Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 1

by Malcolm J Wardlaw

  There was no way of knowing whether all sovereign lands were like this. There was no way of knowing whether the rest of the lands controlled by the Dasti-Jones clan were like this. Since there was no way for him to find out, let alone do anything about it, there was no point in getting steamed up about it. He kept his eyes ahead for the rest of the drive to Canterbury.

  *

  Donald already knew from his legal work that Canterbury was the administrative capital of the Lands of Dasti-Jones. Around the centrepiece of the ancient cathedral was a neat town enriched by being the meeting place of the Dasti-Jones clan and the lesser manorial clans that lived under its protection. For someone thinned by ten days of prison rations, the smells from the restaurants and saloon bars were tantalising, whilst the young ladies in tight skirts and short dresses tormented his confounded needs.

  For entertainment, the city offered a motor racing circuit, a horse-racing track, a dog-racing track, two casinos, a velodrome, a concert hall, a theatre and a grand hall. This much could he overheard from the driver’s monologue to his young side-kick, who had obviously never been to the capital before. The driver lowered his voice. From the contortions of the teenager’s face, he was obviously receiving knowledge of less salubrious attractions.

  The first stop was a stone villa set behind its own frontier wall on the far side of the cathedral. Donald noted the coat of arms of the Krossington clan on the iron gates and on the pediment of the porch. He supposed this must be the embassy of the Krossington clan in the Lands of Dasti-Jones. Her Decency Sally Tabetha Eugenie Krossington-Darcy stepped down from the cabin and was promptly wrapped in a bearskin gown by a couple of maids, who ushered her indoors. An official signed a form and handed a receipt up to the driver with a tip of some silver coins.

  The driver glanced back at Donald as if checking a load of boxes.

  “Just the commoner to drop and then we’ll get a beer,” he said. “Right you lot, take up the slack…”

  The carriage rolled on away from the cathedral into a short stretch of woodland, which opened out into what was obviously a glory depot. There were trucks and armoured staff cars parked, glory troops marching about with an affected sense of purpose, there were long brick warehouses, and of course, the ubiquitous two-storey administrative building in which Donald was delivered to new hosts. He passed a miserable night in a ground floor cell kept awake by tramping boots in the corridor, truck engines revving and sergeants yelling at their squads to look lively or they’d be on jankers for being such useless turds. The depot never slept, nor did its guests.

  At just before ten o’clock in the morning, boots thumped up outside the door, there was a sharp knock. The man who entered was a team lieutenant, a dapper fellow of medium height with a long, lugubrious face and keen eyes.

  “I am Team Lieutenant Theo Farkas.”

  “Donald Bartleigh Aldingford.”

  They shook hands. Donald estimated that Farkas was getting old for a team lieutenant, probably almost forty. This was surprising, as he seemed intelligent and capable enough for more senior rank.

  “I have instructions to take you to the Euston depot in the Central Enclave,” Farkas said.

  That was good news. Euston depot was only a quarter of a mile from Donald’s house.

  “How will we get there?”

  “By armoured car. Please follow me.”

  Farkas was not joking about the armoured car. He led Donald out to a bloody great monster of a vehicle with no less than ten wheels, eight of which steered. From its back sprouted a Perspex turret mounting quadruple machine guns. Donald climbed a ladder onto the roof and descended into the interior through a hatch. The car was much less spacious than its exterior dimensions suggested. The turning cage and ammunition tanks for the turret occupied much of the central area. The drive shafts and elaborate steering took up the lower part of the hull. The engine had its own compartment behind the turret. Then there were tool boxes, first aid cabinets, a map locker and a rack of half a dozen submachine guns. This did not leave a great deal of room for passengers.

  “Come and sit up front with us,” Farkas said. The vehicle was wide enough to allow three seats abreast in the cockpit with plenty of space around them. The driver took the middle seat, Farkas and Donald the flanking places. There was no windscreen as such. Instead, there were portholes about the size of dinner plates with armoured scuttles that could be clipped shut leaving a small viewing hole.

  Farkas briefed his driver, Wightman, on the journey to come. Donald did not understand much of the jargon. However, he did catch mention of discharges to the drains and surplus flow of up to two thousand head per hour. After this, Farkas turned around in his seat and ordered the gunner to get the engine cranked up.

  The engine was obviously of prodigious power. It shook the great vehicle as it fired up and settled into a languidly panting idle. The engine barely revved as it launched the ten-wheeler on its way at a pace that surprised Donald. They drove down a broad, gravel avenue for several miles through woodland. There were no further scenes of wretched agriculture and grandiose mansions.

  “Tell me, Mr Aldingford, what is your occupation?” Farkas asked.

  “I’m a barrister—make it Donald, by the way. I’m not precious about social decorum, in fact, I’m sick of it.”

  Farkas nodded and turned to smile, obviously highly approving of Donald’s informality.

  “And tell me, Donald, how is it you came to be riding with us to the Central Enclave today?”

  “I was on a flying boat that drifted over the Lands of Dasti-Jones in fog and was shot down under Naclaski. I was interned under Frite. Not that you need to know—I’m trusting your discretion.”

  “Thank you for sharing your information. From time to time we deal with people from your level of society. Most of them will not stoop to address mere glory troopers like us—you make a pleasant change.”

  “My younger brother’s a glory officer with your crowd. Not that you need to know that either. His name is Cost-Centre Lieutenant Lawrence Aldingford.” A twinge of conscience halted Donald. He had betrayed Haighman’s trust, damn it. That kind of bloody foolishness could be dangerous in the wrong company. “Have you ever met him?”

  “No,” Farkas said. Wightman piped up negative too. “There are over a hundred thousand of us in General Wardian, so it’s not very likely we’d know him. He must be quite… dedicated I suppose one would say, to reach such a rank.”

  Being guilty about his clumsy breach of Haighman’s trust, Donald let the conversation rest for a few minutes before he changed the subject.

  “Do these trees go on forever?” he asked.

  “No. We’re about to go through the frontier of the Lands of Dasti-Jones, then we’ll be on the Old Kent Drain,” Farkas said.

  “We’ll be driving on a public drain—just like the Fatted Masses!”

  The two glory troopers smiled politely. Farkas said:

  “The drains have changed since the days of the Fatted Masses.”

  *

  The avenue narrowed and meandered about as it passed through a stretch of intense bushland. Donald doubted a mouse could have got through the tangle of gorse, bramble, holly and wild roses. The armoured car arrived at a heavy iron gate guarded by a contingent of General Wardian troops, where it was waved through by a sour-faced grade lieutenant. Thirty yards around a bend, they again confronted an iron gate and again they were waved straight through. The road widened out to a broad channel like a river, mostly grown over with grass, nettles and dead foxgloves. To both sides, thick bushland sloped up what may have been man-made banks, as they appeared too regular to be natural. Wightman picked his own way, avoiding muddy pools and the worst of the churnings left by previous vehicles. The ten deeply-treaded tyres made easy work of the ground, although the speed was slower than on the gravel avenue.

  “Welcome to the Old Kent Drain,” Farkas said. “That thick band of thorny bushes we passed through
was the frontier of the Lands of Dasti-Jones.”

  “I’m surprised at how peaceful it is out here.”

  “You’ve never been on the public drains?” Farkas said.

  “Nope.”

  “Then we have an opportunity for a little social education.”

  Wightman smiled and laughed softly as he hauled the steering wheel, accompanied by much wheezing from the hydraulic system.

  For some miles they lumbered along without seeing any other vehicles or people. The first wildlife was a small deer that flashed in front of them pursued by a pack of dogs. The deer made a desperate leap over some gorse and disappeared, whereupon Farkas ordered a stop and they waited. After a few minutes, the dogs reappeared with bloody jaws fighting over two legs. They snarled and writhed to win the meat. One larger dog attacked another and drove it away. The dogs were similar to Alsatians, although longer of limb and smaller of head.

  “You can imagine what they do to people,” Farkas said.

  Not much farther on, the car drove into a potent stench of decaying flesh. Farkas ordered a halt and opened his top hatch to get a better view by standing on the frame of his seat.

  “This may interest you, Donald.”

  He pointed at a copse of birch trees on the edge of the public drain. Donald could see some enormous, hunched birds perched in the lower branches of the trees. The birds were so large the higher branches would not have supported them.

  “I recognise them. Those are lammergeiers,” Donald said. “I’ve dealt with cases in which lammergeiers gather bones from one sovereign land and drop them on the roofs of mansions in a neighbouring sovereign land to break open the marrow. It really infuriates some people. There is now a precedent that it’s not a breach of Naclaski unless it can be shown the birds were coached by human intervention. I must say they are enormous beasts when you see them for real.”

  “How interesting,” Farkas said. “Look more closely at the ground beneath them.”

  In the long grass and ferns were some dark, lumpy shapes.

  “Is that abattoir waste?”

  “No. That’s dissipated surplus. The lammergeiers are waiting for the cadavers to rot as they are easier to rip open. I suspect the surplus finished itself in a group suicide, although it also gets slaughtered by gangsters and I’ve heard glory officers laughing at how they train machine gun teams using surplus flow. Anything can happen out here, so everything does. Such is death by decent society.”

  He settled back in his seat and ordered Wightman to continue. Donald followed suit, frowning, withholding any comment. During the next couple of hours, they passed through four more banks of stench without stopping. Apparently Farkas had only paused at the first in support of Donald’s ‘social education’.

  They passed more gates of the Lands of Dasti-Jones and began to mix with other traffic, mostly trucks loaded with troops, although they did pass a column of Night and Fog slave labour foot-slogging the other way. There must have been at least a hundred foggers, yet they were under the supervision of only eight ultramarines in their jet-black uniforms. It amazed Donald that so few could enslave so many. Of course, what one did not see was the invisible discipline of fear: foggers who escaped presumably ‘dissipated’ and their rotting flesh went down the gullets of the lammergeiers.

  “We’ve made good time. We’ll stop at Blue Bell Plaza,” Farkas said. A few minutes later, the public drain passed under a mighty concrete span where another drain crossed overhead. The great concrete structure with its curving, graded ramps was unmistakably a relic of the Public Era. As Farkas commented, during the Public Era both of these drains would have been open tarmac flooded with torrents of sheet metal motor cars and trucks all whistling along at the speed of a flying boat. Wightman steered towards one of the ramps. It led up to an expanse of several acres of gravel surrounded by birch trees with various stalls and tents around the edges. The smells of roast meat were tantalising for Donald, who had not enjoyed a decent meal for eleven days.

  “I don’t have any money with me,” he said.

  “General Wardian provides an allowance for food and drink, don’t worry about it,” Farkas said. “They do a very nice wild hog burger here.”

  With his glory escort, Donald joined a queue at an open-air stall where a hog carcass was being turned over a charcoal stove. The chef sliced tender meat straight off the carcass onto thick slabs of freshly-baked bread and served the burgers on wooden platters with mugs of tea. There were all sorts gathered around the Blue Bell Plaza. Glory troops in the olive green of General Wardian, the field green of Universal Parrier and the grey-green of Guards to the People were there, along with ultramarines in their smart, jet-black uniforms. Donald saw no mixing at all amongst these different groups. They queued politely together but afterwards moved apart to their cliques, being extremely careful not to upset either their own tray or anyone else’s. The ultramarines were generally larger and tougher-looking men. They had more of a swagger to them, something of an arrogant heartiness. Their weaponry appeared to be personalised, with some bearing a pistol holster, others sported a sawn-off shotgun slung about their chest, others still a submachine gun. All of them kept a steel pipe hung from a loop in their belt. These varied in length, colour and style of handle. Donald was a little careless in his observations and incited a belligerent glare in return. He immediately looked down and kept his burger out of sight for several minutes until the tough had drawn his satisfaction.

  Wightman called their attention towards the ramp that went down to the public drain. A group of young men had stopped at the top of the ramp. They wore sleeveless sheepskin jackets and brown canvas pants. Their footwear was Roman sandals, cross-laced up the calves. Donald watched as more young men drifted up and joined them. They appeared tentative and curious. Now a larger group of women in long, muddy dresses rose into view bringing with them some children. Donald thought they looked exactly like natives.

  “That’s surplus flow,” Farkas said. “There’s a discharge tank about a quarter of a mile up the drain. I’ve not seen them come up here to the plaza before.”

  The surplus attracted the odd glance from the glory troops and ultramarines, no more. This indifference must have emboldened the surplus. The young men advanced. There were perhaps thirty of them coming on with rising confidence and obviously drawn by delicious whiffs of roast meat, for them no doubt a rare treat, or perhaps only a dream. Donald watched a confabulation amongst four or five who were obviously bolder and stronger than the rest. They squared their shoulders and strode forward. When the circles of ultramarines and glory troops realised there was surplus flowing through them, all bantering ceased. Dead silence stiffened the air.

  It was possible Donald attracted attention because he was the only man there dressed in brown canvas overalls rather than a uniform. Or perhaps it was his face, with its refined bearing cultivated from life in a society that required poise and disarming quips. One of the surplus men strode forward and confronted Donald. He was the shorter and younger, with dark curly hair and a face scarred by small pox. One eye was badly aligned, with a milky pupil. That eye looked wide over Donald’s right shoulder while the good eye scowled directly at him.

  “You give us eat. Give us to eat,” he said.

  “We don’t have any fodder,” Farkas said. “You’d better get—”

  An explosion from the left blew Donald away into a shocked crouch, his senses catching up to grasp the report had been a pistol shot and the surplus man seeking food had collapsed on the gravel and a stream of blood was pouring through his curly hair. A couple of ultramarines erupted in yells of rage, tore their submachine guns over the heads and started firing. Brass cartridges spat up sparkling in the sunshine. The pack of surplus burst apart, sprinting in panic from the hail of bullets. Some fell screaming, others lurched but kept running. They fled into the bushes around Blue Bell Plaza. Within seconds, the gravel area was clear of any upright surplus. Those left groaning or tryin
g to drag themselves away got despatched by whichever ultramarine happened to be nearby. Each got a bullet in the back of the head, with instant result.

  Farkas gathered Wightman, the turret gunner and Donald back towards the armoured car.

  “Let’s get moving. There’s no telling what will happen next—it won’t be pretty, that I can tell you.”

  The gunner got the engine started. Wightman reversed to turn. When they pulled forward, Donald was revolted to see their wheels had crushed two surplus cadavers into the gravel. Some of the ultramarines were laughing about it. A couple of hogs dashed from the bushes and fought over the bodies, tearing and squealing in a tug-of-war. The ultramarines cheered and laughed, and laughed more when the chef ran out, shot the bigger hog with a pistol and dragged it back to be cooked. Table-sized shadows flitted across the scene as a couple of lammergeiers glided low and circled looking for a perch.

  “Jesus Christ,” Donald said. “Those ultramarines are absolute barbarians—but they know how to shoot.”

  “Shut your hatches,” Farkas said.

  When they descended the ramp back down to the Old Kent Drain, they found it now scattered with groups of surplus generally drifting east, although without much conviction. Farkas offered Donald use of the commander’s periscope, which projected through the roof behind Wightman’s seat. Donald turned it to the left—the south side of the Old Kent Drain—as directed by Farkas. The armoured car drove past a muddy path jostling with people flowing out from the Lands of Dasti-Jones and spreading onto the public drain. It was easy to see why it was called “surplus flow”. It really did flow like a viscous liquid.

  “That’s a discharge of surplus,” Farkas said. “It’s a bit early in the season for big discharges. They’re probably just trimming their system, maybe pumping out five hundred to balance a local area.”