The Children of Andaalwaald is the third book in The Children Trilogy. I am currently working on this story, and I hope to have the second draft completed by the end of January 2022.
The feedback I have received so far from the two readers who have read the first draft is positive – but the story needs tightening up quite a bit, and some of the chapters need redoing / reworking. Also – I am not happy with the ending and I want to write a couple of new chapters to close things off in a better way.
The Children of Andaalwaald is set in the second decade of the 22nd Century, and picks up the story about 10 years after the end of The Child of Mars.
Commander Nathan Blake and Alaa are living in Zanzibar, enjoying a quite life as a happy family – along with Bellona, Yimu, and Zhu. But dark clouds are appearing on the horizon – and their quiet and happy life will be shattered.
The Children of Andaalwaald introduces new characters, and brings back an old favourite.
I plan on publishing this story in April 2022.
Below is a teaser – the prologue. Enjoy!
The Children ofAndaalwaald: Prologue
The craft flew over the abandoned Eternal Imperial City, passing over the burnt out remains of the Imperial Palace. The craft flew away from the Imperial Palace and landed a short distance from the now deserted golden Summer Palace.
The rear ramp to the craft opened, and three men stepped from the craft. The men were white and carried machine guns. They were dressed in faded camouflage. The craft was a Chinese military ship.
‘Gaurd the ship’ – said one of the men – an American man – “Anyone comes near – fucking waste them!’
It was 2111 and it was winter in Shanghai. It was ten years after the death of the Emperor Qin and the Empress Zhuan. The Eternal Imperial Palace had been ransacked – and many of the buildings burned and destroyed. China – like the rest of the world – was in turmoil, and fighting a bloody civil war after the fall of Imperial China.
Two of the men left the craft and approached the Summer Palace. The doors of the palace were smashed, and they stepped inside with their guns readied. The once beautifully decorated foyer of the Summer Palace had been destroyed. Anything of any value had been stolen, and the skeletal remains of the Empress’ once loyal servants and courtiers lay on the marble floor.
The men moved silently up the marble staircase, and began checking all of the rooms. All of the rooms had been looted, and there were more skeletons. They came to the Empress’ chamber – there were two skeletons in the room. The remains of Zhu Zan’s nurse – shot and killed by the Empress – and the decapitated body of the Empress, still dressed in her golden robes. The robes were now ragged, and disintegrating. Her skull had been stamped on – and lay in brittle pieces away from her body. The Empress’ chamber had been looted – and anything of any value had been taken.
‘Is that the Empress?’ – said one of the men.
The other man knelt beside the body and studied the remains.
‘Yep – that’s her’
The two men began rummaging through the mess strewn over the once plush carpet. The windows to the Empress’ chamber had been smashed, and the room had been at the mercy of the elements for over a decade. They went through the room, and then the bedroom – looking through all of the junk and debris on the floor.
‘If it is here, it will be hidden’ – said one of the men.
They continued looking through the room – and then after a while they took knives out and began cutting the carpet around the edges. They pulled the carpet back, and cut it away – throwing the strips out of the broken window. They removed all of the carpet in the bedroom – and then took a break. They drank water, and one of the men radioed to the man guarding the ship.
‘How’s it down there?’
‘Quiet – few dogs roaming about, but no tangos’
‘Cool – we found the Empress and we are searching her bedroom’
‘Okay’
The two men drank more water, and then removed a device from a backpack.The device looked like a giant pair of binoculars – and one of the men held the device to his eyes and began scanning the room – the now bare floors and walls.
‘Anything?’ – said the other man
‘Nope’
They left the bedroom and started the process of stripping out the carpets and then scanning the main room. Hours passed, and then men worked silently as they moved from room-to-room repeating the process. They didn’t find what they were looking for. They moved to the lower floor, and found the Empress’ laboratory. The metal table the Empress had used to control the minds of Nathan and Yimu was in the middle of the room. The surgical lights above the table were smashed, and the computers and displays had been looted. There was no carpet to remove – and as one man bagan rummaging through the papers scattered over the floor, the other man began scanning the floor and walls.
Off from the laboratory’s main room was a small office – and it was truly ransacked. A giant glass fronted refrigerator was against the back wall. The glass had been smashed and the samples inside of it were broken. The man picked up a broken vial that had once contained blood. He read the label – it said “BLAKE, ALAA – ALIEN SAMPLE”.
‘What the fuck’ – said the man
He picked up other broken vials from the floor. The labels read “BLAKE, NATHAN”, “ZHUAN, YIMU”, “ZHUAN, QIN”, and “BLAKE, BELLONA – ALIEN SAMPLE”.
‘Aliens? The fucking Empress was fucking crazy’ – said the man, and he tossed the vials back on the floor.
The blood that was once inside of the vials had long since gone – spilled and then trampled on and then dried and then turned to dust.
The man continued to rummage through the scraps of paper amongst the broken glass and other debris.
‘Anything?’ – the other man shouted from the main laboratory.
The man left the office and joined the other man, who was standing and staring at the wall through the scanning device – ‘Nope – you?’
‘Something – maybe…’
The man took a stick of chalk from his breast pocket and walked to the wall. He held his hand and the other man gave him instructions of where to mark the outline of whatever was inside the wall. Once they had the outline completed the other man put the scanning device back into his backpack. Both the men studied the wall – looking for cracks or openings. One of the men took his knife out, and chipped away at the dark concrete of the lab wall. They worked for hours – chipping and scraping with their knives until they had worked to expose the outlines of a hidden compartment. Their radios crackled.
‘Hey guys – it’s getting dark. What do you want to do?’
‘30 minutes’ – said one of the men – ‘Get the bird warmed up, and stay ready for contact’
The other man removed a pouch from his backpack and removed some plastic explosive from the pouch. He pulled off four small lumps of the plastic explosive, and rolled it into balls that he stuck onto the four corners of the hidden compartment. He attached detonators to each ball of the explosives, and then connected all four detonators with blast cord. The blast cord was extended out and the two men retreated from the hidden locker.
‘Ready?’ – he said, the other man nodded.
There was an explosion, and after the dust settled the men returned to the hidden compartment. The front of a metal box had been blown off, and inside – covered in dust and bits of concrete – was a black leather physicians bag. They pulled the bag from the hidden compartment, and unclipped it. One of the men lifted from the bag a metal and glass canister of straw coloured liquid. He placed the canister back in the bag and clipped it shut. The two men left the laboratory – moving fast.
Outside of the Summer Palace the sun had set – and it was twilight. Away from the Summer Palace – at the end of the long boulevard some men were coming towards the craft. Men with guns.
‘We have company’ – said the man guarding the ship on the radio. He moved to the front of the ship, and raised his weapon and looked through the scope.
‘60 seconds out’ – said a voice in his ear.
He opened fire – and shot a long burst of automatic gunfire towards the approaching men. Several of the men dropped to the ground, and the others took cover. He reloaded his weapon and then fired again – shorter bursts. He hit more of the men – and then began moving towards the rear of the ship. The other two men came through the door of the palace, and raced towards the rear ramp of the waiting ship.
‘You got it?’ – said the man who had been guarding the ship.
‘Yep – we got it’ – said the man carrying the black bag as he climbed up the ramp.
All three of the men were inside the ship. The man carrying the bag placed it in a box and then took the controls of the ship. He quickly buckled himself in, and then the rear ramp began closing.
‘About 20 tangos – at the end of the road’ – said the guard.
They were starting to receive gunfire from the men at the end of the boulevard.
‘I see them’ – said the pilot.
The ship lifted off – and then a mighty blaze of gunfire erupted from the sides of the ship – as thousands of armour piercing rounds were fired towards the men shooting at the ship. The ship’s cannons ripped through the men – and the men were blown apart by the cannon fire. The craft lifted off from the Eternal Imperial City – and banked and then circled above the chaotic, smouldering, and war torn remains of Shanghai – and then headed out over the Yellow Sea and towards the Pacific and America.
####
Thousands of miles away – in the summer sun of Antarctica another Chinese craft flew over the deserted remains of the McMurdo station. After the fall of America, the scientists and engineers and support staff at the McMurdo station had been cut off. At first they radioed for help – but there was no response from their people back in America. Then they rationed their food supplies, and hunkered down until help arrived. But help never arrived – and then they began starving to death, and then they became cannibals. Eventually the last of the scientists and engineers and support staff died – and then the ice and the wind and the cold took over the McMurdo station, and all that was left now were huts covered in snow drifts and the bones of the scientists and engineers and support staff.
The Chinese craft flew over the McMurdo ice station and out across the frozen landscape. It flew high and onboard were a group of three Americans – dressed in polar survival suits. They had machine guns and in the rear of the craft was a small excavator and jack-hammers and other excavation equipment.
The craft circled at the South Pole, and then landed. The rear of the Chinese craft lowered, and one of the men walked out onto the ice with metal detecting equipment. He began scanning the ice with the metal detector as the two other men began moving the excavating equipment from the craft.
Once the equipment was unloaded onto the ice, then other men collected metal detecting equipment from the craft, and they joined the first man in scanning the ice. They worked silently and methodically for several hours – stopping every once in a while to drink and eat, and then they would return to the scanning of the ice.
After about five hours of work, one of the men’s metal detectors howled a metallic sound into his headphones.
‘I got something’ – he shouted to the others.
The two other men joined him, and they all began scanning the spot and all three metal detectors made a metallic howl. One of the men took a metal stake from his jacket pocket, and hammered it into the ice in the spot where the detectors had howled. The excavator was moved over to this spot, and it began chipping away at the ice as the two other men watched.
Every once in a while the two other men would start up the jack-hammers and break through a layer of ice, and then the excavator would continue scraping. After a couple of hours, a hole had opened up and dark patches could be seen through the ice. The men continued working, and then the excavator scraped through the ice and a handgun was pulled out – a Magnum 500 handgun.
The men stopped, and examined the hole. They started digging again and some scraps of clothing were pulled out and a bowie knife. The digger pulled out black ice, and the burned remains of a pair of cowboy boots.
The men examined the content of the hole.
‘Anything usable?’ – said one of the men.
‘Nope – no tissue – we keep digging’
They continued digging, and refuelled the excavator. The hole was expanded and they worked for hours, stopping every once in a while to eat and drink.
The excavator broke through the ice near where the gun had been found – and something grey appeared amongst the broken chunks of ice. The men stopped and examined what had surfaced – it was Butch’s jawbone, ripped from his head by Nathan before he was killed and frozen in the Antartic ice for 70 years.
‘Get the sample collection box’ – said one of the men as he studied the jawbone.
A box was brought out to the site of the excavation, and the jawbone was lifted into the box and sealed.
The men returned to the ship, and left the excavation equipment at the south pole. The ship took off, and banked and flew back towards the McMurdo station and then onwards to the Southern Ocean, and then to America.