» Sat May 04, 2013 5:58 am -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|+x| HAWTHORN PALACE GENERAL POST-OFFICE
|x+| PRIORITIE DISPATCHE
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
****PRIORITIE DISPATCHE FROM HAWTHORN PALACE****
--//SENDER: THE LORD PROTECTOR’S OFFICE//--
--//RECEIVER: ALL CONNEXIONS//--
--//DATE SENT: 03-01-202//--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: ALL CONNEXIONS
From: Lord Protector Lysander Oscar Warburton
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the grace of our Free and Sovereign Parliament, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of Great Brytain, Lysander Oscar Warburton, doth proclaim:
'tis upon the expiration of our ultimatum to that most unscrupulous cad Nicholas Dubois, King of eternal enemy of France, to abdicate his forces from the Low Countries of Europe post-haste, that I doth find myself rendering unto thee. Henceforth our glorious and beneficent Commonwealth doth find itself in a state of war with the Kingdom of France, with the backing of our staunch and traditional allies in the Saxon-Bavarian Empire.
Verylie, 'twas with reckless abandon that the provocative behaviour of our enemy hath forced our-hand, need not it be said however that no Bryton shall be found wanting; 'tis with a righteous fury that we shall reclaim from the French hordes what is ours in the Netherlands and upon that victorie sally-forth to further victorie and glorie in the homeland of the damnable French villain.
Brytain Prevails!
"Bugger," Major-General Marchment said simply, though he would greatly have preferred to switch the terminal off and preserve his eyes from the incessant flickering of the monitor he knew that he mustn't; either that of the overflow of "scrolls" from the pneumatic-delivery would be liable to give him a head-ache. Instead he took a pinch of snuff, a derivative of cannabis (though greater in quality than that available to the peasants), inhaled it tentatively from his thumb and fore-finger before sinking comfortably into his chair and awaited the typical rigmarole that proceeded a declaration of war brought about by a fresh generation of officers whom had yet to learn the true nature of conflict.
An aging bull of a man in a scarlet tunic now pushing fifty-five, the days were long past since the fresh-faced Lieutenant Nathaniel Marchment of the 16th New Kent Dragoons had gallivanted about Irish Dominion, learning the ways of marksmanship from a moving horse against the disparate Irishers who (not unlike the Wildmen and Levellers of Brytain) thought perseverance and some mortars from before the Great-Ceasefire would be enough to see the endless waves of Redcoats from Erin; where the Brytons not their slave-masters however then the French of Iberians surely would be, like the Dutch and Austrians they were doomed to perpetual slavery by one-side or another.
He remembered his time in the Dominion of Ireland fondly, indeed it was a simpler time before he - like the youth of to-day would soon learn - was called to fight against the Federated Iberian States; the storming the port at Cadiz, the Malaga Front and the last-stand in Gibraltar, Marchment had earned his glory on the battlefield and elevated the status of the relatively nothing House of Marchment into something of a name in New Kent baronies but the sights of that conflict and the others since would never leave him: the terrible rumble of the mobile forts known as "Landships" and the death-clouds of smoke and gas through-and-out of which marched the endless armies of either side against the other to the rhythmic beat of kettledrums whilst aircraft roared over-head and troops of horses galloped-on and all across the turgid, crater-strewn battlefield; and afterwards the columns of those blinded by marching home in silence, the once mighty Landships smouldering furnaces for a hundred men and the foul concoctions of poisonous gases still lingering like a low morning mist.
Innocence went to war to die, hardly a revelation Marchment conceded, but it hardly took the sting of bitterness out of it too know it was endemic to human history; he sighed wearily, small capsules rode the pneumatic propulsion through the myriad of pipe-work of Foulness Castle into his desk, benevolently informing him what that facility would play host to munitions storage and scores of wounded whilst the original mandate of pushing the damn Levellers back east into Olde London would be forgotten and what-ever progress had been made in that respect forfeited for what remained of Rotterdam and hundreds of thousands of slaves in natives and French POWs.
Extricating himself from his comfortable position he crossed the few steps to the tube in the corner by the window to collect his mail, however amongst the red-colour indicated capsules one in black stood out amongst the rest; taking the coal-plastic capsule from the receptacle and removing the tightly furled "scroll" of paper from the inside began to read only to almost gasp in surprise immediately at the letterhead: "The Lord Protector's Office, Hawthorn Palace".
