Cherie Priest. Dreadnought (The Clockwork Century 3)
To Jerry and Donna PriestI used to joke that they could come home and find a bus full of first-graders crashed on the front lawn, caught in the cross fire of a bank robbery, in the midst of an alien invasion . . . and theyd have the situation under control in under a minute. But for the record, I was only kind ofjoking.
This is a work of fiction, featuring impossible politics, unlikely zombies, and some ludicrously incorrect Civil War action. I hope you enjoy it! And Id like to thank you in advance for not sending me e-mail to tell me how bad my history is. I think we all know Ive fudged the facts rather significantly.
(Except the zombie parts.)
Acknowledgments
And I cant have a thanks page without a nod to my day-job chief, Bill Schafer. Thanks for helping me keep the lights on without crowding out the writing work, dude; and thanks to Yanni Kuznia, because she seriously does manage to do it all, and I dont know how -but I sure am glad for it.
Thanks also to Andrea Jones, she of the copious Civil War knowledge-for always answering dumb questions with intelligent, interesting, sometimes wacky (but always cool-as-hell) speculation. She and her usual suspects at the Manor of Mixed Blessings have become my go-to crowd for obscure trivia and strange guesses. Thanks be likewise to Christina Smith at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum for her input on Ranger usage and treatment. Because honestly, I just didnt know.
Likewise, thanks to Louisa May Alcott for writing letters home when she was working at a Washington, D.C., hospital during the Civil War. Her collection of Hospital Sketches was immensely helpful in imagining and re-creating a fictional version of the Robertson facility in Richmond.
Epic gratitude and much love go to everyone in the secret clubhouse that serves the world; and to Warren Ellis for being Warren Ellis; and to Wil Wheaton for being Wil Wheaton. Also I send it out to Team Seattle-Mark Henry, Caitlin Kittredge (even though shes leaving us for Massachusetts), Richelle Mead, and Kat Richardson-for giving me a posse of writer peeps with which to hang; to Duane Wilkins for helping manage the signed cargo at the University Book Store; and to the crew at Third Place Books (hi Steve and Vlad!) for their continuing support as well.
More hearty thanks go to Greg Wild-Smith, my original and forever webmaster (unless I eventually drive him off with my crazy); to Ellen Milne and Suezie Hagy for the brunches, company, the organizational skills, and the cat-sitting services.
And finally, thanks to my dad and stepmom-Jerry and Donna Priest, both of them retired from the U.S. Army. Dad was a medic in Vietnam who went on to become a nurse, then a CRNA; Donna was an ER nurse for decades, and now she teaches. Back in the day, she went around the world a time or two on the hospital ship USNS Mercy -which may or may not be a coincidence regarding any characters appearing in this book.
Anyway, Dad, thanks for everything. Donna, thanks for everything . . . and the boots.
Then bring me here a breastplate,
And a helm before ye fly,
And I will gird my womans form,
And on the ramparts die!
FELICIA HEMANS, from the poem Marguerite of France
I want something to do.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, upon announcing her intention to serve as a nurse at the Washington Hospital during the Civil War. To be filed under, Be careful what you wish for.
One
Why the private had stashed it in a pillowcase wasnt much of a mystery: even in an upstanding place like the Robertson Hospital, small and shiny valuables went missing from personal stashes with unsettling regularity. And him forgetting about it was no great leap either: the shot he took in the forehead had been a lucky one because hed survived it, but it left him addled at times-and this morning at breakfast had been one of those times. At the first bell announcing morning food, against the strict orders of Captain Sally hed sat up and bolted into the mess hall, which existed only in that bullet-buffeted brain of his. In the time it took for him to be captured and redirected to his cot, where the meal would come to him, thank you very kindly, if only hed be patient enough to receive it, the junior nursing staff had come through and stripped the bedding of all and sundry.
None of them had noticed the watch, but it wouldve been easy to miss.
So Nurse Lynch was down in the blistering hot hospital basement, dutifully fishing through laundry soiled by injured and greasy heads, running noses, and rheumy eyes in hopes that Private Hugh Morton would either be reunited with the absent treasure, or would be separated from it long enough to forget all about it.
Upstairs, someone cried out, Mercy!
And downstairs, in the hospital basement, Vinita Lynch took a very deep breath and let it out slowly, between her teeth.
Mercy! Mercy, come up here, please!
Because thats what theyd taken to calling her, through some error of hearing or paperwork, or because it was easier for a room full of bed-bound men to remember a common word than call her by her given name.