Erebus Diamond - Ladies Side

Georgiana Spencer-Poyntz Cavendish, 17th Duchess of Devonshire, looked out on the manicured lawn of Green Park from the windows of London’s Cavalry and Guards Club. 

It was mid-May in 2204 and it was raining, predictably, spring's drops tapping and patterning the windowpane. England’s foremost adventuress and landowner of not inconsiderable fortune turned to her host, “Kitchener, what earthly purpose is there in weather satellites when they can’t control the weather?”

Lord Kitchener fixed Devonshire with a friendly eye over a cup of afternoon Darjeeling, freshly brought in that very day from Her Imperial Majesty’s territories in Burma. “Earthly, Devo?” he had known her since they were children playing on the grounds of Chatsworth, “I’d say more celestial, don’t you think?” Devonshire sat down neatly and helped herself to tea, “Celestial, Field Marshall?”

“Yes, just that. To be more precise, the Celestial Kingdom.”

“You mean Mars, New China? I thought that settled business.”

Kitchener frowned, “Settled? In a sense, yes. New China isn’t about to eject our Legations, the Dowager Empress is gone and Prince Qing sits on the throne. He’s favourable to us, as well he should be.” 

The Field Marshall thought back to the high orbit bombardment his Anglo-US fleet had rained down on the Empress’ forces. A merciless hail of incandescent fury which, as if out of spite, had obliterated the Chinese Summer Palace and the priceless artefacts therein. Well, war was war, even if limited.

“You see, Devo, the raid was successful, but there’s the small matter of a diamond, the Erebus Diamond.”

Devonshire looked askance, “The Erebus Diamond? What do you mean, surely we have that?” Kitchener smiled, and instantly they found themselves in Null Space, free from prying eyes and ears, the comfort of of 127 Piccadilly replaced by the no-space of Null, a grey background surging with damping static.

“There,” said Kitchener, above the hissing sound, “The diamond. As you know, Sir Carter Headington was carrying the gem in transit when we launched our strike on the Palace and lifted the siege.” Devonshire glanced agreement, “And?”

“It's disappeared. Gone. Lost, if you’ll forgive the phrase, in the 'fog of war,  Nebel des Krieges.' We suspect the Tongs have it, which means Empress Cixi intends to have it, which must never happen. You understand.”

“I most certainly do,” remarked Devonshire, tragically widowed when her philandering husband met his end in an alcohol-fueled duel on the Crystal Palace space elevator. His opponent had been in the pay of the Chinese Dowager Empress and of course she had killed him, a matter of honour. Yes, Devonshire knew something of the danger of Cixi. But so be it, the elevator incident had left her vastly wealthy and free to do as she pleased.

Georgiana regarded Kitchener with her famously insouciant grin. He replied, “I think you know what to do, Devo, old girl. Go out and get that diamond. And by the way, should Cixi disappear, which of course she has already, that would be helpful.”

Devonshire nodded, and in an instant they were back in the reassuring warmth of the club. She descended the long stairwell in a rustle of skirts, admiring the paintings of illustrious charges. Such was Empire. Then to her Brougham and a brisk clip past the Palace, Apsley House, where the Wellington's held court when in Town, and on through Hyde Park, and the towering Albert Memorial.

Georgiana looked up at the soaring gothic magnificence of its spire, which seemed to pierce heaven itself, and reflected on the Prince Consort's cryogenically frozen head, sealed there, in its midst. Her neural implants picked up traces of Albert's refrigerated voice, vestigial waves of the mind emanating from his frosty sepulchre, What of worth has ever been achieved which did not inspire fear? 

"Quite," thought Devonshire, "if Teutonic." The Consort had been dead, for the most part, for well over two hundred years and still the people wore mourning. She did herself, perfectly, in black. 

Perhaps this was about to change, but regardless, the heroine of Olympus Mons thought on the brilliance of the Erebus Diamond and plotted a mental course for Phobos, Great Britain’s Imperial staging post for the Red Planet.

Yes, this story writes itself... I think.

Cheers,

LSP

The Erebus Diamond - Intro

 

We landed on a shelf of rock selected by autopilot, got out, planted the flag and cried, “For God, Harry, England and St. George.” Helliwell Axe.

"I would annex the planets if I could." Cecil Rhodes.

Being a series of narratives on space exploration and conquest.

As Lady Devonshire urged the grav bike to a throaty roar, she gave Brolly, her obsequious Welsh butler, a high-spirited swipe with her crop, "Hold on tight!" He was drunk, as usual, and hardly noticed. “Yes, Milady!” And so the sun rose over Phobos and Devonshire's Triumph Spectre lifted into the thin air of the recently terraformed Martian moon.

Fast wasn’t in it, and Brolly held on for dear life whilst the bike sped over rocky Phobian desert, arms tight around the driver's fur-clad waist. Beneath them, the sixteenth Erebus expedition toiled up the slopes of a towering mountain, a jagged remnant of the cataclysmic Jovian War. “Why walk when you can ride,” remarked Devonshire, glancing down at surly Venusian Sherpas. Brolly clenched his teeth against the biting cold. At this rate he’d soon be sober.

Sobriety aside, Phobos is the larger of the Martian moons but only some eleven miles in diameter, so it wasn’t long before the Triumph touched down on the parade square of the Residence. Neatly ranked sepoys stamped to attention and Major Hardman offered a brisk salute.

“Time for breakfast, Major?” enquired Devonshire, already striding to the plasteel dome of the Mess in her burnished Lobb's top boots. “Do keep up, Brolly,” snapped Devonshire as Hardman struggled with the door. In fairness, it wasn't every day that he was fortunate enough to welcome the heroine of Olympus Mons to his particular outpost of Empire. 

“Come on, Major, this air lock won’t open itself,” and then they were inside and seated at gleaming mahogany, battle honors hanging overhead like the triumphant standards they were. Nonplussed by regimental glory, Devonshire turned smartly to Hardman, “Major, about this diamond.”

“Diamond, Devo?”

“Yes, diamond. You know the matter exactly, don't play the fool.”

Hardman thought back to desperate scrimmages in the lava tubes of Mars, “We lost a lot of good men.”

“So, all the more reason to get it back.”

“But the Tongs, hardly pacified, eh?”

Yes, the terrorist Tongs of New China had been in a state of Huawei driven holy war since an Anglo-US expedition burned the Celestial Kingdom's vaunted Summer palace to the ground. "Bamboo burns quick," remarked Force Commander, Lord Kitchener VI at the time of the raid, and he wasn't wrong. Rice paper met Rods from God and all the incandescent fury of the British Lion and American Eagle combined. A bad day for the mandarins, indeed.

While Hardman reflected on the fight, he had seen the elephant, data streamed across Devonshire's eyes and she flashed the Major an enchanting smile. He knew that no was not an option. It was then that the bomb exploded. An Orderly, Corporal Tighe, was vapourized instantly, and the room sprayed with a deadly shrapnel of molten Mess silver.

Major Cornelius Hardman stood, the veteran of a thousand psychic and literal wars, brushing invisible lint from his immaculate dress blues. “No disrespect, Ma’am, but did I mention the Tongs were restless?” Lady Devonshire raised a perfect eyebrow of sheer artistry, “Quite. And I intend to have that diamond. Brolly! Coffee. Now.”

Thanks to nano second force deflectors, both Major and Devonshire were unscathed from the blast and proceeded to breakfast in the wreckage of the room, ignoring hustling servitor bots who busily repaired the splintered chaos and slaughter around them.

“I say, Devo, old girl, best meal of the day, what?”

“So they say, Major. I must and shall have that diamond. Would that be marmalade?”

Such is the indomitable spirit of Britannia’s far-flung Empire, an Imperium upon which the sun never sets.

With apologies to everyone who isn't mentioned in this short.

Ad Astra,

LSP