by Leo Champion
His again. He had his ship back.
And there was work to do.
John Kennedy came back to the bridge. “Red Wasp coming in now,” he reported. “Your prize crew’s ready to take over. But I’ve a question for you.”
“I’m listening,” said Perry. The man had gotten his ship back; he’d listen to any proposal from him.
“You’re going into some action, Vice. Some of these men are trained in the operation of ship weapons. Right now you only have enough crew to fly that ship and only barely that; you can’t fight her. You want to be able to fight her?”
They were heading into action, thought Perry. Whatever he was going to find in Hugoton when he got there, it was going to be bad.
But there was a certain lunacy to the idea of taking a line-class airship right into Hugoton, with all the weapons stations manned by pirates.
Hadn’t lunacy been the defining state of his existence for the last two weeks?
Yeah, but there were still precautions you could take.
“I’ll consider that,” he said. “But I’ll want them disarmed and stripped. Hideout weapons too; Ahle and Nolan’s men will see to that. They obey my orders and submit themselves, in advance, to Imperial custody.”
Kennedy opened his mouth to say something. Perry – on the bridge of my ship again! – waved him down.
“To my knowledge, none of these people has committed a criminal offence, and they’ve done the British Empire an invaluable service. They won’t be held for very long and the evidence doesn’t exist to try them, let alone convict.”
“Very well,” said Kennedy. “I’ll ask for volunteers. And now we go to Hugoton; it’s time to do your part of the deal. I’m meeting with Ian Fleming at the man’s earliest convenience, and Governor Henry at his.”
“If we were in London,” said Perry, “I’d do my best to introduce you to Her Majesty herself.”
Nate Nolan sat personally at – the late – Sub-Lieutenant Kent’s communications station. He’d made up a line of bullshit about how Perry could use any available crew and for the money…
Perry had handed the captain a sheaf of hundreds on the spot. He’d already paid Nolan for the rest of the job, and given him more money – fighting wages, as originally promised – to distribute to the others.
“Gina reports boilers hot, Mr. Vice,” reported the scavenger captain.
“We loose?” Perry, now at the helm – my beautiful new ship, again! – of 4-106, asked Ahle.
“Loose as a Deadwood whore.”
“Then lift in three, two, one,” ordered Perry.
It actually took a few more moments than that; it was only a makeshift crew, after all. But a few seconds after Perry’s command, buoyancy reached positive and the warship began to lift.
“Next stop, Hugoton,” said Nolan happily.
“Next stop, Hugoton,” repeated Perry as the canyon walls began to slide past them.
John Kennedy, at Swarovski’s Weapons station, grinned.
“Next stop, Ian Fleming,” he said.
Skorzeny’s command car drove through the night across the Kansas plains, the speedometer holding down an even thirty-five miles an hour; the highest practical long-range speed of the Tiger IIs, IIas and IIbs in the division.
It was the second time since the Special Squadrons’ formation that the entire organization had been brought together in one place. The sight – the lights of hundreds of tanks, armored cars, battalion command cars and fighting vehicles – was impressive. Three miles wide as they kicked dust through Kansas, the division-sized formation with its headlights, searchlights and spotlights dominated the night.
We’re twelve hours from Hugoton, the SS colonel thought. And the Imperials have scattered their garrison across the border. There’s nothing there to stop us.
A pity. It looked like they were going to do a painless wrecking job on the place, trashing facilities, wells and refineries without more than token resistance.
He’d have almost preferred a good fight.
Chapter Twenty-One
Part of the Imperially-guided reconstruction of North America involved Texan independence. Maps were redrawn to create the Hugoton Lease, essentially granting the Southwestern quarter of Kansas to Imperial control, for the sake of the helium reserves there…
From A History of North America, Winston Churchill.
Early in a clear-skied late-March morning, the Ruby Red Robber touched down at the military airship park of Amarillo, Texas. Coming in, Ferrer had seen seven brightly-painted airships, but the signature jet-black ship of Commodore Cordova was what really gave him the clue.
Cordova’s Armadillos. Like anyone media-literate, he’d heard of those guys and their previous feats. The Russians had hired them? Oh, God was Minister Trotsky serious.
They’re killers like anyone else in this line of work, he tried to tell himself.
Still, he was impressed.
“4-106 should be joining them within a few hours over Hugoton,” Marko told him, Judd, Rienzi and McIlhan on the bridge as they landed. “I’m about to make a final report. Then we’ll join the Commodore” – a gesture at the jet-black, four-hundred-yard fighting ship they were parked beside; at this distance Ferrer could clearly make out the florid lettering Lone Star on the nose of its gondola – “and the SS as they make their final approach. Any questions?”
Nobody had any.
You bastard, thought Ferrer. I was doing a good job for you. Why did you stiff me?
You’re as bad as Federal Electric.
“There’ll be burning and fire and explosions!” Marko exalted. “The South’s already going up, and soon Imperial power will do the same!”
And replace it with people like you? Ferrer thought.
Bile returned to his throat, but he kept his mouth shut.
“Detach and lift!” came over the wire. A crewman on Paula Handley’s ship relayed the command to her. It was ten thirty in the morning.
“Detach and lift,” Handley ordered.
The usual slithering noises. The Vorpal, and Rick Evans’ Dread Wyvern half a mile away, began to ascend.
“To Hugoton,” she ordered her XO – and husband – Brad, at the helm. “To kill everything that lifts.”
Damn, was it going to be good to be back in a fight again.
Although from all she’d heard, it was going to be more of a turkey shoot.
Damn, she corrected herself, will it be good to earn combat pay again. Instead of just appearance fees and media revenue.
“Adjusting course,” Brad Handley reported, turning the wheel. A moment later: “On course.”
The Dread Wyvern fell in next to her as they headed for the Hugoton Lease.
Fleming stood in Governor Lloyd’s all-but-empty office.
“Governor of Mississippi assassinated,” he reported. “Federal airship base in Biloxi, Louisiana under rocket fire. Georgia statehouse bombed. Two dozen lesser incidents; the Southern States are exploding. Reports were still coming in when we lost communication.”
“We lost communication?” demanded the Governor. Although he’d been anticipating this.
“SS must have finally cut the wire. We’re still in communication with Dodge, but that’s it.”
“So they’re coming, Ian.”
“We know they’re coming,” said the spy. “Sir, if I may respectfully suggest you get yourself the hell out of here?”
“You may not,” Governor Lloyd snapped. He’d had this damn conversation enough times, hadn’t he? “Although you may entreat my aide again, if you wish.”
“I’m not leaving,” Warren Buff said. He was dressed as for an evening in Mayfair, as always, and Lloyd respected the young man’s spirit. And his style. If not his intelligence. “Not unless the boss goes.”
“Your Lordship’s family will be deeply upset if you’re killed,” Fleming said. “When you are. The SS aren’t known for their mercy.”
“I signed up for a Colonial assignment,” sa
id Buff. “I accepted the risk, sir. I will live with it, sir.”
Lloyd smiled thinly.
“Why are you remaining, Mr. Fleming?”
“Duty as long as practicable,” Fleming snapped. “Besides, who says I don’t have a way out?”
Governor Lloyd decided not to ask. He didn’t want to know, and the man would probably conceal it anyway. Of course Fleming would find a way to survive.
Fleming’s injured aide, Connery, pushed his way into the once-well-appointed office.
“Deputy Director?” he called from across the large room.
“I’m here,” said Fleming.
“Lookouts reported. Just now,” said Connery. “They’ve been spotted. Incoming airships.”
“It’s starting,” said Fleming.
The two line-class mercenary ships, one bright red and the other a striking lime green, flew over Hugoton two and a half hours before the Special Squadrons – given their known capabilities and anticipated speeds – had been scheduled to arrive.
Flight Admiral Janet Richardson watched dispassionately as the lime-green ship shredded, with a single missile broadside, her personal transport. Its cannon began to work on the other two civilian ships, which had been hired in Dodge for the purpose of getting the remaining Air Service personnel out of Hugoton.
The bright red ship – Richardson could not be remotely bothered with a scope, and could have cared less for the names of the supposedly-celebrity enemy – fired a wave of missiles into the first civilian airship and then, as it lifted and desperately attempted to turn, the other.
Both went down in bright flames, amplified all the more by the darkly-overcast day, as storm clouds gathered above them.
That’s it, Richardson thought, as the junior officers and enlisteds who’d expected to leave aboard those ships, went to pieces around her. I suppose we die here.
To Richardson, who as a twenty-year-old ensign had seen four of her classmates – and best friends – die over Berlin, it was a mere detail. Her present rank and the famous action in which she’d won it, her present rank and the offer of a knighthood that she’d refused – Charles, Marie, Jennifer and Gordon had never lived to earn those – had been a later byproduct.
Janet Richardson had considered herself dead since 1939. The remaining details were just that, as her adjutant cried out: “What do we do now?”
“We die here,” Richardson responded reflexively with the obvious.
Just details.
“We’re dead,” Senior Airshipwoman Hayden was saying. “Our ticket out just went boom. We’re gone.”
“Not necessarily,” Vidkowski said. “There’s horses left. And a few steam-cars. And the railway. Maybe we can do something.”
“If you have to” – Lieutenant-Commander Martindale appeared, his own sidearm drawn – “you’ll die fighting. With those crazy Army sons of bitches.”
About a hundred volunteers from the Army garrison – Vidkowski had heard something about bonus pensions being granted by executive order from the Governor – had stayed. A mishmash of various units, but their job was to put up a fight. To not let Hugoton go down without some kind of resistance.
Nothing more than maintaining Imperial honor, thought Specialist Second Ernest Vidkowski. A worthy objective, but not one he’d signed on for.
And their way out had just been blown to flaming trash.
Very well. If he was going to die, he’d die as he’d lived.
As an Imperial airshipman.
“Mr. Martindale,” he shouted.
Lieutenant-Commander Martindale turned.
“Specialist Second Vidkowski.”
“Gimme a rifle, sir. They’re coming and our way out is shot to crap. I’ll do my bit.”
“You’ll get one,” the lieutenant-commander snapped back. “We all do our bit. For Imperial honor, if nothing else.”
Captain Peggey Rowland and her ship, the Five Speed, flew over grassy Kansas plains toward Dodge City, flanked by Shirley Meier’s Pith and Vinegar. The light line-class ships flew straight, under the darkening clouds.
As they approached the railway line, they saw a train. A long line of tankers and – mostly – boxcars, making haste out of Hugoton, racing east ahead of the oncoming storm.
Too bad, thought Rowland.
“Signals, tell Captain Meier the obvious,” Rowland ordered. “Helm, you know what to do.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
The Five Speed, paced on the other side of the railway line by the Pith and Vinegar, matched speed with the train from Hugoton and then descended to obliterate it.
Six-inch missiles lanced out, pounding into the engine and the tankers.
Those went up in blazing fireballs. The Five Speed’s experienced helmsman slowed the ship to a crawl, following the train.
As flames and thick black smoke boiled into the sky from the wrecked engine and the burning tanker cars, Rowland slammed missiles, cannon fire – and, as she drew closer, descending to three hundred feet – 30mm Gatling bursts into the powerless train.
“Next stop Dodge City,” she murmured, as something in one of the boxcars went up in a blazing pyre. “If they fire on us, kill them. If they lift, kill them. If they can lift? Kill them.”
Otto Skorzeny grinned as the flasher reports came in.
He could see perfectly well from his own maps, of course. They were approaching Dodge City, which itself was an hour and a half away from Hugoton.
“Destroy everything that pumps or moves,” came the flasher orders from Himmler’s own command car. “We are now in free-fire mode. Kill everything.”
“Sir,” Fleming reported to Governor Lloyd. “We’ve just lost contact with Dodge. More of those Armadillo bastards must have cut our wire.”
“Then they must have cut our wire,” said Lloyd calmly – pleasantly? “We have a job to do, Mr. Fleming. We die well.”
The two brightly-colored line-class ships had been comfortably holding station, at about twenty-five hundred feet relative, above Hugoton for about twenty minutes since they’d destroyed Admiral Richardson’s White Lightning and the two civilian ships.
Presumably waiting for more trouble to erupt, thought Lieutenant Swarovski, cradling the semi-familiar US Cavalry carbine. He’d kept it over the Army rifle he’d been offered. He and the rest of 4-106’s crew, and the fifty or so ground crew, who had been disassembling and packing the last semi-portable material from the air base, were milling around the flight pads. Taking care never to congeal into clusters so big that the hovering Armadillo airships might bother to fire at them.
Soon, Ensign Hastings had informed him a few minutes ago, they were due to move into defensive positions against the SS. A final stand.
Swarovski would have desperately appreciated a final drink. A final hand of cards or spin of the roulette wheel. He’d joined the Service because Pater had required him, as the fourth son of an aristocratic family, to make his own way. He’d chosen the Service because neither salt water nor rigid Army discipline had appealed much to him. And an airshipman got to see the world, right?
But, very well. If he was going to die here on this rig-filled ugly Kansas plain, he was going to die here. A man couldn’t always have what he wanted.
Sudden cry out.
“Someone’s coming!”
Yes. A new speck on the northern horizon. A big ship, Swarovski could make out.
He raised his binoculars for a closer look.
Oh shit.
He recognized that ship, unless he was very wrong.
He’d flown on it. Briefly been its weapons officer.
DN 4-106.
Hope.
“Oh shit,” came Specialist Singh’s voice. “She’s flashing the bastards. She’s with them.”
“We carry Theron Marko,” Perry told Nolan. “We request loudhailer distance from senior present airship. Wish to convey intelligence.”
“Got it the first time, Vice,” said Nolan.
A short pause.
“But repeating the flash now. Hold on – the red fucker’s responding.”
“Go on,” said Perry. Tense. He looked at Kennedy. “Acting Weapons, you ready?”
“Primed and loaded on all stations,” John F. Kennedy reported.
“Says to come in,” Nolan went on. “They know who your Marko is, apparently. Message is, ‘We’re listening’.”
“Get as close as we can,” Perry ordered Ahle, who was at the helm. “And then on my order” – to Kennedy – “destroy them.”
Captain Handley was a little confused, watching through a monocular scope as the big line-class moved to rendezvous with them. Hadn’t Mr. Marko, the apparent Russian agent, been aboard the other airship?
Covert operations be damned. That shit confused her.
But she’d also been told to expect an airship matching this one’s description, designated 4-106 as this one was. She put down the monocular.
“I still say we kill them,” Brad muttered from the helm.
“You say to kill everything, dearest,” Handley replied.
The airship designated 4-106 was moving to within loudhailer distance. A couple of hundred yards away, half its length and two thirds the Vorpal’s.
“Engage loudhailer,” Handley ordered.
“Loudhailer engaged,” reported the crewman. “You have the speaker.”
Handley reached for the mike.
“Mr. Marko,” she said pleasantly. Her words were amplified by loudspeaker over two hundred yards of airspace to the massive – damn, that’s an Imperial line-class – airship across from her. “What can I do for you?”
The answer came in an upper-class Imperial accent.
“You can jump, mercenary.”
Trailing fire, a dozen missiles followed.
