by Leo Champion
Halfway, they met another two MPs, with gel guns drawn.
“Stop! Stop right there!”
“I’m an Air Service Vice-Commodore,” said Perry. Shone his own flashlight on his shoulders and rank insignia.
The two lowered their gel guns. Perry sprayed one; Ahle the other, squirting the gas hard into the MPs’ faces.
And I’m empty, Ahle thought. She bent down and took one of the men’s gel guns – he fought to retain it, but he was coughing and sneezing and mostly blinded. Her long fingers felt around the somewhat familiar weapon – not that she’d used this particular model, but physics required all gel guns to be functionally pretty similar.
Damn thing was still on safety. She corrected that – I think – and followed Perry.
They were on the ground level. Another security checkpoint, but a cursory one, only a single man. His partner must have run off for help.
“Vice Perry, signing out,” Perry told the man there. “Got to run, sign for me.”
“Who’s the one with you?”
“My assistant,” Perry snapped as the door opened. “Sign her out too.”
Outside was dark. The explosion had cut the power to most of central Hugoton, although the inner offices and barracks had emergency internal backups that were starting to come online. A bomb had taken out a vital carrier cable. There’d be an enquiry.
I’ll be found guilty as a conspirator, Perry thought, for things I have no idea how to do in the first place.
No time to think about it. No time to let the bile rise in his throat again. Power wouldn’t be down forever; time to run. He had it planned out, had walked through the course; now he led Ahle along it; down a narrow alley between the MP and one of the rapid reaction companies’ guardhouses; out the front of that guardhouse, past a trackless steam-tank on a maintenance pad, across a throughway of busy people with flashlights and searchlights.
Power down; everyone went to full alert, yes. The rapid reaction companies were coming out, engaging the electric lights on their eight-wheeled APCs and light tanks; backup power would engage any time now. At present nobody was paying him much mind. That’d change.
It would be a disaster to get caught this early. All the trouble, all the consequences from trouble, and no gain.
His boots pounded on the dust. Behind another of the rapid-reaction guardhouses, into a narrow gap between the military area and the civilian facilities. On the other side of a – presently powerless – electric fence was a railyard; trains sitting idle, although the closest was powered-up and ready to go, its air brakes hissing.
It would leave, picking up high speed as an express run to St. Louis, in three and a half minutes as of Time. However much of it they had left. Missing it would be another disaster, although there was a backup.
How long before somebody discovered the disabled MPs? Probably already happened. No time to worry. His boots stamped as he counted off paces; four, five, six, seven, eight, and yes, the slight bulge on the ground of the bags Fleming had left. Next to the slit cut open in the fence.
“Good to see you. You’ve got just under seventy seconds,” said Fleming himself, stepping out from a shadowed recess.
“I tear-gassed our own MPs,” Perry growled, not thinking superior officer. “You bastard.”
Was that a grin on Fleming’s face? Hard to tell in the darkness.
No time to think too much. Well, maybe a little time, a minute was more than he’d hoped for at this point.
An electric alarm went off from the direction of the prison. Heavy braang-braang-braang.
No. No time. He scooped up one of the sacks, Ahle taking the other. Ducked to fit through the slit in the wire; Fleming had cut two of the three detection wires. As soon as power went on, those cuts would be noticed and there’d be a patrol on the way.
“Open boxcar one away on the left,” said Fleming.
Ahle fit through the wire after Perry, turned left.
“You’ve got forty-five seconds,” Fleming said. He extended a hand and yes, that was a grin on the bastard’s face. Polite reflex made Perry shake it anyway. The train’s airbrakes began to hiss louder, and from up ahead came the sound of a steam-engine heating up, the chuff-chuff-chuff that said it’d be moving very soon.
“Good luck out there. It’ll stop in Dodge City for a bit; don’t get out. Go on with it to St. Louis; it’ll be about a day. Food in the bags. Downtown bar named the Green Gables. Ask for Josiah and tell him you’re with Methuselah.”
“Sir,” said Perry, remembering his manners.
“And something for you.” Fleming pressed something hard, cold and metallic into Perry’s hand. A flask.
“Traditional to drink in boxcars,” he said under his breath. “Sainsbury Estate 40 from my personal stock. Enjoy.”
He’s thinking about alcohol at a time like this?
Perry dropped the spy’s flask into his coat and turned. Ran for the boxcar, pulled himself in; Ahle extended a hand.
Inside was dark and greasy, like an engine hall without the moving parts. A lot of empty cardboard boxes filled half the boxcar, and there was matted straw on the stamped-metal floor.
“Looks like a comfortable one,” said Ahle. “Your man arranged it well.” She pulled the heavy door closed so that only a slit remained.
The train jolted into motion; a sudden, hard jerk that would have knocked a less experienced airshipman off his feet. Perry could barely make out anything in the darkness, but Ahle was already going through her pack.
“Yours, I think. Has the civvies in it,” she said. “Now give me my guns back. What did Fleming want, anyway?”
Perry handed her the pack and the flask. Ahle unscrewed the lid of the flask, took a deep sniff.
“Sainsbury Estate,” she said. Took a sip. “Damn, forty-year. I like your deputy director. He’s classy.”
“Ian Fleming,” Perry said, “is a scheming bastard.”
“He’s an Imperial spymaster,” said Ahle dismissively as the train accelerated out of Hugoton. “Of course he is. But he’s got excellent taste. Makes up for everything.”
“You don’t understand duty,” said Perry. He couldn’t believe it. MPs were order personified, internal order. And he’d tear-gassed four of them. He, a respectable and honorable Vice-Commodore of the Air Service. There was time for that to sink in now, and he didn’t like it.
“You don’t understand detached duty,” said Ahle. “Or piracy.” Ahle took another sip of the rum and passed it back. “Your education starts now. Have a drink.”
Chapter Ten
MACARTHUR DISMISSES TEXAN INAUGURAL PROVOCATION
In response to newly-elected Texan President Lyndon B. Johnson’s inaugural-address challenge Monday, United States Secretary of War Douglas MacArthur made a statement yesterday of contempt and dismissal.
“Johnson has done us the favor of declaring himself a nuisance,” MacArthur said, “but if Texan history for the last half-century shows, he is – in his own words – ‘all hat and no cattle’.”
MacArthur’s response follows an angry inaugural address by Johnson, believed to have been directed mainly at his political base of exiled Southerners.
“The Republic of Texas has been pushed around enough by the United States,” Johnson’s address included, “and it is time we asserted ourselves against them. Washington thinks they have the strength; Washington will learn that Texas, too, can be as strong as they are – if not stronger. Washington will shrug this off; Washington will learn a painful lesson.”
When asked at the press conference whether the United States intended to take Johnson’s threats seriously, the Secretary of War gave a blatant dismissal.
“Texas has been causing trouble since we recognized them. But they’re outclassed by Sonora, as they learned to their detriment in 1958. Johnson’s talk is just talk, but if he wants to bring it, he can feel free.”
The notoriously grudge-holding Johnson has not yet given a reply to MacArthur’s response…
>
From the New York Daily Herald, January 23rd, 1960.
The line-class military airship formerly named 4-106 touched down in a certain narrow, doglegged box canyon in the Rockies, a location Pratt Cannon knew of as safe. The canyon walls were only about eighty yards apart, with buffeting crosswinds, and the airship bumped several times against them as it uneasily descended.
The bottom was sand and spots of grass underfoot, made dark by the bulk of the airship filling the space above. Hisses came as helium was pumped back into its compression tanks, reducing buoyancy.
“Make camp,” Cannon’s voice came. “It might be a few days.”
Over the course of the flight, Cannon and Rienzi had polled the crew for those with woodsman’s experience, combat experience, military skill. They were a rough lot of trash, in Ferrer’s eye, these new crew – fifty or so pirates, mercenaries, criminals and general ne’er-do-wells – but there was a surprising amount of competence between them. Not just in their primary skillset as airshipmen, but most knew their way around weapons, and quite a number claimed to have some skill as woodsmen.
Talking with Captain Caine, it made sense. Airships went down all the time over the Rockies; not just the general lawless frontier environment, but the high altitude’s thinner air and the mountains’ turbulent air currents – and crews, including downed pirates, often had to walk a bit to civilization, foraging as they went.
Now, eight or nine with hunting skill were given rifles and told to bring back food; deer or wild cattle, whichever. The others were divided into watch squads.
“Mr. Ferrer, Mr. Rienzi and I are going to go for a little walk,” said Marko to the assembled crew leaders now, in the dark shadow of the huge airship in the small canyon. “We’ll be back in a day or two. Mr. Cannon is in charge while I’m away, with Ms. McIlhan his second; they speak with my voice. Captain Caine is responsible for the airship; he speaks with my voice, too, on those matters. You’ll be visited by friends soon; the officers have their passwords. Anyone else comes along, kill them and make sure they don’t get away.”
“Settle yourselves and the men in, boys; we’re going to be here a bit,” said Cannon.
“What’s he want with the kinny tapes?” Rienzi asked Ferrer, a few minutes later as they packed. The two shared one of the officers’ cabins of the airship, although neither had a whole lot of personal stuff in the first place.
“He wants us,” Ferrer said, “to keep them safe. Carry them safely. He’ll cut your throat if those are damaged.”
“Right over Hugoton,” Rienzi exalted again. “Blew away two fuckin’ Imperials! And this is just the start, he said. We flew right over Hugoton and shot down two Imperials and it’s just the start!”
“Just the start,” Ferrer agreed. He could see the purpose of shooting down the airships – they’d have been shot down, otherwise – but there’d been people aboard them, and the fire would probably have killed at least a couple. That was still distasteful to his visceral mind, no matter how he tried to rationalize it.
The Collapse didn’t just happen. The old oligarchs had to be brought down. And killed.
“So pack the speely tapes good,” Ferrer said. “In amongst the spare clothing. We’re going to be trekking over mountains.”
“You know exactly where we are in the first place, anyway?” Rienzi asked. He was wearing a pistol on each hip, and a round-magazined submachinegun was slung over his shoulder.
“No, and I don’t want to. Boss knows where we are, that’s good enough for me.”
“No, you don’t,” agreed Marko, appearing in the doorway. “Rienzi, exchange that subgun for a rifle. Now. Get one for Ferrer, too. Ferrer, why aren’t you armed?”
“I am, boss,” said Ferrer. He tapped the .38 in its shoulder holster, under his jacket and vest.
Marko sprang; a blur of motion and pain. Suddenly Ferrer was face-down on his bunk, arm twisted into a pain-imminent hold, one foot off the floor. Marko twisted his arm; pain, agonizing pain, ran up Ferrer’s arms and shoulder into his neck.
“Couldn’t draw that fast enough, could we?” came Marko’s cold hiss in Ferrer’s ear. “When I said I wanted you armed at all times, I said I wanted you armed at all times.”
Marko stepped back, got up. “The two of you be at the nose in five minutes with those speelies. We have a meeting arranged.”
Thirty-First Squadron’s day room was chaos, the next morning. Only Senior Warrant Halversen and a couple of the older engineers were silent, standing in the back watching the other officers’ disarray.
Near the front, Commander Ricks was talking with Swarovski. The handsome blond squadron XO was sitting jauntily on the desk at the front, his non-regulation sword hanging to one side. Swarovski, who liked the XO and was thinking of getting a sword of his own, sprawled on a seat he’d pulled up.
“I’m telling you,” Ricks was saying, “love can make a man do crazy things. It’s always the uptight ones who crack first.”
“He’s married,” said Swarovski. “You haven’t heard him on the bridge. He loves that wife of his.”
“His wife’s cut from the same cloth he is,” Martindale put in. “Haven’t you met her? Accountant. Tax codes and rulebooks just like the old man. Close couple.”
“And he broke,” said Ricks. He touched the hilt of his sword. “Always helps to have a little fun. XO never did any of that, and look what happened. Vice Rulebook blows up a power line and runs away with some pirate captain.”
“I don’t believe it,” Swarovski repeated. “The pieces don’t fit together. Something else is going on.”
“How do you know?” Martindale asked. “You had a drink with Director Fleming or something?”
“Maybe I did. Look, the man’s an airship commander, but I saw him in action with those pirates we killed. He’s no more an espionage agent than you or I am. Best airship commander since Rivington, but outside a ship? He’s as much basic training and luck as anyone else. If he rigged the bomb himself, I’m a hex-pushing Luddite.”
“So who did?” Ricks pushed. “If he didn’t do it all on his own?”
“He couldn’t have done it all on his own,” said Swarovski. Can’t these idiots see the obvious? “Martindale just named the guy. Fleming did. Using him for something. Here you’ve got a redundant Vice who, let’s be frank, is obsessed with getting that ship back, when everyone knows there’s a spy war going on. Fleming’s using what he’s got handy.”
“I still don’t believe it. I’m going to ask the Flight Admiral,” said Ricks.
A cough came from behind. The three officers turned to see Flight Admiral Richardson standing in the doorway, her adjutant – a spare Kenyan commander named Sophie Ojibwa – behind her.
A rustle as the room came to order. The officers and senior warrants got to their feet, saluted, as Richardson came to the front of the room.
“Acting squadron commander Ricks, you were going to ask me something?” Richardson asked. Her flat green eyes swept across the room, covering it like a Marine with a submachinegun.
“Ma’am. Yes ma’am,” said Ricks. “We were wondering—”
“Of course you’re wondering,” said Richardson. “Understandable and justified. I’m here to do two things, ladies and gentlemen. The first is to confirm Commander Ricks as the acting commander of Thirty-First Squadron until such time as a replacement for Vice-Commodore Perry is appointed. Hereby you are, Commander. The second is to illuminate you regarding the matter of Vice-Commodore Perry. At ease and sit down.”
The room settled, people taking their seats. Ojibwa had a pen and notepad out, ready to take something down.
Scary bitch, that one, Swarovski thought. Perry was alright, but the Flight Admiral had seen some real shit and it had left a mark on her more than physically. Mid-forties was young, in peacetime, for a rank that equated to Army brigadier or Navy commodore, and you didn’t get that high that fast by being nice. Or normal.
“Regarding Vice-Commodore Perry; Sophie, th
e papers, please.”
“Ma’am.” The adjutant passed her boss a sheaf of papers. Swarovski was close enough to read the print on the wanted poster when Richardson held it up. A blurred black-and-white photo – something from file, Swarovski thought, the magnification was badly off – of Vice Perry, with a physical description. Reward of five hundred Imperial pounds – damn, that was more than what Swarovski made in five months. Wanted for desertion, assault, gross property destruction and attempted murder.
“Your former squadron commander is a wanted criminal,” said Richardson. “Pass these around and take a close look. He has committed – you know what happened last night.”
Ricks, next to Swarovski, very much looked as though he wanted to say something, like he was straining to keep his mouth shut.
“Vice-Commodore Perry is a deserter and a traitor,” Richardson said. “I know you have other questions; I am not going to answer them. I’m aware of the speculation; I am not going to comment on it. Acting squadron commander Ricks, what is the philosophical foundation of our Service?”
An Academy question, and one that the XO answered as promptly as the cadet he’d been at Biggin Hill fifteen years ago.
“Reason and logic, ma’am.”
“What is the tradition of the Air Service?”
“Duty and service, ma’am.”
“And?”
Jeez, thought Swarovski, she’s going to ask for Admiral Fisher’s birthday next.
“Nothing else, ma’am,” responded Ricks like a cadet. “The Air Service was created from whole cloth out of reason and logic, to serve the Empire through the Great War and beyond.”
“Reason and logic,” Richardson transparently pretended to muse. “And the evidence is precisely what you see in front of you. Vice-Commodore Perry has betrayed his country and his Service. Full stop. Now, I am specifically prohibiting further discussion of the matter. Is that understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” came murmurs.
Richardson raised her voice.
