The Game Called Revolution, - [ebook reader 8 inch .txt] 📗

allow us to keep you under guard so that you do not interfere with our mission. What is it going to be?”

Jeanne turned to Pierre and Victor. “Cover the forger. Do not allow any harm to come to him.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they said. They ran over to Jacques (who was still on the ground watching the scene) and proceeded to shield him with their bodies.

Lefebvre said, “So you refuse?”

Jeanne removed her rapier and pointed it at him. “We must return to our airship and then report back to the king. You will not stop us.”

Lefebvre looked at her with contempt. “That is a foolish choice. Very well.”

He raised his hand and then brought it down like the hammers of the rifles his men were carrying. They immediately opened fire on the knights. Jeanne raised her arm to shield her head but took several bullets in her chest plating, while Pierre and Victor similarly took multiple blows.

Jeanne fell backwards onto the ground. “I know that volley wasn’t enough to penetrate your irodium armor,” Lefebre said. He pulled out his own sword and Strolled over to Jeanne’s fallen and seemingly unconscious form. “But it should have stunned you enough for me to deliver the killing blow.”

He gripped his sword with both hands and positioned it over Jeanne’s throat (which was not covered by armor). He then dropped it with all his might.

However, Jeanne tilted her head ever so slightly and Lefebvre’s blade dug harmlessly into the ground. In one fluid and rapid motion she thrust her rapier—which she had never let go of—into his thigh. Unlike the knights, French infantry wore no armor, so Jeanne’s blade entered Lefebvre’s body unopposed.

He cried out and staggered back. Jeanne took this opportunity to leap to her feet and kick him in the wound she had just made. Now it was his turn to meet the ground.

His seven soldiers scrambled to unsheathe their own swords, but Jeanne ran in and cut down two of them before they could. Fortunately for them, she intentionally avoided their vitals.

She turned around to confront two more who were charging her, only to see a massive pair of hands knock their heads together.

It was Pierre.

Victor grabbed a fallen infantryman’s rifle and clubbed one of the others over the head, knocking him out cold. He looked at her and said, “We thought you would prefer the nonlethal approach, if possible.”

The last two members of the Gardes Francaises obviously realized they had been thoroughly routed and turned tail to run away.

When they were out of sight, Jeanne addressed her subordinates. “I told you two to guard the forger.”

“By that point, they were focused entirely on you, ma’am. They weren’t even aware of his existence.”

Jacques walked up to them with a grin on his face. “That they were not. Admit it: You forgot about me as well. Ah, ‘tis a sad thing when a man is important one moment, and unknown the next. But that is just the way of the world, I suppose.”

Jeanne felt like rebuking his devil-may-care attitude, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. For all his faults, Jacques du Chard was a hard man to hate.

A pained grunt alerted them to the fact that Lefebvre was still there. They turned to see him getting back to his feet with no small difficulty. “This isn’t over,” he said venomously.

“It had better be, for your sake,” Jeanne retorted.

“Why, you—”

Lefebvre’s words were cut off by a suddenly cry from a hundred feet up the road. A mass of people rushed towards them.

“Looks like the mob has found us,” Pierre said.

Lefebvre began laughing with a righteous fury, a far cry from his earlier demeanor. “Now you’ll pay! You and all the other dogs of the Ancien Régime.”

With renewed vigor he scooped up the Marquis de Launay—whom they had all forgotten about in the heat of battle—and sprinted towards the rushing mob.

“Get back here!” Jeanne called after him.

“Should we go after him?” Pierre asked.

She shook her head. Even if they managed to catch up with the manic sergeant, they’d still have to fight off the mob. There was a veritable sea of enraged Parisians coming at them, and she didn’t see how they could possibly win against them all. That only left retreat.

She looked around them. They were surrounded on three sides by thick walls, those of the Bastille and the adjacent buildings. The only way out was through the mob. The riotous group momentarily stopped to celebrate the capturing of the Marquis de Launay, but Lefebvre quickly reminded them with a pointing finger that there were still enemies of the people waiting to be seized or worse. The crowd wasted no time continuing their charge.

“Gut the oppressors!” one yelled.

“The king’s chienne must die!” said another.

“Let’s take our time with her!”

Jeanne wasn’t flattered by being called a bitch. As the mob got closer she could see they were mostly armed with hoes and other blunt farming tools. She seriously doubted any of them alone could even scratch her, but with sheer numbers they had an overwhelming advantage.

“Is this the end?” Jacques said with mild apathy.

Jeanne was about to reply when a familiar whooshing sound drew her attention. “The end of this farce?” she said. “Yes, it is.”

They all watched as a massive wall came down between the mob and the knights. Only it wasn’t just a wall; it was an airship. It landed just a few feet in front of the knights, and Jeanne’s hair was blown wildly by its appearance.

At fifty feet long, the Minuit Solaire was a sleek silver marvel of airship technology. Since the outer hull was made of irodium, the ship could fly faster and higher than if it was composed of any other metal. In addition, twin engines on either side of the stern provided thrust while the elongated balloon moored above the ship helped to achieve buoyancy.

While they were admiring the ship’s impeccable timing, a teenage girl wearing glasses and a dirty brown jumpsuit appeared on the deck above them. “Sorry to keep you waiting, milady!” She threw down a rope ladder, and Jeanne instructed Jacques to climb up first, followed by Pierre and Victor. Finally, Jeanne herself started climbing, and she motioned to the girl for them to take off.

As the Minuit Solaire began ascending into the air, Jeanne once again marveled at the level of technological achievement France had generated in such a short period. It was just ten years ago that Jean Baptiste Marie Meusnier submitted to L’Académie des Sciences his paper entitled “Memoire on the Equilibrium of Aerostatic Machines.” In it, he detailed his design for an elongated airship (as opposed to a round balloon) which called for propulsion via the use of propellers. It was nowhere near as advanced as the Minuit Solaire or the king’s own airship that would eventually be built, and Louis XVI paid no attention to it.

However, his wife and queen, Marie Antoinette, saw the untold benefits of being able to rule the sky, and she convinced her husband to champion research into the field.

They soon brought in engineers from all over the world and had them work together on the Diu du Ciel [God of the Sky] project. Perhaps most instrumental in the success of the airship project was James Watt who came up with the idea to power the airships with technology derived from his steam engine.

At the behest of Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI decreed that the first airship be christened by the end of 1785. Working feverishly, the team managed to pull it off, and on December 24, 1785, the king and queen rode in the inaugural flight of the Minuit Solaire.

Looking back, Jeanne now wondered if it was all worth it. The Diu du Ciel project required vast amounts of France’s resources to be completed on time and now the country was heavily in debt—and only two airships had been built thus far. Inflation was at an all-time high; the cost of bread alone had skyrocketed as of late. She understood why the people were so upset, but their solution of extreme violence was only making things horribly worse. I am sorry, Monsieur de Launay, she added silently. Rest assured your sacrifice will not have been for nothing.

Her train of thought—along with her climb up the ladder—was suddenly disrupted by a heavy jolt. The airship spun thirty-five degrees, and Jeanne had to cling to the ladder to keep from falling off. “Celeste!” She shouted. “What’s going on?”

Hugging the railing up above, Celeste adjusted her glasses and called back, “They managed to hit us with a steam cannon shell! Don’t worry; it was a glancing blow.”

Jeanne climbed up the rope as fast as she could. If just a graze managed to do that to them, she didn’t intend to be on a flimsy rope ladder if and when they were hit again.

When she reached the polished wood of the top deck, Pierre lent her a hand to help her up. Although it was unnecessary, she appreciated the gesture and allowed him the assist.

“Are you unhurt, milady?” Celeste asked.

“I’m fine. Get below deck and see to any damage we sustained.”

“Right away!”

Celeste nimbly bound down the stairs a few feet away.

“Full of energy, that girl,” Jacques said. Like Pierre and Victor, he had remained on the railing as they awaited the ship’s captain.

“That she does,” Victor replied. “Our little engineer has a taste for adventure and she’s right at home up here in the sky. In fact, the only thing she likes more than pure excitement may be our captain here.”

“Ah, so you are a role model, eh?”

Jeanne dismissed the high praise. “It’s just youthful admiration.”

She looked up at the balloon above them. It did not appear to be damaged or leaking gas. She silently thanked the Lord for the one thing that hadn’t gone wrong today.

Satisfied that the ship would continue to fly (at least for the moment), she headed down the stairs one flight to the command deck below them. When she reached the command deck, immediately behind her was the bridge, located on the ship’s bow. Along the corridor in the opposite direction were crew quarters, the captain’s being the closest to the bridge so she could get there quickly in an emergency.

Jeanne turned around and walked into the bridge. The captain’s chair sat bolted in the middle of the room, while the two operators had their own seats at bulky consoles in front of the canopy window. Each console had large levers and wheels for them to operate in order to fly the ship. Because of the complexity of the airship, it took two people working together just to fly it. The left operator was in charge of altitude control, while the right operator handled acceleration. Of course, there was also a group of people slaving down in the boiler room to keep the ship powered.

As Jeanne entered, the two operators—Adolphe on the left, Claude on the right—stood up to salute her. They wore jumpsuits with a blue left sleeve and red right sleeve, with the rest of the outfit being white (the colors of the French flag).

“As you were,” she said, and they returned to their posts.

Jeanne went over to a panel built into the left wall. She pulled on a latch to reveal an opening about the size of her hand, removed the vial she had retrieved from the Bastille from her pocket, and poured the contents into the opening. The water went down a funnel into the depths of the device, where she