Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 1

by Malcolm J Wardlaw

  They rested against a tree, panting.

  “Those were Krossington marines. They broke into the house—so they certainly weren’t there to say ‘hello’. For some reason TK wants me gone.”

  “He must have found out about that account-captain you shot.”

  “I doubt it. More likely it’s because of my wife’s divorcing me, or else Lawrence’s escape. Or both. He’s decided we’re more bloody trouble than we’re worth.”

  The implications were far too daunting to dwell on now. The imperative of now was to get outside the Grande Enceinte before TK put a watch on Ladbroke fort.

  “We’ve got to keep moving,” he said.

  “We’ll be safe in Brent Cross.”

  “We have to get there first, can you keep running?”

  “We’ll stand out a mile if we run, and we’ll keep hitting folk.”

  This was true. They put on their boots and continued at a brisk walk. They could hear occasional boot steps and whispers around them. In the darkness, it was hard to discern whether there were many other people out here or few. Most strangely, there were no vehicles. Normally glory vehicles roared up and down this major artery all day and all night. A wider silence hung over the Central Enclave. There were no background booms of the Naclaski batteries.

  The wide road veered a little to present a new long straight. In the distance was a bubble of light, rather like frontier gates, except that there were no frontier gates on this stretch of Euston Road. Presently they could hear a Stirling generator pulsing and smell wood smoke from its stack. The lights stood on the junction of Euston Road with Ladbroke Grove. Donald could see nothing resembling an impromptu checkpoint. The flag of the National Party hung between a couple of poles beaten into the gravel, forming a backdrop to a lighted area jostling with people creating a great deal of excited chatter. None of them were glory troops and there certainly were no sovereign marines.

  A ring of young men and women around the flag were dishing out handfuls of bulletins to everyone who passed. Donald drifted in the flow and took a bulletin, pausing in the light to read it. It had been issued by the National Party using top-class paper and print. Donald burst out in an exclamation and shook his head.

  “Team Lieutenant Farkas is the new president of the National Party,” he said. “Do you know Farkas?”

  “Of course. He was one of the big movers behind the Atrocity Commission. It’s payback for him, seeing as he never killed surplus and it killed his career. There’s lots of glory officers like him in the Party now… It says there’s an arrest list.”

  Sarah-Kelly turned the bulletin over. Together, they scanned the photographs of named glory criminals. Donald did not breathe for half a minute. He was pretty sure Sarah-Kelly held her breath too. Lawrence was not named. However, Donald did spot a familiar face; Team Lieutenant Richard Haighman, the officer with the rugby-mashed face who had been his jailer on the Lands of Dasti-Jones. It was Haighman who had warned Donald yesterday that an atrocity was about to happen in Bloomsbury. According to the bulletin, Haighman’s crimes included being in the chain of command that had ordered the shelling of Brent Cross, in addition to “a sustained record of criminal actions from the beginning of his career”.

  “How seriously should we take these charges?” he asked. He thought his voice quivered.

  “Very seriously. Banner and Farkas were determined that only if the evidence was—to use their word—irrefragable, would an officer be listed for arrest. I saw the files of some of the ones on the short list. They were bloody guilty bastards.” She rapped the sheet with her forefinger. “This lot are guilty and they deserve to hang.”

  Sarah-Kelly could not have missed Haighman’s picture. She had not recognised him.

  “It doesn’t say how many of them have been captured.”

  “I wonder how they’ll hang after all the stuff they’ve done.”

  Donald folded the bulletin and put it inside his leather raincoat. He glanced back up Euston Road. It was a pointless gesture, as the darkness could have hidden a company of Krossington marines.

  “Let’s keep going,” he said.

  *

  TK and Wingfield passed the stiff minutes trying to absorb themselves reading reports or drafting memos. From beyond the blackout shutters came occasional sounds of the enormous night of confusion: distant shots, some yelling, the grumbling of a truck on Park Lane. When booted feet thumped up the steps beyond the door, both men put down their pencils. Wingfield bade the arrival enter. It was the marine lieutenant who had led the small party to capture Donald.

  “Is he well, lieutenant?” TK asked.

  “He wasn’t there, Your Decency. The house was shuttered up and empty. No servants, no owners. We had to break in to check, being careful to make it look like casual looting.”

  “Anything at all to suggest where they went?”

  “Nothing, Your Decency. No notes or forwarding information.”

  “Thank you,” TK said, in a dull tone. The lieutenant saluted and left. After a few moments’ thought, TK spoke over his shoulder to Wingfield.

  “We’ll have to stay in London. I’ve a nasty feeling Nightminster was right that Donald is going to pop up as a National Party zealot. If so, we’ll have to get an assassination organised in short order—and when I say short, I mean ‘action that day’. The two of us are fucked unless we stamp on that kind of thing in a very public way.”

  “Jolly good!”

  “We’ll use the Marylebone Suite as our new home,” TK said. “We’ll be safe enough there for the time being, even if this poor old house gets taken.”

  “I’ll order the convoy on its way,” Wingfield said. He was delighted to be staying in the Central Enclave in defiance of the nationalists. The Marylebone Suite would make an excellent local base for spying. Besides, it was beneath contempt to run from a pack of jabbering militants.

  *

  Donald and Sarah-Kelly found Ladbroke fort occupied once again with glory troopers, although not from one glory trust. They were from all three big names: the olive green of General Wardian, the field green of Universal Parrier and the grey-green of Guards to the People. One feature of their dress code united them; all wore an armband, a vivid tricolour of deep blue, sulphur yellow and forest green. They also wore the National Party badge. Donald was at first reassured to find the gate in nationalist hands, since it ensured Krossington marines would not be welcome here and it seemed unlikely TK could have organised spies so quickly.

  A couple of men in black leather raincoats approached and asked Donald and Sarah-Kelly to follow them over to a line of little tables set against the wall on the public side of the counter. Donald’s heart hammered, his eyes flicked about for escape routes. This was not a situation one could shoot a way out of. There were glory troops at the entrance and exit nursing submachine guns. He would just have to blag this one out. The two men were hard-faced types, without four o’clock shadows and still fresh at half past one in the morning. The shorter one was a little overweight, with a babyface, the taller one older, with pronounced cheekbones. He was so thin his nose had sunken sides—doubtless an ascetic who starved himself to feel worthy.

  “Good evening,” said this older, ascetic one, “Let’s have some ID.”

  “I’m a Party member,” said Sarah-Kelly, laying down her National Party card with her North Kensington basin passport and Central Enclave visa. Donald set down his real Central Enclave passport and firearms carry permit, acutely aware the false messenger’s passport issued to him by Wingfield weeks ago still nestled inside his jacket. He was sunk if they found that.

  However, Mr Ascetic was taking the greater interest in Sarah-Kelly’s documentation.

  “Just a minute,” he said. His chair rumbled as he stood and strode away behind the counter, taking her Party member’s card with him. He dropped from view whilst leaning to consult something on a desk and came back within thirty seconds. “I thought I recognised the n
ame. You are listed as missing from the Bloomsbury Massacre. Why have you not reported in?”

  “I wasn’t aware I was meant to.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Ah, perhaps I might explain something,” Donald said, with all the blandness he could muster, “Miss Newman—”

  “That address is no longer acceptable. We now use ‘madam’.”

  “Madam Newman was deeply traumatised by the event and took shelter in my household. It was only with great difficulty I was able to persuade her to travel tonight to assure her family that she is safe.”

  “And you are—” Once again the chair rumbled and once again Mr Ascetic departed, this time with Donald’s passport. Again his head dipped from view in consulting some documents. Donald could see the back of his head shaking as if he were in discussion with someone. When he returned, his expression was deeply serious.

  “You’re on the Sought List.”

  “What does that mean, please?”

  “You are sought by the Provisional Cabinet.”

  “I am?” Donald was genuinely amazed. “Why?”

  “I’ve no idea.” Mr Ascetic pulled a humourless smile. “We don’t need to know.”

  “Think positive, you’ll be taken up to headquarters in a car,” Mr Babyface said. His eyes lingered on Sarah-Kelly’s face and Donald’s. “Are you two shagging, or what?”

  Donald gave Sarah-Kelly’s ankle a sharp kick.

  “You don’t need to know,” he said, standing up and reaching to get his documents back.

  “No. We’ll keep these,” Mr Ascetic said, gathering up their IDs and snapping a rubber band around them. “Wait in that room until you’re called.”

  Donald and Sarah-Kelly moved into a squalid room of chipped benches. Blisters of damp had burst and left debris on the floor. The air smelled of toilets. They sat as far from other people as they could.

  “Who did those two pricks think they were?” Sarah-Kelly huffed.

  “Unfortunately, it’s beginning already.”

  “What’s beginning?”

  “The mobilisation of sadism. It’s all there in the history books.” Donald spotted the entrance to the toilets. “Wait for me.” He advanced into a rising stench, found a free cubicle and went in. By a combination of biting, bending and tearing he broke up the fake messenger’s passport into bits, which he dropped into the unspeakable pit beneath the cistern.

  “What’s the mobilisation of sadism?” Sarah-Kelly asked him on his return.

  “Keep your voice down. Let me explain something. All power is based on violence and the threat of violence. No exceptions. The sovereigns mobilise the sadism of the glory troopers—you have exposed that through the Atrocity Commission. Before the sovereigns, it was the nation states with their nuclear weapons and oligarchs with their private armies. Before the nation states, it was feudal barons and their henchmen. The National Party will not be any different. All you and I can hope is that we are not the surplus of tomorrow.”

  “I’m a well-known Party member, they’re hardly likely to turf us on the drains.”

  “The Party will reign by rhetoric above the belt and neck-shooting below the belt. You’ll believe it when you see it. It’s much better to be prepared.”

  “Where do you get these ideas from?”

  “History goes around and around, Skay. I’ve a nasty feeling it’s going to be 1917 St Petersburg again.”

  “That was a totally different situation—there are no czars any more, Donald. Banner was not Lenin and Farkas certainly isn’t Stalin.”

  “Better hush up, they’re coming back.”

  Mr Ascetic strode over to them and struck a nonchalant pose, tapping their IDs against his thigh.

  “The car is here. Follow me.”

  Chapter 19

  In Donald’s eyes, the ‘car’ looked more like a fish. Its sleek, sheet-metal bodywork enclosed everything, including the wheels and all but the glass of the headlights. The windscreen swept back at an absurd angle like a dog’s head instead of being upright, and it had no means of opening. The rear end sloped down like the back of a cockroach. There was no luggage trunk. There was no chimney stack.

  “Meet the future from the past,” Mr Ascetic said. “A genuine Public Era relic, donated for party use by one of the factory owners. Pure sheet steel beauty. Just listen to that engine.”

  No mechanical clatter accompanied the rhythmic panting of the exhausts, which Donald now identified as neat pipes low down at the rear in lieu of a prominent stack at the front. He recognised the sweet, almost narcotic odour as petrol. So this was how the Fatted Masses travelled... Mr Babyface opened the door to the rear cabin. Donald hesitated; he would have to stoop nearly double to get down into a space only a few inches above the ground.

  “Get in there, sought person,” Mr Babyface said. Donald ducked and swivelled around into an extremely comfortable leather seat. It accepted him with a long hiss. The cabin smelled of beeswax. A large notice stuck to the glass partition forbade smoking by order of the National Party Health Committee on pain of one black mark in the offender’s party record. Sarah-Kelly sank beside him with another hiss, the door slammed shut. The closeness of the gravel disturbed Donald. This felt more like being in a rowing boat.

  Mr Ascetic passed over the bundle of their documents to the driver and said:

  “Straight to headquarters—you’ve got ten minutes.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The driver wound his window up. Something clunked. A muted roar swelled at the front. The seat shoved into Donald’s kidneys and the gravel blurred as the car dived into a funnel of light as if falling down a brick-lined shaft. The gates of North Kensington basin flashed behind. Donald’s stomach lifted as the car cleared Duddon Bridge, siren howling. Figures on the turnpike ahead dashed for their lives out of the path of the careening thunderbolt with its blinding eyes. Only at the customs barrier of Brent Cross did the machine slow, and only then because the ground was badly rutted on the market square.

  “I feel sick,” Sarah-Kelly said.

  The lurching of the old car did not assist Donald’s digestion either. The madcap trip had taken just over five minutes to cover four and a half miles. The National Party certainly had ambitions to compress time—even an express charabanc had taken an hour. He had been counting on that time to compose the story he would tell his interrogators, time that velocity from the Public Era had just snatched away. The driver stopped in the splay of light from a two-storey building on the periphery of the market place. He ran out and grabbed a telephone from a kiosk by the steps of the building.

  “This is the new Party headquarters,” Sarah-Kelly said. “The place is mobbed. The Party must have abandoned sleep.”

  “I doubt many are sleeping soundly this night,” Donald said.

  The driver was sweating but obviously relieved when he returned from his phone call. He led them inside and left their documents at the Reception desk, departing back to the night without a word. For some time they might as well have been invisible. Party officials and former glory officers brushed by, leaped up and down the stairs, ran in from the night and ran back out gripping leather packs of officialdom. They all shared the same grim preoccupations and exhausted eyes. Donald watched, thinking about the freedom of the night outside and his unchanging condition of being restrained by an invisible leash. Why the hell could he never get away from that?

  “Shall I go for a wander?” Sarah-Kelly asked. “I’m bound to know someone here.” She had barely said that when she called out: “Andrew! Over here!”

  “Skay! Oh it’s fantastic to see you.” A man in his forties with a pronounced limp and beaming teeth closed in and bear-hugged Sarah-Kelly off her feet. “We were so afraid those glory barbarians had got you.”

  “This is Andrew Kalchelik, he worked with me on the Atrocity Commission,” Sarah-Kelly said. Donald smiled and shook his hand. “This is Donald Aldingford. He’s… a frien
d of mine from town. He’s helped me a lot.”

  “Skay’s friend is my friend. So pleased to meet you.” Donald sensed a pair of cold, hooded eyes lingering on him longer than a casual summing-up. Instinctively he disliked the man. This was a false creature; a dissimulator of bureaucracy.

  “We’ve been hanging around here for about twenty minutes,” Donald said. “I was told I’m on the Sought List, which I assume means that someone here is seeking me. Maybe I should see President Farkas? At least I know him.”

  This news had a strange effect on Kalchelik. He became rubber-legged, swaying about with an inane grin on his face.

  “I should think the president is not the least of the people who will want to see you.” Addressing Sarah-Kelly, he patted a leather file under his arm and said: “We’ve caught seven from the first Arrest List. They’re in the Basement at Euston—it’s amazing to just pick a handpiece up and talk to people five miles away.”

  “Oh my God! It’s actually happening. I never believed this day would come.”

  “I was on my way up to the president to tell him, so—” The cold, hooded eyes lifted to Donald’s face. “By all means come with me.”

  “Our ID papers are behind that desk, there—will they be safe?” Donald asked.

  “I’ll take them up. Cathy—could you toss me that bundle?”

  The forbidding, middle-aged woman fielding the Reception desk held out the documents at a disdainful droop without even looking. Kalchelik took them and nodded Sarah-Kelly and Donald to follow him up the stairs. Strange business, Donald thought, wondering how long they would have hung about had Kalchelik not turned up. What worried him was Sarah-Kelly’s friendliness towards such an obvious eel. She seemed to have no discrimination when it came to Party members.