yenoharan interests after the recent invasion that city suffered. Protecting Yenohar’s chief markets was key to his principality’s survival. His Secretary of Defense was north, overseeing the construction of a new fortress against the countless barbarians and monsters that always sought the conquest or destruction of his lands.
So why is it that only the top-tier individuals are here? The President asked himself for a moment. In another’s time, he had something of an answer. And who the hellfires is that?
The ‘that’ to which the President referred was a man who appeared about five years his junior and had brown hair with a number of red highlights running over and through his locks. He wore silver armor, the insignia of the Knights Council of Emor emboldened upon his chest. The President quickly recognized that, among various regalia etched into the intruder’s armor, he was both the Second Councilor and a Ralasian Swordpriest. He spent an instant of time annoyed at the complexity of those symbols before his face relaxed as though he were playing poker.
“I am Arthur Carpathian,” the man announced, standing up and walking to the door with an extended hand, “And I am the–”
”I know who you are,” Armous struck pre-emptively. “You are the Second Knights’ Councilor and you have interrupted my tee time. I trust that whatever you are here to deal with is important, Commander, because my time is very important.” Ordinarily, he would have looked around to see that his hand-picked secretaries - Not quite flunkies, but they were definitely in his pocket - were beaming with pride at the defiance their President showed.
He was disappointed. The secretaries looked crushed; and they hadn’t seemed to hear what he’d said at all. Worse, they might indeed have heard, and simply not cared. Or, they may even have dared to think him a fool. When he looked back to Arthur, he noticed the knight had an intermingled dose of worry and aggravation in his eyes.
“Mr. President,” the knight began in a tone containing enough gravity to suck in a planet, “it has come to our attention through the work of one of our elite units that the Empire of Solasce has snuck a number of military divisions into the Great Woods of the north, far beyond the Border Mountains of Coaslund.” The knight looked downward and took a slow breath in and out, a necessary pause to ensure he was prepared to say what was coming. It was hard to believe, but the implication was already quite clear.
“In a short time...” He gazed up, “They will...” he paused again, having found the President had disappeared. “Is he coming back?!” shouted the bewildered councilor, unable to hide his agitation any longer. To him, such a disappearance signaled cowardice, at best.
Senator Connelly chose to field this particular question with a moment of hemming and hawing, followed by a simple answer. “He needs time to think. It’s kind of a common thing for him.” Her voice didn’t hold much pride in her boss’ patterns.
The knight seated himself, opening a small manila folder that had gone unnoticed on the large table, and began to look over a number of files. He looked at his watch; five minutes had passed. When the door to the room finally opened, it had been a full set of seven of them.
“Sorry. Now, what is the kingdom giving us?” The first dishonorable words out of the Preisdent’s mouth nearly caused the knight’s temper to snap. First, the President went on about golf - Arthur hated Golf. Golf was a waste of precious land that only the rich could afford to indulge in. Second, he was plainly disrespectful - not just to a royal emissary such as himself, but to a fellow human being and citizen of Emor. Then, to top it all off, third; he showed fear combined an inability to sit down and cope with a problem staring him down. He needed to think about the obvious answers to a simplistic issue, and came back with a foolish question right off the bat. He could barely suppress his anger from rising up and choking the man’s life out.
“We will give you whatever support we can, Mr. President,” Carpathian answered as he held his temper back, shaking his head as he rapidly cooled. “Honestly, we do not know what they are capable of, save that it is a credible threat to the entire kingdom we are faced with.”
“And who exactly does this report come from?” A skeptical tone in the President’s voice indicated that Mr. George was not convinced this was legitimate. After all, the Empire of Solasce was deemed a child’s myth until recent weeks, and many people viewed its rumored existence as an attempt to implement some form of totalitarian government. Lies, deceit, and fear-mongering; all were plausible tools in such an endeavor, and the paranoid conspiracy theorists of the kingdom never really had a limit to their deranged fantasies.
“Third Knights’ Councilor Serge Lenkmen, in collusion with his special operatives. They have encountered a number of Solascian operatives and eliminated them all. From what we can tell, the Solascians have no Horas and utilize only minimal arcane abilities, leaving them with just a technological advantage which dwarfs almost everything you have here tenfold,” Carpathian stated in a dry voice.
“Serge, Lord Branden Frost, and their compatriots have already prevented a pincer attack on our nation and are currently aboard a private vessel back toward this city to help defend it. From the intelligence I have gathered thus far, our enemies have prepared a fleet consisting primarily of two cruisers, as well as assorted lancers and cutters.”
In a war of technology, such terminology was essential in getting a basic grasp of the logistics involved. A lancer was a flying vessel, typically held in the air by crystal-fueled anti-gravity pads and propelled forward by jets in the rear. They were about the size of two and a half houses stacked on top of each other, a good fifty feet large, and ordinarily packed a reasonable amount of firepower for their size, although they couldn‘t support more than the scantest amount of shielding. They also made excellent landing craft for small troop squadrons, as small arms fire was rarely enough to penetrate their armor.
Cutters were one gigantic step larger - they were about the size of a small city block. These vessels typically served as anti-ship platforms; they usually packed a great deal of direct fire weaponry, such as heavy laser cannons, and a fair supply of indirect weapons such as missiles. Their shields were ordinarily quite dense, making them excellent tools of war.
Between these two classes and the cruiser class was the destroyer. These ships were tremendous; four city blocks in size. They consumed a great deal of fuel, not to mention the labor costs and natural resource consumption associated with such ships. On the plus side, they were large enough to house a fair number of smaller planes, making them capable of self-defense in a thoroughly different capacity than the other types of ships. Yenohar and Coaslund each had a number of these, and they were all armed to the teeth and armored to the core. They had never been used in anger, but simulated tests proved they were a good match for a Hora.
This proved little reassurance, as the President’s voice cracked when his lips spoke to confirm to his mind what he’d just heard. “C...Cruisers?” The President asked with a gasp. “Cruisers are only theoretical! Nobody can build them, yet, they’re simply too big! How...”
“They are about twice the size of a Yenoharan destroyer, if not larger,” Carpathian stated in a grave tone. “We understand they are all well shielded using technology quite beyond that which Yenohar possesses. They have three divisions of armored troops - Half of that in vehicles, half in war walkers - and two divisions of infantry on the continent. That’s not much,” Carpathian admitted, “because we have a number of Horas and Fechas readying to counter this threat as we speak. It’s the air battle that will be the key to this tactical situation, and unfortunately they appear to dominate the skies.”
The President, despite his anxiety, broke into a sudden and aggressive grin. He recognized it was his turn to brag about how much force he had backing him. He’d show the knight that, had Yenohar’s methods been followed by the whole kingdom, this wouldn’t be an issue. “We have three destroyers and almost twenty smaller vessels, not to mention standard fighters on the ground and anti-aircraft armaments...We can–”
Carpathian raised his hand to forestall the bluster which his eyes, in their gravity and irritation, indicated he found unnecessary. “The kingdom,” he said as a substitute for himself, “has already ordered them to form up over the Great Canyon and join with the one destroyer and seven or so smaller vessels we have transferred to Yenohar’s command network from Coaslund.”
He stood from his seat as his arms moved over his head into a lackadaisical stretch, heedless of how this might insult the man standing before him. “This meeting in itself is simply to inform you that within a few hours your air bases will have Coaslundian air forces - and even the small Gataminian and Ralasian fleets we could obtain - backing them up. We understand Yenohar has eight armored divisions, two war walker divisions, and seven Infantry groups. We are supplementing them with our armed forces in the region as well, and we are trying to keep them out of the city of Yenohs at all costs.”
The President was defeated and he knew it. So much for having nominal authority, he thought as he signed the transfer papers already prepared for him. Still, he looked Carpathian over and, after a moment, forgave the man his trespasses in the way that a one acquiesces to their own mortality. He is, among other things, a member of the council.
*****
Not that he disliked his job, but the Killer Bee-3 was a damn small plane. Its name was the rhyme-infused third incarnation of the Killer Bee fighter plane model. The KB-1 had been designed more as a low-altitude fighter, fielding five anti-gravity pads as propulsion. One was located on the bottom of the small cockpit, one under a small generator on each wing and one on the far side of each wing. This allowed the small fighter to lift off vertically and scuttle forward at a slow but highly maneuverable pace. It served as an excellent boat-killer and a decent strafing weapon, so much so that the mechanized infantry units still employed them on their own.
On the other hand, the KB-1 was deemed insufficient to fill the decks of Sword Division’s carrier circumstances, so the KB-2 was developed as an efficient ship-based aircraft. That particular model used a single-engine fuel system based on liquefied crystal to propel two large, powerful turbines with anti-gravity pads underneath. This incarnation retained much of its predecessor’s maneuverability while increasing its speed tremendously. The only drawback? The large engines took up more space than desired on their cruisers, and aside from producing too much thrust for such a small plane the monstrous turbines were an easy target that was hard to put shielding devices on. Left-over KB-2’s weren’t slated to see combat, instead serving to train new pilots due to the similarity of the control consoles with their successor’s.