Youth World

Chapter 16 – Reuniting With Aidan

A short while had passed, and a bunch of people, including me, were gathering sand from the beaches and transporting vast quantities of it to the metallurgists. But why sand? Why would any society need sand?

Simple. It's a simple metal casting process that can rapidly manufacture brass cannons and even more muskets. At this point, we didn't even have a single cannon and not even a hundred muskets, so we had to start producing them at a higher rate. According to the analysis of the metallurgists' leader, doing things this way would decrease the number of failures and deficiencies on the firearms, many of them being related to faulty and unsatisfactory barrel construction.

Of course, this wasn't the only thing that I had done over the past few days. Much of it was administrative or helping around the camp, so I won't bore you with the details. All you need to know is that a lot of progress had been made.

After gathering enough sand, we brought it all back to the metallurgists. Then, we quickly got to work.

The metallurgists had asked the carpenters to make a full-sized cannon barrel out of wood to serve as a pattern for the molds. They had delivered way before schedule, much to the joy of everyone.

The pattern was incorporated along with the sand in a gating system. Afterwards, it was removed. The mold cavity was filled with molten brass, and it was left there to cool.

As that happened, I continued to work on making even more Cascadian Rifles. Midway, my attention was needed elsewhere, so I had to leave for the time being. Turns out, a strange man with a few hundred followers had turned up to our camp's doorstep. I wasn't sure if he was a friend or foe, but I still decided to set out and meet him near the bottom extreme of our camp.

I walked through the gates accompanied by a company of halberdiers, and I sat down on a nearby stump sitting face to face with this man. According to the messenger, he really wanted to meet me, and asked over and over again if a certain Alexander Ruan was in the camp. He seemed quite surprised when he was told I was the leader.

"So," I began the conversation, "Why do you need to see me?"

The bearded man's eyes watered as he leaped from his stump and tacked me to the ground. Immediately, twenty halberdiers pointed their halberds at his neck, and the man's followers raised their stone spears in a throwing position.

"Halt," I commanded, "Withdraw your halberds. This man is my friend."

The man said the same thing to his troops. We were stuck in an embrace for minutes, but we finally got up and returned to our respective stumps.

"Aidan," I began, "Why weren't you here in the city of Bellevue when the apocalypse happened? You have a lot of explaining to do."

"Yes," Aidan agreed, "Yes I do. Let me tell you everything that transpired that fateful day."

"Do tell. However, this is not an adequate place, so please follow me back to my shelter."

I ordered my troops to open the camp gates, and we began walking through the central road. Many of the citizens were waving at me as I walked by them.

"You sure got a lot of progress going on here. Say, why are you dressed like a Roman?"

"I didn't mean to dress like that. Its just that some kids gave me this crown, and I made this brėȧstplate for protection, and…"

"And the cape? That's totally intentional. Don't lie to me."

"Yep. That's just to look cool, and for everybody to easily identify who I am. It serves no practical purpose."

"I could tell. Alex, did you smash a bird? If you're the leader, certainly all the women would want to sleep with you. If I remember this correctly, that chick Erika sure did have a thing for you. Didn't she wrap herself like a present and show up at your front door one day?"

"I have no clue how she found my address. Yeah, she tried, and she stole my first kiss. But I kicked her out of my shelter and told her to screw off."

"Well, that isn't a nice thing to say to a girl. She was quite the snack, if you know what I mean."

"And how would you know that?"

"Simple. She was my twenty-third girlfriend."

"Dude, you get a new girlfriend practically every month. That's nothing to brag about."

"Is it though?" Aidan questioned as he pulled himself closer to my face, "IS IT THOUGH???"

"Enough of that, Aidan. Let's get down to serious business. Why weren't you at school that day? Were you skipping school to go to some party at some cheerleader's house?"

"Oh, nothing like that."

I raised an eyebrow, quizzically staring at the relatively short man. At least in my biased opinion, since I was around six foot tall.

"You sure?"

"I swear! I was out sailing that day."

"Wait a minute. Let's continue this conversation once we're inside.

We arrived at the shelter, and I invited Aidan to take a seat. Ironically enough, that was the same place where Erika was hiding when I entered the shelter a few days prior. I tried to erase that from my memory, but ones first kiss is something that they can never forget. No matter how much they want to do so.

"So, this is where things went down, huh?"

"Shut up, Aidan. Say it one more time and I'll punch you."

"You won't do it. You pussƴcat."

"Aight, bet."

"Knew you wouldn't do it."

"What do you mean? You saw me punch you."

"That didn't count. My three-year-old brother could punch harder."

"You don't have a brother!"

"Maybe I do."

"Stop kidding around. You tell white lies like that all the time."

"Alright, alright, I'll stop. We should probably get back on topic. Can I continue my story?"

"Go ahead. I'll make myself comfortable in this corner over here."

Aidan took a deep breath, and then he began to recount his tale.

"As I woke up on the morning of April 20th, my parents surprised me and told me we were all going on a sailing trip together. Even though they were both divorced, they came together just to celebrate my 17th birthday, so this was something special. We drove all the way to the marina, where we boarded the sailboat that my father owned, and we began to sail across the Puget Sound to the city of Bremerton. After a few hours of sailing around, since we weren't going in a linear direction, I fainted and woke up drowning in the water, my parents and the boat nowhere to be seen. Luckily, I was able to compose myself and I swam all the way to a small island in the middle of the sound. After building a raft from some trees, I sailed all the way to the Kitsap Peninsula where I befriended a tribe of students and eventually got elected their leader through charisma. We built kayaks out of tree trunks and paddled all the way to Burien where we ran into your salt guys, and they directed us to your camp."

The room was silent for a while. Then, I finally came up with some words that seemed suitable for the situation.

"It's truly impressive that you managed to survive and do all that. However, words cannot describe how happy I am that you managed to survive and had the dedication and loyalty to bring all these guys here just to reunite with me. Now, that is a feat of friendship that nobody else could possibly achieve. I hate to have to separate with you so early, but I really need you to do something for me."

"What's that?"

"You see, we're currently building a bunch of ships on the Duwamish River so we can sail to the Yakima River Valley. The salt guys told you about our plan, right?"

"To some extent. By the way, I ran into your shipbuilders on the way there, and they seem to be making good progress."

"Talking about those shipbuilders, I need you to bring your guys to them and help them with the process. Due to the sheer amount of people here, we need even more ships to carry them, since it'd be extremely difficult to get ten thousand people through the mountain pass at once. Do you think you could do that?"

"I could, but I really don't want to leave you. We've just reunited for an hour, and now you need me to go?"

"I miss you too, and I don't want you to leave, but the reality of the situation leaves us no choice. If we do not complete the ships in time, we won't make it to Yakima in time to plant crops. Talking about crops, I've already had some of the botanists gather useful seeds from around here."

"How about this. We'll stay the night in the camp, and then we'll depart to Duwamish the following day. Hopefully this gives us some extra time to catch up."

"That sounds reasonable. Now, Aidan, could you tell me a bit about that time you were dating Katie?"

We talked for what seemed to be hours until it was time for dinner. After grabbing my portion and eating it with Aidan, I stood on top of the tree stump and made a speech to the whole group.

"After much deliberation, I find it absolutely necessary that we delay the journey to the Yakima River Valley by one week. That will give us adequate time to prepare absolutely everything we need and more importantly to make sure the boats are properly constructed and properly supplied. I know this is a bit sudden, but this is the best option for us. Are there any objections with this?"

Nobody moved as much as a muscle. I guess either people were afraid of me, respected me too much to object, or they didn't have any qualms about extending the deadline.

I continued to ramble on about other things that were of note to the group, and then I retreated into my shelter with Aidan. We sat there under the candlelight and continued to talk about our lives and our preparations for the migration until it was nearly midnight. During our talks, Aidan came up with an interesting proposal.

He wanted to establish Cascadian control over Vancouver Island and neighboring islands and lands around the Puget Sound and Salish Sea. Although he really wanted to reunite with me in Yakima, he deemed this the best option for Cascadia's future expansion. After much argument, I relented and allowed for his plan to be carried out.

Out of the five thousand people that I was going to send on the boats, about half of them would settle on Vancouver Island near the location of the former city of Victoria while the other half continued the journey. Then, Aidan would act on my behalf as a Commissar of the Imperial State using the half of the navy that he retained, those ships armed with swivel guns and Congreve rockets, and conquer nearby lands to establish a foothold.

After figuring out the basics of the operation and promising to name him Admiral of the Cascadian Navy, we instantly fell asleep.. We were too tired from the day's events, and there were plenty of things that we would have to do tomorrow.