The Peshawar Lancers

by S. M. Stirling

  “What news?” he asked, smiling like a shark behind the mask of his face. Useful idiot. That is a phrase that will bring much laughter, in the Okhrana. He put on an attentive expression as the Kapenaar traitor spoke:

  “The Clive has already turned back—multiple engine failures,” he said. “We’ll have to use the fallback with the Raffles; probably someone did a just-in-case replacement of the crankshaft lubricant at the very last moment, after our load went through. That was always a risk. Everyone does additional preventive maintenance before an important mission.”

  “Which is why we have the other. Any problems aboard this ship?”

  “Yes,” Pienaar said. “Last-minute change in personnel. My man who was to hold down the wireless transmitter was injured in a fall, and they put a damned yellow coolie from British Siam in his place.”

  Ignatieff scooped up a knife from among the equipment; it was one of his favorites, double-edged and very slightly curved.

  “That,” he said, visualizing the layout of the airship, “is not a problem.”

  The wireless telegraph was only ten feet up this very corridor, after all.

  The rear observation bubble was a low, domed oval, with seats all around its circumference and a hatch that could be opened to allow riggers and repair crews access to the outer hull. For a moment the huge view of ocean and sky caught Athelstane King. There was a high overcast like milk, and not many stars, leaving the Garuda suspended in a world of darkness fringed by pearly light and sea glitter. Then he forced his attention to the task at hand. The forward bubble a hundred feet forward was lit, and he could just see a man there despite the curve of the hull. Off to their right the shape of another airship slid, perhaps half a mile distant and five hundred feet higher. The silvery hull was a hint, a gleam, a thing that the brain sketched from memory more than the eyes.

  “Come,” he said.

  The others came up the ladder behind him, and Warburton let the rubber-padded hatch down again silently. “We don’t know how long until it begins,” he said. “If they’re not just going to blow this up.”

  “No,” Yasmini said. “My dream was definite. Not this—”

  “Wait,” King said.

  A signal lamp was flashing from the other airship . . . and where was the third one, anyway? The lamp was in clear Morse: He read it automatically, as did Yasmini and the other men save Ibrahim:

  “Clive . . . will . . . continue . . . to . . . conform . . . to . . . your . . . movements. Suggest . . . you . . . check . . . compass . . . again . . . and . . . attempt . . . star . . . sighting.”

  The answer from the Garuda was hidden. There was a long moment’s pause, and then the Clive replied: “Acknowledge . . . King-Emperor’s . . . direct . . . order . . . will . . . not . . . repeat . . . will . . . not . . . question . . . it . . . again.”

  “I think it’s already started,” King said. “Daffadar, get to the Gurkhas. You have the letter and the seal? Good. Yasmini, Sir Manfred—best you get started too.” He looked at his watch. “Nearly twenty hours . . . sixty miles an hour . . . we could be a long way off our course.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Henri de Vascogne woke at the light touch on his shoulder, and his hand clamped on the hilt of the blade beneath his pillow. The dark figure skipped backward as the knife came free, and raised its hands soothingly. Henri shook his head once, then reached to turn on the light. It failed with a pop and internal spark—reliability as well as expense kept electric light confined mostly to specialty uses such as aircraft and warships, so far.

  “It’s me, Warburton,” a very quiet voice said.

  “Name of a dog!” he replied, equally sotto voce. “What news?”

  “This craft is off course—far off course. And whoever’s in charge on the bridge is trying to keep it that way. Are you armed?”

  “Knife, and sword. Charles is next door—he has a pistol. So also with Lord Pratap next to him, and his father in the Imperial suite at the head of the corridor.”

  “Get them. Quickly, man. The airship may already be under enemy control.”

  He grunted at that, and dressed hurriedly, pulling on the soft-soled boots that were compulsory for wear aboard the Garuda. Charles’s reaction was considerably slower than his, but then, he had less experience. Enough, though; the pistol was in the bedside stand, not locked away.

  “Guard detachment?” he said, sitting up and looking at their faces. His light, Henri noted, worked.

  “It’s being handled,” Warburton said. “We’d best get to your father, and quickly.”

  The King-Emperor’s son had no problem getting past the two Gurkhas outside his father’s door. It was fortunate that he spoke their language as well, for they could tell him that his father and Lord Pratap had been called to the bridge. The three men looked at each other, appalled, in the light that came through the door and the arched curve of windows around the front of the Imperial Suite. Charles reacted quickly, then: He took the rifles from the two guards, handed them to Henri and Warburton, and sent the two jawans running for their comrades at the rear of the aircraft.

  “Quickly, but quiet,” Warburton said, working the bolt to make sure that he had a round chambered. “I’ll lead the way; then you, de Vascogne, then the prince.”

  Henri did likewise; the thought of a firefight on a flying bomb set his teeth on edge, but the alternative . . . the alternative was likely to be worse. The steep narrow staircase down to the flight deck was shadowed in the early morning hours, only a few lonely bulbs glowing along the corridor below—officers’ quarters aft, specialists and equipment forward.

  It was the tacky sensation under his feet that made him realize what he was walking in; that, and a whiff of an all-too-familiar smell. He hissed for quiet, and tried the door of the wireless compartment. It gave with a soft heavy resistance, and then blocked half-open. Through the slit into the narrow cubby—the half ton of equipment took up most of the space—he could see the body of the operator, and the thick brown-red pools on the floor.

  “Dead,” he whispered to the other two men. “At least an hour ago. Equipment destroyed.”

  They stole forward toward the bridge; no rating stood beside it, another sign of things awry. The Metford was heavy in his hand as he used it to push the hatchway open a crack. That let through voices. The King-Emperor’s was unmistakable:

  “And for the last time, Captain Pienaar, will you please tell me precisely what it was you wished me to observe? Sleep is more necessary at my time of life, and harder to achieve.”

  “What I want you to observe is—”

  The night sky lit, as if the sun had come up to the south. Seconds later, a fist as large as God’s struck the Garuda.

  “What are you taking me to the rear of the ship for, if whatever’s happening is happening up front?” Sita complained sleepily.

  The kunwari was not a quick riser. For that, Cassandra was grimly thankful. She and Yasmini had barely met, but they were moving in perfect unison as they bundled the Imperial princess rearward. It wasn’t until they reached the main observation deck that Sita finally mustered the consciousness to dig in her heels and force them to stop.

  “What’s going on?”

  “This is Yasmini, didn’t you notice?” Cassandra said. “My brother and Sir Manfred are on board. We’re supposed to get you to the safest place—”

  Boots and bare feet pounded on the polished wooden tiles. A wave of twenty or so Gurkhas went by, many of them half-naked, a few completely so except for cotton loincloths, but all carrying their rifles and kukris. Narayan Singh ran at their head, still waving a letter with the King-Emperor’s signature at a pink young Australian officer; two of the Gurkhas looked as if they had been told to guard him while official explanations were sought, but at least they were all moving in the right direction.

  Sita thought so, too; she made a dash after them. Cassandra and Yasmini grabbed her arms. “You stupid bint, what could you do that they can’t?” Cassand
ra yelled into her ear. “Get in the way? Get killed ?”

  The princess sagged into their arms, then broke free as their grip relaxed. “I have to—” she said, darting backward toward the railing to circle around them.

  For a moment Cassandra couldn’t make out what the flare of yellow light was. She realized it was an exploding airship just as the blast wave hit; a blue wash of hydrogen flame, and then the real punch, as vaporized kerosene from the fuel tanks mixed with air and flashed off all at once. The Garuda pitched and rolled like a balloon, rotating on her axis and then swinging down again. Cassandra felt herself weightless, and mountaineer’s reflex made her flail for a hold, any hold. The railing that divided the observation deck from the slanting windows struck her across the back of the thighs, and she toppled backward onto the floor as the airship righted itself.

  Glass stabbed at her back. Window blown in, she thought; but that was not the reason she was slow hauling herself to her feet.

  “Oh, Gods, two hundred men,” she whispered to herself, clinging to the rail and watching as the flaming debris made meteors through the night. The crew, and the whole company of the Foot Guards, given the nightmare death that had haunted her every time she walked up the boarding ramp of an aircraft. Hatred clenched her fingers on the rail, but only half was for the murderers. The other half was for the malignant fate that had stranded her on this flying bomb.

  Dying in an airship crash. How ironic. After years of telling myself how safe it was.

  Her mind was functioning. Her body refused, threatening to spew hot bile into the night as she realized that there was nothing between her and the rushing darkened ocean below but air. The sight drew her, despite Yasmini pulling at her and shouting; drew her as the cobra draws the mice, hypnotic.

  Not even the sight of Sita’s fingers, cutting themselves as they gripped the metal edging of the vanished window below her, could break the spell. The metal bent, and the body of the kunwari twisted as well, in the rushing passage of the Garuda’s speed. She couldn’t hold for more than a few seconds, and then it would be a long fall to the water.

  The only reality was the solid teakwood under her fingers as she stood frozen.

  “So many men,” Athelstane King whispered to himself as he watched the death of the Clive, a hand clamping him to the inside of the observation bubble as the Garuda wallowed across the sky.

  He could see bits of debris go by, flung by the power of the explosion; and in the distance a man jumping from the burning mass of the stricken airship, but he was only visible because his parachute was on fire. As the hull fabric curved away in great fluttering patches you could see the gossamer fragility that underlay an airship’s bulk; it broke into half a dozen pieces before it struck the sea below.

  Then his horror was gone, leaving only a huge and cleansing anger. He turned to Ibrahim Khan.

  “I must go forward, there,” he said, nodding to the second observation bubble, the one whose ladder led down through the ship to the bridge. “Follow if you dare.”

  There was no time for anything but the rushing wind, and the feel of the narrow metal track across the arch of the Garuda’s spine. Wisps of cloud went by through the air around him, as he crouched and worked his way forward. There were narrow metal loops to either side of the path; probably for crews to clip safety lines to, when they were working on rips to the fabric. Now the gleam of their polished surfaces helped to guide him forward.

  “I have the King-Emperor hostage! Nobody move, or he dies!”

  Henri de Vascogne recognized the shout; it was the voice of Pienaar, captain of the Garuda. Curses followed, and a brief sound of struggle.

  He used that to paralyze any loyal men still on the bridge, Henri thought. His conspirators would be ready to strike.

  The Frenchman looked forward through the swinging hatchway. The King-Emperor and his companion had been thrown to the deck by the force of the explosion. They came slowly to their feet, looking at the pistols in the hands of men in the Empire’s uniform. Henri did a quick check of his own; less than a third of the bridge crew present, and a third of those were gagged and bound, one or two dead. All the rest—the mutineers—were armed, though; the captain had a store of pistols under his control. Some of them looked shaky, and he thought he could smell the rank sweat of fear. Pienaar looked exalted, not frightened. His chin was up, and the Frenchman recognized the look in those staring blue eyes.

  He’d seen it on wahabi fanatics, making a death charge in the face of certain doom, after they slit the throats of their own women in the face of defeat. That was a man with very little left to lose.

  Still . . . His eyes met Warburton’s, and they nodded together.

  “No, you don’t,” the Political agent said loudly.

  The muzzles of their rifles swung the hatchway open as Pienaar started violently. John II and Lord Pratap, with the pragmatism of veterans, went down again to give the men behind them a clear field of fire. There were five potential targets, men with guns—but both muzzles pointed unerringly at the center of mass of Pienaar’s body.

  The Kapenaar looked up at them. “I expected that,” he said slowly, pulling his left hand out of his pocket.

  With the one that held the service pistol he pulled open his loose officer’s jacket. The blasting explosive strapped to his body was unmistakable, and so was the deadman switch that he held in his left hand, the cord running to the first of the cloth-wrapped bundles that were strapped around his waist.

  “Yes, I do have him hostage,” he went on, with a smile. “There’s thirty pounds of this guncotton stuff; that’s more than two shells from a field-gun carry. You can’t save your kaffir-loving Emperor with those toys. Put them down.”

  Henri thought furiously, not letting the rifle waver from its snug fit against his shoulder. How did you threaten someone who didn’t care whether he lived or died?

  “No,” John II said. “You don’t have anything of the sort.”

  “No,” Sir Manfred Warburton said. “That’s a bomb, you swine, but it isn’t a magical spell. If you wanted to kill yourself, you would have already—the way you murdered two hundred men in the same uniform you’re wearing.”

  Pienaar shrugged. “I want to live to see an independent Cape,” he said. “One without your coolie Parliament—but I have brothers, a Brotherhood, to see to it. Once the war with Nippon and the Caliph starts—”

  “You’re mad!”

  “No. The evidence has been most carefully planted. We have . . . allies. Then the Brotherhood will seize power in Cape Town, and we’ll—” He stopped in mid-rant. “You wouldn’t be interested.”

  “No,” the monarch said. He was crouching, but nobody watching his face could mistake it for submission. “Nor surprised.”

  Henri cocked an ear; the sound of boots came through from the deck above. Shortly thereafter the boards started to creak and splinter under rifle butts and the broad chopping knives—kukris had been the Nepalese peasants’ all-purpose tool, before they became famous as a weapon. Several of the mutineers in the control cabin looked up in alarm.

  “Stop them!” Pienaar said sharply, raising the hand that bore the switch. “Stop your tame mountain monkeys now, or we all die!”

  “He means that,” Henri murmured aside to Warburton, and then looked back over his shoulder.

  Charles’s face twisted with savage anger, but he called out sharply in Nepali. The sound ceased, and a tense silence fell.

  “Stalemate,” Warburton said.

  “I don’t think so,” Pienaar said. “I know where we’re going. Haven’t you looked down?”

  Henri did, for a brief second. The clouds had lifted a little, enough for moonlight to show a white line ahead. Surf, he thought. Surf breaking on a shore.

  “The Caliph’s part of Baluchistan,” Pienaar said, and laughed; it was a sound a drunken man might have made, and he realized it, falling silent for an instant and wiping his hand across his mouth. “Get the prince in here, and I promise the
rest of you can live.”

  “You promise?” Warburton said, lip curling slightly. “On what? On your word of honor? As an officer and a gentleman, perhaps?”

  Pienaar’s florid face went white. Wordlessly, he raised the pistol in his right hand and shot. The sharp crack covered the King-Emperor’s cut-off cry of pain, as the bullet smashed into his ankle. Henri sensed Charles’s forward rush toward his father, and spared just enough attention to push his rifle butt backward six inches, into the young man’s stomach right under the short ribs. That stopped the movement, and he returned the weapon to his point of aim with smooth economy.

  Pratap whipped the sword belt off from over his sash and looped it over the leg just above the wound, drawing it tight. The motion that would have put his body between the ruler’s and the gun was checked with a gesture that set him back on his heels. The wrinkled brown hawk’s face of the Rajput lord was no less calm than that of the man he’d served for nearly forty years; they both watched Pienaar with the gaze of birds of prey.

  “Get the prince in here, or it’ll be his other ankle next. Then his kneecaps. Then his bliddy balls!”

  Pienaar’s accent had become thicker, but there was no trembling in the hand that held the revolver. The wounded man on the floor spoke then, loudly and clearly; Henri recognized the language but had no more than a few words of it—Nepali. He saw Warburton go pale, and nod once, slowly.

  “Shabash, Padishah,” he whispered, very softly.

  Henri thought he heard a soft sound from above, as of many men moving quietly to the rear; and the querulous voices of courtiers awoken. Behind them came a strangled grunt of pain. He turned his head slightly, enough to see the heir to the Lion Throne press trembling hands palm to palm, put them before his face and bow deeply; the salaam to a ruler, or to the pitaji who rules a family. His fingernails stood out white with effort, but the prince’s voice was calm and hard: