If They Made Me a King

The alleged cashbox in question was really an old military surplus footlocker full of Nelson's personal stuff, and a few items left over from previous plant managers, including a nice large wooden statuette that ought to be in some Polynesian museum. At the very bottom of the chest, under an old vintage military jacket were a bunch of loosely strewn old silver dollars, maybe about two hundred or so, dating from the late 1930's. I hoped that the sight of this shiny bottom layer would distract the sergeant long enough for me to overpower him, especially as the chest was just around the corner from the vault door, well out of sight from the Captain.

Really, the plan couldn't have worked any better! I showed the Sergeant the chest and the suspicious bastard wouldn't let me open it, in case there was a gun or another weapon resting on top. Fair enough ... there was a gun, an old military 1911 issue .45 Colt right on top of the junk pile, albeit unloaded. The Sergeant grinned and I could watch him mentally relax as he started to unload the rest of the junk out the box. He was obviously smug, certain that he had outfoxed my clever plan to grab the weapon and disarm him. When he found the layer of 1930's vintage Peace silver dollars, his eyes were off of me entirely, and without a thought of anything other than greed in his head, he bent down to examine and gather up the silver.

Picking up the large heavy ebony wood carved figure of a native woman that he had unwrapped from the jacket and set aside on the floor, I had no trouble at all picking it up and braining the poor fool with it. Rather too hard, I later discovered. The old ebony wood was as tough as metal and crushing his bare skull didn't even put a dent or a scratch in the base of the wood. Her head did come off in my hand, as the rest of the now broken figurine fell on top of the junk pile, but fortunately soundlessly onto the discarded old jacket it had been carefully wrapped up in.

"You, Sir," I muttered as I took the sergeant's gun, "are a lackwit!"

With his gun now in hand, I had no trouble sneaking quietly around to the edge of the vault doorway and then darting briefly into view I quickly popped two rounds into the central chest mass of the other gunsel Sergeant, and thoroughly getting the Captain's attention distracted to me. I ducked back around the corner of the vault as he fired off with lightning speed one round that went right through where my head had been a fraction of a moment before, but he did not fire again. Our new 'Dear Leader' had all of the trouble he could handle from that moment fighting off Ellie, who had taken full advantage of my distraction.

When I dared turn my head around the doorway about ten seconds later, the martial arts duel in Jeff's large executive office was disturbingly even. Apparently a lot of mercs spend their formative training years in martial arts dojos too and know nearly every trick of dirty fighting there is. I think Ellie was ahead on points, but he was bigger and stronger than she was. Her lightning fast kicks to his face and the side of his head looked nasty, but were non-critical, on the other hand one of his fast hard punches to the side of her head clearly wobbled her and half knocked her silly. At least his sidearm had been knocked away to the far side of the room, closer to me than to him.

I decided that the fight looked a little bit too fair and even to be comforting, so I waved my gun a bit and gave Ellie a quizzical look. Her dander was up, but even in her adrenaline fury and cloud of pain, she could see sense, and she nodded to me.

Sensing that I was behind him, the Captain darted like a jackrabbit to put his back to the wall, but that didn't concern me in the slightest. My first round, fired from right in front of him, blew out his right kneecap in a very pretty Technicolor spray of blood that splattered shattered cartilage and bone all over the wall of the executive office. If Jeff had still been alive, he would have been pissed.

I had zero regrets, and from the look on Ellie's face, he wasn't going to live long to enjoy his permanent disability. His mobility and balance gone, the rest of the fight wasn't even close to being fair. In fact, the next few minutes were so violently disturbing that I returned to check upon the dead body of the Sergeant in the vault and even took the time to repack up the footlocker. Even out of the room, I could still hear the loud cracking of bones and the howls for mercy that went unheeded. Doing so saved me some visual memories that I would have preferred not to recall, and this earned me at least one family heirloom as a reward. The US Army military jacket, complete with the insignia of a US Army Colonel, bore the embroidered name of Renwick. It was clearly my grandfather's, and when I put it on it fit me almost like a glove, except more comfortably.

I want to think that he someday wanted me, or maybe my father, to have claimed this heirloom, and I searched the other contents of the footlocker more carefully. The gun, certainly of the same vintage, I assumed was his as well, and I slipped it in my belt loop, to wear it for now. Some extra magazines along with some old, but still very useable ammo were at the bottom of the chest mixed in with the old Peace dollars, and I loaded the weapon and tucked it inside of my belt.

I was carefully examining the two pieces of the broken wooden carving when I felt Ellie's finger gently touching my right shoulder. She had taken a moment to wash her face and hands in the next door executive restroom and her fingers were still wet to the touch when she gently also touched in a light caress the side of my head. She'd mostly washed her face as well, but there was some remaining splattered blood on one of her ears, not to mention that her once lovely dress was quite covered in blood as well. Still, she beamed at me with obvious joy and delight at her victory, and she even allowed me to take a tissue to wipe the blood from her ear.

Together, under the better light of Jeff's office, we examined the broken statuette and discovered that the two pieces were intended to be separated apart, as there was a small interior hidden cavity which hid a small rolled up tube of stationary writing paper, complete with my grandfather's printed name and his old New York office address high in the Empire State Building.

Reading in wonder, I discovered that the hand-written letter from my ancestor, dated early in 1947, was written in two distinct languages, of which neither one of them was English. The top portion of the message was in hieroglyphic runes from a ancient nearly forgotten Central American culture similar to the Mayans from a small country called Hidalgo, with which my grandfather and my father even today had many commercial and political ties. I had resisted learning this forgotten language as a schoolboy, but it was made very expressly clear to me that most (if not all) of the old family secrets were recorded and preserved in this language, used by my grandfather's few small but exceptionally close adventuring fellowship, and that I in turn (and my own children), needed to preserve this family tradition. To date, I had never needed this secret knowledge, but my family tutors had taught me well and I could read clearly my grandfather's message, which was indeed intended solely for one of his direct descendants.

This portion of the message was brief, but important. The bloodline of the queen had been protected and preserved by my grandfather, and a trusted line of local priests. I was given a name to seek, a certain Fetu Solomona or his direct descendants. This, I was startled to instantly recognize, was Ellie's uncle Fetu, an elderly man who indeed could have met my grandfather as a boy and remembered him.

Ellie claimed that she could not read the lower script, but recognized it as being from a different hand writing in the island's ancient traditional language, known now only by the priests. Her eyes told me differently, but I was willing to let her keep her secret, for now.

***********

Visiting old Fetu at his usual hangout in front of Duncan's Tavern ended up being nearly as disturbing as the battered human remains Ellie had left in Hudson's office. Seeing my grandfather's jacket, and his sixty year old hidden letter, brought tears of joy to the old jewelry maker's aged eyes. He hugged and kissed Ellie, hugged me, then went back to hugging and dancing on the grass with his niece while they jabbered excitedly at each other in their native language. English is by far the lingua-franca on Poravuvu, with usually only the elderly natives or priests using the older indigenous tongue. In another few decades, the tongue will be nearly lost entirely and remain only a secret tongue for the priests, much like the ancient Hidalgo language is for my family, and the small group of families that share our secrets.

Fetu had no trouble at all reading the bottom inscriptions, for he had written this second half of the message himself when he was just a young priest, barely yet fifteen. He had waited for the day that this letter would return to him ... along with certain other acceptable portents so that he would know that the gods and goddesses had chosen for the time to be right for the return of the queen. Apparently, Fetu remained in communication with my father and had even orchestrated my arrival on the island, to handle a simple civil engineering job as my ancestor had done, and to wait to see if this fresh and nearly virginal apple had fallen far from its original tree. I was glad that I had not disappointed anyone.

Plans had been slowly in action for a peaceful, civil coup to disband the small army of mercenaries once and for all, and to provide for a peaceful restoration of the monarchy, but those plans had still been considered for the indefinite future. If the time had ever been right in the past, a message also preserved in my grandfather's hand, with his secret language, would have been mailed to either my father or myself. That I had found this other message entirely on my own, and launched the first strike of a government overthrow, boded well, he insisted. The divine omens were most indeed quite auspicious!

Still, restoration or not, the gleeful old former priest now couldn't wait to disclose his last final secret, the true task of his legacy to be passed down in turn to his selected descendent if the days had not yet become suitably auspicious. With Ellie and myself now in tow, we marched on foot into the remains of the central jungle up into the northern mountains, where there were a thousand caves with at least that many ancient secrets. Even today, the natives buried their family and kin in these remote mountain caves and it was among the worst of taboos to disturb them. In one such especially remote and hidden cave, Fetu and his family had protected the royal treasures, the ancient texts of the priests and the crown and coronation gear of the queens of old.

Deep inside the secret protected cave, in a hidden path that only the initiated had ever followed, the most sacred place of their ancient religion, the crown of the Poravuvu queen was after over fifty years once again revealed from it's dark protective hiding place and after a brief silent blessing, offered it upon his bent knees to his niece, Ellie, who was indeed the right and proper heir to the throne, and soon to be the anointed queen Ele'ele. After years of protection and education overseas, the young Ellie had returned to island home not long before I arrived, and had been slyly hidden (and well protected) in plain sight of her enemies.

First, before the queen could be revealed to her expectant subjects, there was just one remaining minor hassle.

***********

"Holy Cow! What do you mean I have to be crowned king first? Poravuvu has never had a king! This is just wrong in oh so many ways!"

"Not true!" Ellie assured me. "Once long ago, the queen died without a direct female heir, leaving only a son. For expediency, he was crowned metua'ervae, 'he who takes the path of his mother'. He acted as regent until one day after his daughter's sixteenth birthday had past. The queen to-be must endure a day of ritual from the final day of the rule of the previous queen ... or usurper. Usually the most senior priest, a brother or uncle, acts as a regent for that one day, swearing to hold the throne safe for the coronation the next day, but under the circumstances, Fetu assures me that the temporary reign of a well-beloved metua'ervae would serve our people better right now!"

"Now how exactly am I this well-beloved?" I curiously enquired.

"As the man that brought down the man who just seized the throne, you're in the best moral position to ride forth into the palace grounds and take control of things."

"With what army? I don't think the couple of dozen company guards are going to do much against the fifty or so merc's on the previous junta payroll. I'd really like the idea of a proper counter-revolution ... rather a lot actually, but those bastards in the palace have modern assault rifles and know how to use them!"

"Be brave, my metua'ervae! She said as she kissed my cheek and then gave me a torrid snog that nearly peeled all of the skin from my scorched lips. "Do it for your queen!" She commanded!

Damn! She knew that I loved her and worshiped the very ground she walked on (from afar). OK, that was definitely worth probably getting shot at!

**********

We walked back to the tavern mostly in silence. Fetu had collected a few goodies to take along with us, including a short carved ebony wood and silver gilded staff that looked important and impressively large and he gave it to me to tote around for the day. Fetu and Ellie now had important things to do and they warned me that I would now be (mostly) on my own for the next day, but that I was to go to the main public square right outside of the palace just before sunset (with the staff of course), and wait for assistance. I knew better than to argue, especially after she kissed me again.

Regal staff in hand, I took an extended liquid luncheon break to nervously chew one of Duncan's unspeakably vile sandwiches and nurse three Henry Weinhard's Reserve bottled beers. Soon, I found that I was semi-officially holding court at the tavern, as the joint began to fill up with the entire usual collection of expats, and more locals that anyone could count.

At first, the arriving natives were all Oceania Nitrates workers, like me. The hard working joes that worked the equipment that dug the shit or ported it from point A to point B. They'd stick their nose in Duncan's and take a look at me, then take a hard look at my staff, and then take another more agog look at me, and usually then quickly make themselves scarce. I didn't blame them — I sort of wished that I had a little cave of my own to hide in until the shooting was over!

More and more locals arrived than I had ever even glimpsed at a distance before. Only the elders tended to stick around to keep us occidentals company. There is no color bar to drinking at Duncan's — if you have the dollars, he'll serve you a beer, or something harder. Most of the locals tended to like the harder stuff, but for ceremonial or festive occasions they were partial to a strongly fermented local Polynesian tropical fruit juice that we expat's call Jungle Juice. I couldn't tell you a single thing that was in the stuff, but it went down like smooth fruit punch until sometime later when you noticed that your legs had stopped listening or taking orders from your head. The stuff is guaranteed to put most western visitors flat on their asses, but usually the locals can drink the stuff like Kool-Aid. Allegedly, more than one local herb with recreational or shamanistic hallucinogenic uses is included in the recipe. It does, as I hate to admit, get them more than a bit lubricated for a bit of extreme traditional tribal violence.

***********

With my head still firmly functioning (and mostly sober) I arrived at the central square near the palace about half an hour before sunset, and I was probably the last person on the entire island to arrive. Like the Philippine Revolution, it was People Power at its best, with the islanders singing and dancing, loudly and very visibly blocking every entrance and exit from the palace. The mercs were getting nervous, especially as the jungle juice began to flow like a river.

I didn't blame them. Handling annoyed drugged up natives was the single greatest reason that the 1911 model Colt .45 was invented ... to put a large enough hole into a drugged up and very homicidally angry native so that a mortal wound could quickly occur, instead of the natives just becoming more annoyed by smaller flesh wounds of lesser bullets. Those 5.56mm and 9mm pea-shooters that most of the mercs were toting were going to prove to be a very poor replacement for that job.

At the first sight of me, or probably rather my staff, the singing turned to a more uniform undulated wailing that occurred for some great time until one of the old priests, now standing by my side, began to speak at length to the fully assembled crowd, mostly at least at first, in the old ancestral tongue, but enough English was involved that I got the gist of the speeches. In short, the priests, the company and the people of the island had all had more than enough.

The shouted orders to the mercs made it quite clear — get out now, surrender or else. They didn't, and the 'or else' part ended up become very educational for the next future would-be tyrant. With sticks, rocks, old war surplus M-1 rifles, sidearms and quite a lot of ancient family war clubs, the infuriated crowd drunk with anger and unknown and powerfully strong intoxicants, stormed over the gates and pretty much ripped the palace guard from limb from to limb. It was like Bastille Day, but messier... as if filmed by Sam Peckinpah or George Romero and an endless supply of Playtex #4 theatrical blood to hose down the entire set.

I hastened after them, for allegedly I was their leader.

**************

Apparently, most of the mercs, seeing that they were outnumbered about a hundred to one, decided quickly that they didn't like the odds and most of them attempted to surrender. The mob wasn't taking any prisoners. To a man, every occidental within the palace grounds was hunted down, killed in some primitively brutal sort of way, and their heads were mounted upon tribal spears in the grass of the palace courtyard. For the Quislings or Vichy islanders that had enjoyed the cronyism of the tyrants, they were taken alive, much to their later chagrin. I heard stories later on about their trials before a tribal council of their peers, and of the torturous death sentences that each and every one faced. No pardons, no paroles, not even a dingy prison cell. The methods of execution would have made Vlad the Impaler turn pale, but this was again, very educational for the young, to show the historical and traditional fate of traitors to the crown.

There were martyrs of course, as modern weaponry did exact a small toll of the islanders, but the final number of native deaths was surprisingly low, only seventeen. Lots more wounded, but it was a relatively small price that they were more than happy to pay for their freedom.

As their nominal leader, me and granddad's .45 ought to have been at the very front of the assault, but try as I might I never encountered a single living mercenary. Less than an hour later I found myself the sole ruler of a very blood splattered palace, and everything else that my eyes could survey, or for at least for another twenty-four hours or so, until the ritual purification of the queen was complete and she was ready for her coronation.

In fact, I hardly understood what was happening. Once the palace was secure and the last mercenary head was decorating some war spear, the priests arrived and they fussed over me for the better part of an hour. Some ancient and not nearly brief enough ceremony was conducted, where I waved my royal staff around a lot and I was blessed by both earth and water, and the priests stripped me bare assed naked, with my cock dangling out in front of a couple of thousand cheering subjects as the priests smeared me with more earth and water. I the interest of brevity and severe embarrassment, I won't even discuss the offering to the gods where the priests pricked my foreskin with a pointed stick and splashed my blood into a sacred fire. OUCH! Thus, I became the crowned king of Poravuvu.