by John Lilley
For the past four weeks, the ships had been taking on passengers and provisions. Lebang had no choice in the passengers, but the chosen few had been exactly as he had predicted: all the relatives of Fenyang, his new boss, plus all their friends and of course a sizable chunk of Fenyang’s army, including his own personal guard. So no choices made on the basis of fitness and ability, just the usual African way. Even so, he felt that they had far too many warriors, but Fenyang had justified the disproportionate numbers of young men as being required to establish their beachhead once they arrived in the UK. They would overwhelm the local forces by sheer numbers. However, Lebang observed that since coming on board the “Warriors” had spent most of their time drinking beer, firing their guns or chasing the few women who were of child-bearing age. There had already been several fights and three fatalities amongst them. As for the rest of the passengers, Lebang reckoned that several thousand would not make it due to the conditions on the voyage; this group included the old, the infirm and the very young. He tried to be pragmatic about the whole thing, just as his Auntie would have been, but it did gnaw at his soul whenever he had time to himself.
Two days earlier he had heard some screams as he passed one of the large storerooms on deck six. He opened the door only to find a group of warriors just about to gang rape a young girl. They all froze when they saw his purple t-shirt (One of Fenyang’s better ideas for his top people). As he stood in the doorway he could sense that there was some uncertainty flashing through their tiny minds: Will he want some of the action or will he go straight to Fenyang or if we jump him now will Fenyang get to know? Although he was absolutely crapping himself, he managed to bluff his way through and simply ordered the girl to come with him and left the warriors in the store room. Her family were glad to see her but a bit apprehensive of him until the girl told them what had happened. Fearing further recriminations, he posted one of Fenyang’s secret service guys to keep an eye on them. Sure enough, the warriors came sniffing round the next day but got the message once they recognised Fenyang’s agent.
It was incidents like this that sent his mind searching for answers, back to his time with his Auntie. He could still opt out if he wanted to; Fenyang had assured him that it was always an option, right up to the day before departure. A personal guard would take him ashore with no questions asked. But he would not be taking up that offer because the chance at a new life in the UK had been his only motivation for taking on a lead role with the gang of merciless criminals. Since his kidnapping he had always managed to set himself apart from the rabble, to remain his own man, something which Fenyang seemed to respect. He had done an excellent job in building the fleet, what a shame it was filled with the worst of the worst gutter trash and their psychotic relatives.
Looking ashore with his powerful binoculars he could see that the last minute desperate dashes to get on the ships had started. Fenyang’s forces were ruthlessly putting them all down with heavy machine gun fire from their launches. His only navy ship: a frigate, was at anchor further out to sea, its 4-inch guns waiting to deal with any more serious threats. Lebang knew this activity would continue long after their departure time of 13:00 the next day.
The whole of Africa was on the move, away from the drought and famine. For those in the south, the northern trek across the deserts would have meant certain death; either from environmental causes or at the hands of their fellow starving Africans. The Mediterranean was awash with African bodies after the European Democratic Republic (EDR) Navy had made sure that that game was over and had put a brutal stop to that overwhelming flow of desperate people. The landing at the Ribble had been Lebang’s idea, it meant many more days at sea but avoided the EDR patrols in the Bay of Biscay and the even more intense bloodbath that was now the English Channel, presided over by the British Navy. Once in the Irish Sea, the African fleet would be unstoppable as they all headed at full speed to beach themselves on the soft low-lying shores of the estuary. The largest ships would lead the charge. It all seemed so simple, but Fenyang had not accounted for the full effects of a month at sea with 1.5 million people living in desperately cramped conditions.
Two weeks later Lebang left his stateroom escorted by what appeared to be his personal armed guards. They indeed made it look like he was being guarded, but effectively he was being held prisoner. After the coup, Fenyang’s appropriately named nephew: Molatodi (One who denies everything), had Lebang under lock and key even before he had disposed of his uncle’s bullet-ridden body. For the remaining six weeks of the cruise, Molatodi’s death squads held almost daily public executions of suspected rivals.
Otherwise, everything was going well, the fuel, food and water were lasting better than expected, aided mainly by having a rapidly decreasing number of mouths to feed. The extended Atlantic detour had worked well, they had encountered no British or EDR navy vessels, even when they rounded the northern coast of Ireland the worst they came up against were some small coastal patrol boats.
Lebang was on the bridge of the New Africa coordinating the final approach with the other Captains of the fleet. The ten large ships formed an arrowhead formation a mile wide, and the smaller ships followed in their wakes. With 80 miles to go several reconnaissance drones appeared but were sent on their way by concentrated anti-aircraft fire from the frigate. At 60 miles the ships were attacked by several fighter drones, shots across their bows at first but rapidly escalating to well-placed bombs targeting the big ships’ engine rooms, a real test for the additional armour plated bulkheads installed under Lebang’s instructions. In a final desperate attack, the drones concentrated on one of the leading smaller ships and literally blew it apart, but the rest of the fleet kept their nerve and course. The big ships went in deep, their huge momentum carried them all half of their lengths up the shore. Not one ship was lost at the beaching, a great achievement and full credit to Lebang and his Captains. The frigate stayed off-shore to offer cover for Molatodi’s initial advance.
It was a long way down from the decks of the stranded ships, and once ashore the warriors found themselves struggling in the soft boggy ground of the estuary. They fanned out in well-planned fire and cover manoeuvres, and within thirty minutes had reached the firmer ground of the small coastal road that surrounded the nature reserve. At that point, the warriors stopped their advance and regrouped along the road. Their support vehicles had been lowered by crane from the ships’ decks but were all now heavily bogged down in the marsh of the reserve. It would be some time before a pontoon road could be built to get them up to the advanced party. In all their time ashore there had not been any further drone activity, and they had not been approached by any land-based forces or even any of the locals. The whole place seemed deserted, so with just the seabirds for company Molatodi told his troops to make camp and fortify their position along the road. He maintained that the UK authorities would appear to negotiate terms before it went dark and the passengers would have to stay one more night on board and depart the next day, once a better route ashore was in place.
As night drew in the warriors felt confident that they had made a good job of digging in along the road. They had several braziers going, and hot food was being served. Their initial apprehensions of the mission were rapidly evaporating, then the beer came out, and they began to celebrate their victory.
The simulants moved quickly, walking in from the north and south across the marshes, hidden by the reeds and even if they were discovered they were indistinguishable from warriors from their dress, weapons and skin colour right down to their perfect regional African accents. With over 60,000 warriors in the fleet, it was impossible for any warrior to recognise all of his comrades, especially on such a dark moonless night. The simulants merged in with the activity between the road and the ships. By midnight they were all on board the New Africa and in place. At 01:00 the frigate exploded in a ball of fire as did every vehicle brought ashore. At 10-metre intervals through the camp on Marsh Road, gas canisters began to pump out a combination of
smoke and anaesthetic. The warriors on the New Africa were powerless to help their colleagues on the road, their comms systems had been rendered inoperative, and all they could do was watch the gas clouds drifting towards them. Some of them panicked and started to fire towards the road, but were soon silenced by the simulants amongst them with just a quick jab of a finger that administered a fast acting knock-out drug. All the warriors on the other ships were effectively isolated by the explosive removal of all their gangways. The leading simulant team had already immobilised the presidential guards outside Molatodi’s suite of rooms and using a loud hailer they demanded that he come out and negotiate the terms of his surrender. Unperturbed by this he decided to fight his way out with his ten remaining personal guards. They managed to take out three of the simulants. The shock of the simulant’s disintegrating bodies was their downfall, as they stopped to stare they were blown off their feet by two percussion grenades. When they came round, they were tied to the guard rails. At dawn, Molatodi was forced to announce to his people that he had surrendered and that they were all now under the control of the British Government and explained the quarantine process that they would go through before they went ashore. The simulants set up administration centres on every ship where all the Africans were medically examined, chipped and immunised. The warriors were the first to be processed and removed. Temporary holding areas were organised before the Africans were moved to twenty integration camps across the country.
Three months after the Africans had arrived there was nothing to show for it on the Ribble Estuary. All the ships had been towed away to the breakers yards, and the waders and seabirds were recovering well after the sudden disruption forced upon them. Significant changes had been made to accommodate the sudden influx of 1.3 million new citizens. In the camps, they were all put through an education and reorientation programme. For most of the Africans, the British culture was a major shock: their previous positions of privilege were no more, and they faced life in the many work camps. Their resistance to the change was fierce and led to the emergence of new chiefs in all of the camps, each one determined to get the best for his people, with of course a lot extra for himself. This stalemate position slowed down the dispersal of the Africans from the camps and increased local resentment as they were seen increasingly as a troublesome and non-productive burden on British society.
Out at sea, major changes were also made as the patrols were extended out into the Atlantic as far as Iceland. All unidentified incoming vessels suffered the same fate as the ones attempting the English Channel crossing. Britain could not risk any more significant incursions because despite severe rationing it just did not have the resources to cope with more people on what was already a massively overcrowded island.
Lebang had been identified as one of the principal ringleaders of the incursion before the ships had even hit the shore. He spent the best part of three months in a high-security interrogation centre on the Isle of Man. Although he had put up a good convincing case for himself, the decision was made that he would be sent to one of the camps, where he would help with the assimilation of his people. It would be a test of his intent to integrate within the British culture. The brief glimpses that he was given of life in Britain made him want what they were offering more than anything in his life so far. He spent many hours deep in thought, imagining what his Auntie would have made of the situation he now found himself in and resolved to do her proud. The possibility of finally getting away from Molatodi and his poisonous clan was a tremendous motivator.
The camp he had been assigned to was as far west as it was possible to get away from the major cities. This was disappointing for him because he had really wanted to be in an urban area, but he figured it would be good to put some distance between him and the landing site. He, therefore, got a shock when climbing into the military transport vehicle, to find that Molatodi was a fellow passenger to the same camp.
At the camp, he tried as best he could to keep way from Molatodi, but the guy was an expert at manipulation. Within a week we had all but re-established his chain of command, complete with a gang of thugs who took great delight in taking Lebang down a peg or two. From Molatodi’s point of view Lebang no longer served him any useful purpose in the new world and he also knew the wisdom of periodically replacing his top advisors, before they became too powerful or popular. After several beatings, Lebang decided that he would need to toe the line just to survive the camp. The slow integration process at the camp virtually stopped under Molatodi’s culture of intimidation, and for the next year life in the camp became a living hell for Lebang. His British masters were not happy with his performance to the extent that they had told him that he was off the programme and would not leave the camp until after Molatodi. For his part, Molatodi took every opportunity he could to humiliate his once commander-in-chief. This was of course just to prepare him for a mission that Molatodi had been thinking about since he reached the camp; he wanted a woman, a British woman, not as some sort of symbol of his integration, in fact just the opposite. Lebang just laughed at him when he suggested it.
‘Even if you could somehow get such a person into the camp, she would never submit to your demands,’ he said.
‘You have no idea about how to control women, she would be my prize, I would have one over on the British,’ said Molatodi.
‘You’re crazy, to her you would seem like a creature from the dark ages,’ said Lebang before Molatodi had one of his guards whip him across his face.
Nothing further was said about this for months. Lebang had been forced to run the gauntlet outside the camp, looking for artefacts that Molatodi could use in the camp’s black market. The work was deemed to be risky for if caught the rumour was that you would be put to work on one of the deep-sea prison factory ships and never seen again. The thought had passed Lebang’s mind that it might be preferable to life under Molatodi.
There was usually nothing out there outside the camp, just the desolation of thousands of abandoned dwellings. The scale of the change that the British had gone through was not lost on Lebang. He would have preferred to work on his own, but Molatodi didn’t trust him, so there were three of Molatodi’s men with him when they crawled out of the tunnel that evening. After six hours combing the nearby abandoned town, they had only succeeded in finding a few small brooches and four knives. As always they divided the spoils between them to split the loss if any one of them was captured on the way back in. It was raining heavily when they turned back to the camp. Lebang had the phone since he was the only one who knew how to use it from his days as a trusty.
Wendy’s knife had cut deep into Lebang’s forearm, but he had managed to keep hold of his knife in his other hand. He kicked out and pushed off from the trench wall and his foot connected with Wendy’s knee, pitching her onto her back in the thick mud. Before she could bring her knife up again, Lebang was upon her and had pinned her arm to the floor of the trench. He brought his knife up to Wendy’s throat, they were both panting desperately while trying to get their breath back. Wendy stared at him, he reminded her of one of the few simulants she had briefly seen back at the feeding station. His skin was so black it had an almost purple tinge to it, and those big white teeth and bulging eyes. A shiver went through her body as the rain continued to cascade down onto them dripping down Lebang’s face and onto Wendy’s.
‘Damn it, I’m not going to do this. Molatodi can go and screw himself,’ Lebang suddenly said in his local tongue.
Wendy was startled and confused by his outburst but then felt his weight shift. Lebang let go of her, stood up and pitched his knife into the mud next to her. He turned his attention to his arm and gripped the wound tightly to stop the blood flow. Wendy sat up, but her hip was now on fire, so she stayed where she was, shivering in the cold water of the trench which had now completely saturated her trousers. They were both wondering what their next move would be when Molatodi’s three other men appeared at the end of the trench, all with their knives drawn. They walked
forward staring and smiling at Wendy. Lebang turned to face them, blocking their way. Their smiles now turned to frowns as they advanced. They were almost in striking distance when Lebang saw another face behind them, a black face. The next instant the three Molatodi men were pitching forward, dropping their knives and seemed to be trying to pull something out of their backs as they fell. Lebang remained where he was and watched as the simulant jumped down into the trench and approach him. Out of the corner of his eye, he sensed movement where Wendy had fallen and turned to face her. He had a brief glimpse of a camp guard helping her to her feet before there was a scratch on his shoulder and he lost consciousness.
15 GREGORY
Gregory thought about the situation for some time, at least five seconds. There was little that he or his masters could do about it. People just kept walking north to get away from the heat and searching for food. Gregory’s complex was due to be moved, but they’d left it too late. It now seemed that most of southern Asia was on the move and coming his way. They were not travelling empty-handed either, many of them were well organised and had the military hardware to make life very unpleasant for the people they were overrunning. Most large cities resisted for a while, but there were too many migrants with nothing to lose.