by Tyler Danann
“Three of my men lie dead in a morgue along with four in hospital because of thugs with swords who put themselves above the law. Yeomanry are an outdated concept. In modern Albion we do not need anyone but Police Law Enforcement owning, carrying and using weaponry. It quite simply is not a British value to have an armed citizenry, volunteer militia or anything like that when that is the job of the police. With the authority of the Police Emergency Powers Act I can authorize the detention and revocation of any remaining arms privately held, following the Council's approval. Although this day is a tragic loss I am confident to see a new beginning.”
The next images began to show the scene unfolding and Gearson had her turn it off. The outrage had begun, the die was cast and now Gearson had to consider his moves. Colonel Penkin had already departed to his country-estate and it was only he, Riley and a few others that remained.
After they'd eaten he drew up his plans.
“How many Deep-Eye operatives do we have here in the city?” he asked Riley.
“Three, but one has been off-comms and hasn't answered any calls for months,” she said neutrally.
“We can work with that. I'll need to arrange meetings with them before the week is out.”
“I'll put out the word,” she assured. “I've lived here for several years and I've never seen it this bad you know?”
“I've seen it worse believe me,” Gearson said seriously. “Yet there's a strange concentration of evil in this city especially as well as the land as a whole. It's bad here, at least there's places elsewhere to go to if things get worse. My concern is not only for the people of this land, but for others elsewhere that the evil present may spread to.”
“Can you fight whatever it is though? You once said not every war can be won or is possible to win. That sometimes a war has to be lost in order to learn for later times.”
“We might not have to fight a war with what lies ahead in future times.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something has meddled and interrupted the flow of things to cause discord, fear and oppression.”
“What do you think it is?”
“A threat to western civilization, one which is making its move at a most vulnerable period. Whatever it is, I'm glad I brought along artifacts,” he motioned to a non-descript set of five cases under the table. Lorraine Riley was surprised, even her own gear amounted to very little. Most of her supplies were all cached in the countryside.
The early night was bittersweet as they remembered the fallen dead and held a brief ceremony with lit candle-flame and ancient rites. Gearson swore an oath to avenge the fallen and that they were deserving of the best halls in the afterlife.
That night as Lorraine slept the monsters of the city prowled the night. For Gearson, the man who was part of a long forgotten race, he prepared himself and his equipment like a brooding deity. Weapons were checked, Artifacts were readied and warrior-prayers were made. He was tempted to head out into the night and to launch a devastating lone-wolf attack on the very heart of darkness within London. Not only was that risky, he could jeopardize future things as yet unbroken. The Prime Speaker and his band of vipers would pay, but it would be done right. Gearson slept on the couch just after the clock struck two in the morning. It wasn’t a long enough couch for his tall frame but it was enough to catch up on a few hours rest.
Chapter 14
Mission
By the next morning four of the arrested protestors had died in enforcer custody. Reasons such as “wounds sustained” and “resisting interrogation” were given. On the television screen the previous day’s events were shown with ticker-strip information displaying the grim death-toll.
Riley checked her messages on the internet terminal and gave Gearson an excited shout. He came in half-dressed.
“What news?”
“One of our Deep Eyes has an unedited tape of the whole thing!”
“The Pegasus Massacre?”
“Yes, he sent me a snippet so I know he’s not messing us about.”
“That's something we can use for leverage, something to sway the public towards us. Who is he, can he be trusted?”
“I hope so, he’s the one who dropped off communications!”
“Who is he?” Gearson asked.
“Henry Malthar, works for a media outlet, half-Kaslar. Doesn’t mix with the other Deep Eye folk much. I don’t know if we should trust this. But the partial footage is genuine,” she turned and shook her head with a worried look about her.
“Is it because he is half-Kaslar? You think he could be a double-agent?” Gearson asked.
“Maybe, he’s a gay little thing, not a bad one but too keen and zealous for my liking. Maybe even has his own agenda. He wants a rapid answer, yes or no to an exchange?”
“Yes, specify a dead-drop and get the location.”
“Within five seconds a new message arrived.
“’Market Square three hours from now.’ Face-to-face though, no dead-drop.”
“Acknowledge it,” Gearson relented. “Get me his data too.”
Promptly Aurora did both and Gearson took a seat next to her, viewing the agents profile.
“Ahh, I know of this one, his grand-mother was a spy during the European Wars I think,” Gearson said curtly. “You had better not be gaming with us little Kaslar,” he spoke with a glimmer of ice to his words.
“Lorrie, change of plan on the other agents. Send out a hibernation notice and ready three resettlement packs.”
As they made to leave Gearson picked up one of the Artifact cases, causing her to laugh.
“So you don’t trust the spy after all?”
“I don’t trust anyone in this city outside of you and I.”
Within half an hour they were prepared and almost ready. Lorraine donned her spectrum analyser. It was a covert thing, built into the rim of a baseball cap. All she had to do was flip it down in front of her eyes to get it working.
Together they departed the agent handler’s apartment, while she looked young enough to be his daughter such things no longer even registered as a taboo anymore. On their way down White Horse Lane the mostly foreign populace viewed the pair warily but said nothing. North Croydon was a majority ‘New-European’ part of London but it was also a place the authorities last suspected to search for pale-skinned European folk. The Foreign Rights Bureau had indirectly assisted the Deep Eye units. It was the FRB that had successfully made areas such as Croydon and other non-European districts off-limits to network-linked CCTV cameras, and house-occupancy registration. The distant subway at Norwood Junction was only a ten minute walk but a nearby Rabian Solidarity march was taking place which they had to dodge around. Uniformed enforcers kept a wary eye as they approached but said nothing.
“If things get any worse we’ll have to leave this city and regroup,” Gearson said to Lorraine quietly.
“Will that be wise? Aren’t we needed in the city to try and limit the damage they are doing.”
“This city will go to hell once the New Europeans flood in, it’s already at breaking point with all the colony-types from past generations.”
It took them over two hours to drop off the first pair of resettlement packs. After they tucked the last one under a certain rock at the agent’s dead-drop location the weather became cloudy, threatening rainfall.
They reached nearby Coventside without incident, as it was still morning the underclass element was less active. Over two-thirds of the area was made up of foreigners. The classic Cockney accent was no more as darker faces seemed to dominate the crowds. Here and there were pockets of pale Caucasians. They were like tiny islands looking lost and overwhelmed by the surrounding sea. There were those that moved about aimlessly with apathy, others, satisfied with housing, food and utilities busied themselves with their daily commute to work. It reminded Gearson of Sisyphus, the man from legend condemned to toil for work without end. A twist on the tale was that these Britons they passed by toiled for masters not of his own
volition. A few, a scant few had the look of subdued defiance, often that was clouded with alcohol, addled with drugs or just a cloud of degeneracy. The tiny remaining fraction without such tainting could be counted as righteous folk and these were rare souls indeed within London’s beating heart. The two agents of this calibre walked on and closed in on their destiny. Never far away from them were either camera surveillance, enforcer patrols or their earnest auxiliary units.
Market Square lay within a plaza of pedestrianized walkways. Once it was full of market stalls selling home-grown food and manufactured products. In recent times the markets had been over-regulated, flooded with corporate-sponsored imports near-impossible. The market stalls had moved on making it Market Square in name only. The result was the park area in the middle was now an oasis of green trees, winding pathways and shrubs.
As both agents entered the inner-square’s gateway it seemed like they were crossing into another world. Much of the traffic noise was muted and the skewed demographic was like microcosm, differing from beyond its walls and fences. For some reason the non-local foreigners did not venture inside, unless it was for the briefest of moments.
It did not take long for the pair to locate their target. Sitting on a bench at the side of the pathway was Malthar.
The Eye man was a furtive, glassy-eyed and fair-skinned. He wore somewhat smart clothes in a shabby fashion, typical of the journalist profession. Riley thought of Malthar having a boyishly good-looking face with hazel eyes that were sharp and harrowingly wise. He matched the description on file to the letter.
“Down the path?” Lorraine questioned, using the first part of the password.
“We go softly,” completed the spy Malthar, showing no threats were with him.
“Safe,” Lorraine said back to him and Gearson, confirming there was no hidden danger from them either. Malthar nodded and seemed relieved to see friendly faces.
“Ok, get on all-round watch Lorrie,”Gearson ordered. “I want to talk to him alone.”
“I should—”
“Not on this one, I need you on over-watch, just in case.” The agent handler nodded and moved away from them.
“I’m so glad to see you Father!” Malthar said, his effeminate countenance brightening.
“I’m not your father lad, your ways are in both places, both worlds.”
“I mean you are like a distant father. We’ve heard about you and that you might come, the other Deep Eyes agents were skeptical but not me. To actually see you—”
“Malthar! The data, from the Yeomanry murders at Belgravia? Do you have it?”
“Of course,” he dipped into his pocket to remove a memory stick. “I managed to grab a quick spectrum scan of the leadership area during the chaos. Normally I wouldn’t have risked it, but when I saw the Enforcers’ butchery…”
Gearson nodded, taking the small stick from him. Lorraine had moved twenty yards distant to check out the area innocuously. She made no sign of caution or warning to him, but did not relax either.
“What’s the portal file, cypher and password?” Gearson asked. He was proficient on Deep Eye computer protocols.
“Largest file size for the portal, the password is ‘default settings’ with a space, all in lower case, and the key cypher file is the first office file in the root directory,”
Gearson’s attuned memory took in the essentials.
“Good. Now you could have coded this for a dead-drop, why did you insist on a face-to-face? That’s risky as you know,” Gearson spoke sternly.
“I’m sorry Father but I had to risk it there are things going on that are too dangerous to send out on cyberspace.”
“Like what?”
“The radical policies by the new Prime Speaker and his party are just the tip of the iceberg!” Malthar said excitedly. “The puppet masters calling the shots to them are an organisation I’ve never heard of before. It’s like they came out of nowhere! That’s why I had to go off-comms. I couldn’t risk alerting anyone using a proxy-server.”
“Who are they?”
“There’s one called the Inner Way embedded within Britain.”
“I know of the Inner Way son. That is not news to me.”
“There’s more though! The real danger is outside our borders, on mainland Europe. They call themselves the UNAS and have operatives all over Europe.”
“What does—“
“It stands for United Nations And Sectors. Totally supranationalist, utterly committed to destroying Europe.”
“Part of the United Nations?” Gearson quizzed.
“Not directly, although they probably have ties given all that goes on. They have a base far to the east, beyond the Black Sea.”
“I need all you know about them.”
“It’s all on the stick along with the media footage. Listen carefully, I’ve put the minutes from an Inner Way meeting onto it too, they held it only days ago.”
“How did you get it Malthar?”
“My contact is an insider, possibly a Knowlen rebel, perhaps even of the Inner Way. He’s working from the inside and managed to record a whole meeting of the Inner Way with an audio recording. We’re talking the fate of this island here! Even Albion would be destroyed if it comes to pass with what they have planned. Some of my folk are keen to see Albion changed with these foreigners but not I Father. I am not blind to the harm being wreaked on this fair land and people.” Malthar was a rare kind of spy, one who was a patriot to his adopted nation, just like his grandmother had been in her fashion.
“If what you say is true and they suspect a leak, you could be in more danger than we are lad.” Gearson nodded, he was not keen to linger for too long. He was now gravely aware the spy was either lying or passing on a firestorm of information.
“Father I think I may have been, shadowed,” Malthar whispered the words. “My contact says the Inner Way now have ways capable of slow-tracing people using thought-paths or intentions.” Malthar had a worried look on his face. Gearson felt a touch of dread also, spectrum analysis was rare indeed. To even know of its existence meant something. If Malthar was correct and that meant trouble.
“Lorraine, full surveillance check,” Gearson called out softly.
She nodded at the coded language and adjusted her device, and read the feed-back details, then shook her head slowly. Nothing showed, but the analyser was not infallible. If something was out of range, like an enemy lurking beyond the coverage amid the background blur, a false sense of security could set in.
“Nothing, but the range is bad with all this interference.”
“We have to go now! Malthar, go to ground you’ve done enough,” Gearson ordered plainly.
He got up to leave.
“But I have new access from my work,” Malthar said looking hurt. “I’m just been promoted as well. I could get to the bottom of the UNAS, maybe figure out their base here in Albion?”
“Damn your zeal lad! All Deep Eyes are being hibernated by my order. Anything you do from here on in is totally cut-off from us. I strongly advise relocating to Albion. In future times maybe we’ll contact you again. For now, I want agents that survive, not killed or captured.”
“Surely I can help in some way by continuing the fight here? The Morning Star gets unedited raw stories.”
“Forget your old life,” Gearson hissed intently and passed over the last package. “This is a resettlement package for you to start a new life. Make the most of it, you only get one of them.”
As the young man inspected the passport, currency and precious metals package Lorraine caught a growing flash indicator on her analyser.
“I’m getting signs Kallan! Focused mass is approaching,” she said nervously.
“Get out of here now!” he told Malthar who backed up and hastened to the exit.
“I did not betray you Father!”
“Go!”
As the short man moved to the gateway all seemed normal.
“That direction is clear,” she directed towa
rds the other gateway. They both went at a fast walking pace towards the opposite gateway but Riley could not hold back from watching behind them.
At Malthar’s gateway by two figures, a man and a woman in casual clothing now appeared. The man was tall and, even from a hundred yards away seemed to have a vein-riddled face. With the two figures were nearly a dozen auxiliary police who trailed behind them. The threatening menace intensified as the vein-man fixed his cold gaze on the spy. The young agent thought he could slip past unnoticed but Cordell Mastock lunged forwards for Malthar. With a sideways move that took the police by surprise he managed to elude the plainclothes man with a low turn and ran for it. The woman had already drawn her baton though and hurled it sideways, causing the rod to crack into his shin. Malthar felt a bolt of agony tear up his leg and he fell to the grass with a womanly shriek. Biting back the pain he reached into his pocket with trembling fingers. Moments before he was swarmed with police he sprayed a full canister of CS gas defensively around him.
The effects upon the authorities agents were apparent. Cordell caught the brunt of it and went to the ground choking while the woman went staggering back, struggling to breathe. Malthar tried to crawl away but the fallen one gripped onto him while more auxiliary police swarmed over him.
“Malthar! Ahh, they have him!” Gearson said with anxious tension.
“There’s too many Kallan!”
They left through the other gateway which was clear, but beyond it in both directions many uniformed Enforcers and more auxiliary police were moving towards them. One shouted on seeing them and as one they surged forwards.
“Back inside!” !” Gearson said to her and they re-entered the green haven. “This way come on!”
Together they ran across the square towards the high wall. Although there were small viewing gaps in it the top was decorated with razor wire.
The coughing and wheezing woman pointed and hoarsely ordered the dull-minded auxiliary police at the pair of fugitives.
“Them! Get them!” The Ministry Elite agent coughed.
