Pax Britannia: Unnatural History

by Jonathan Green

  The gunfire stopped, rattling into echoing silence. Hearing the clank-clank-clank of pistoning legs and the ringing of metal heels on concrete, Ulysses risked a glance.

  The automata-drudges employed by the Darwinian Dawn were running and leaping across the hangar towards the fuel dump behind which Ulysses and Simeon were sheltering. Ulysses counted a dozen, maybe more.

  He fired off two more shots, despite knowing that they would make little impact against the droids' armoured chest plates. Perhaps if he had been armed with one of the guards' sub-machine pistols he might have been able to defend himself more effectively.

  Something spun over his head and crashed into one of the bounding robots with a resounding clang. A mechanical man was torn off as a heavy engine part collided with it. There was the whickering of more spare parts scything through the air followed by clattering crashes and rattling collisions as Simeon hurled more of his improvised arsenal at the advancing robots. However, although his efforts were making a small difference, they weren't going to be enough to save the two of them for much longer.

  Ulysses tugged his communicator from his pocket. "Nimrod!" he shouted into the comm. "It's time for Plan B!"

  His voice was drowned out by the roar of the zeppelin's engines and the rich, gagging stink of exhaust fumes washed over them.

  With a loud grinding of gears and the clanking of chains, the panels of the roof above them pulled back, exposing the laden airship to the polluted London skies.

  The engines whirring at take-off velocity, the zeppelin, with its deadly payload, lifted off, pulling free of its mooring hawsers, like some great whale rising from the ocean depths.

  The robots braving Simeon's barrage were nearly on them now.

  Ulysses was abruptly aware of the scream of a revving engine. With a splintering crash, the Silver Phantom smashed through a wall, headlights flaring in the exhaust-smogged gloom of the hangar. It crashed down on the hard floor of the building, bouncing on its tyres and collided with the two robots bearing down on Ulysses and Simeon. The automata-drudges were sent flying, arms and legs windmilling wildly as the automobile skidded to a halt side-on, less than a foot from Ulysses' position.

  The front and rear passenger doors flew open. "Get in!" Nimrod shouted from behind the cracked windscreen.

  Ulysses didn't need to be told twice. He threw himself into the front of the Phantom as Simeon bounded into the back, slamming the door shut behind him. "Just in the nick of time, eh, Nimrod?"

  There was a metallic crash above them and a dent appeared in the roof of the car.

  "Get us out of here!" Ulysses commanded, eyes wide with the adrenalin rushing through his system.

  Nimrod floored the accelerator. Wheels spun, there was the stink of burning rubber, then the tyres gripped and the Phantom took off like a rocket. The car had suffered a fair amount of damage to its pristine bodywork during the Challenger Incident, particularly when the velociraptor had crashed onto the bonnet. However, it had since been repaired so that it looked as good as the day it had left the showroom but all that careful work was now being undone in another pulse-pounding escape.

  Reaching the far end of the hangar Nimrod swung the car round sharply, dislodging the droid on its roof. The automaton was sent barrelling across the concrete - sparks flying from its steel body - and into a pile of discarded packing boxes. The drudge lay there, like a marionette with its strings cut, flames dancing within the bone-dry tinder around it.

  All they could see of the rising airship, through the windscreen of the Phantom, were the swinging ropes and cables of its freed tethers. The abandoned automata, caring nothing for their own well-being, strove to carry out the last command they had been given, dashing and leaping towards the car, their movements jerky and insect-like.

  Gunning the engine, Nimrod sent the Phantom hurtling forwards. Droids bounced off the bonnet, were smashed aside by its radiator grill or were sent under its wheels as the automobile's engine flung it forwards with all the force of a steam-hammer.

  The fire had now taken over the pile of packing cases and was licking at one wall of the warehouse. A trail of flames slithered across the floor of the hangar behind the Phantom, following the rainbow-sheen of leaked fuel leading back to the fuel dump.

  Then the automobile was through the barricade formed by the charging robots and the smoggy dusk beyond the sundered wall of the hangar was beckoning them.

  The Silver Phantom, its battered bodywork reflecting the fury of the flames in shimmering crimson and orange, launched through the hole it had made, as the last few barrels of the fuel dump exploded. The car flew through the side of the building chased by a volcanic explosion of greasy smoke and flames as windows blew out above it. The shattered body parts of destroyed automata winnowed through the walls and windows and clattered off the back of the vehicle in a shower of bullet-hard shrapnel. The rear window shattered.

  The car crashed down onto the harbour side, Simeon tumbling across the back seat as Nimrod swung into a tight turn, stopping them hurtling into the oily, black waters of the Thames.

  Through his window, Ulysses could see the zeppelin rise clear of the Limehouse complex, flood-lit by the conflagration consuming the warehouse-hangar. The airship was turning west, manoeuvring itself in the direction of the centre of the capital, continuing to climb, to soar above the elevated trackways of the Overground.

  He turned to Nimrod, his eyes wild. "We have to stop that zeppelin!"

  "Yes, sir," his manservant agreed, his expression as stoical as ever, and put the pedal to the metal.

  With a screech of tyres and a leonine roar from its engine, the Silver Phantom sped off into the darkening night, leaving the blazing docklands of Limehouse behind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Unnatural Selection

  The zeppelin plied its way slowly through the smog-bound skies over London. It passed over towering tenement buildings and the spider's web of the Overground network, following the course of the Thames, a darkly glistening amethyst in the last light of dusk and the first hour of darkness. Aero-engines purring at cruising speed, it soared majestically through the encroaching night, caught in the staccato flicker of the city's rainbow display of lights, their ever-changing colours giving the envelope of its balloon the illusion of shimmering scales.

  Slung beneath it was the heavily-armoured gondola, looking not-unlike the hull of a battle-cruiser, inside which was carried the vessel's deadly payload, as well as a squad of armed and dangerous Darwinian Dawn guardsmen. These men were fanatics, prepared to lay down their lives for what they believed to be the good of mankind, to bring about a violent social revolution at the very heart of the world-spanning empire of Magna Britannia. Positioned towards the aft of the gondola the twin engines directed the dirigible onwards over the labyrinthine streets beneath, over the crumbling docklands of Limehouse, past Ratcliff, above the thoroughfares of Shadwell, skirting the wharfs of Wapping, and on towards its initial target.

  Beneath the great behemoth of the skies, but still a good half a mile behind it, the sleek, darkly gleaming shape of the Mark IV Silver Phantom sped through the celebration-emptied streets, pursuing the dirigible on what its driver hoped would be an interception course.

  Dr Cornelius Wilde gazed out over the fenced compound beyond the rooftops of the Waterloo Barracks, past the rolls of razor wire that topped the towers of the Outer Ward and into the deepening darkness to the east.

  The air was still and close with the heat of summer, intensified by the smothering layers of pollution-troubled cloud that hung over the city like a funeral shroud. The usual long white lab coat hung from his bony shoulders as if still on its hanger. A large teak and brass-finished mind box was harnessed to his chest and shoulders with leather straps. A deep pocket bulged.

  Beneath his lonely position, high on the battlements of the White Tower, his test subjects trudged around the perimeter of the cobbled Inner Ward as they were coerced into enduring yet another hour of enforced ex
ercise, under the ever-attentive optical sensors of the 'Beefeater' model automata-guards.

  It was unusual for the inmates to have a drill period when they would normally be back in their cells, doors locked for the night, but then there had been many out of the ordinary arrangements during Dr Wilde's work to develop the mind control collars, that one more aberration was not really that much of a surprise to anyone. As far as the robo-guards were concerned, Dr Wilde's command clearance was second only to that of Governor Colesworth himself. The governor was among the great and the good invited to attend the gala dinner at the recently reconstructed Crystal Palace, to conclude the day's jubilee celebrations. So, as far as the droids were concerned, Dr Wilde's word was the highest-ranking authority left in the complex.

  The inmates trudged on round the stark floodlit ward, begrudging every step but knowing no other life. Any sense of individuality his subjects might have once have had had been stripped from them. Fading blue tattoos, rough scars and other bodily disfigurements, such as broken noses and missing teeth, the only remaining reference to them ever having had a savage and down-trodden life of their own. Their heads were shaved, they all wore the same drab, one-size-fits-none coveralls and each man had his neck trapped in the vice of one of the good doctor's behaviour modification devices.

  And then, there it was, a flicker of reflected light from one of the sweeping arc-beams. Peering even harder through his round-rimmed spectacles at the blanket of smog smothering the city, Wilde could make out the piscine shape of the airship as it hove into view over the Thames, framed between the ornamental barbican of Tower Bridge.

  His heart leapt in excitement, the dour expression on his face becoming a grin of adrenalin-fuelled excitement. The hour had come.

  He could see the running lights as well now. The movement of its tailfin suddenly side on, starkly visible in the sweep of a searchlight, as with a shift of its rudder, the zeppelin angled in over the river, heading directly towards the maximum security prison facility. Wilde could almost make out the distant purr of its engines. It was no distance away at all now, three hundred yards at most. The doctor was not the only one aware of the zeppelin's approach now. The prisoners paused in their tracks, looking up at the great grey belly of the dirigible as it hove into view over the turrets of the White Tower.

  Even the Beefeater-drones, their clockwork craniums processing the overwhelming sensory input and calculating that this was a possible threat to the security of the facility, turned their glowing bulb eyes towards the airship - and promptly shutdown.

  Wilde smiled, taking his finger off the nondescript brass switch on the control panel in front of him. Command clearance was a wonderful thing.

  A klaxon wail began somewhere within the prison compound. Ignoring the clamour and commotion welling up within the cordoned exercise yard, Wilde turned his full attention back to the approaching leviathan. It was preparing to cross the outer curtain wall of the Tower complex, having steadily descended to a height nearing only one hundred feet.

  There was a barely-heard whining mechanical noise and the bottom of the steel gondola's hull cracked open, ready to deploy the airship's deadly cargo.

  "They're getting ready to deploy!" Ulysses gasped, watching through the windshield as the zeppelin's bomb bay doors eased open. He had assumed that the jubilee celebrations in Hyde Park would be the Darwinian Dawn's target but it seemed that he had been wrong.

  The dirigible had moved ahead of them with ease, unimpeded by the need to follow the maze of city streets beneath it, able to travel where it pleased over and among the great canyons of the capital's towering skyscrapers and tenement buildings.

  "Don't worry, sir, we're nearly on them," Nimrod said, disregarding a set of traffic lights and steering the speeding automobile over onto the other side of the thoroughfare.

  Simeon hooted in wild abandon at the adrenalin-rush of the ride as Nimrod accelerated away from Jamaica Road and onto Tooley Street.

  In their journey from the decrepit Limehouse docks they had already crossed the river once at the Rotherhithe Bridge to avoid a road closure, and now they were going to have to do so again if they were to have any chance of catching up with the zeppelin.

  The Silver Phantom roared up the road and towards the floodlit bastions of Tower Bridge.

  "Oh, I don't bloody believe it!" Ulysses exclaimed.

  The bridge was closing to traffic, beginning to rise to allow a steam ship to pass through. Nimrod had to slam on the brakes to stop them from running into the back of the vehicle in front. There was a short queue waiting for the barriers to rise again.

  "Don't worry, sir, a little obstacle like this won't stop us," Nimrod declared, pulling out from behind a cab and gunning the throttle. "I have long had a healthy disregard for the rules of the road."

  He slammed his foot down. Wheels spun and the stink of burning rubber assailed them. Then the tyres found purchase and the car rocketed forward.

  The red and white-painted barrier splintered like matchwood across the front of the Phantom. The front bumper crunched as it hit the rising section of roadway. The automobile hurtled on up the incline. The edge of the bridge section appeared ahead of them - the clear air between it and its counterpart steadily increasing as the bridge continued to rise.

  "Nimrod, are you sure we can make it?" Ulysses said, overcome by a sudden moment of doubt.

  "Have no fear, sir," Nimrod replied, voice raised over the protesting scream of the engine. "Of course we ca..."

  Ulysses' prescient sense flashed like a camera bulb in the darkness. A dark shape swooped at them out of the enclosing night.

  "Bloody hellfire," the unflappable butler suddenly exclaimed, "what was that!"

  "Pterodactyl I believe, old chap," Ulysses replied, equally startled. "They're getting bold."

  The unexpected appearance of the dinosaur had caused Nimrod to swerve instinctively.

  And then the car hit the end of the rising bridge-section.

  With a clatter the first of the huge spined devices was ejected from the bomb bay of the zeppelin. Looking like some massive steel-skinned sea urchin it dropped like a stone into the drained moat, detonating on impact with the sludgy mud at the bottom of the ditch. The explosion peppered the bastion's outer wall with deadly steel shrapnel that impaled itself in the stonework, smashing windows. Although it had missed the inner curtain wall by only a matter of a few feet, the sudden heat generated by the explosion vaporised the contents of the device's secondary compartment. The steam produced by the exothermic reaction washed across the moat and over the curtain wall of the Tower's original medieval fortifications as a heavy, low-hanging mist.

  Alarms bells were set ringing inside the prison, the cacophonous sound of them joining the wailing of sirens, throwing those trapped inside the Tower into a state of panic.

  The second bomb smashed through the roof of the hospital block, blowing out every window in the building as it exploded somewhere between the second and first floors, killing or maiming many of those recovering there as they lay helpless in their beds.

  A third device - fully four feet in diameter - was launched into the wailing air and bounced off the north-east turret of the White Tower, crushing the lead-covered cupola and tearing down the seventeenth century weathervane, landing in front of the sturdy, reinforced doors of W block. The solid construction of the stone archway at the entrance to the old barracks directed the force of the blast. It shredded the prison-block doors, hurling what remained of them inwards, chased by a devastating fireball. The concussive force of the blast swept across the courtyard compound, bowling prisoners before it, several men being impaled by the spiny shrapnel of the cruel device.

  Inmates were fleeing in all directions, some in panic but just as many having clocked that their robotic guards were failing to react and seizing on the chance to escape, scaling the chain-link fence or throwing themselves through the now unprotected gateways.

  Mist was pouring out of the shattered frontage of
the hospital block, drifting inexorably across the inner ward and through the chain-link fence surrounding the exercise yard. The choking clouds smothered the desperate prisoners like a thick sea-fog until they could hardly see their own hands in front of their faces, their fellow inmates appearing as blurred grey figures amidst the searchlight-shot whiteout.

  There were prison warders amongst them too, unimpeded as their robot counterparts mysteriously appeared to be, but the acrid, obscuring steam took away identities and made one man like another - a new status quo achieved through one simple, violent action - incarcerated and incarcerator truly one at last. The mist smelled unpleasantly of spoiled meat combined with the sickly sweetness of aniseed.

  Men were coughing now, choking as they inhaled the vapour, the mist hot and wet in their throats. Then the wracking coughs gave way to a palsied shaking, the bodies of prisoners and prison guards alike gripped by agonising seizures, hands forming into rigid talons, eyes bulging from faces turned near purple with the strain, veins writhing beneath the skin.

  As they struggled for air, drawing in yet more of the poisoned air, a terrifying transformation took hold.

  Dr Wilde watched the chaos consuming the Tower of London through the thick lenses of a gas mask.

  The walls of London's maximum security prison and correctional facility had been breached and those interred within it were being transformed into a berserk fighting force that would bring the capital to its knees.

  "Dr Wilde!" It was Nash, running onto the battlements. "The Tower's under attack."

  Wilde turned. "Really?" he said, his voice muffled by the rubber snout of the gas mask.

  Nash looked back at him stunned, the assistant's face ashen with fear. "It's a breakout, sir! A full scale prison break!"

  "I would call it a liberation."