Preview from Clouds in the Future, Book Signing, Download Fix
I hope you're having a great summer!
This time I have the preview chapter from Clouds in the Future I promised.
But first, some housekeeping.
It seems that a few new subscribers (Welcome, by the way!) had problems downloading The Tesla Fire. So, here’s a link to download it without having to sign up again.
Second, I’ll be signing books at Barnes and Noble in Paramus, NJ on Saturday, August 17th! I’d love to meet you if you can make it. Here’s the announcement and details on the store if you’re not already familiar with the area.
On to the preview.
And if you haven’t read the first book in The great War of the Worlds series yet, you can get your copy of Shadows of the Past here.
You can preorder Clouds in the Future here.
Clouds in the Future
Chapter 1
Goussainville, France
The little girl danced on the edge of the well, teetering on the edge and waving her arms to catch her balance. Christian Beckenbauer lunged toward her with his hands outstretched, then caught himself when her father grabbed and pulled her back.
It was easy to understand the girl’s exuberance. Her tiny fingers clutched what was probably the first piece of bread she’d seen in two weeks; the last time Christian and the rest of the Marauders had visited with supplies from Paris. But seeing her close to falling in the well brought back unwelcome memories.
The tiny village of Goussainville sat on the northeastern edge of the area surrounding Paris. An area that the Martians had left unmolested after withdrawing a few weeks earlier, but not before destroying rail service and decimating crops. Food was still in short supply and what was still available had to be distributed by foot, truck, or horse-drawn cart.
“Herr Beckenbauer?”
It was Louis, the man who oversaw handing out food to the townspeople. He was younger than Christian, probably only twenty-two or three, with clothes that hung off him like an under stuffed scarecrow. Clearly, he’d been eating better before the invasion. Louis inherited the village market from his father, who’d been killed by the invaders in January when they’d torn through the area, making him the closest thing to a mayor the village had.
“Yes, Louis?” Christian replied.
“What should we do with these Bibles?” the younger man asked, pointing to a crate perched on the end of one of the supply carts.
Christian looked around before answering. The monseigneur was nowhere in sight.
“Set them aside for when it gets cold again. They’ll make great kindling.”
“Now, now, I’m sure Louis can find another use for the Cardinal’s generous gift,” Emil Zimmerman said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “They’re for everyone. Why don’t you get the monseigneur and see if he has a plan for distributing them? He’s taking confession at the église.”
Louis nodded and left.
“We talked about this, Christian. You need to keep your feelings about the church to yourself. We need them,” Emil said after Louis was out of earshot. Emil was a small man, noticeably shorter than Christian’s two meters, with thinning, dark hair. What he lacked in stature, he made up for in gravitas and intensity.
“We’re already keeping these villages safe and delivering food to them. Why do we have to distribute the church’s trash and kiss up to the Cardinal’s men, too? And where’s the monseigneur? He can hand out his books.”
“He’s taking confession. The Martians killed their priest. We need to work with him because that’s part of the deal, and we don’t want to make any more trouble for the Resistance. Things are tenuous enough as it is,” Emil said.
“They’re tenuous because of the Cardinal’s attitude toward the us and the Resistance.” Christian said.
“Yes, he’s got a problem with Curie. We don’t want him to have a problem with—”
A deep hum cut off Emil’s point. A hum that almost sounded like a Martian heat ray.
Fortunately, most of the townspeople had already picked up their supplies, and only a few were still in town square. Even so the area exploded into pandemonium, with people running, screaming, and surging toward cover where they could find it. Emil and Christian ran to the shelter of a nearby building.
“Martians? Where?” Emil asked, scanning the horizon. “I don’t see any Wanderers.”
“Is it me, or did that heat ray sound… wrong?” Christian asked.
“No, it’s not you. Wrong pitch,” Emil said with a nod.
The tone was too high, almost as if it was from a smaller unit. Were the Martians deploying less sizeable wanderers, or some kind of more compact craft?
Christian craned his neck and listened. Shots rang out from the northern end of the village, followed by another hum.
Emil had posted men at the end of the town because that was where he expected any ravageur attacks to come from. Were they wasting rounds on a wanderer? They knew better than that.
Zimmerman had led the squad that formed the heart of the Marauders safely out of the trenches of the Somme during a deadly Martian attack and all the way to Reims, where they toppled a wannabe military dictator and defended the city from even greater Martian aggression. Then they earned their nickname by staging a series of hit and run attacks on the Martians as they made their way to Paris, where they had heard the Resistance needed help. Emil was a natural, if sometimes reluctant, leader.
“Go see what’s happening over there. I’ll check the southern end of town to make sure they aren’t trying to box the village in,” Emil said.
“Send the panzer our way after you’re sure,” Christian said. The Marauders had their Martian-powered electric panzer, outfitted with a heat ray, with them on this trip.
“We need a prisoner, especially if the ravageurs have Martian tech now. I’ll give you some time before I send Fluse. You’re our best shot. See if you can get one of them before they run,” Emil said and took off to the south.
The label “ravageurs” suited the mysterious and anonymous attackers. They’d appear, open fire on villages, pilfer supplies, and retreat, often within minutes. Other than an uncanny ability to get away unscathed, they demonstrated no strategy or underlying goal.
But if they had heat rays now, their strategy might change.
Christian worked his way north, taking cover between the buildings that lined the tiny village’s main road as he went. Soon the familiar scent of a wood fire filled the air, confirming his suspicion that someone was using a heat ray. But most of the structures in Goussainville were stone. What was burning?
The main road ended with a two-story brick building, where several marauders huddled for cover. Two of them were watching the field that lie past the edge of town through their rifle sights. A burn was completely engulfed in flames that way.
“What’s happening?” he asked the big farm boy Emil affectionately called “Bumpkin.” Bumpkin was a tall, blonde, farm boy from somewhere deep in Bayern with an endearing, almost childish, naivete.
Bumpkin pointed toward the open field, his eyes wide with fear. Christian squinted for a better view through the smoke and finally saw the strangest vehicle he’d ever seen. Someone had done their best to outfit an automobile like a panzer, but their best wasn’t very good. Someone had attached metal plates, obviously salvaged from scrap to it as armor, with irregular gaps on the front and sides, presumably so the driver could see, and a crew could aim weapons. But what might have been hilariously inept under other circumstances wasn’t funny at all. The makeshift battle wagon had a heat ray bolted on its roof.
“We were over by the barn when that thing came out of the woods,” Bumpkin said, his voice quavering. “It got Frenz.”
Before Christian could answer, the heat ray sounded and fired on the building across the road from where the men hid. It was built from rough cast walls but had wood-framed windows which immediately burst into flame.
Christian watched in shock as a woman fled out the front door and the vehicle turned the heart ray on her. She was incinerated in seconds.
The ray might have a higher pitch, but it was at least as deadly as the ones on the wanderers.
“We have to stop that thing before it kills everyone in Goussainville,” said Miller. Miller was the metropolitan answer to Bumpkin. Tall, blonde, and muscular but a born cynic that was fastidious about his uniform.
“We need Fluse up here, but I don’t know how much that thing will do before he makes it here,” Christian said.
“Can you shoot the mirror?” Miller asked. “Like Zimmerman did back on the Somme. I can’t make a shot like that, but I know you can.”
Of course! That’s how Emil had disabled the heat ray the madman was using after they’d fled the trenches. One well-placed shot, and this makeshift panzer was nothing more than a slow-moving automobile.
Christian eased himself into a prone firing position and brought his rifle sight up to his eye. He sighted the mirror and prepared to fire. Before he squeezed the trigger, the heat ray fired again, forcing him to look away.
Another person had exited the bakery and was burning on the road in front of it.
Bile rose in Christian’s throat. He sighted the crack in the armor and put three rounds into it, hoping with every fiber of his being that he had killed everyone in the vehicle. So much for Emil’s prisoners. These butchers were using Martian tech on civilians and belonged in hell.
Then he targeted the mirror and shattered it with another shot.
Seconds after the mirror exploded into glass shards, Christian heard the rumble of the panzer. It rolled over to where he waited with Bumpkin. The huge steel vehicle spun on its tracks to face away from the enemy, and Leutnant Fluse stepped out.
If the Marauders were a proper German unit, Fluse would have been their commander. Of course, if they were still German military, they’d be back in Germany instead of delivering supplies from Paris to French villages.
Fluse and Emil had been at each other’s throats back at the Somme and had struggled for control of the group all the way to Reims. Fluse, like his close friend Miller, looked and acted like the Kaiser’s ideal soldier. Emil had been, in many ways, the complete opposite. But they’d worked things out at some point during the struggle with the erstwhile strongman Wegener and Emil was in charge.
“I think it’s disabled,“ Christian said. “But maybe you should lead us over there and we can make sure.”
Fluse reentered the panzer, closing the door behind himself. Christian fell in behind the vehicle with Bumpkin and they headed across the field. The men used the vehicle as cover in a drill that they practiced many times before.
There were two dead men inside the vehicle.
“No prisoner?” Emil said with a sigh.
Christian shook his head and explained what happened.
“Why didn’t you just shoot the mirror out?” Emil said, his head titled in puzzlement.
“They were butchers,” Christian spat.
“Butchers that could have told us where they got those weapons from,” Emil said.
The monseigneur stood behind Emil with his arms crossed, shaking his head. He was a heavyset man in his late twenties who, even though he was a man of the cloth, was fastidious about his grooming. His clean shaven cheeks gleamed in the midday sun.
Heat rose in Christian face and a bead of sweat trickled onto his nose.
“They had to be stopped. Who knows what they would have done if—” he said before Emil cut him off.
“These weapons are our only advantage, and now someone else has them, too. We need to know more. Try to control your temper next time,” Emil said with a grimace.
“We need to get more men trained so we can start creating garrisons. And we need Grundig to build us more weapons,” he continued.
“I think you’d have to talk to the Cardinal before you start deploying an army around here,” said the monseigneur in heavily accented German.
“Is he interested in protecting these people, or trying to restore the Holy Roman Empire? The Cardinal isn’t in charge of troop movements,” snapped Christian.
“Maybe if he was, you’d know who these ravageurs were and what they wanted!” the monseigneur exclaimed.
“Oh really? Why doesn’t he burn some incense and ask God?” Christian said with a sneer.
“That’s enough,” Emil said. “Let’s get back to Paris before sunset.”
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Eric Goebelbecker
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