"McKinley is a meddler, mark my words. A meddler and an officious busybody. But he won't meddle in
this
, never you fear!" Theodore Roosevelt ejaculated, mustache bristling and smoke puffing into the air as he waggled his cigar in the general direction of Van Helsing as the two of them stood together in the massive gantry that had once been set aside for holding cargo earmarked for ports and bustling towns along the European coast. But with most of Europe a smoldering ruin and millions of refugees spreading outwards from the center of world politics, the Americans (ever the mercantilists) had begun to shift themselves from selling to Europe to selling literally anywhere else -- this had transformed the warehouse, momentarily, into a site full of cargoes bound for the burgeoning Japanese markets, or China, or South America.
Then, with an idle sweep of their power and might, the Martians had undertaken what the Americans were calling 'Black Sunday.' Their flying machines, operating in groups of three or four, had swept across the Atlantic, to the unsuspecting shores of America. There, they had begun to systemically destroy the ports and the ships of the American industrial cities. Their heat rays had melted steel, cracked concrete, set fire to wood, boiled water, and incinerated almost a thousand American civilians and more than two thousand American sailors. The only reason why the slaughter had not been worse had been that the American fleets had been at port -- large portions of their crews had been ashore.
That hadn't made the disaster any better.
Van Helsing coughed, softly, as the smoke that the American statesman was waving around reached his nose. He covered his mouth with his handkerchief, and said: "Who are you being, in this government, Mr. Roosevelt, again?"
Arriving by flying machine had not been the most...gentle way for Dr. Van Helsing to introduce himself to the United States. The entire country had been on edge for the next sighting of the invaders from Mars, and had begun to contrive what they thought of as a reasonable defense in the form of cannons and guns aimed at the sky, with fused shells. Through sheer preponderance of firepower and some luck, they had managed to rattle Van Helsing's flying machine with near misses and shrapnel. That hadn't been enough to damage the vehicle, but it had made controlling the finnicky thing more difficult than Van Helsing had expected -- ending with him crashing in the middle of downtown New York.
He had been surrounded by armed police and even some citizens and emerged with his hands up, coughing. There, he had been whisked off for interrogation, interrogation that had gone through several branches of the army, the government, President McKinley himself, and now, at last, he was back here, at the warehouse where the flying machine was being examined by a swarm of American technicians, directed by an fiftysomething, jowly man in a fine suit who kept obviously checking his pocket watch.
The technicians were at work taking the machine apart with as much gentleness as could be managed, revealing the internal workings of the wings and the cockpit. The ferocious complexity of the gears, the levers, the wires, and the other connective tissues within the vehicle was remarkable as seeing a human body on a dissection table, but Van Helsing was less interested in the machine than he was in this Roosevelt, who had reacted to Van Helsing's question by swelling up like an inflatable balloon.
"I am Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, formerly of the Rough Riders, you may have heard of us over there in Germany?" Roosevelt said, and despite ending the sentence with a question mark, he still somehow managed to sound as if he was stating a fact of the world. Van Helsing coughed.
"I...am afraid I do not pay the mind of too the wars in these parts of the world, who...who were you at war with? The Canadians? You fought them before, yes?"
"The
Spanish
," Roosevelt said, waggling his cigar at him. "The damned Spanish were pushing around our little brothers in Cuba -- and McKinley sat on his hands for a full year. Well. An American doesn't need
orders
to go helping out around the world. I founded the Rough Riders on my own recognizance. If it weren't for the Maine exploding, I suppose we'd have fought in the war alone, but in the end, we were backed up by the Atlantic Squadron -- the poor fellows..." He shook his head.
"Ah..." Van Helsing nodded. "You are a kind of...mercenary?"
"A volunteer!" Roosevelt huffed. "And that is why I am here, today, with my associate, Dr. Edison."
"That is the true Dr. Edison?" Van Helsing asked, turning to the catwalk's railing, peering down with new interest at the overseer of the project going on in the warehouse. "Remarkable! An electrical genius, is he not?"
"Yes, I lured him out of his Florida home to New York by threatening him with Tesla," Roosevelt said. "Because I'm the only American who can see that these squiddy fellows you Germans are having such troubles with, they're going to be the big row, the thing that America can use to really take her place in the sun." He stubbed out the cigar against the side of the railing, twisting it with a harrumph. "We've sat on our hands for too long, Dr. Van Helsing, and the world needs us to show her what we can do."
"This is most excellent news you are telling me," Dr. Van Helsing said, nodding eagerly. "You think you can get your President to take these Martians seriously?"
"Oh, McKinley is taking them seriously. Largest increase in the War Department's budget since the War between States," Roosevelt said. "Funds for fortresses! Funds for cannons! Funds for fire fighting levies and for mines in the harbors and funds for trenches. But not a single fund for attack! No funds for bringing the fight to Europe, where the war will be won!" He shook his head. "Absurd. You don't win a war by sitting back and letting enemies beat themselves against your fortifications. You win, as the French say, with
elan
. With the attack!"
Van Helsing nodded, slowly. His lips pursed. "And thus...you..."
"I have managed to call upon the great people of this glorious nation and once again, I am creating a volunteer regiment. But this flying machine you have here shows that it is a new kind of world, a new kind of war. So, it will be a new kind of regiment. With the electrical genius there..." He nodded to Edison. "And funding from every automobile manufacturing, train running, oil-fracking Rockefeller and Carnegie in the country, we'll be able to figure these contraptions out, make our own, and show these red men from Mars what's what." His eyes positively glowed as he looked down at the machine being deconstructed, his hands gripping onto the railing of the catwalk.
Van Helsing beamed. "Fantastic! Most excellentness! Now, about the vampires?"
Roosevelt slowly turned to him.
"...the what?"
***
"Thank god for Jonathan Harker," Dracula said, shaking her head as she stood on the hill that overlooked the winding convoy that was cutting north across Romania. She had taken a feminine form purely for her own whims as far as Mina could tell -- but to hear that husky, seductive voice say those words, in that order, in that tone of voice actually caused her to stumble and fell forward a bit, her arms flailing. Mina herself was dressed in a simple shift, having abandoned all of her more fashionable and human-centric clothing back at the castle, to be burned by the Martian heat rays. She was bare foot like an urchin...and yet, she didn't feel anything but the pleasant energy of a long, enjoyable walk, despite the speed and the harsh pace required for the evacuation.
"I...what?" she asked.
Dracula laughed -- her eyes traveling from the convoy to the landscape of lonely, abandoned farms that they were moving through, to Mina. She took Mina's arm, helping her fully upright. "We have, in total, twelve vampires, each requiring their own coffins, collections of Earth from our native lands, blood, and the blood must be refreshed, with mortals needing to get their dosages of album vitae, which must be made. Your...fiance..." She grinned. "Has compiled this." She reached into her vest, then tugged out a small portfolio, which she allowed to open onto her palm, revealing the papers and documents within.
Mina took the portfolio, her brow furrowing as her eyes skimmed along the neat, even handwriting of her fiance, pausing only momentarily to marvel at how easy it was to read, despite the entire convoy traveling by moonless, cloudy night. The papers listed vampires, mortals who had been given the album vitae, the times the drinks had been taken, the amount of tasks and duties taken by the vampires (marked with tiny check marks to indicate how many times, say, Lucy had transformed into a wolf or enhanced her strength.) There were also documents listing precisely the amount of Earth that was being transported, and...as she flipped to the last few pages, she saw that there were lists of ammunition, clothing, food, medicine, and other supplies required for the human refugees.
These lists were the most hazy -- simply because the convoy had been gathering refugees in drips and drabs, the people coming to them from the forests and the ruins, simply because they were organized and had food. When they discovered the vampires, they normally were too shocked to do much more than meekly accept their protection...and after a few days, when they realized that they were not going to be consumed or abused, they relaxed. Even here, though, Jonathan's diligence was present. He had listed, beside each name, the shorthand of their languages spoken, their skills and their age.
Mina closed the portfolio with a shy smile. "He still can't even turn into a wolf, you know?"
