The Yeoman: Crying Albion Series - Book 1

by Tyler Danann

  “You should have left them in the county barracks my friend,” Penkin lamented. ”The Enforcers are long since outside our control.”

  Many of the Ministry Enforcers were mostly under the sway of the Common-Purpose doctrine and the School of Frankfurt Marxist ideology. They gleefully awaited their turn to extract DNA, fingerprints and pictures from the dissenters away from prying eyes. Who knows what they would turn up and what they could create from such seeds.

  Penkin was old enough to recall the days when there had been checks and balances. A necessary absence of authority to prevent such uniformed thugs and undesirables from polluting the policing realm, how times had turned. The professional police force was now a monster. In the large towns and cities especially the enforcers reigned with a gloved-fist, baton and lethal weaponry.

  One of the Ministry Enforcers approached the trio, he was a bi-racial man secretly opposed against any European. The enforcer passed close to the Gearson and his friends, their enemy noted their homogenous appearance along with the haunting beauty of Lorraine Riley. The Enforcer felt a strange compulsion to consider scrutinizing them, followed by questioning under section four protocols. Before he could raise his camera-scanner, another roar of protest sounded and he was ordered with a dozen other enforcers to another direction. There he went about containing and arresting the last of the dissenters that were struggling further inside the conference room.

  “Those Enforcer scum!” Lorraine hissed like a she-wolf. “They are the boot heel grinding at the neck. A uniformed gang is all they are and all they have been! Damn them!”

  “Maybe,” said Penkin. “Their leadership is largely the issue that poisons the well and more besides. One should never hate the soldier.”

  “Quiet down both of you!” Gearson spoke firmly, partly because they risked drawing attention to themselves and partly because Vazwitch had spoken up again.

  “We mean only peace, not war among ourselves,” Veitch reasoned after the clamor had died down. “Race is purely a social construct and we are all the same underneath our skin. European values are not about the evils of xenophobia or the sick disease of racism.” He swelled with his hand on his heart, casting meek looks to the Yeomanry.

  “Countless aeons of time would argue otherwise puppet-man,” Gearson muttered quietly.

  “For those that choose to join us in this journey and fully embrace the New Europeans their door will be generously compensated along with those who form a new order in helping this to be achieved.”

  “This is where the treachery begins and loyalty is bought and paid for,” Kallan brooded.

  “The upper-classes and their retinue Yeomanry have a long and true history on this island. But times move on and it is time for them to step down in honor and allow a police-orientated authority to step-forward. We must enforce the peace as only then must there be any peace in the world.”

  Just before the ecstatic liberals howled in unrestrained glee and whooped like hyenas the Colonel turned to Gearson with steel in his eyes. “Alright, whatever it takes, I'm in. We do it your way,” he uttered.

  Veitch heaped great lashings of outrage and scorn upon the spread of civilization and colonization by Europeans. That which had richly contributed to the world was demonized. He rounded it off by extoling the superiority of Africans, and along with any other tribe that was non-European.

  “Remember,” he said with hands clasped together. “Our priority is you! This is our directive.” There was a rising crescendo in his voice.

  His speech being concluded and the proclamation from him complete, Veitch left the podium all smiles and waves. His brunette wife and brown-skinned children, the fruit of their union, greeted him as the roar of the crowd rattled eardrums for nearly half-a-minute. When it had settled Gearson nearly missed the last, fading words that echoed through him over and over.

  “Kallan, restore the balance.”

  He breathed deeply as an awesome power of responsibility went flooding through him. More words followed, some of information, others of guidance. It was like an inner answer and solution to counter the ways of their enemies.

  “Very well, we observe no longer,” Gearson said icily. “Come, we must be away from this den of traitors, it’s no longer safe.”

  “But Kallan, the Yeomanry have yet to make their case! The trade-zone—” Penkin said furtively.

  “Words will not make any difference now Colonel, the enemy has shown their hand, we must be away,” he said sighing.

  He turned and made to leave. Riley followed but the Colonel hesitated and looked once more back to the Yeomanry moving into position. It was the Yeomanry’s turn to speak. Major Roger Matthews was looking to his men and exchanging a few words. Penkin knew him casually and a few others of their number from his younger days and felt compelled to stay for a moment. Then Riley tugged at his arm and he too was away, threading through the crowd of sheep who watched to see more of the spectacle.

  Major Matthews walked up to the podium, he was in his fifties and smartly attired in his Yeomanry dress uniform of dark green. His ancestry could be counted back to the Norse and Germanic settlers of the islands before 800 AD like the rest of his kinsmen. Before that it stretched back to the last ice age and beyond. His bloodline and many before it had forged lives throughout the European landmass and elsewhere.

  Now he saw a vast abyss rising up from the direction of Veitch that would slowly swallow his future and that of his children, his children's children and beyond like a death by a thousand cuts. Albion might be secure, but much of populated Britain was not.

  Yet what could the free-minded Yeomanry do? They lacked the numbers, ordnance and vehicles they enemie had. The regular armed forces in Britain were still stuck in a strange marriage of heavy restrictions, archaic laws, needless regimentation and grinding subservience though. They seemed little better than augmenting the Enforcers nowadays. Of the latter the weaponry they commanded seemed to be borderline military-grade. This they openly displayed whether prowling either streets, in cyberspace or at the camera-control points. All the while the citizenry were disarmed and heavy penalties imposed for even the possession of irritant sprays.

  Matthews’ blood boiled at the Prime-Speakers clever barbed-tongue but he controlled his temper and glanced down once at his own speech. It was originally his own words in entirety, holding back somewhat on much of what he'd like to say. Yet even those careful words had been edited and amended by the Home Office to a more ‘politically-correct’ version.

  The Major looked out to the crowd that waited; not all were hopeless liberals, deviants and other flotsam. The old ways that were still flickering here and there. He tossed the speech aside.

  “Many of you do not know who I am. I am Major Roger Matthews of the Yorkshire Hussars. For two decades now I've sworn to serve this country and now Albion as a Yeomanry officer.”

  “Go back north traitor,” yelled a heckler.

  The officer ignored him as his resolution was unshakeable. He continued speaking.

  “In the Yeomanry we can only attain the highest rank of Colonel. Part of this reason was so that the government of the day can function and the nation-state continue without the risk of tyranny. The other reason is the ancient obligation every Briton of old had as a duty to fight and present himself ready for combat if the need arose. Nowadays that same duty is kept alive in both the Yeomanry and the regular armed forces. I know that most of you are town and city-born here but we'd lay down our lives for you just the same as those in our distant shires of Albion. That is who I am and what my brother officers and rangers are.”

  Veitch made a just-noticeable jerk that caught a few eyes. He felt a shudder rattle though him that generated a twinge of fear. Veitch saw that, far from the man being an archaic and out-dated relic Matthews was actually stepping outside the preconceived notions they had of people like him and causing them to listen evenly.

  The Prime-Speaker hadn't planned for this and looked to his Chief of Operat
ions who was out of sight from the mainstream camera-viewers. Police Commissioner David Nomes. Nomes was a dour-looking man with gloomy eyes and a frightful disposition. A serpentine brain swam with deception and intrigues. He was a-political for the most part, but shared with Veitch both a lust for perversions and a malicious intent to those not on his wavelength. Nomes nodded and raised his comms-piece then spoke into it using a pre-arranged code.

  First the live-feed being broadcast around the country was partially-cut. It went as far as the news-corporations but sophisticated data-link routing adjusted and no transmission went beyond it. Personal video-devices were not affected but for now it was damage-limitation not outright control. Several riot-enforcers now made their way forward through the crowd heading along the right-hand side of the vast chamber. The Operations Commissioner for the City of London led them. Nomes was reassured by the fact that the Yeomanry had followed the letter of the law. By showing up without firearms and no bodyguards, save for their drivers’, it made the enforcers’ looming task much easier. The Yeomen still held on to their ceremonial weaponry though, something that troubled him and a few others.

  “What the Prime-Speaker has proclaimed as a Directive is sedition and treachery to the people and this nation,” Matthews warned. “It’s the culmination of many years of festering schemes, statutes and laws designed to break apart the native people. The end result is so both you and the unwanted foreigners will end up nothing more than slaves. Those standing here and listening to this same proclamation forty years ago, nay even thirty years ago, would have brought down a government that dared speak of such madness.”

  The microphone went dead at the end of his sentence but Matthews quickly adjusted by raising his voice. He removed himself from the podium and carried on regardless. Only the first four or five rows heard him at first but his booming voice elevated in depth so it carried much further.

  “Even back then no ruling party or leadership would wish for the risk of civil war from the lunacy now common from these delusional fools.” He said it all with such righteous authority that was beginning to strike a chord with some. “The Colonels stepped in before over much less, perhaps they must once again step in to avert this funeral ceremony?!”

  Nomes chuckled at this, with the near-complete disarmament of the English and Welsh there was next to no chance of any revolt, rebellion or uprising from them. Any defiant ones that hoped to rally support additionally had the challenge of being vastly outnumbered by an indifferent, apathetic populace. The people were too gorged and used to the material comforts common to western civilization.

  The Yeomanry however represented the last vestige for armed-resistance. Their exemptions from prohibited weaponry remained a thorn in the Ministry’s side. The Home Fleet, making up most of the navy, was deployed far from British shores keeping the oil-lanes clear. The British Army was now at a quarter-strength and would never be allowed the prestige and power it once commanded. The remaining high-ranking officers in the army were nearly all well-groomed to remain loyal to Veitch’s government.

  Nomes knew the Yeoman Forces days were numbered, at least as far as operating outside their area of control. The arrests had originally been scheduled for after the conference was over and as the Yeomanry departed from the capital. Now though the bold words saw the feathers of power ruffled and orders filtered into Nomes’ earpiece.

  None of the Yeomanry noticed the approaching danger due to the way the hallway was offset from the main stage-area. Then someone in the crowd shouted out and it was all bedlam. First a junior Commissioner waved an arrest warrant at the Yeomanry and spoke in their peculiar legal-language before his attack-enforcers rushed at them. They wielded asp batons and hoped for a quick take-down but the Yeomanry were not servile citizens to kowtow before brainwashed, power-lusting men.

  Naked steel showed in their hands, giving the enforcers pause for a moment. Then a shot rang out from the balcony overlooking the stage and a flurry of fresh gunfire noisily followed. The Prime-Speaker and his cronies were hurriedly spirited away at the first gunshot into waiting VIP cars as the killing started.

  Yeoman went down rapidly as smart uniforms became crisscrossed with bloody holes. The group of Enforcer snipers spared none of the Yeomanry save for the high-ranking major. From their excellent vantage point they were careful to avoid their own being shot.

  As they lay dead, dying or wounded Nomes grinned slightly. The act would send a bloody message to Colonel Seymour. There would be no trade-zone and the New Europeans were only the beginning of wave upon wave of foreigners to be unleashed. The Yeomanry could hold out for only so long. If they acted violently against border jumpers they’d be facing a United Nations task force. Slowly Albion would fall and the British Isles would be forever changed, remodelled and controlled by the elites. Commissioner Roberts and his kindred would be overseas in safe havens ruling by proxy. The useful idiots and more senior overseers, protected by well-paid guards and police would carry out their bidding. The workforce, just clever enough to work in mostly menial jobs and too dumb to question anything would enable the perfect populace for them to rule over. Nomes was like a machine and the predictive calculations were a certainty.

  Three enforcers lay dead though despite their armor along with four others that were wounded. There were screams and panic from some in the room but the cameras rolled on. The Ministry had made its response and now the Yeomanry were bleeding.

  Chapter 11

  The Colonels

  The aftermath of the news from London sent the Yeomanry Colonels incandescent with rage. Officers were killed or imprisoned, all supposedly while attending the ancient proclamation. An age-old rite that had, until now, had always been sacrosanct from interference. That Major Matthews and the others were reservist Yeomanry mattered not a jot. They were like family to the tightly-knit warrior-class.

  Within an hour of the news breaking nearly all of the other Colonels had assembled with their bodyguard at The Estates. Colonel Seymour waited for them to enter the council chambers. After leaving their men outside they entered to take their seats, although some remained standing. His seniority and wisdom was respected, he was a legend from the dark days of the coup and subsequent war. Yet even he struggled to keep a cool head while his blood churned. Seymour resembled a grim demi-god brooding at injustice. A distant genocidal rage swam through his blood, but with excellent discipline he calmed his fire from becoming realized.

  “Don’t wait on me brothers, speak your thoughts.” Seymour rubbed his throbbing temple as the other Colonels now spoke.

  “We should have occupied and sacked London years ago when we had the chance,” Colonel Baden snarled. He was an officer with a strong Geordie accent, hailing from Newcastle’s fringes.

  “It’s cold-blooded murder brothers,” Sandford shook his head in disbelief. “The Enforcers are acting like thugs for the government, just like before the coup. We must strike back.”

  “Tyranny once again lashes out at us!” cried Jeffrey Hawes. “Alex! Let us call out the reserve, march on the capital with our regulars, arrest the entire Ministry and their Enforcer lackeys!”

  Seymour said nothing but watched the others speak their mind.

  “Aye, then put them against a wall for summary execution? That’s what our ancestors would do,” added another.

  “If we even mobilize the reserve we risk sanctions!” cautioned Sandford. “Then there’s the risk of war with the regular garrisons and the U.N.”

  “Let’s have the damned war and be done with it I say!” Bladen spat. “We’ve been treading on eggshells for rotten and scheming politicians for too long!”

  “We’ve already had one war to win us our Albion Geordie. I’m not keen to be in another and lose it,” Sandford countered.

  “Aye, we’ve no full recognition by the UN or NATO either,” Colonel Dougie Donaldson countered. “We’re considered a rogue state by most of Europe and a quarter of an island is not a full country. A full island would mea
n stronger sovereignity.”

  “A full island takeover is insanity, you want those bloated cities to become Albion Dougie?” Colonel Seymour said masterfully.

  “Aye, well—” he hesitated.

  “The main reason we have territory from Scotland down to Derbyshire is because beyond that we risk over-extending. We’d end up becoming bogged down managing high-population areas, much of it having people who hate us and that produce very little. We’ve enough watching to do as it is. Having to play at city politics and policing would do us no favors.”

  “Alex is right, just look at what happened to Rhodesia, if we hand over power back to the politicians we’d be back to square one all over again.”

  “We have to do something though Alex, we can’t just let them kill our folk for nothing and get away with it,” Bladen said. “We don’t have to try taking southern England, just sack and retaliate. If they kill ten, we kill a hundred. Desolate the bastards!”

  “That’s risking civil war,” Sandford cautioned causing Bladen to gasp in frustration.

  “If we don’t do something, our reservists could easily take matters into their own hands Sandy,” Colonel Fairclough sighed. “Just before leaving my county I heard talk of my reservists wanting vengeance. The nearest town or village over the border could see murder Alex and I don’t think I could hold them back.”

  This was not a cause for concern for them directly. Yet since the independence of Albion their reservists were well armed and capable. Also a majority of Sandford’s men were based at the border and likely to take high casualties in a sudden conflict.