Boot On Face: Very true! Such things only lead to trouble.
Beowulf: Perhaps he just made a lucky guess?
And yeah, he's a great actor, and the character from the Sopranos summed up what I wanted Cade to be like.
Dewirix: Maybe...though given the life expectancy of the Roman Emperors you'd wonder why.
morningSIDEr: She meets him sooner then you think...heh.
blsteen: Well, I admit that she probably had an idea it was him on the station, or had seen his picture. Don't read too much into that bit.
Range: Thanks!
And yes, the flashbacks are a very nice way of doing things...but I must be careful not to overuse them.
adamclason: Thanks! I probably should have done the flashback right at the start...but yeah.
And now we start the Ming sequence...these posts are longer, probably more confusing, and hopefully successful! Read, review and enjoy!
I think I did quite well in the circumstances against Ming. I used small armies to prevent them siege assaulting, scorched the ground, and attacked their small forces. In all I got them down to 4000 manpower and 19.6 war exhaustion. Pretty good for someone outnumbered 10-1!
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MAWDAW I PART 4
XXX
8/9/1507
The devastation was total. Every day more and more refugees arrived in the monastery to escape from the devastation of the countryside. The monks took in all those who arrived, even though they barely had enough food for themselves. The strong walls were an effective deterrent to both the invaders and the brigands who had claimed the desolated lands abandoned by the peasants.
Talena had done what she could for the people, but what she noticed most was the way people looked at her. It was true that she naturally looked different to everyone else, but the way some looked at curious; like they had seen her before.
She soon found the cause when the army arrived outside the monastery. They encamped at the bottom of the steep slope leading to the monastery, and with them were a good many siege engines and wagons. She couldn’t fathomed why an army of at least five thousand strong had been sent to attack a single refuge.
Before an attack was launched a small party of Chinese soldiers approached conspicuously carrying no weapons. It wasn’t like the monks had any weapons except for wooden staffs and roof tiles.
Talena was there with the Lama, Quan and others, when the delegation arrived.
“We greet you, soldiers. We have no weapons here, just civilians fleeing the war,” the Lama called.
“We acknowledge that,” said one of the party, a man dressed in fine silk robes and wearing a wide hat that shielded his face. “But you have within your walls a woman. A woman named Talena. She is an enemy of the Emperor and will surrender to us. If this is done your monastery will be spared.”
Talena, in the shadows, felt all eyes on her. All she could do was lamely shrug. However, something about the man’s voice was odd, unusual.
She stepped from her refuge and into sight. “I have done nothing to your Emperor. I have never met him, nor even fought his servants.”
“That’s really beside the point, Captain Mazari. You’re a long way from Titan, but be sure your sin shall find you out.” The man below pulled off his hat and looked up at her. He was Caucasian, in his late thirties, and balding. “Cyrus Cade at your service, ma’am.”
Talena had no idea what to say. He was familiar to look at vaguely, and the name was also one she knew. The problem was that although she had over a century and a quarter’s memories, only someone from her time could have known about Titan. That meant he had come back with her. He wasn’t one of her squad, which meant that he had been one of the enemies in the final battle. She’d seen him at the final battle on board the space station, she was sure, one of the men she’d captured.
“Now Captain, if you come down here and surrender this army will leave these monks to their own devices.” He was speaking in her native language so that they could not be overheard and understood.
“And if I refuse?”
Cade smirked. “One advantage of coming from the future is that we know some pretty interesting things. The Professor did wonderful work with petroleum and pine resin to create a type of napalm. Not to mention that we have explosives that could level that wall. You might not die, but those people must be packed in pretty tight there. An exploding cask of napalm...” he grinned “could be kind of dangerous.”
“Professor Channing survived did he? Shame. So he’s advising the Emperor is he? Is that how you found me here?”
Cade seemed amused. “Channing? He’s a typical mad scientist. He doesn’t give the orders, and he doesn’t have the Emperor’s ear. Problem is that you got him right in the chest and then we got sucked back here, so it’s stuck in him forever. Not too happy with you, for sure! But he’s not the boss. No...you’ll have to go meet him yourself...with my escort of course.”
“Naturally.” Talena looked at the worried, confused monks, and then down to the people. She knew that she had only one choice. If she refused then they would kill every person there, and even if she did escape she’d have those deaths on her mind.
Finally she sighed and nodded to Cade. “I’m coming out. I don’t really have much choice.”
“There’s always a choice, Talena. You could make the choice to watch the people in there get turned to ash, or you could do as I say.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
“Take you to the Emperor...and the boss. Now get a move on. You haven’t got all day.”
And so Talena exited the gate and walked towards the soldiers. She held out her gun to Cade, who took it and stored it.
“Tie her tightly, but make sure she can walk. Move out, we make for the port,” he told the other soldiers.
And so now Talena was a captive of her enemies, enemies from the present and the future.
XXX
For more than three years the fighting raged on. It was a process so brutal that both sides suffered terrible losses. The armies of the Pegu King, as well as deserters and villagers ambushed the Chinese invaders, then retreated into the jungle. The Chinese armies came to a point where they begun to kill any adult, young or old, and devastate the properties left behind. It is estimated that over one hundred thousand Ming Chinese warriors died of wounds or other causes, while almost half the population of the Kingdom also died. It was no chivalric war; it was a war of annihilation.
King Mawdaw, who had started it all with his mad, reckless bid for power, tried to urge his dwindling forces onward to total victory. Finally his army became angered and afraid of his madness and he was assassinated. It did no good; China had suffered too many losses by this point to be merciful. 80% of the Kingdom was seized, and the rest forced to pay homage to the Emperor. It was a bloody victory, and the chief legacy of Mawdaw P’an-Lo is that his actions inadvertently brought about the downfall of his Ming Chinese enemies....