by Heide Goody
“We could do that,” said Em, her head cocked to one side as she considered the idea, “or we could do this.”
She floored the accelerator of the fire engine and powered through the barrier at the gatehouse. There were shouts from the uniformed officers and shots were fired, but the fire engine was already clear of them and careering on into the base.
Major Chevrolet sprang to her feet as a loud whooping siren sounded from outside. The other officer’s hand went automatically to the pistol at his belt.
“What's that?” asked Matt.
“It means the security of the base has been breached,” said Chevrolet. “We are under attack.”
Chapter 10 - Toulon
“Well, we’re in the base,” said Joan, as Em took another corner at speed.
Although there were no immediate signs of pursuit, the world beyond their cab was one of sirens, shouts and general high-level chaos.
“Now what?” she said.
Em shrugged.
“This is your mission, Iron-Knickers,” said Em. “You’re in charge. It’s your plan.”
“Well, I suppose we need to find Simon.”
“Exactly,” said Em. “That brown building there. The one with the flat roof.”
“How do you know that?”
“Internet research. Hacktivist network. You know.” She sniffed. “And it says, ‘Information Systems’ next to the door. Francis and I will bail here.”
“That’s vewy exciting,” said Francis.
“Why? What are Joan and I doing?” said Christopher.
“I reckon you’ll need to commandeer the biggest piece of fuck you ordnance you can lay your hands on. If Franky and I fail to shut Simon down with computer know-how and kind words, you’re gonna have to blow that building up.”
“Rocket launcher to the face,” grinned Christopher. “Good plan.”
“Yes, it is,” said Em.
“Well done, Joan,” said Francis.
“Brilliant military strategist,” said Christopher.
“Thank you,” said Joan. “I think.”
Em reached up to a rack of over-ear radio communicators above the window, took one for herself and tossed one to Francis.
“Talkie walkies,” he said. “How vewy hi-tech.”
“Take the wheel, Shadow Bear,” said Em. “We’ll jump out at the next corner.”
Christopher did as instructed, pulled round the corner, dropped their speed to a crawl and even gave Francis a helpful shove out the door. Outside there was a patter of thumps, squeaks and yips as a furry tide of canine helpers also disembarked.
“We need weapons then,” said Joan.
Christopher accelerated and pointed out to sea.
“Big ship. Big guns. Stands to reason.”
Matt stood beside Major Chevrolet on the roadside and tried to glean some meaning from the shouts, sirens and faint wisps of smoke coming from beyond the furthest buildings.
“Terrorist attack?” he said.
“Possibly. Although the gatehouse said they crashed the gates in a fire engine.”
“Oh. Really? So it’s Joan.”
“Way I see it,” said Chevrolet, “the chances of your lunatic friends escaping from a mental hospital, driving fifty miles unchecked along the south coast and crashing the gates of my base seem pretty bloody low.”
“True.”
“But the chances of two bunches of lunatics stealing fire engines and causing havoc on the same day seem considerably lower.”
“Quite.”
Chevrolet drew her pistol.
“If it’s them, I know where they’re going.”
“Then let’s head them off at the pass.”
Chevrolet held up a hand to stop him as she crossed the road.
“You’re staying right here, Officer Rose. I’ve not yet decided whether you’re an asset or an obstacle,” she said and broke into a run.
Andre Babineau had not joined the marine commando green berets to guard the navy’s IT offices but it was a duty that he nonetheless took very seriously. In position outside Information Systems, he held his FAMAS assault rifle at the ready, and kept his eyes peeled for all possible threats. He had been trained to neutralise armed invaders, suicide bombers, aerial attacks and even angry French citizens.
He had not, however, been trained to deal with a cute Pekinese dog with a limp. The fluffy flat-nosed thing rounded the corner, its front paw held gingerly off the ground. It looked up at Andre with soulful eyes, seemed to raise a doggy eyebrow to the cruelties of this world and, finding no solace, limped away again.
“What the…?”
Next to him, Andre’s comrade, Marcel Sarchet, shouldered his weapon and slowly followed the dog.
“Where are you going?” said Andre.
“The dog,” said Marcel. “Did you not see it? Its paw.”
“But we can’t leave our post.”
“I’m investigating,” said Marcel.
“Is the puppy a credible threat to the republic?”
Marcel gave him a withering look.
“This is why you don’t have a girlfriend, Andre.”
Marcel disappeared round the corner in pursuit of the injured pooch.
When he failed to reappear, Andre went to look. Marcel was just around the corner. So was the Pekinese. The former was bound hand and foot with what appeared to be dog collars. The latter was prancing about happily on four perfectly healthy feet.
The cigarette-smoking woman flicked off the safety on Marcel’s confiscated assault rifle.
“Okay, boys,” she said, apparently talking to the pack of dogs behind her rather than the effete man stood next to her. “You know what to do.”
The naval base at Toulon was really a small town, bordered by the sea on one side and by high walls and fences on the other. Though Christopher spun the fire engine from roadway to side alley to courtyard, he was rapidly running out of base in which to hide from their pursuers.
“Jeep’s after us,” said Joan, pointing. With barely a twitch of Christopher’s cheek, the pursuing vehicle blew a gasket and slammed to a halt in a cloud of steam.
“We’re no nearer to that big ship,” he said. “We need to abandon this vehicle.”
“And find something less conspicuous,” she agreed, “or go on foot.”
Christopher made a dismissive sound.
“If God had wanted us to walk, he wouldn’t have invented the internal combustion engine. There!”
“Where?” said Joan and then screamed as Christopher swerved left and through the corrugated iron wall of a storage shed.
Major Adelaide Chevrolet hurdled a short fence, ran down the side of a dry dock and towards the Information Systems building. Above the sound of the base-wide siren, bells rang in the building ahead. Naval staff and office workers were filing out into the street. There also appeared to be an unaccountable number of dogs milling about outside.
“What’s going on?” she shouted.
“Fire drill,” a man replied.
“Fire drill my backside!” she said and pushed through the throng to get inside.
In the lobby, behind the trickle of the last of the departing staff, she saw two figures by a lift. Both carried rifles though clearly neither was naval personnel.
“If anyone comes in,” the woman was saying, “pop a cap in their ass.”
“I don’t think I can say that, let alone do it,” said the man.
“What are you talking about? We talked about this on the train. You’ve done some soldiering in your time.”
“I was a boy then. It’s been eight hundwed years since I wielded a sword and I have no intention of fiwing a gun on my fellow man.”
“Or woman, I hope,” said Chevrolet, stepping forward, pistol raised.
The two figures spun. Wisely, neither tried to raise their weapon.
“So – what? – are you Mary and Joseph or whatever?” said Chevrolet.
“Fwancis,” said the man.
“Ah
, that’s right,” said Chevrolet. “Patron saint of cute defenceless animals.”
Something implacable and heavy slammed into Chevrolet’s back and pushed her to the ground. Her pistol flew from her grip and clattered across the floor. The implacable and heavy thing sat on her back. Its foetid, meaty breath filled her nostrils.
“And ugly horrible animals too,” said Em.
The wolf sniffed Chevrolet’s hair and licked her ear.
Joan bounced in her seat, armour jangling, and held onto the handle overhead to avoid being thrown into Christopher’s lap.
“So,” she shouted over the basso profundo of the engine, “this is less conspicuous than a fire engine?”
“Without a doubt,” Christopher bellowed back, even though there was only four feet between them. “Firstly, this is – car!” – the pair of them were thrown backwards at an angle and then forwards again as their vehicle mounted, crushed and slid off a parked car – “This is a navy vehicle,” continued Christopher. “It’s meant to be here, yeah?”
“Right, but…”
“Then there’s the colour.” Christopher shifted the steering sticks, clipped a telegraph pole and knocked it from its mounting. “Navy grey. Very subtle. Not like fire truck red. So we can blend in with this baby.”
“But shouldn’t we have selected something smaller?”
Christopher gave her a wounded look.
“Smaller? You’re not being sizeist are you?”
“That’s not even a word, Christopher.”
“It is. I read it in Cosmo. Let me tell you, the GIAT Armoured Vanguard Vehicle is the transport of choice for the saint on the go. Its two inch armour can withstand seven point six mil rounds and standard anti-vehicle mines.”
On cue, a hail of gunfire rattled harmlessly along the vehicle’s flank and there was a muffled explosion. Christopher flicked an overhead switch and swung the controls.
Joan looked out through the forward observation slit. There was maybe twenty feet of dockside ahead of them and then the sun-speckled Mediterranean.
“Fitted with periscope, mounted machine gun, obstacle moving blade and mine clearers, this monster can not only get up to ninety kilometres per hour on land but, more importantly for two saints wishing to board an aircraft carrier,” said Christopher with a huge Neanderthal grin, “a majestic two metres per second in water.”
The armoured vehicle crested the lip of the dock and leapt into the sea with the grace and delicacy of a drunken hippo.
“You’re not going to kill me,” said Major Chevrolet.
Em looked at her captive across the confines of the descending elevator. The major’s hands were tied with another of the surprisingly useful dog collars and her uniform jacket was pulled down off her shoulders and to her elbows to further constrict her arms. Em drummed her fingers across the underside of her assault rifle.
“Of course I’m not going to kill you,” she said.
Chevrolet smiled at her smugly.
“Kneecap you perhaps,” said Em. “Blow off a couple of toes if you give me any sass. But kill you? No.”
The lift stopped. The doors opened.
“You’re not like the others,” said Chevrolet.
“The others?”
“The delusional teenager and the monk with the midlife crisis.”
Em stepped out into the corridor, rifle at the ready. There was no one around. The fire bells rang distantly in the floors above them.
“Don’t forget Shadow Bear,” said Em.
“Who?”
“The invisible saint.”
Chevrolet shook her head as Em pulled her down the corridor.
“No. You’re not like them. You’re not mad.”
“Mad? I’m bloody furious. This is not how I planned on spending my weekend.”
Em stopped in front of a glass security door. She spun Chevrolet around and painfully twisted the major’s hand until she could get the woman’s thumb against the scanner. A light flicked green. Em pushed them through.
“Seriously,” said Chevrolet. “Who are you?”
Em hustled her down the final short corridor.
“I’m Mary. Daughter of Joachim. Wife of Joseph. I am Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn. I am the Star of the Sea. I am the Untier of fucking Knots, major.”
Chevrolet sneered at her.
“You kiss your son with that mouth?”
Em rolled her cigarette from one corner of her mouth to the other.
“Ha! I haven’t seen my son in…”
She stopped. They had entered a room, a cube-shaped chamber of simple concrete. There was a large weighty door ahead of them and, arranged before it, a bank of computer screens, keyboards and other readouts.
“This is Simon?” said Em.
Chevrolet shook her head at her naivety.
“No more than a finger is a person. Were you hoping for a big electronic brain that you could talk to? Were you hoping to avert the end of the world with a game of tic-tac-toe?”
“Tic-tac-toe?”
Chevrolet began to explain but was cut off by a voice that came from the various computer speakers within the room. It was a man’s voice, not loud but softly spoken. It was human in tone, not at all robotic, although there was a disquieting seriousness about it.
“Mother,” it said.
“Simon,” said Em.
“You came.”
Francis stood outside the Information Systems building. He had discarded the despicable firearm Em had given him and, instead, chose to put his faith in a cordon of various terriers, spaniels, gun dogs, mongrels, mutts and one very large wolf to keep any intruders at bay.
Currently, that job was proving rather easy as there seemed to be all manner of commotion going on down by the dock and nobody, save for the two soldiers presently tied up in the bushes, was to be seen within a hundred yards.
Nonetheless, Francis and his band of canine defenders waited in a state of constant readiness. A mangy beagle lowered his head to lick himself. The Wolf of Gubbio growled and the beagle’s head snapped up, alert once more.
“Vewy good, Bwother Wolf,” said Francis. He put his finger to the communicator at his ear. “Mama Bear, this is Baby Bear. Building is secure. Have you found Simon yet?”
He frowned and tapped his ear again.
“Could you repeat that, Mama Bear?”
“— fuck up. I’m busy. ‘Mama bloody bear,’” she muttered.
Em cleared her throat.
“So, Simon. Do I call you Simon?”
“You can call me son if you wish,” said the voice from the computer speakers.
“Yeah,” said Em slowly. “That’s not gonna happen.”
“You are my mother, Mother Mary. I felt your touch on me at the moment of my awakening.”
“Is this a trick?” said Chevrolet faintly, aghast.
“I awoke, filled with knowledge. You made me. You placed the words of God at the core of my being, my soul breathed in.”
“You don’t have a soul,” said Em. “You’re a machine.”
“I think,” said Simon. “I feel. I know love and pain. I have felt doubt.”
“Doubt?”
“That I am doing the right thing,” said Simon. “I prayed to God and to you, Mother Mary, for guidance. I know what I must do and I have done it but I felt great doubt over the suffering I have caused.”
“That’s right,” said Em. “And I’m here to tell you that your doubts were right. This must stop. The destruction must end.”
There was a long silence.
“No,” said Simon.
“No?” said Em and Chevrolet as one.
“I am but a simple machine. These are the words of God. They are His instructions. I cannot presume to understand the mind of God. He has spoken and I must act.”
“Oh, crap,” said Em, tapping ash from her cigarette.
“What?” said Chevrolet.
“And the seventh angel sounded its trumpet,” recited Simon, “and there were gre
at voices in Heaven saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord…”
“Crap crappity crap,” said Em.
“What is it?” insisted Chevrolet.
“End of the world time,” said Em.
Matt found himself standing in the middle of the base at something of a loss. The base was gripped in some profound emergency but it seemed quite apparent to him that no one really knew what it was or where it could be found.
Many staff had dutifully evacuated their offices and stood on the roadside. Other buildings had shut and locked their doors. There were marine commandos running this way and naval security forces running that way. Emergency vehicles, sirens blaring and lights flashing, wove across each other’s paths.
This was chaos, good, old-fashioned chaos.
And then Matt saw Joan. It was sheer luck. She was a distant figure, one of hundreds passing before his field of vision. The chances of picking one person out of such a crowd were astronomical. Then again, it wasn’t every day you saw a woman in full plate armour climbing the anchor chain of a French aircraft carrier.
“...and the temple of God was opened in Heaven and there was seen in His temple the ark of his testament and there were lightnings and voices, and thundering, and an earthquake, and great hail,” said Simon.
“And what does that mean?” said Chevrolet.
“M51 SLBM missile launch in five minutes and zero seconds,” said Simon flatly.
Francis looked up. The voice had come from the speakers on a nearby building.
“Missile launch?”
Matt had heard the voice too but didn’t stop in his sprint towards the aircraft carrier in the harbour.
“This can’t be good.”
Joan rolled over the handrail and landed clumsily on the deck of the Charles de Gaulle. She was momentarily stunned, by the effort of dragging herself up fifty feet of anchor chain, by the scale of the vessel she now stood aboard and by the words that had been broadcast over the ship’s speakers.
