by Leo Champion
“We don't have the transport, and the nearest railhead would be Kansas City. You can march, or we can send for an airship. I imagine your friends won't be coming back to pick you up?”
“Policy is to go on, regardless. Protect the convoy at all costs.”
“Even when - you're about what a lieutenant-colonel is, right? Pretty high-ranking guy to go down.”
“The assumption,” Perry said, “is that a vice-commodore can take care of himself as well as any lieutenant-commander.”
“Makes sense, I suppose. My thought would be that you stay in Kearney overnight. See if you can hire a ship - there's a couple in town, spring-powered scout runners - to send to Kansas City for something that can carry all your people.”
“Not viable to hire horses? All I need is thirty-two, for my crew. The civilians aren't my responsibility beyond basic physical protection.”
“You might, I suppose, but are you carrying enough cash to? Early spring’s a busy season around here. They won't come cheap.”
“I could write a note - if I had official paper. I suppose they wouldn't take payment on arrival in Kansas City? There's a small Service outpost there.”
“Possibly, or not,” said Danhauer. “I'll arrange bunkhouses for your men just in case.”
The deputy-sergeant re-mounted his house and spurred it forwards, riding for the town. After a moment, the steam-car accelerated and followed him.
“I shave with a broadsword,” Deputy Norris remarked to Perry. “That's how badass I am, Commodore. Takes a broadsword to cut my beard.”
“Uh-huh,” said Perry. “How much further to Kearney?”
“Five miles or so?” Norris pointed along the road.
“Then let's pick up the pace, shall we?”
Kearney was larger than Perry had expected, although he vaguely recalled flying over the place; there were a hundred towns like this on the plains, regional centers of industry and commerce. The advantage Kearney had was its location on the Platte, which had been dammed. There was a power station and what looked like a hydrogen plant, and a scout-class airship hung tethered in a field outside the town limits, whose fencing implied it was normally a cattle yard. From somewhere, an engine puffed.
Danhauer met them on the road in.
“Vice-Commodore, I've arranged rooms at the Grand Junction. Best hotel in the town. A block of a dozen, Sheriff’s Department account – don't know how much cash you’re personally carrying, but you can have your service reimburse us. Bunkhousing for your enlisted men, at McDonald's.”
“Thank you,” said Perry. “As soon as I reach a telegraph, I'll have a courier sent with the money.”
“Your men have personal cash, I assume? You do?”
“They should,” said Perry. “Payday was only a couple of days ago. Swarovski’s probably gambled all his away, though.”
“No, sir,” said Swarovski. “Won big, the other night in Denver. Hell, I can cover anyone who needs it. Couple of Fed cavalry majors who couldn’t handle their liquor.”
“Never had much use for Feds myself,” Danhauer agreed. “Vice-Commodore, you look like you could use a stiff drink. Why don't I have Norris show your men – and these civilians – to the hotels, and I'll meet you in the bar of the Junction."
“That works.” Perry turned to the others. “I think you heard the deputy-sergeant. You civilians, it was a pleasure escorting you in, but I'll leave you to make your own arrangements. My crew, consider yourselves free for now. Behave yourselves, don't get drunk, stay in groups of at least two, and stay in town. Anyone short on cash, see the weapons officer for a loan.”
A few sheepish-looking enlisteds approached Swarovski; Perry, with Martindale and Warrant Halvorsen, went in the direction Danhauer had indicated.
The town had wide central streets, paved in brick, with a couple of steam-cars and more than a few horses. Boardwalks ran along each side, a couple of feet above the ground.
They passed a dry-goods store, what looked like a rooming house, a feed store. The directory of an office building indicated a local newspaper, the Kearney Dispatch, a lawyer and a couple of cattle-buyers. Tallest building in the place seemed to be two storeys, although those were common enough.
“Nice little town,” Martindale said. “What do you figure the population is?”
“Given the industrial bit on the river? Probably at least a thousand. More houses to the south of us, a lot more,” said Perry.
“Local center of commerce. Wonder how soon we can get us a ride out?”
“If there's not one by tomorrow,” said Perry, “we walk.”
Rafferty, Gilford and a half-dozen other enlisteds, after being shown to a bunkhouse where they dumped their bags, found their way into the cowboy equivalent of an enlisted bar, a rough, dim place with cheap cast-iron spittoons on the floor.
“Whisky,” said Gilford.
“I'll have a beer,” Rafferty said. “And he'll have a beer, too. Not a whisky.”
“Learning to behave yourself, Rafferty?” asked Vidkowski. The two had served together out of Bermuda as young Airshipmen Third then Second, and then met again in South China some years back.
“Boss can't behave himself if he tries,” said Gilford proudly. “You hear what he did to that pirate with the rocket launcher? Would've fried him, too, if he hadn't been all jacketed up.”
“I've seen him do worse,” Vidkowski said, drinking his own beer. “Only man in the crew to hurt the scabs, though. They remember us by anything, it's by what Raff did.”
“What Raff did, and what the cap’n’s going to do,” said Warrant Second O'Leary, coming in with Senior Warrant Halversen.
Gilford gulped his beer nervously, a bit uneasy in the presence of the squadron's top enlisted man and another warrant, besides. Halversen ranked equal to a battalion sergeant-major. Under normal circumstances even a warrant second wouldn't drink with an airshipman second.
“Double whiskeys for us both,” Halversen told the bartender. He and O'Leary, who was a lean red-haired woman in her early forties, took the glasses.
“I was under Perry in `56,” O'Leary said. “Specialist First on the Galway Hawk. FitzMorrison's division, punching out pirates in the Mediterranean and running guns to our rebels in Italy and Greece. Perry was a lieutenant-commander then, just been promoted.”
“Wasn't that when the Frogs made their play for the Suez?” asked Vidkowski.
“That was what made it fun. Well, we're clashing with a pair of Frog privateers over Cyprus; a nest of the bastards were somewhere in the mountains, and our wing was hunting it. Take some hits, and four of the rig crew go down. Three of `em women. We're moving too fast to rescue, but you know how the riggers are equipped for that shit.”
“Wouldn't do rigging for the world,” Rafferty muttered. “That bonus they get ain’t enough.”
“You did it for two years,” Halversen pointed out.
“Two years too long. Sorry, Warrant.”
“They go down. We meet up with some Marines a while later, pick them up for a ride back to Malta. Turns out they know what happened to those four riggers. Raped and killed by those Frog motherfuckers.”
“Privateers,” said Halversen. “Which is to say, government ships and government contract but they can be denied. The Romantics are assholes like that.”
“Honorable airmen go under their own flag and no other,” Vidkowski agreed. “I'm not ashamed of the Jack, and I'll clobber the man who says I should be.”
“Anyway,” O'Leary said, “Perry gets mad. You should have seen him. Demands permission to hunt them down. Squadron commander – that was Vice Rittenhouse, and a bitch on wheels she was – says, well, we got a crisis exploding in the Canal Zone, a rebellion to stop and an Army division to support. But I can live without one escort-class for two weeks, I suppose. You've got that much and no longer to chase down the killers.”
“Did you get them?” asked Gilford.
“We didn't sleep,” said O'Leary. “Captain Perry
wanted to get the scum, and we were operating constantly. Sweeping the hills, landing our Marines to interrogate locals and prisoners. Don't think he was getting more than two or three hours a night of Z.”
“You get them, Warrant?” Gilford asked again.
“We got them. Second-last day, and only because Perry was riding the ship so hard. Caught them where they were trying to hide on the ground – we'd learned who it was, a little fuck named Scagnetti and his gang who'd done the raping, in either an escort-class or a scout-class, depending how you measure `em – and the cap says, just open up. No warning, no quarter, no terms. Blow their tanks, blow their ship, blow their buildings, blow them to fucking hell. We have a whole lot of ordnance on this ship, he says, and I don't want to come home with one grain.”
“He do it?” asked Rafferty.
“Nothing left of their base but ash and skeletals, and not much of that. Trashed it back and forth, then landed and shot a couple of woundeds we found playing possum in the wreckage. Perry says, you do not rape my crew.”
“And you know,” said Rafferty, “I am not planning to!”
“Vice isn't going to be happy about this, was my point,” Leary said. “Could've happened to anyone, but I'll bet you ten-two he's seeing it as a personal humiliation.”
“Didn't seem very upset, Warrant,” said Gilford.
“Of course he's gonna keep his mouth shut about it in front of enlisted types. He'll keep it shut around the junior officers, too. But you better believe he's gonna be seething inside, if I know him right. He'll have taken it personally. Last he took something personally that I saw? That wop bastard Scagnetti was dead two weeks later, with every last one of his crew.”
“Excuse me?” It was the young deputy, Norris. He looked up and down the bar – about half of 4-106's enlisted crew was there, in knots and individuals, some of them talking to the local cowboys and a couple of off-shift workers. “Sergeant Danhauer says your captain wants to speak with Airshipman Gilford and Specialist Rafferty?”
“That'll be us,” said Rafferty.
“Come with me. Sarge says you fired a missile at one of the pirates.”
“More than one, kid,” Rafferty said.
“Fired one backwards when they were in your ship,” said Norris. “Fried him to a crisp, he said.”
“Almost did," Gilford said. "Then Rafferty jumped on him and practically bashed his head in. One tough guy, my gun lead.”
“Yeah, well, I shave with a broadsword,” said Norris, running a hand across the stubble on his jaw. “And, I'll tell you what? When the boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for me.”
“Uh-huh,” said Rafferty.
“Gonna be a Ranger someday," Norris went on, leading them up the boardwalk. "This is just training. They say you've got to have four years doing law-enforcement as well as a military hitch. Three and a half more years, and I'm there.”
“You were military?”
“Air Force. Just ground crew,” he added, as though he expected the two airshipmen to make a fight of it.
“Hey. Our ground crews are worth more than a damn,” said Rafferty. “And your lot aren't too bad either. Sweat themselves as good as any man under the Jack, they do, what I've seen of `em.”
“I was with a hard bunch then, I'll grant. Stationed down near my hometown, in Oklahoma near the Tex border. At first. Hey, I got another one. That Charles Darwin guy got it wrong. No theory of evolution, just the animals I choose not to kill!”
The common-room of the Grand Junction was an upscale place; low electric lighting, polished floorboards, leather chairs. The ship's officers were sitting around, a couple of them talking to civilians; a well-dressed cowboy in his fifties, a pair of men in suits who looked like drummers or cattle-buyers.
Captain Perry was in a booth with XO Martindale, on the same side. Both men had pads and pens in front of them.
“Thank you, deputy,” said Perry. “Specialist, Airshipman. Sit down, please. I want you to debrief me on exactly what happened in your missile bay.”
“Buy us a drink, sir?” said Rafferty as he sat down. “Tongue moves better after a little oil, y'know, sir.”
“You've had an hour in which to oil your tongues already,” said Perry. “And I don't want exaggerations here. You put up the only effective fight of anyone on the ship; I heard that much. I want to hear how it happened. Airshipman Gilford, you first.”
The XO's pen scribbled as Gilford began to tell his story, Perry asking questions every so-often. When he'd finished, Perry asked Rafferty.
“Very well. You two, tell the bartender you're to have a drink apiece on my tab. One drink. Deputy Norris? Would you please find Senior Warrant Halversen and Airshipman First Jeppesen, bring them here?”
“Thought this man might be of interest to you,” Danhauer said about half an hour later.
The guy with him was short and sandy-haired, his square face smeared with grease. About forty, he wore a dirty white shirt under a frayed brown coat, and on his forehead were the goggles of an airshipman.
“Vice-Commodore Perry,” said Perry. “Imperial Air Service. What can I do for you?”
“Nolan's the name. Nate Nolan – Captain Nathaniel Nolan, at your service. Just winged in half an hour ago, sir.”
“A captain of what?”
“Red Wasp,” Nolan said. “Captain and owner, with my wife. We heard there was a bit of a fight around here, might be some pickings.”
Another woman in goggles had come in, her engineer's rig covered in sooty black and a clipboard in her hands. She was talking with the cowboys and businesspeople down the other end of the bar.
“There might be,” said Perry. “You might also be looking to take passengers? Can you carry thirty-two people to Chicago?”
“In the hold we could, sir. We might well could. It wouldn't be comfortable, but I can give you a lower rate than any passenger line. You want to give us a few hours to look over where the battle was, see what we can pick up?”
“I'd rather get moving now,” said Perry.
“One or two hours, is all I’m asking. You're flying to Chicago. That'll be sixty bucks a head, but I'll cut that down to fifty if you give us until four o'clock.”
“That's five hours,” said Perry. “And you're charging second-class passenger rates for what isn't even steerage. How about four hours, and you get forty dollars a head. Paid on delivery.”
“Now, if you don't have the cash down, it might be a little more. How about we say fifty, because a promise ain’t the same as a pound.”
“Forty-five bucks a head, and you've got until three o'clock to take whatever you can scavenge from the battlefield. And if we're not in Chicago by sunrise tomorrow, you're getting thirty dollars a head. I don't care when we leave; I care when we arrive.”
“How about fifty a head, and if we don't get to Chicago by sunrise, it's free?"
“That sounds fair,” said Perry. “Good luck finding scraps. And be careful, a bunch of pirates also went down. Some might still be out there.”
That thing flies? was Perry's first thought when he saw the Red Wasp, anchored at a stockyard near the town's little scout-class. It was a little over a hundred and fifty yards long, small as airships went, and every bit of it looked to have been a battered-apart piece of some other ship, crudely welded onto a frame that itself had started existence as at least three pieces. The aluminum gondola was a multicolored patchwork; pieces had clearly been taken from dozens of other craft, with blobs of color or pieces of lettering joined together in a messy quilt.
The cabin wasn't much better. There was the usual configuration of bridge/cabins then hold then engines; the engines emitted thick smoke just at idle, and the hold wasn't much more than a grilled box. Lines of reddish corrosion streaked the short pathway from the engine room to the hold, and there were frayed streaks of it where the engine room met the gondola. Rusting iron bolts ran along its length, and the entire ship was covered in a film of brownish dust.
“You coming on board, Vice-Commodore?” Nolan asked from the bridge. A gangway had been thrown up, a low ramp going into the cargo hold.
I'm not sure it's safe to, Perry thought. He could hear murmurs from the rest of the crew.
“Chicago by sunrise or it's free!” Nolan yelled.
“Let's get moving,” Perry said. “On board.”
Perry's crew, carrying their bags, began to file aboard.
The two deputies, Danhauer and Norris, were standing by.
“If you need anything from the Service, Sergeant,” Perry said, “let me know. You and your department have gone well out of your way to help us, and we take care of our friends.”
They shook hands.
“I've counted to infinity, Vice-Commodore,” Norris told him. “Twice.”
Chapter Five
Reporter, Chicago Sun: Mr. President, you are cancelling your company's push to build a line from Chicago to Lincoln, it having completed the first stage to Madison, but not reached the second stage to Dubuque. Let alone to Lincoln. Why is that?
President Rockingham: We are. And the reason is that it is simply impossible. Until the point where our government can stop wasting resources on attempting to subjugate - sorry, attempting to integrate - the former Confederacy and begin to focus them where they are needed, on the Plains, we can not build and maintain a railway. We cannot build and maintain a railroad line through unpoliced anarchy.
Reporter, Springfield Daily News: The Central Southern Railroad has a line, and a telegraph, clear through to Hugoton. Along essentially similar ground.
President Rockingham: Because the government can be bothered protecting the border with Texas. Because the Imperials, damn their eyes, assist them. If Washington or London decided that the West was important, beyond London's precious helium supply, then we would be able to do the same thing.
Reporter, New York Times: I simply don't get why it's so hard. We had four transcontinental railroads and three transcontinental telegraph lines at the time of the Crash.