The Commodore’s Clock

THE ELVEN PRINCES

“Cameron,” wondered the King. “What do you think about the Yrr situation?”

“Well, My King, Colin and his staff are working on the military aspects. I think, you know, that it’s best to let him handle the nuts and bolts of that stuff. Were it up to me, I’d probably just send a regiment and a battle cruiser; but Colin knows about tactics, strategy, logistics. And morale, battle honours, and all those sorts of things. So there will be many to do battle and to share in the renown. Still, there’s way more to this problem than just the military situation.”

“I sent a note over to Leo and Lewis to let them know they’re up for an important job. Diplomatic entertaining, all very posh while I imagine Simon, or someone, will hammer out a treaty. Shouldn’t be too difficult - peace and trade is all.”

“You should send a letter over to General Winn and let him know how much you need him here at home. He’ll surely want to go.”

“Agreed,” the King responded. “I think we should send Humphrey and Larry, too. Humphrey, despite his theatrics, is a powerful wizard and Larry is a formidable healer. So they’ll be useful. Plus Wilde knows them well and can transform any faux pas Humphrey might perform into masterpiece theatre.

“But there’s a larger issue here. The Riffak seem to think they’re some sort of barbarian horde. Free to take whatever they chance upon. That’s going to have to stop. I think I’ll tell Winn to start staff studying all aspects of the Riffian problem.”

“While we’re at it,” Cameron paused thoughtfully, “I’d like for Milord and David to go too. Milord is a brilliant familiar and this might help him get back in the swing of things.”

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Rear Admiral Sir John Tavers, KCGD, KCT, DSO, DCM, SSM, was very pleased. His last combat fleet command had been a catch-all squadron standing before Earth and a Riffian fleet of unknown intent. That had worried him more than just a little bit; but the Riffians had blinked. Then his reinforcements arrived.

‘Chipper’ was his nickname, it was usable by close friends. It came from when he was a Carpenters Mate striker on the old training ship HMS St Brendan the Navigator. He had met two cadets on his last cruise on her; the three of them saved the life of an officer who had almost been washed overboard in a gale; the three of them remained close friends; the three of them had distinguished themselves, then they had gone on to become admirals. Since the age of twelve, his life had been the Navy and the Space Corps.

He flew his flag on HMS Warspite. She was one of the first of the Navy’s battlecruisers, but she had been modified and updated and carried all the latest technology and weaponry. Chipper loved the Warspite; she had been his flagship before. Three of a total of eight destroyers had reported for duty off Earth Prime as well as two living ships, HMS 1601, and HMS 1543. Another battle cruiser would be joining his fleet, as well a yacht and a frigate which would attend to the diplomats. He smiled and wondered if it was correct to consider two royal princes as ‘diplomats’. This should be quite a trip.

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HRH Prince Llewellyn smiled at his twin brother, HRH Prince Leopold Edward Winthrop Henry Karl ap Justin III. “Did you see this? We’re to have a mission.” He returned to the parchment and read on.

“We’re to be ambassadors to a new civilization they found.

“Seems the Riffak are trying to conquer these folks and Simon and the Navy aren’t having it. What a trip!”

“Ambassadors, you say?” Leo consulted the distance. “We need to go see Cousin Helene. She runs all that. She’ll know what to do. What we’ll need.

“Do you remember our mission to Reykjavik? We had great fun on that one. And we got the job done, too.”

Lewis was paying little attention. “We’ll need music. I’m going to get Gianni working on that. Do you suppose that Julie can come? We’ll have to have a chamber orchestra at the very least. Serious entertaining. A chef. That’s diplomacy for you. And a yacht, of course.”

“Yeah. Reykjavik was great. Our mission was to protect the locals from their own government. Remember, they were going to run a new highway up to the Gálgahraun lava fields. And it pissed everybody off. The environmentalists objected because they thought the road came too close to the lava beds. Which it did! Our friends objected because the route would destroy this huge boulder which they thought was an ‘elf hotel’.

“Course it wasn’t really a hotel. More like a village. There’s a pub there and you can rent a room, good food, great pies too. Plus there’s an apothecary, and a toy shop with enchanted toys.”

“There’s a great bakery there, too, I remember. Wonderful bread and eclairs,” Lewis recalled. He thought highly of music and eclairs.

“It was a huge boulder. A hundred tons or so. They were gonna blow it up. We made ‘em shift the road around it.”

“Yeah. Remember! We were flashers! We were all seductive; we’d flash our ears and smile winningly to the locals and then drift away as they tried to get a grip on what they just saw, or thought they saw, or believed they saw. We reminded them that we are here: what fun!”

“Of course, it’s a little easier when a lot of the locals believe in us, or in the Huladufólk anyway. Scared the politicians. There aren’t a whole lot of voters in Iceland and if enough of them believed it was an elf hotel. Well then, it just was an elf hotel. Let’s remember to visit them again.”

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“I apologize. You are not really a racist.” Ma’am reassured the Commodore. “It’s just sometimes your language is. So people think you are.”

“Well. Thanks for that. I guess.”

“See, your problem is that you’re an old line, military aristocrat from the Habsburg empire. So you think pretty much everyone is beneath you unless they’re of the blood royal. That’s all okay and perfectly natural for you, but you can come off as an arrogant prick if you're not careful, and that can sometimes sound racist.

“See, the actual fact of our world is that it is diverse. Diverse! Diverse, I tell you! Nobody seems to realize that. It should be celebrated, not feared. Not fussed and fumed over.

“Look. Your old Habsburg Empire was remarkably diverse. There were all sorts of peoples speaking all sorts of languages: Polish, Czech, Slovenian, Yiddish, Italian, German, Magyar, Dalmatian, and…well I think you get the picture. Yet it kept creeping along for centuries. A celebration of diversity until the Germans and the Hungarians started taking themselves too seriously and began to demean the other nationalities of the Empire. Goodness, they were even smart enough not to get saddled with colonies. Who knows what might have happened if they could have celebrated their diversity, rather than denigrating it.”

There was a long silence. “I never thought of it like that,” the Commodore mused.

“Well you should. And another thing, you’re too much of a ‘guy’. You’re a gentleman sure, but there’s way too much of that ‘we men know best’ about you. How do you think that’s going to work when dealing with the leaders of a matriarchy? You know, where we girls know best?”

“Hell. I never thought about that either.”

“Well it’s time to. Like right now.”

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Alan St Marie had been busy creating an army out of a mob of enthusiastic amateurs who had no idea what an army really was. He had an embryonic organization with which to begin. The loose association of different rebel groups that had been conducting guerrilla style operations against the several Riffian armed outposts into which the invaders had been forced to retreat as the revolt warmed up.

Alan knew himself to be handicapped as an amateur soldier, he was after all, a naval officer. But he asked questions of Ma’am who had a huge library to delve into. They discussed Generals Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, who had rebuilt the Prussian Army after Napoleon had decisively defeated it. Then there was General Von Seekt who carefully cradled the customs and traditions of the Imperial Army while planning its rebirth before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Versailles. But none of those quite fit Alan's situation.

Then they discovered Generals McClellan and Marshall. Both men had taken the miniscule army of the United States and made it into a formidable and first-class fighting organization. In so doing, they had made the United States into a world power. That was what Alan needed.

Alan began organizing by pulling a rebel group back into the first of his training centers. He arbitrarily divided this group into four companies and declared them the “First Battalion of the Army of Yrr”. Three companies would be the field battalion while the fourth would be a training cadre that would provide replacements as well as trainers for newer battalions. Soon there was a Second Battalion. Then a Third. He also created a General Staff.

These battalions were organized as mechanized infantry. They were individually equipped with blast rifles and the armoured cars that the Riffian supply ship had provided.

While this was going on, Coxswains Morgan and Davies were training pilots and organizing an Air Corps. They were now ranked as Squadron Commanders in the Yrr Air Corps and were paid the equivalent salary of a lieutenant colonel. They had also been studying with Ma’am and were using General Trenchard and the old Royal Flying Corps as an exemplar. They were naming the fighter squadrons for early fighter pilots. So far, there were two squadrons, one named for Albert Ball, and one for Georges Guynemer. More squadrons were training, Jasta Oswald Boelcke would soon be activated.

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His Majesty, Justin 3 of Glorious Repute was piped aboard the flagship, HMS Warspite, with all of the ceremony which his Navy could provide; and it could provide quite a bit. There was a band, there were sideboys, there were ranks of sailors to inspect, there were space grenadiers who also required inspection.

But there was business, too. Chipper’s fleet was complete. The battle cruiser HMS Constitution had joined and his destroyer squadron was now complete with eight destroyers. The living transport HMS 1601 was now carrying the bulk of the Expeditionary Corps with a huge quantity of spares and supplies of all sorts. The living frigate HMS 1543 was accompanied by the brand-new cruiser HMS Andromeda armed with the new interdimensional drone missiles, though she was crewed in the traditional manner. The new cruiser/yacht HMS Marblehead was present in case of need. One never knows, after all.

The diplomatic mission was complete. The cruiser/yacht HMS Rawalpindi carried the two royal princes, their string sextet, staff and entourage. The living cruiser HMS 1703 would provide the escort while carrying one company of the Guards Fusiliers and one squadron of the Dragoon Guards and their horses. The prince's horses were likewise accommodated. The rest of the musicians, now amounting to an orchestra were accommodated, there was also room for additional kitchen staff, china and silver, and a handsome wine cellar should there be a need for formal dinners. There was room for all of the necessary accoutrements needed to support two Royal Princes on a diplomatic mission. This operation was first class in every sense of the word.

Three Command Familiars, Copenhagen, Surus, and Milord were with the fleet, as well as a number of other masters, journeymen, and apprentices.

There were magisters and mages and an excellent medical unit that included magisterial healers as well as a traditional staff of experienced doctors, nurses, and attendants.

There was a banquet with speeches and toasts. Then there was farewell, and the King and his party departed. The King played his role to perfection, but his closest associates and his lover all knew that he would have liked to have gone on the mission.

The fleet conducted a final communications check.

“All units,” the Admiral’s voice sounded on the communications net. “Commence Operation Yrr.” The fleet quickly winked into superluminal space on its way to Yrr.

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Alan St Marie was increasingly comfortable in his two hats. He was, to be sure, a lieutenant in the Royal Space Corps of the Kingdom of Ellendale; but he was also, by order of the War Conclave of First Mothers of Yrr, an Halberdier-Generalissimo commanding the armies and air forces of Yrr. So. What to do?

He had two battalions of motorized infantry well trained and equipped; he had two squadrons of fighters; he had three gunboat scouts. What he wanted was a short, sharp scrap. He and his people needed experience. Hopefully, he could have a clean, quick win, that would give his young army a taste for victory.

The Generalissimo thought that the closest Riffian enclave would do to start. It was fairly close, easing logistic considerations; it was the smallest of the Riffian enclaves, which suggested it would be the weakest of the three. The best possible beginning. He called for a war conference, and the commanders and seconds of the two battalions as well as their equivalents from Squadron Albert Ball and Escadrille Georges Guynemer. They pored over the map and considered the situation. They developed a plan. They kept it simple.

The enclave would be simultaneously attacked by the motorized infantry from both its north and south flanks. Hopefully, this would prevent the Riffians from shifting troops about within the enclave. Number 1 Squadron Albert Ball would provide close air support to the infantry and also attempt to lure any fighters the Riffians might have into combat. Number 2 Escadrille Georges Guynemer was top cover and would pounce in support of Squadron Ball should a dogfight develop. Lieutenant Kerlew would command the three gunboat scouts to deliver air support to the infantry as, and where, needed.

“Execute,” the Halberdier-Generalissimo ordered. “Let liberation commence!”

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Meanwhile, back at the palace, HRH Prince Charles Henry Michael David Winthrop ap Justin III, Prince Royal of Ellendale, was relaxing in the tub. Not the bathtub, but that special pool off the main swimming pool where jets of warm water caressed and soothed the body and the spirit.

He was not alone, HSH Prince Robert Ranald Albert Justin George ap Colin, the Prince Military of Ellendale, was in the tub with him, nestled between his legs, relaxing gently against his chest. Winny, an intimate nickname, was gently massaging his shoulders, neck and temples. Random, as Winny affectionately called him at times like these, was blissful. Relaxed and content after the stresses and pressures of mounting and organizing the Yrr relief fleet.

They had already started working on the Riffian containment problem and the fleet and army that would entail.

Random and Winny were the sons of Colin, the Earl Martial, and of Justin 3, HM the King of Ellendale. They were bound to one another by love and duty. Their Elven connection ensured they would remain lovers for life. Just like their fathers.

The thing about a hot bath, with or without massage jets, is that the body cries for relief from wrinkles. The boys got out of the tub and began to carefully dry each other off. Carefully and thoroughly they attended one to another. Some lotion was nice. They were teenagers, of course, and as can often happen with teenagers, all this comfort and attention led to growing pressure. They kissed lovingly and slowly.

Then passion reared its lovely head and nature took its course.

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