The Alexander Inheritance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Maps

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  Cast of Characters

  THE ALEXANDER

  INHERITANCE

  Eric Flint

  Gorg Huff

  Paula Goodlett

  The Alexander Inheritance

  Eric Flint, Gorg Huff, Paula Goodlett

  NEW TIME TRAVEL ALT. HISTORY FROM A MASTER: Flint's Ring of Fire and Boundary series have proved him to be a master of time travel alternate history. Here then, a new tale of persons displaced in time, fighting for their lives.

  Twice before, mysterious cosmic catastrophes have sent portions of the Earth across space and back in time—first, with the Grantville Disaster in West Virginia, and then again with a maximum security prison in southern Illinois.

  Now, the planet is struck with yet another such cataclysm, whose direct impact falls upon the Queen of the Sea, a cruise ship in the Caribbean. When the convulsions subside, the crew and passengers of the ship discover that they have arrived in a new and frightening world.

  They are in the Mediterranean now, not the Caribbean. Still worse, they discover that the disaster has sent them more than two thousand years back in time. Following the advice of an historian among the passengers, Marie Easley, they sail to Egypt—or, at least, where they hope Egypt will be.

  Sure enough, Egypt is there—ruled over by Ptolemy, the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty and one of Alexander the Great’s chief generals.

  Alexander the Great, it turns out, died just two years ago. The western world has just entered what would become known as the Hellenistic Period of history, during which time Greek civilization would spread around the Mediterranean and beyond. But the first fifty years of the Hellenistic Period was the Age of Diadochi—the Time of the Successors—when Alexander’s empire would collapse into chaos. By the time the Successors finished their strife, every single member of Alexander’s dynasty would be murdered and only three of the generals who began that civil war would still be alive.

  That is the new world in which the Queen of the Sea finds itself. Can Marie Easley and Captain Lars Flodden guide the crew and passengers through this cataclysm? Fortunately, they have some help: a young Norwegian ship’s officer who forms an attachment to Alexander’s widow; a French officer who is a champion pistol marksman; a canny Congressman from Utah—and, most of all, many people of the time who are drawn to a vision of the better world of the future.

  THE RING OF FIRE SERIES

  1632 by Eric Flint

  1633 by Eric Flint & David Weber

  1634: The Baltic War by Eric Flint & David Weber

  1634: The Galileo Affair by Eric Flint & Andrew Dennis

  1634: The Bavarian Crisis by Eric Flint & Virginia DeMarce

  1634: The Ram Rebellion by Eric Flint & Virginia DeMarce et al.

  1635: The Cannon Law by Eric Flint & Andrew Dennis

  1635: The Dreeson Incident by Eric Flint & Virginia DeMarce

  1635: The Eastern Front by Eric Flint

  1635: The Papal Stakes by Eric Flint & Charles E. Gannon

  1636: The Saxon Uprising by Eric Flint

  1636: The Kremlin Games by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff & Paula Goodlett

  1636: The Devil’s Opera by Eric Flint & David Carrico

  1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies by Eric Flint & Charles E. Gannon

  1636: The Viennese Waltz by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff & Paula Goodlett

  1636: The Cardinal Virtues by Eric Flint & Walter Hunt

  1635: A Parcel of Rogues by Eric Flint & Andrew Dennis

  1636: The Ottoman Onslaught by Eric Flint

  1636: Mission to the Mughals by Eric Flint & Griffin Barber

  Grantville Gazette volumes I-V, ed. by Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette VI-VII, ed. by Eric Flint & Paula Goodlett

  Ring of Fire I-IV, ed. by Eric Flint

  1635: The Tangled Web by Virginia DeMarce

  1635: The Wars for the Rhine by Anette Pedersen

  1636: Seas of Fortune by Iver P. Cooper

  1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz by Kerryn Offord & Rick Boatright

  Time Spike by Eric Flint & Marilyn Kosmatka

  The Alexander Inheritance by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff & Paula Goodlett

  THE ALEXANDER INHERITANCE

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff & Paula Goodlett

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Book

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4814-8248-6

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-597-7

  Cover art by Patrick Turner

  Maps by Michael Knopp

  First Baen printing, July 2017

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

  Printed in the United States of America

  Electronic Version by Baen Books

  www.baen.com

  PROLOGUE

  “Eurydice.” Roxane bowed slightly in acknowledgement, but was careful not to bow too deeply. She couldn’t afford to let the fiery sixteen-year-old think she was in any way superior. Roxane was twenty-two and the mother of Alexander the Great’s heir. Her beauty had captivated Alexander, but without Alexander as protector, Roxane’s beauty was as much a danger as an asset. Tall, with rich, lustrous black hair and eyes, a lush figure and a dancer’s grace, Roxane was a temptress whether she wanted to be or not. But she wasn’t Macedonian like Eurydice or Alexander’s sister Cleopatra. The generals wouldn’t be competing to marry Alexander’s beautiful widow…just to use her.

  Eurydice, on the other hand, wasn’t beautiful at all. The teenager had a beak of a nose and an almost mannish face, full of sharp edges and hard features. But she had a presence that was potentially dangerous to both Roxane and her son. Eurydice was a powerful speaker and a member of the dynasty, Philip II’s niece. Roxane was noble, but not Macedonian.

  Eurydice had the bloodlines and knew it. She barely nodded in returning Roxane’s bow. “Will you support me against Antipater when he gets here to Triparadisus?” she asked bluntly.

  “Why should I risk such a thing?” Roxane looked at Eurydice, ignoring the lamps that had been lit as the sun got low in the sky, paying no more attention to the polished wooden floor of the hunting lodge, the rich draperies that hung from the walls or the expensive rugs. She pointed to the figure watching them from the corner of the room, a little boy with black hair and eyes and the features of Alexander the Great already begi
nning to show in his face. “Will my son be safer with you as regent than Antipater?”

  “I am the wife of Philip III Arrhidaeus, half-brother of Alexander.”

  “He’s an idiot.”

  “No, he’s not. He just thinks differently.”

  “Drawing curving lines and numbers on paper doesn’t make him any less an idiot.” Roxane forced herself to stop. She didn’t actually dislike Philip. She resented that he was co-king with her son, who already understood things that Philip never would. And she was afraid of Eurydice, who, it seemed likely, would have Roxane and her son killed to pave her way to power.

  “Never mind,” she said. “Whether he ‘just thinks differently’ or not, having you as regent is not something that fills my heart with peace.”

  “And Antipater does?”

  “Antipater is seventy-six years old and not long for this world. Also, my son doesn’t stand between him and the throne.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that if I were you,” Eurydice insisted. “He has sons, after all. Think, Roxane. If we are allied, the army will listen to us.”

  Eurydice tried to put on a wheedling tone, but Roxane didn’t believe it. Eurydice was good at commanding, and her speeches could move an army. Had, in fact, over the weeks that they had been traveling from the disastrous battle on the Nile. But the teenage firebrand didn’t wheedle well, especially women. In this case, she had focused on the short-term goal of stopping Antipater and assumed that Roxane would fail to see the danger she represented.

  “And how long will our alliance last? You are as much a pawn of the generals as I, but were I to help you to become a queen, I would be sacrificed in an instant, and my son with me.”

  “You’re a fool. Perdiccas is as dead as Alexander. The generals are all out for themselves. The empire is coming apart and bleeding its honor onto the ground as Alexander’s soldiers kill each other.”

  “Eumenes maintains his loyalty to the Argead dynasty.”

  “Eumenes is a Greek, not a Macedonian, or he’d be rebelling with the rest. And anyway, the army has already declared him outlaw. It will be made official once Antipater is regent. The generals won’t have any choice. Eumenes isn’t going to come riding out of the east to rescue you and little Alexander. Nor me and Philip. We’ll have to rescue ourselves.”

  It would have been a good argument, Roxane thought, if I could trust Eurydice as far as I could throw her. And Eurydice is the wrestler, not me.

  Life in the household of Alexander the Great had been a mixture of terror and exultation from the beginning. Terror because Alexander’s generals weren’t happy that he married a Bactrian. Exultation because Alexander was truly a great man, frightening and tempestuous, but a man of great and grand dreams. A man who, if his life hadn’t been cut short, might have melded all the peoples of the world into one people. A man who saw past the surface, who could even see civilization, or at least the potential for it, in a blond Gaul or a Roman.

  But that dream was as dead as Alexander now, and the generals had turned into jackals.

  And Eurydice was a hungry tigress, swishing her tail and ready to pounce.

  CHAPTER 1

  Port Berry, Royal Cay, Bahamas

  6:15 AM

  At dawn, the Reliance was alongside and the fuel lines were being attached. Dag Jakobsen watched through his camera feed. There were three flat-screen monitors set into the wall next to his desk. One was showing the fuel line hookup, the second would show the fuel flow and fuel levels in the form of a bar graph as soon as fueling started. And there it goes, Dag thought. The third was his computer monitor, which had a form that Dag would be filling out as the fueling proceeded. There was a leak in the fuel line coming from Barge 14, but it seemed to be very minor. Dag zoomed in on the connection and saw that it was only a few drops. He made a note on the form.

  The Reliance and Barge 14 together made up an ATB, articulated tug barge. While attached they were one ship, but the Reliance could detach from Barge 14 in a few minutes to perform other functions while Barge 14 was being loaded or unloaded.

  Dag was lucky to get this slot on the Queen of the Sea. The newest ship of Royal Cruise Line had flex fuel engines and was larger than any other in the line. This was a load of fuel oil, just as a matter of price. They had gotten a bargain on the oil, while the methanol was still pricey. The great thing about flex fuel engines was they could burn anything: fuel oil, ethanol, methanol, even gasoline or crude oil. If it was liquid and would burn, they could use it for fuel.

  Then the power went out. Dag lost his video feeds and heard a boom. The boom was followed by a crunching sound, and the ship shook.

  That was bad. This was a four-thousand-passenger cruise ship. It didn’t shake. Not unless there was very, very heavy weather or a tidal wave. Dag was already out of his chair, running for the fuel-loading area, when the emergency power came on.

  ☆ ☆ ☆

  Arriving at the forward fuel loading station, Dag heard a welter of shouted arguments. The room was a large one with pipes painted in bright colors to indicate the type of liquid they carried, but even on a new ship and with a good crew this was a working area. Dirt, smudges of oil, and the other natural byproducts of work being done were present and so was a bucket with a mop in a corner, ready to fight the never-ending battle against the oil and grime. Sunlight poured into the space from an opened porthole the size of a garage door. Four fifteen-centimeter-wide fuel lines went from the red pipes out the porthole.

  “What was that?” Bayani Pascual asked.

  “Dammit, Bayani. The Princess is gone, and so is that bar on the point. Hell, the point is gone. Will you stop asking what it was?”

  “But what was it?” Bayani almost whined.

  And suddenly Dag was afraid. Because while Bayani wasn’t the brightest crewman on the refueling detail, he was perhaps the most phlegmatic. Bayani was nearly two meters tall and weighed upwards of a hundred kilos. He was the biggest Filipino Dag had ever met, and as calm and unflappable as you could hope for. Besides, Romi Clarke was sounding belligerent, and the little Jamaican was not someone Dag would want to meet in a dark alley.

  “Then tell me, Romi. What happened?” Dag shouted over the hubbub.

  Romi spun, and then visibly got himself under control. His dark skin was gray under the normal color, and he pointed out the port. “The Princess of the Sea is gone, Mr. Jakobsen. Just gone. Like it was never there. There was a flash, like lightning way too close and a clap like thunder right on it. Then everything was different. And something’s happened dockside.” Dockside was the other side of the ship. The Reliance had pulled up along seaside, as was standard practice. “And the Point Bar is gone. Hell, Mr. Jakobsen, the point is gone.”

  Dag almost called Romi a liar, but by then he’d reached the port and could see for himself. To avoid panicking, he focused on his job. He checked the fuel lines. They were still attached. He leaned out the port and looked at the Reliance. Tug and barge were still locked to one another and still tied up to the Queen, but Barge 14’s cylindrical fenders were compressing like marshmallows, as Barge 14 bounced against the hull of the Queen of the Sea. The fenders were big, heavy, rubber cylinders which meant that Romi was probably right about that, as well. Something was disturbing the water and that almost had to be something on shore. There was a shore line visible ahead of the ship, but it wasn’t the shore that should be there. And, sure enough, their sister ship was gone. A vessel weighing almost 150,000 tons had just…vanished.

  Dag headed to the wall and pushed the intercom button. “Bridge, what’s going on? Should we stop refueling?”

  “We don’t know, Dag,” Apprentice Deck Officer Douglas Warren said. “I’m looking out at a town that ain’t there anymore. I don’t mean it’s wrecked, except the part right next to the docks. I mean it’s gone. As though it had never been built. Even the land is different.”

  “Right, Doug. The point is gone. We can see that from here.”

  “It’s not the p
oint. It’s us. Us and the docks, and maybe half a block of the port. We’re not where we were anymore. Hell, Dag, the sun’s not where it was a minute ago. Look, no one knows what’s going on yet, but it’s a safe bet we are going to need full fuel tanks. Captain says to top them up.”

  “We’ll do that, Doug.” Dag turned away from the ship’s intercom. “You heard, people. We continue refueling.”

  It was then that the regular lights came back on.

  Dag got on the radio and called Joe Kugan, the captain for the Reliance. The Reliance, with Barge 14 attached, had roughly one hundred fifty thousand barrels of fuel bunkerage, a crew of seven and a top speed of twelve knots.

  ☆ ☆ ☆

  Captain Joe Kugan was in the pilot house when whatever it was happened. He was looking at the Queen, not at the shore, so he was only momentarily blinded by the flash, but nearly lost his footing as not just the Reliance but also Barge 14 rocked violently.

  When he regained his balance, he looked around and saw that the world had been replaced by a new and different place. Instead of the flat landscape typical of islands in the Bahamas, he was looking at an island that didn’t have much in the way of elevation but had more than he’d been looking at a short time before. The vegetation looked wrong, too, although he couldn’t have said exactly why. Kugan’s knowledge of botany was abysmal and his interest even lower.

  For a moment, he felt a strong desire to panic or beat the crap out of someone. By the time he was back under control, the radio call from Dag was coming in. Given the circumstances, Joe was tempted to tell Dag to screw himself and stop the pumping till they knew what was going on. But he didn’t. There were contracts involved and if he refused to finish the refueling, he would be in a lot of trouble. The Reliance or Barge 14 was still bouncing against the Queen, but most of the wave front was gone on out to sea. The waves had stirred up the water, and what had been fairly pristine Caribbean ocean was now a lot cloudier.