by David Bishop
Marius decided to hike across the island to see the Old Man of Hoy. There were no shortage of local hover-cabs offering to transport passengers there in a fraction of the time the journey would take on foot. But Marius wanted to savour one last trip in his own company, away from the crowds that had hampered his enjoyment of the train journey. Now he was regretting that decision, more than any other choice he had made in Britannia. Two people were stalking him along the windswept path across the island, slowly gaining on him. Every time he looked back, they were closer than before
He risked another glance over his shoulder and froze. I know those two, he realised. The woman had been one of the passengers, blending in with the others, not drawing attention to herself. But the man, that was another matter. He was dressed like one of the stewards in a kilt and white shirt, but his face was all too familiar... Marius gasped as recognition shook him to the core. It was the man he had seen floating in the Thames! The same man who had glared at him in the dining car, who had lingered at the corner of Marius's thoughts and nightmares since London. He's found me again and now he's hunting me!
Marius Wilderhaber started running.
"Bojemoi, he's running! The bastard must have realised we were following him!" Dante sprinted after Wilderhaber, Penelope close behind.
"It was inevitable," she shouted after Dante. "This path is so exposed, there's no way he could fail to see us tracking him."
The pair ran through a shallow pool of stagnant water. A cloud of tiny black insects rose from the surface, engulfing them. Dante felt a burning sensation beneath his kilt. He lifted the fabric and saw his groin was covered with minute creatures. "What are these things, Crest?"
Midges - a mosquito-like dipterous insect occurring in dancing swarms, especially near water. They are fond of feasting on human blood by piercing the skin with their mouths and sucking out the desired liquid. Each bite encourages the victim to scratch at the wound, creating irritation and swelling far greater in magnitude than size of the midge.
Dante slapped at his crotch, trying to shift the swarm. "Fuoco, it feels as though I'm being eaten alive!"
"Leave them!" Penelope yelled, dragging him after Wilderhaber. "The more you scratch, the more they itch!"
"Easy for you to say, you're not having your life blood sucked out of your testicles!"
Wilderhaber was breathless and exhausted when he reached the eastern tip of the island. He collapsed by the edge of the cliff, his breath rasping and a metallic taste in his mouth. Close by, the Old Man of Hoy rose from the incoming tide, perhaps ten metres between it and the main part of the island. Wilderhaber peered gingerly over the edge of the cliff, but couldn't see any climbers on the sandstone stack. No witnesses who might intervene, no sign of his employer arriving to extract him. He was on his own, not even a rock nearby with which to defend himself.
The two people that had chased him across the island appeared over the brow of the nearest hill, slowing as they realised there was nowhere left to run. This was it, the end of the line. "What do you want of me?" Wilderhaber asked between gasps for breath. "Money? Do you want money?" He reached in his pocket and pulled out an Imperial Express card. "Here, take it! I'll give you my account code - just, please, don't kill me!"
The woman drew one of her pistols and took aim at Wilderhaber. "Why did you do it?"
"Do what?" he protested. "I don't know what you're asking me!"
"Tell us about the target," the other hunter demanded, one hand rubbing urgently at his groin. "Who chose the target?"
"My employer," Wilderhaber said, shrugging helplessly. "They call me, send me to a different country each time. I only find out my target after I arrive."
The woman stepped closer until she was metres away. "Who's your employer? Who paid for this job?"
"The vice president."
"Of which country?" she snarled.
Wilderhaber frowned. "H-He's vice president of a company, not a country. He works for EuroCorp, the food conglomerate."
Now it was the woman who looked confused. "Why would EuroCorp want the king dead?"
"Sorry?"
The kilted man stopped scratching his crotch and pointed a fist at Wilderhaber. A silver sword extruded from his hand, its tip nearly touching the Swiss man's face. "Why would a food company try to assassinate King Henry? What would it gain from his death?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Wilderhaber protested. "I was sent here to buy the Britannia Food Corporation, along with its distribution network - that was my target. I secured the network but could only secure one third ownership of BFC."
The woman lowered her pistol, swearing quietly. "Nikolai, he's not the assassin."
"He must be!" her partner insisted. "I didn't chase him all this way for nothing!" The man jabbed his sword closer, the tip digging into Wilderhaber's neck, blood trickling from the wound. "Tell me the truth - otherwise I'll cut out your larynx and you'll never lie again!"
"I am telling you the truth!" the tourist insisted, close to tears. "I could never kill another living soul. I'm a businessman, nothing more - please, you must believe me!"
"Crest, can you analyse his heartbeat, detect whether or not he's lying?
Wilderhaber listened but heard no reply. To his amazement, the man in the kilt withdrew his sword and stepped away, cursing repeatedly.
"We came all this way for nothing," the woman sighed. "Now what, Dante? Your friends will be executed in a few hours and both of us are still wanted for a murder we didn't commit."
"Dante? Nikolai Dante?" Wilderhaber asked.
"You've heard of me?"
"Of course, you're the most wanted man in the Empire. Besides, your name has been all over the news for days. They said you tried to kill the king."
"No, I didn't!" Dante insisted angrily. "When will I find somebody who believes me?"
"I believe you," the woman replied, "for all the good it's doing us."
"I also believe you," Wilderhaber said, slowly rising from the ground.
"Why?" Dante asked.
"I heard about the assassination after my final meeting with BFC broke up on Tuesday. I was depressed, I went for a walk. I found myself on Westminster Bridge not long after dusk."
"I knew I'd seen you there," Dante said triumphantly.
"Let him talk," the woman replied. "What did you see, Marius?"
"Not much, to be honest. There was a mist rising from the river. As I got near the bridge I heard what sounded like a man crying out in pain, then a splash."
"The sniper's accomplice knocking me out, then probably both of them throwing me into the river," Dante said with a nod. "What next?"
"Two men were talking on the bridge. They had London accents, gruff voices. I couldn't see their faces, they were on the other side of the bridge."
"Could you hear what they said?" the woman asked. "Did either of them mention a name?"
Wilderhaber shook his head. "My employer called, wanting to know the outcome of my final meeting with BFC. When I told him what happened, he suggested I take a few days off, see the country if I wanted. I arranged to be collected from here later today. By the time I finished my call, the two men had gone."
"Another dead end," Dante said hopelessly. But his partner had other ideas.
"Nikolai, you told me a hover-car caught Marius in its headlights - that's how you were able to recognise him as the man on the bridge." She turned to Wilderhaber. "Did you notice the car, see its identity plate?"
He nodded uncertainly. "I did see a hover-vehicle, but nothing I could identify easily."
"What about a colour? Even that would be a start," Dante urged.
"A kind of brown," Wilderhaber ventured. "It looked old but well loved."
Dante stopped talking, his head tilting to one side. "The Crest says there's something coming, a hover-capable vehicle of some sort."
The Swiss man frowned. "It could be my employer's driver come to collect me, but they are not due for another hour at least." Th
e sound of hover-engines rose from beneath the cliff. Wilderhaber moved closer to the edge for a better look. "No, it isn't them. It looks like-"
"Marius - get down!" Dante suddenly shouted, flinging himself towards the tourist.
"An ambulance," Wilderhaber said. He felt two dull thuds in the centre of his chest, then his legs crumpled, pitching him over the edge of the cliff. He would have been terrified, but the Swiss businessman was dead before he hit the jagged rocks below.
"Diavolo!" Dante cursed, his fingers grasping at thin air where Marius had been standing. A hover-ambulance appeared from below the cliff, the same vehicle Dante and Penelope had decided against using at Peebles. Boyle was seated in the pilot's chair, a maniacal grin stretched across his bruised and battered face. The ambulance was side-on to the cliff so the bounty hunter could fire his pistol out of the window at them. He loosed off a fusillade of shots, each bullet smacking the ground ever closer to Dante's precarious position, driving the fugitive nearer the precipice. Boyle's voice boomed at them from the vehicle's public address system. "A piece of advice for the future: if you're going to leave someone to die, don't do it in the back of an ambulance."
"Who says you have a future?" Penelope shouted, opening fire with both her pistols. The rounds smacked into the side of the ambulance, but none penetrated the pilot's door.
Boyle flew his vehicle over the fugitives and came down behind them, cutting off their only escape route. "You should have killed me when you had the chance, like I should have killed you on that bridge. Now I'll make you pay for murdering Dobie."
Dante and Penelope dived to the ground, trying to take cover amidst the rocks and moss. Dante felt naked without a gun in his hands. Bio-blades were fine for close quarters combat, but no use against other threats. What he wouldn't give to have the Huntsman 5000 in his grasp now. "Penelope! Throw me your spare pistol!"
She was trying to shoot Boyle through his windscreen, but her rounds were bouncing off. "What genius put bulletproof glass in an ambulance?" she protested, tossing her other weapon towards Dante. He reached up to grab it from the air but another hail of bullets from Boyle forced him back. The gun floated past, hit the edge of the cliff and bounced over.
Butterfingers, the Crest observed.
Boyle fired again, one of his shots hitting Penelope in her right shoulder. She gave an agonised cry, dropping her pistol. Seeing an opportunity, the bounty hunter sent the ambulance scudding towards his two targets, only centimetres above the ground. Penelope waited until the vehicle was almost on top of her, then rolled out of the way. Dante had nowhere left to go, the ambulance bearing down on him with ever increasing speed. Rather than trying to get out of its way, he began walking towards the oncoming vehicle.
Dante, are you quite insane? Evasive action! Take evasive action!
"I am," he snarled, then spun on his heels and sprinted towards the edge of the cliff. The ambulance was racing towards him, only moments from a fatal collision. Dante launched himself towards the Old Man of Hoy.
"Nikolai, no!" Penelope screamed as the ambulance swept past her.
Dante flew through the air in a gentle arc, arms and legs still pumping, trying to keep his forward momentum going. It felt as if time was slowing around him, each second stretching into an hour. Ahead, the top of the sandstone stack was almost within reach. Dante stretched out for it, his fingers clawing the cold air. He felt a hot blast of exhaust as the ambulance flew low over his head. There was a tearing sound, metal screaming in protest as it fought an unequal battle with nature, but Dante did not have time to look up for the cause. His leap of faith was fast becoming a plunge of death.
His body hit with the side of the stack with a sickening thud, jagged outcrops of rock cutting through cloth and skin, slicing apart flesh and bone. His forward momentum gone, Dante could feel himself tipping over backwards, about to fall to the rocks below. Somehow he clung on to the side of the stack, despite the pain stabbing through every part of his body, despite having the breath punched from his lungs, despite the sounds of mechanical torment above.
Penelope picked herself up from the ground and walked to the edge of the cliff, grimly expecting to find Dante's body smeared across the rocks below next to Marius. What faced her instead defied both logic and belief. "Now that's something you don't see every day," she whispered.
Boyle's ambulance had collided with the Old Man of Hoy, knocking the top section of the stack off and into the sea. The space where the chunk of sandstone had stood for thousands of years was now occupied by the battered vehicle, as if the top of the stack were a natural landing pad. The ambulance had twisted sideways in the collision, Boyle's limp body impaled on the shattered remains of the windscreen. Most remarkable of all was the figure climbing the side of the stack. "You're still alive?" Penelope shouted. "You must be the luckiest bastard in the Empire!"
"Well, you're half right," Dante called over his shoulder. He tried to look at her and almost lost his grip. "Tell you what, let's save the rest of this conversation until I get to the top." Dante resumed climbing, ascending the stack with agonising slowness, hand over hand, a few centimetres at a time. Finally, he reached the top and collapsed, stretching out alongside the ambulance. "Penelope, what was it Boyle said before trying to kill us?"
"He was going to make you pay for murdering Dobie."
"Before that. He said something else before that."
"You should have killed him when you had the chance, like he should have killed you..." Her voice trailed off as she realised the significance of Boyle's words. "Like he should have killed you on that bridge! The men who attacked you on Westminster Bridge - it was Dobie and Boyle. One of them must have been the trigger man for the assassination attempt!"
Dante struggled into a sitting position, leaning back against the ambulance. "That means we've killed the real assassins and still have no proof of our innocence."
A low moan of pain drifted across from the stack. "Dante, you don't sound too good."
"That wasn't me," he replied. "It was Boyle, he's still alive!"
Ray Boyle opened his eyes to find Dante staring at him. The bounty hunter wanted to spit in the Russian bastard's face, but trying to breathe was taking all his energy. He concentrated on his hatred - that would keep him alive.
"You're dying," Dante said softly.
"Go... to hell," Boyle grimaced, the words making jagged, broken things inside him grind together. He screamed involuntarily and that made the pain worse. It was all he could do to keep from passing out. If I close my eyes and I'll never open them again, he thought.
"Probably," Dante agreed, "but you'll be there before me. Besides, I doubt that either of us is much of a praying man." He moved closer, close enough for Boyle to smell the desperation on Dante's breath. "Did you shoot the king, or was it Dobie?"
"Why... why should I tell you?"
"Why not?"
Boyle tried to spit a curse at him but couldn't find the strength.
"You're right, it doesn't matter now," Dante said. "But I need to know who hired you. Was it the princess? Did Marie-Anne pay you to kill her father so she could take the throne?"
The bounty hunter laughed, despite the torture it caused. "You... you couldn't be... further from the truth..."
"Then who?" Dante demanded.
Boyle thought about it. Yes, telling Dante would be fitting revenge against the client who hired them, who set him and Dobie on this doomed path. He swallowed back a mouthful of blood and gasped a last sentence. "Follow... follow the money..."
Dante laid a hand over Boyle's face, closing the dead man's eyes. Professional bounty hunters like Dobie and Boyle would have demanded a huge fee for assassinating the king of Britannia. Such a job would make them pariahs among the criminal underworld, unable to get work again. As insurance the twosome would have asked for half the fee upfront, in case anything went wrong. Follow the money. Yes, of course, Dante realised. Find the bounty hunters' bank accounts, then trace any large payments receiv
ed in the past month back to the person who commissioned the hit.
Dante got to his feet, grateful for the difference his enhanced healing abilities were already making. He staggered past Boyle's body to where Penelope could see him. "How long have we got until Spatchcock and Flintlock are due to be executed?"
"About an hour, I guess. Last I heard they were scheduled for the chop at six."
He looked at the battered, broken ambulance, resting a hand against its side. "Crest, will this thing fly again?" Wires of purple and silver extended from his fingernails, becoming one with the vehicle's metalwork and circuitry. The engines spluttered, then roared back into life.
You can take that as a yes. Can you fly one of these?
"No, but I'm sure you can teach me," Dante said, before shouting across to Penelope. "Get ready to leave! We're going back to London - now!"
FOURTEEN
"Thoughts may be over the hills, but death is just over the shoulder."
- Russian proverb
"Fought in the Year of the Tsar 2669, the Battle of Britannia devastated much of the nation's capital. The country was of limited strategic importance, but the Romanovs felt obliged to defend their most vocal supporter in the fight against the Tsar. The fact that Captain Nikolai Dante and his Rudinshtein Irregulars were sent in first proved how little firepower the noble house was willing to commit to such a fight. Dante and his troops prevailed over the Tsar's Raven Corps, leaving almost as quickly as they had arrived. Britannia spent the next four years rebuilding London, particularly the area around Trafalgar Square. That same area was to suffer again when Dante returned in 2673. Nelson's Column was toppled for a second time shortly after the attempted assassination of King Henry McKray. Four days later Dante returned to the square once more in even more dramatic circumstances."