The Legend of Indian Stream Read online

  The Legend of

  Indian Stream

  Steven Landry

  Copyright © 2017 Steven Landry

  Published by Pine Ridge Technical Risk Management, L.L.C.

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017907856

  CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, North Charleston, SC

  ISBN: 1545487561

  ISBN-13: 978-1545487563

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to all

  American Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, and Coast Guardsmen.

  And to their Families who Served at home, especially my wife Diane and child Allison.

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Part I

  1 - Corcoran

  2 - Dwight

  3 - Anna

  4 - Corcoran

  5 - Dwight

  6 - Dwight

  7 – Dwight, Corcoran & Mack

  8 - Anna

  9 - Anna & Mike

  10 - Corcoran

  11 - Dwight

  12 - Anna

  13 - Corcoran

  14 - Dwight

  15 - Anna

  16 - Dwight

  PART II

  17 - Dwight

  18 - Joseph

  19 - Anna

  20 - Joseph & Worthington

  21 - Anna

  22 - Anna

  23 - Dwight

  24 - Jake

  25 - Worthington

  26 - Roger

  27 - Jennifer

  28 - Ruby & Susan

  29 - Anna

  30 - Jennifer

  31 - Peta

  32 - Jake

  33 - Jennifer & Jake

  34 - Anna

  35 - Jake

  36 - Anna & Jennifer

  37 - Anna

  38 - Anna

  INTERLUDE

  Liam & Peta

  Worthington & Corcoran

  Anna & Worthington

  PART III

  39 - Mack

  40 - Peta

  41 - Mack

  42 - Margaret

  43 - Peta

  44 - Jake & Luke

  45 - Anna

  46 - Peta

  47 - Jake

  48 - Peta

  49 - Anna

  50 - Corcoran

  51 - Sheila

  52 - Dwight

  53 - Margaret & Anna

  54 - Corcoran

  55 - Jake

  56 - Peta

  57 - Peta & Luke

  58 - Corcoran

  FOREWORD

  This story describes the development of an alternative history starting on December 11, 1832, six days after the re-election of President Andrew Jackson. The story’s protagonists are citizens of the Republic of Indian Stream, an independent nation that once existed between the borders of British Canada and the United States, and which comprised about half of present-day Pittsburg in Coos County, New Hampshire. In real life, the Republic existed from about April 6, 1829 to about December 10, 1840 (sources vary), although the border dispute between the United States and Canada was not formally settled until the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. In this story, I’ve expanded the Republic’s borders to include all of present day New Hampshire north of the 45th parallel, an area of about three hundred square miles.

  Thanks to David Covill, President of the Historical Society in Pittsburg, New Hampshire, for his insights and assistance. An excellent history of the actual Indian Stream Republic can be found at: http://www.pittsburg-nh.com/town-history/indian-stream-republic.

  Special thanks to my first readers, including my wife Diane, Judy D., Larry G., and the members of the Good Karma Koffee Klub for their excellent input, and to Bridget Boland at Modern Muse for her guidance, encouragement, and expertise.

  All of the military equipment described in this book actually existed at the time of this writing (2016), and had either been fielded or operationally tested by one or more of the world’s militaries, (although I’ve added a fictional power source). Data on the Republic’s weapons and equipment comes primarily from Wikipedia™, as well as the Federation of American Scientists™ website (www.fas.org).

  Finally, I have chosen to use the word “black” to describe Americans of African descent, rather than use the offensive terms generally in use at the time. I ask the reader to forgive the deviation from the historical language. I have chosen to retain usage of the word “Indian” as its use is unavoidable when describing the historical name of the actual Republic. I apologize to any who are offended.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.

  Cover art JLTV depiction derived from Oshkosh Defense photograph, accessed at

  https://oshkoshdefense.com/photo-gallery/?category=Vehicles,

  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

  International license.

  PART I

  1 - CORCORAN

  Temporal Tide: the propagation of changes through time in a three-dimensional living universe when a temporal event changes the subjective past. It creates a new reality, based on a new sequence of events. The temporal tide propagates through four-dimensional space at a rate faster than the Einsteinian speed of time by a factor of two Pi. See also Temporal Shock and Temporal Riptide. Glossary, An Illustrated History of the Republic, Helen O’Shea, Ed.

  St. Mark’s Church, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, Sunday, December 9, 2035

  I thought saving humanity would be easier. Corcoran Fallon had travelled more than one hundred years back in time. He and his companions had assembled a team to destroy the lab that weaponized the plague and killed the world in his own timeline. They had vanquished the terror cell that released Thunder pestis, and provided 22nd Century vaccines to ward off the disease itself. But they had been no more successful in stopping the plague than any of the previous attempts. History always seemed to find an agent to do its bidding.

  “Thanks be to God,” Corcoran replied. That phrase, signaling the end of Holy Mass, was usually proclaimed by the congregation, not mumbled as it was today. Corcoran looked around the church and saw maybe forty people, about one-tenth the previous week’s tally. Of course last week the plague was something distant, a threat many believed would be contained. This week, it was just a few hour’s drive away in Los Angeles. Fear of contagion had evidently trumped love of God on this Sunday.

  “Dad, let’s go.” His stepdaughter, Aileen Coyle, RN, was in a hurry to get their next meeting underway. Corcoran followed her out to the vestibule, then down a winding stair to a brightly lit classroom. Most of the others had already arrived and were squeezing themselves into seats designed for much smaller bodies. Including himself, Aileen, and her husband Kellen, there were twenty-five people in the room.

  Dr. Sheila Flynn got straight to the point. “It’s broken containment,” she said flatly. “There are plague cases reported in all the major transportation hubs. None of our anti-bacterial drugs are having the slightest effect on this strain, and the vaccines Corcoran brought with him from the 22nd Century are equally ineffective.”

  “This is playing out exactly the way it did in my timeline, except a few years later,” Corcoran said. “People are dying by the hundreds of thousands; soon it’ll be by the millions. The original Great Cancun Plague of 2030 killed over six billion. This one is just getting started.”

  “What can we do to stop it?” Darcy O’Brien was also a nurse, and like Aileen might soon be on the front lines of the battle against th
e plague.

  “Nothing. At least not in this time.” Sheila glanced at Corcoran. “The powers that be won’t admit it’s too late until it really is too late. But we can take action on our own. I assume you all came to this meeting because you’re willing to entertain Corcoran’s idea of another leap back in time.”

  Liam Keating banged his hand on a desk. Everyone looked over at him.

  “Are we sure this wasn’t caused by that damn fool Mike Wilcox?” Liam was a former Navy SEAL, a large and powerfully-built man.

  “There’s no way to be sure,” replied Barbara O’Malley, an applied physicist. “When Mike hijacked the time machine in 2028 he went directly to 1988, stayed there long enough to grab Anna Mannheim, and then jumped straight to 1832. He’s been gone seven years now. The temporal tide travels through history at precisely two Pi times the normal rate of time. Under normal circumstances, the earliest effects of his jump to 1988 shouldn’t show up before 2032.

  “But Mike jumped back to Friday, November 18th, 1988, a date in his own lifetime.” Barbara shook her head, in seeming disbelief. “We can’t know what interactions he may have had with his own history. He may have created a negative feedback loop. Call it a temporal riptide, for lack of a better term.”

  History always seems to find a way. Corcoran didn’t voice the thought, but said a silent prayer for divine guidance.

  “Regardless, Mike’s time travel has placed constraints on what we can do now,” said Fiona Forte, another physicist.

  “She’s right.” Corcoran leapt into the opening before Liam could argue with O’Malley. “Because of the temporal tide from Mike’s jump to 1988, we can’t jump back to any time between then and now.” While he spoke, Fiona drew a timeline on a chalkboard at the front of the classroom. “Even if we could, we don’t know where this new strain of Thunder pestis was weaponized. Taking another whack at the surviving cells of the Animal Justice Brigade might be satisfying, but probably ineffective.” The AJB was the terror group that released the plague in the year 2030 in the original history, the event Corcoran had travelled back in time from the 22nd Century to prevent.

  “We need to forget about the group and concentrate on the plague itself,” Corcoran said.

  “I agree with Dad,” Aileen said. “We know that the original strain of Thunder pestis emerged in the Castle Thunder Confederate prison camp outside Richmond, Virginia, in July 1863. In the filth and squalor of camp, a strain of the bubonic plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, mutated into Thunder pestis, but lost most of its potency. It spread throughout the rebel prison camp system by the end of the war. AJB managed to restore its potency by altering the bacteria’s DNA slightly.”

  “So I propose a two pronged approach,” Corcoran said. “First, we introduce anti-bacterials like penicillin before the Civil War starts, and second we see to it that the war ends before the outbreak in mid-1863.”

  “By, ‘end’ I suppose y’all mean helping the Union aggressors win?” Neil Sullivan emphasized his southern accent.

  “My ma and pa were indentured servants in the Irish Kingdom, the next closest cousin to slavery,” Corcoran replied evenly. “I’ll be damned if I’ll support the Confederacy. But I’m going to stop this plague, with or without your help.”

  “Neil, think about it,” Liam said. “If we can end the war in one fell swoop, say by facilitating a Union victory at Fredericksburg, then how much better off will the South be in the long run? No Gettysburg, no Sherman’s March to the Sea, no burning of Atlanta and Charleston, no sieges of Vicksburg, Richmond and Petersburg. We’d save hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides, especially among civilians.” Neil gave a grudging nod.

  “Which brings us to the other problem Mike created,” Barbara said. “If we’re going to jump, we need to jump all the way back to December 11, 1832 because of the temporal tide from his second jump.” Fiona extended the line on the chalkboard.

  “That answers the question of when,” Liam said. “But where?”

  “The Republic of Indian Stream,” Corcoran replied. “It’s a place where we can write the rules and still be in the middle of the action.”

  “Never heard of it,” Mack O’Malley said.

  “It’s a small place in New England, north of the White Mountains in what is now Pittsburg, New Hampshire,” Kellen said. “It only lasted as an independent republic for a few years, but they’ve got a constitution we can use to our advantage. And it’s about as isolated as you can get in post-Colonial America.”

  “We’ll be making a much bigger impact on history going back that far,” said Barbara.

  “I hope so,” Corcoran replied. “If we are going to save mankind from the plague, we need to cause a seismic shift in the timeline. I don’t care how much we screw up our own histories. We’ll be well out of the way by the time the temporal tide passes through the 21st Century.”

  2 - DWIGHT

  Republic of Indian Stream: Signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America on September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolutionary War. However, it failed to properly establish the border between the State of New Hampshire and the Province of Lower Canada. Situated east of Hall’s Stream, west of the 71st Meridian, and north of the 45th Parallel, the Indian Stream watershed was claimed by both the United States and the British Empire. Both sides eventually attempted to tax the residents, while neither government provided any of the benefits citizens had come to expect from government. On April 6, 1829 the two hundred and eighty-five residents of the area declared their independence, established their own constitutional government, and formed their own militia. Glossary, An Illustrated History of the Republic, Helen O’Shea, Ed.

  Republic of Indian Stream, Tuesday, December 11, 1832

  Dwight Carver was the first citizen of the Republic to spot the caravan of thirteen horse-drawn cargo sleighs coming up River Road from New Hampshire. He quickly spread word of the new arrivals, and a small crowd gathered near Fletcher's Mill in the village of Pittsburg. It was a cold and clear Tuesday morning, and everyone was warmly dressed in wool and fur. The Republic’s Supreme Council, consisting of Messrs. Nathaniel Perkins, John Haines, and David Mitchell, were among the onlookers.

  The caravan stopped. Two men jumped to the ground from the driver’s seats of the first two sleighs and came up the street.

  The three councilmen stepped forward to greet the visitors. “Good day to you, sirs,” called out Perkins as the two men approached. “How may we assist you?” In Dwight’s experience, the slim and handsome Perkins was always the first to speak up among the Council, although he was only twenty-three years old.

  “Good day to you folks as well,” the older of the two men replied in a loud voice that carried over the gathering. Dwight took him to be around forty years old. He was tall and well-built, with a military bearing that Dwight recognized from his days fighting in the First Seminole War. The other visitor was younger, maybe twenty-five, taller and heavily muscled, with the same military air about him. Both men had green eyes, short cropped red hair, and the fair complexion of the Irish.

  “I’m Corcoran Fallon and this is my son-in-law Kellen Coyle,” the older man said in a musical Irish accent. “We’ve recently arrived here by way of Ireland and would like to settle our families in your free Republic. Would you be willing to abide our presence and sell us a large piece of property between Back Lake and the Connecticut River?”

  “That would depend on how many of you there are, how large a piece of land you want, and how much you’re willing to pay,” said Haines. He was the oldest of the Councilors, well into his fifties, but with a full head of graying hair and an equally full gray beard.

  “There are twenty-five adults and thirty-six children among us. We wish to purchase all of the Republic’s land east of a line extending due south from the southernmost point of Back Lake to the Connecticut River, and south of a line extending due east from the nort
heast corner of Back Lake to the Connecticut River,” Fallon replied. “The parcel’s southern and eastern borders would be the Connecticut River.”

  There was an audible gasp from the crowd. The three Councilors stood with their mouths agape. The land in question constituted a very large chunk of the Republic. Dwight estimated that the purchase would involve about three thousand acres of forested hills, including half-a-dozen homesteads and the Republic’s only school. It would also include about a thousand yards of Back Lake shoreline.

  The younger man, Coyle, jumped into the silence. “We’ll allow a right-of-way for the River Road, but it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. Every property owner has to agree, and agree to the same price per acre. Whatever side deals you make among yourselves are your business.”

  “The soil is poorly suited to farming and some of it’s prone to flooding. I think two English pounds or nine American dollars per acre, in gold, is more than fair,” Fallon added. “We’ll also build a new school on the River Road right-of-way.” He folded his arms and waited while the crowd did the mental arithmetic.

  “Please give us a moment,” Mitchell replied. He withdrew with Perkins and Haines, speaking in a quiet whisper that Dwight couldn’t pick up.

  About five minutes passed before Haines returned to the two visitors. “I’m afraid we’ll need more time to consider your offer.”

  “That’s fine,” replied Fallon. “If it’s okay with you, we’ll move up Hill Road and make camp in the saddle between Sherman’s Hill and Dorman’s Hill. Come on up when you’re ready to talk.” Coyle and Fallon returned to their sleighs. Dwight watched as the caravan headed northwest out of town on the road to the lake. The women and children returned to their chores while Dwight and the other men gathered at the nearby Perkins homestead to discuss the offer.

  “For new arrivals they sure seem to know a lot about the area,” Nathaniel Perkins said.

  “I agree,” replied Haines. “I don’t think we can trust them. We shouldn’t have allowed them to stay in the Republic until we learned more about them.”