"POSTSCRI" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jerome Bigge - Warlady 9 - The Freedom Fighters Of Trelandar)Freedom Fighters of Trelandar A Tale of Adventure in the Second Dark Age Book Nine of the Warlady Series By Jerome B. Bigge Postscript
I felt the manor "shudder" in the hurricane force winds, the
trees soon to come crashing down as the ocean came smashing in to
shore, the water already having come up half way to the house as
the Earth entered its final hours of life. The sounds of Dooms-
day like no storm I'd ever known as I felt another earthquake, a
"warning" that the time was not far off when all of this would be
destroyed. Most of the outbuildings were gone now, the last of
our retainers having fled towards the mountains, seeking a safety
that could be found only aboard a spaceship. Outside Black Lady
rocked and shook in the gusts as the winds grew stronger, waiting
for me to take her up on her last ever flight as our world died
beneath... A heavy crash of thunder like the detonation of some
explosive. The sky filled with lightning, nature on a "rampage".
I had decided to die with my world, where my memories were,
where the bodies of those I'd known now laid, Jon's next to his
beloved Lorraine, my last husband having died now two years ago
in 2646, his heart having stopped in his sleep as he laid beside
me. Taking a last look around, the manor shaking in the wind, I
forced the door open and stumbled outside, the wind tearing at
me. A last look at the graves beside the house, a tree breaking
off as I leaped aside as best I could, the terror clutching at my
old heart for a moment making me "young" again, not a hundred and
twenty eight as I was, my hair now all gray, my face wrinkled up.
I stumbled towards Black Lady, fighting the wind, feeling it
tear at my clothing, bits of spin drift from the ocean like rain.
My sword at my hip, the same blade my mother once carried so long
ago in an age when men believed that the Earth would be forever.
Black Lady was "old", her piston rings in poor shape, making her
burn oil, foul spark plugs, but she would take off one more time.
Carry me aloft into the sky, allow me to report by radio to the
orbiting spaceships what I can see, the clouds such that I will
have a better "view" of things than they will here, I'm told now.
There are other spacecraft in our atmosphere, but I will "help".
"One more time, old girl," I said, forcing open the door and
climbing in, the black Beechcraft Bonzana the last of her kind.
The engine started right up, thanks to the fresh spark plugs I'd
put in earlier, its steady roar a comfort as the wind whistled by
the windshield. The double barred cross of Lorraine painted on
the fuselage now faded with time, the action of wind and rain...
A last memory of a woman now but only a "legend" upon two worlds.
I applied more throttle, Black Lady now rolling away from
the ship's cable I'd used to hold her from being blown backwards,
the wind now so strong that I need only draw the wheel back a bit
and we are at once airborne, actually drifting backwards for a
moment before I pushed in the throttle and allowed Black Lady to
seek again the sky for the last time. A shuddering going through
the airplane as we climbed, the ground falling away, the heavy
clouds racing across the sky like I'd never seen before, the sea
now beneath me like nothing I've ever seen either, the waves be-
ing I'd guess some fifty feet to sixty feet in height. Smashing
into the cliffs south of the estate, throwing up spray perhaps a
hundred yards or more into the air, the airplane hardly moving
against the wind despite my airspeed of a hundred miles an hour.
I then pushed the throttle in all the way, hoping the engine
would hold together for just a few hours, Black Lady now racing
along the sea coast on towards Trella at an airspeed of a hundred
and ninety miles per hour, although my ground speed was far less.
My flight actually crab wise, almost sideways in this hurricane!
Beneath me I could see the sea smashing into the land, in places
now flooding inland where the ground was lower. The fisherman's
huts and all such all ready gone, washed away. Even inland, the
wind had already destroyed much of Man's works, a test of it by
pointing the airplane into the wind and throttle back indicating
that its speed was just over a hundred ten miles per hour here.*
* I was making regular reports by radio to a spaceship. (Sanda)
I thought of the ruined house once belonging to the Simmons
that had played such a role in all our lives, aware that it too
would finally be destroyed when the tidal waves came as they soon
would. The changes in the Earth's rotation, its orbit about the
Sun as it was torn away from, all would spell the "end" of Earth.
I could tell as the minutes passed that I was losing ground
speed despite my airspeed indicator registering a steady 190 mph.
The trees of the forest now breaking off, falling over, the rain
coming, the lightning flashing in the sky overhead terrifying me.
Its heavy thunder sometimes deafening, not at all helping an old
woman whose hearing was none too good anymore anyway. I wore my
reading glasses low on my nose, letting me see to fly and at the
same time bringing the airplane's instruments into clear vision.
Then I was flying over roiled water, the ocean having broken
in here, my ground speed obviously lower now despite the best ef-
forts of Black Lady's engine. The spaceship I was reporting to
informing me that the wind was now up to a hundred and thirty...
The thought going through my mind that eventually it would become
strong enough that Black Lady would no longer be able to fly into
it and I'd then be blown inland, over the mountains to my eventu-
al doom when the alcohol was finally drained from the fuel tanks.
If lucky I might be able to make a landing somewhere flying into
the wind, and perhaps survive for a few more days if the earth-
quakes and everything else didn't get me. I had with me too the
means of ending my own life, that famous drug that the Priestess-
es have given people for centuries, a drug that is gentle, pain-
less, and eases you across the "barrier" between life and death.
Unlike those of the distant past, I had no fear of death, knowing
that only one's body dies, while your immortal soul continues on.
I flew over what remained of a village I'd once "ambushed" a
small garrison of Imperial troopers in so long ago now, the wind
having smashed most of the houses, the buildings into rubble now.
It was starting to rain, the rain striking the fuselage like hail
as I flew towards Trella, wondering how "much" would be left now.
A spaceship somewhere further out to sea reporting tidal waves, a
final convulsion of the Earth as she destroyed all Man had made.
Some people here and there would survive for a time, those
in the mountains, or on the plains beyond, but then it would grow
cold, colder as the life giving Sun became only a speck of bright
light in the sky... The temperatures would fall, fall lower than
they had even during the Ice Ages of the past, and eventually all
would freeze, even the air itself eventually becoming solid until
the Earth was frozen solid colder than ice, now a world of death.
I heard on the radio the report of a tidal wave striking Du-
larn, of waves washing over the island for a mile inland, even
larger tidal waves coming that would no doubt destroy everything.
Queen Maris would die with her people, as would Sharon, our be-
loved Empress, and our own Queen Gayle of Trelandar. Perhaps in
Talon there would be survivors huddling with Queen Sela, although
it seemed likely that Talon might survive perhaps a bit longer to
face the bitter cold, the freezing temperatures of outer space.
"My groundspeed is noticeably `slower' now," I reported, the
wind having picked up a bit more, perhaps close to a hundred and
fifty here, the trees below mostly now broken off in such gusts.
Black Lady was hard to fly in the super hurricane force winds, it
taking all my skill to keep her flying as the updrafts and down-
drafts bounced me about inside her. "Few trees still stand," I
added, the scene one of desolation, broken trees, smashed houses.
My groundspeed now hardly faster than that of a racing unicorn,
even with my airspeed indicator reading a full one ninety here...
"Don't know if I'm going to be able to make it to Trella or not."
I could see the beginning of the ruins of Los Angeles, the
ocean now invisible in the rain beyond, a large "crack" in the
earth below leaving no doubts as to the earthquakes taking place.
Beyond would be Trella, my groundspeed now down to no more than
thirty miles per hour, Black Lady bucking in the horrible winds,
her airspeed indicator still reading one ninety to one ninety
five now, my fuel consumption such that it would be exhausted in
less than six hours now, although I did not think I'd be able to
stay aloft even that long now with things the way that they were!
At a groundspeed no faster than that of a galloping unicorn
I now approached Trella, or what now still stood of the city, the
portion closest to the ocean already flooded, although the royal
palace still stood there overlooking the doomed capital below. I
thought of Gayle, who like me had a radio, and was reporting in a
calm voice what she saw, a "vision" of her there in my mind as I
saw the tidal wave sweep over the city, the water smashing down
the yet standing buildings, the water sweeping towards the palace
in an unstoppable tide. Queen Gayle's last words, "MAY LYS HAVE
MERCY..." the last that I heard as the palace fell in the waters!
"Losing you, Sanda!" I heard on my radio, the static now
cutting everything out as I brought Black Lady around into the
wind, the airplane hardly moving now over the ground as I saw the
second tidal wave hit, leaving Trella only a memory I yet held...
"Sanda! Radar is showing a ******," the static drowning it out!
I was climbing now, Trella only roiled waters beneath me as Black
Lady sought the sky like a dying bird, the lightning flashing all
around me, the radio only static roaring and screaming in my ears
before I shut it off. I knew what laid ahead, and it would be a
fitting end, I thought, perhaps better than any other I knew of!!
THEN I SAW IT, THE MOVING GREENISH GLOW SEEMING TO REACH OUT
TO ME, AND AS THE AGONY CAME, I THOUGHT FOR A SECOND THAT THERE
WAS ANOTHER THERE IN THE AIRPLANE WITH ME, A TALL BRUNETTE, HARD
FEATURED, HER FACE SET IN GRIM DETERMINATION AS WE FLEW INTO IT!!
MY SENSES SPINNING AS THE GLOWING GREENISH LIGHT SURROUNDED THE
AIRPLANE, THE ENGINE YET ROARING AS THE AGONY RIPPLED THROUGH MY
OLD BODY, MY HANDS SHAKING ON THE CONTROLS AS LORRAINE'S SPIRIT
THERE BESIDE ME NOW GUIDED BLACK LADY ON HER FINAL LAST FLIGHT...
*****************************************************************
"Ain't no body ever going to `believe' any story like this,"
old widow Perkins grinned at me, setting down the book I'd wrote.
Peering at me over the wire rims of her glasses, her hair as gray
as my own, her wrinkled features leaving no doubts as to her age.
Her attire common in this society still strange even to me. "Ev-
eryone knows that this `airy plane' of yours couldn't exist," she
continued, Black Lady having drifted off with the wind when I had
made my landing a short distance from the little settlement here,
the airplane no doubt having eventually sunk in some storm. It
was now the year 1851, the mid Nineteenth Century. The Califor-
nian Gold Rush having brought ships, men, women of "easy virtue"
as is said in this society where Queen Victoria now rules an "Em-
pire" growing so huge that it is said it will now span the world.
Where to the east, across the continent, men argue the rights and
wrongs of slavery, and will eventually fight a great war over it.
"Perhaps it is just as well," I smiled, aware of the dangers
of altering what is to be... I may live for a few years yet, my
health being quite good, but none will ever believe that I was in
fact born in the year 2520, lived until the year 2648 in southern
California, and flew an airplane built in the seventh decade of
the 20th Century now back to this, the fifth decade of the 19th!
"Well, at least you're pretty good `company'," she laughed,
the old widow being well off, and no doubt I kept her entertained
with my stories of a society that would not exist for centuries.
"Even if you can't be no hundred and twenty nine," she concluded,
my birthday due now in a few days if my track of time was right.
"Perhaps that's all that's really `important'," I smiled.
I awoke from a sound sleep, widow Perkins there in the other
bed snoring softly to herself, the night sounds coming in through
the open window beside me. The memories flooding back of hearing
such sounds in another land, another time. The shadowy figure in
black standing by my bed one I immediately recognized even after
so many years had passed, that tall brunette I'd so admired once.
"You will soon be with me..." Lorraine now said to me before
disappearing from view, her words leaving little doubt of things.
The End
(The Lady Sanda Harles of Trelandar)
Freedom Fighters of Trelandar A Tale of Adventure in the Second Dark Age Book Nine of the Warlady Series By Jerome B. Bigge Postscript I felt the manor "shudder" in the hurricane force winds, the trees soon to come crashing down as the ocean came smashing in to shore, the water already having come up half way to the house as the Earth entered its final hours of life. The sounds of Dooms- day like no storm I'd ever known as I felt another earthquake, a "warning" that the time was not far off when all of this would be destroyed. Most of the outbuildings were gone now, the last of our retainers having fled towards the mountains, seeking a safety that could be found only aboard a spaceship. Outside Black Lady rocked and shook in the gusts as the winds grew stronger, waiting for me to take her up on her last ever flight as our world died beneath... A heavy crash of thunder like the detonation of some explosive. The sky filled with lightning, nature on a "rampage". I had decided to die with my world, where my memories were, where the bodies of those I'd known now laid, Jon's next to his beloved Lorraine, my last husband having died now two years ago in 2646, his heart having stopped in his sleep as he laid beside me. Taking a last look around, the manor shaking in the wind, I forced the door open and stumbled outside, the wind tearing at me. A last look at the graves beside the house, a tree breaking off as I leaped aside as best I could, the terror clutching at my old heart for a moment making me "young" again, not a hundred and twenty eight as I was, my hair now all gray, my face wrinkled up. I stumbled towards Black Lady, fighting the wind, feeling it tear at my clothing, bits of spin drift from the ocean like rain. My sword at my hip, the same blade my mother once carried so long ago in an age when men believed that the Earth would be forever. Black Lady was "old", her piston rings in poor shape, making her burn oil, foul spark plugs, but she would take off one more time. Carry me aloft into the sky, allow me to report by radio to the orbiting spaceships what I can see, the clouds such that I will have a better "view" of things than they will here, I'm told now. There are other spacecraft in our atmosphere, but I will "help". "One more time, old girl," I said, forcing open the door and climbing in, the black Beechcraft Bonzana the last of her kind. The engine started right up, thanks to the fresh spark plugs I'd put in earlier, its steady roar a comfort as the wind whistled by the windshield. The double barred cross of Lorraine painted on the fuselage now faded with time, the action of wind and rain... A last memory of a woman now but only a "legend" upon two worlds. I applied more throttle, Black Lady now rolling away from the ship's cable I'd used to hold her from being blown backwards, the wind now so strong that I need only draw the wheel back a bit and we are at once airborne, actually drifting backwards for a moment before I pushed in the throttle and allowed Black Lady to seek again the sky for the last time. A shuddering going through the airplane as we climbed, the ground falling away, the heavy clouds racing across the sky like I'd never seen before, the sea now beneath me like nothing I've ever seen either, the waves be- ing I'd guess some fifty feet to sixty feet in height. Smashing into the cliffs south of the estate, throwing up spray perhaps a hundred yards or more into the air, the airplane hardly moving against the wind despite my airspeed of a hundred miles an hour. I then pushed the throttle in all the way, hoping the engine would hold together for just a few hours, Black Lady now racing along the sea coast on towards Trella at an airspeed of a hundred and ninety miles per hour, although my ground speed was far less. My flight actually crab wise, almost sideways in this hurricane! Beneath me I could see the sea smashing into the land, in places now flooding inland where the ground was lower. The fisherman's huts and all such all ready gone, washed away. Even inland, the wind had already destroyed much of Man's works, a test of it by pointing the airplane into the wind and throttle back indicating that its speed was just over a hundred ten miles per hour here.* * I was making regular reports by radio to a spaceship. (Sanda) I thought of the ruined house once belonging to the Simmons that had played such a role in all our lives, aware that it too would finally be destroyed when the tidal waves came as they soon would. The changes in the Earth's rotation, its orbit about the Sun as it was torn away from, all would spell the "end" of Earth. I could tell as the minutes passed that I was losing ground speed despite my airspeed indicator registering a steady 190 mph. The trees of the forest now breaking off, falling over, the rain coming, the lightning flashing in the sky overhead terrifying me. Its heavy thunder sometimes deafening, not at all helping an old woman whose hearing was none too good anymore anyway. I wore my reading glasses low on my nose, letting me see to fly and at the same time bringing the airplane's instruments into clear vision. Then I was flying over roiled water, the ocean having broken in here, my ground speed obviously lower now despite the best ef- forts of Black Lady's engine. The spaceship I was reporting to informing me that the wind was now up to a hundred and thirty... The thought going through my mind that eventually it would become strong enough that Black Lady would no longer be able to fly into it and I'd then be blown inland, over the mountains to my eventu- al doom when the alcohol was finally drained from the fuel tanks. If lucky I might be able to make a landing somewhere flying into the wind, and perhaps survive for a few more days if the earth- quakes and everything else didn't get me. I had with me too the means of ending my own life, that famous drug that the Priestess- es have given people for centuries, a drug that is gentle, pain- less, and eases you across the "barrier" between life and death. Unlike those of the distant past, I had no fear of death, knowing that only one's body dies, while your immortal soul continues on. I flew over what remained of a village I'd once "ambushed" a small garrison of Imperial troopers in so long ago now, the wind having smashed most of the houses, the buildings into rubble now. It was starting to rain, the rain striking the fuselage like hail as I flew towards Trella, wondering how "much" would be left now. A spaceship somewhere further out to sea reporting tidal waves, a final convulsion of the Earth as she destroyed all Man had made. Some people here and there would survive for a time, those in the mountains, or on the plains beyond, but then it would grow cold, colder as the life giving Sun became only a speck of bright light in the sky... The temperatures would fall, fall lower than they had even during the Ice Ages of the past, and eventually all would freeze, even the air itself eventually becoming solid until the Earth was frozen solid colder than ice, now a world of death. I heard on the radio the report of a tidal wave striking Du- larn, of waves washing over the island for a mile inland, even larger tidal waves coming that would no doubt destroy everything. Queen Maris would die with her people, as would Sharon, our be- loved Empress, and our own Queen Gayle of Trelandar. Perhaps in Talon there would be survivors huddling with Queen Sela, although it seemed likely that Talon might survive perhaps a bit longer to face the bitter cold, the freezing temperatures of outer space. "My groundspeed is noticeably `slower' now," I reported, the wind having picked up a bit more, perhaps close to a hundred and fifty here, the trees below mostly now broken off in such gusts. Black Lady was hard to fly in the super hurricane force winds, it taking all my skill to keep her flying as the updrafts and down- drafts bounced me about inside her. "Few trees still stand," I added, the scene one of desolation, broken trees, smashed houses. My groundspeed now hardly faster than that of a racing unicorn, even with my airspeed indicator reading a full one ninety here... "Don't know if I'm going to be able to make it to Trella or not." I could see the beginning of the ruins of Los Angeles, the ocean now invisible in the rain beyond, a large "crack" in the earth below leaving no doubts as to the earthquakes taking place. Beyond would be Trella, my groundspeed now down to no more than thirty miles per hour, Black Lady bucking in the horrible winds, her airspeed indicator still reading one ninety to one ninety five now, my fuel consumption such that it would be exhausted in less than six hours now, although I did not think I'd be able to stay aloft even that long now with things the way that they were! At a groundspeed no faster than that of a galloping unicorn I now approached Trella, or what now still stood of the city, the portion closest to the ocean already flooded, although the royal palace still stood there overlooking the doomed capital below. I thought of Gayle, who like me had a radio, and was reporting in a calm voice what she saw, a "vision" of her there in my mind as I saw the tidal wave sweep over the city, the water smashing down the yet standing buildings, the water sweeping towards the palace in an unstoppable tide. Queen Gayle's last words, "MAY LYS HAVE MERCY..." the last that I heard as the palace fell in the waters! "Losing you, Sanda!" I heard on my radio, the static now cutting everything out as I brought Black Lady around into the wind, the airplane hardly moving now over the ground as I saw the second tidal wave hit, leaving Trella only a memory I yet held... "Sanda! Radar is showing a ******," the static drowning it out! I was climbing now, Trella only roiled waters beneath me as Black Lady sought the sky like a dying bird, the lightning flashing all around me, the radio only static roaring and screaming in my ears before I shut it off. I knew what laid ahead, and it would be a fitting end, I thought, perhaps better than any other I knew of!! THEN I SAW IT, THE MOVING GREENISH GLOW SEEMING TO REACH OUT TO ME, AND AS THE AGONY CAME, I THOUGHT FOR A SECOND THAT THERE WAS ANOTHER THERE IN THE AIRPLANE WITH ME, A TALL BRUNETTE, HARD FEATURED, HER FACE SET IN GRIM DETERMINATION AS WE FLEW INTO IT!! MY SENSES SPINNING AS THE GLOWING GREENISH LIGHT SURROUNDED THE AIRPLANE, THE ENGINE YET ROARING AS THE AGONY RIPPLED THROUGH MY OLD BODY, MY HANDS SHAKING ON THE CONTROLS AS LORRAINE'S SPIRIT THERE BESIDE ME NOW GUIDED BLACK LADY ON HER FINAL LAST FLIGHT... ***************************************************************** "Ain't no body ever going to `believe' any story like this," old widow Perkins grinned at me, setting down the book I'd wrote. Peering at me over the wire rims of her glasses, her hair as gray as my own, her wrinkled features leaving no doubts as to her age. Her attire common in this society still strange even to me. "Ev- eryone knows that this `airy plane' of yours couldn't exist," she continued, Black Lady having drifted off with the wind when I had made my landing a short distance from the little settlement here, the airplane no doubt having eventually sunk in some storm. It was now the year 1851, the mid Nineteenth Century. The Califor- nian Gold Rush having brought ships, men, women of "easy virtue" as is said in this society where Queen Victoria now rules an "Em- pire" growing so huge that it is said it will now span the world. Where to the east, across the continent, men argue the rights and wrongs of slavery, and will eventually fight a great war over it. "Perhaps it is just as well," I smiled, aware of the dangers of altering what is to be... I may live for a few years yet, my health being quite good, but none will ever believe that I was in fact born in the year 2520, lived until the year 2648 in southern California, and flew an airplane built in the seventh decade of the 20th Century now back to this, the fifth decade of the 19th! "Well, at least you're pretty good `company'," she laughed, the old widow being well off, and no doubt I kept her entertained with my stories of a society that would not exist for centuries. "Even if you can't be no hundred and twenty nine," she concluded, my birthday due now in a few days if my track of time was right. "Perhaps that's all that's really `important'," I smiled. I awoke from a sound sleep, widow Perkins there in the other bed snoring softly to herself, the night sounds coming in through the open window beside me. The memories flooding back of hearing such sounds in another land, another time. The shadowy figure in black standing by my bed one I immediately recognized even after so many years had passed, that tall brunette I'd so admired once. "You will soon be with me..." Lorraine now said to me before disappearing from view, her words leaving little doubt of things. The End (The Lady Sanda Harles of Trelandar) |
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