Her Majesty's Western Service

by Leo Champion

  They passed a couple of men passed out in the street, one down on his face in the gutter with a stab-wound in his back. There was shouting, and once they had to skirt around a bar-brawl that had spilled into the street. A few times they heard gunshots.

  Despite what Perry wanted to think, he could feel they were being watched. Groups of men marching with purpose weren't, he hoped, too rare in Dodge City. Shippers or cowboys out to settle a score for their crew or their ranch. He just hoped that breaking the group up would keep them from drawing too much attention.

  “Sleazy place,” Swarovski said, as they passed a whorehouse. Noises came loudly from the inside.

  “Fun, though, sir,” said Rafferty. "You ought to come here. Lot of gambling happens."

  “High stakes?” Swarovski asked with interest.

  “Sometimes. Once saw a man bet five hundred beef on a single hand.”

  Perry kept the pace up, gesturing for Rafferty to keep them moving. This was a shithole, to him. Most cities had underbellies like this - Dodge was arguably more underbelly than not - but he avoided the places. They were what his parents had worked and self-educated their way out of, and why he had studied so hard himself. They existed, but you didn't need to acknowledge them often.

  The sort of trash who'd choose to hang out in places like this - well, Rafferty was a well-intentioned delinquent whose mindset, Perry acknowledged, was still foreign to his own. Lieutenant Swarovski, who was a gambler and a drinker but, when you came down to it, a gentleman, might come slumming once in a while for the novelty of it. But the ones who considered these places their home environment, the men swilling whisky in the bars and getting two-dollar lays in the whorehouses? How could you go through life with this as your bar for civilization? Why would anyone not do as his parents had, or as he would have if he'd been born to this kind of environment – find steady work, join a military service, educate yourself, achieve at least the middle class?

  The alcohol helped, he supposed. Helped you tolerate it, and hindered your leaving.

  They let themselves get trapped, he thought, with a mixture of pity and contempt. And I guess they get used to it.

  “We got a specific plan for when we get there?” asked the lance-corporal in charge of Bravo section's Second fire-team. Named Turley, he was in his late twenties, with a thin red moustache. On a strap from his shoulder hung a leather attache-case containing a Sterling submachinegun.

  “Wait for your main body to secure the exits. Vidkowski, when we arrive, tell the lieutenant that he's to spread his men around the buildings. And rooftops – can't forget rooftops. The MPs join us, and the other section acts as an outer perimiter.”

  “Got it, sir,” said Vidkowski.

  “You want us to go first, sir?” Turley asked. “Trained combat soldiers, we are. And used to taking a bullet or two. Unlike you airshipmen, with respect, sir.”

  “We fought a boarding action yesterday, Lance,” said Swarovski. “It was up close and personal. The Vice here, he stabbed a man in the throat and shot two more at point-blank.”

  Turley looked impressed.

  “Wow, sir? Really? I always thought you airship types fought a more, like, distant kind of engagement. Like the artillery wallahs, you know?”

  “Only when things go right, Lance-Corporal,” said Perry. “The fact that we're here right now is proof that they don't, isn't it?”

  “Ah, sir, but proof they come right eventually,” said Rafferty. “And by the way, we're coming up on it. That building to the right, all the green decorations? That's the Foster Arms, sir.”

  The building Rafferty indicated was an uncharacteristically nice place for the area; clean and neater, with glass windows and bright electric lights on the outside. Gilt letters on a wooden bar, and the front room was bustling even at this hour.

  Across the road was a sleazy bar. A man with an expensive frock coat over a set of workers' coveralls, a pair of goggles around his neck and silver-adorned rubber boots, came out smoking a cigar. He staggered as he crossed the road, plucked the cigar from his mouth and raised it in salute.

  “Sir!” he said to Perry. “You're outta uniform, sir!”

  “Ducks!” said Rafferty. “You OK?”

  “I'm more than fuckin' OK, Raff! I'm good! Look what I won.” He gestured at the coat. “Fucker was outta money, wanted to raise, put his coat on the table. Nice coat, wouldn't you say?”

  “Not the same boots you started the night with,” Rafferty observed.

  “He raised those, too. After we figured he was my size and I could use `em. Gave him my old pair. Silver on these!”

  “You're hammered,” Perry said.

  “Am, sir! That's the truth, alright! Fact is, sir, couldn't just hang around and not draw notice. In a bar, I was.”

  “We can tell, Duckworth,” said Perry. “Is our – friend still there?”

  “Didn't see `em leave, I guess. No bunch of `em.”

  Lieutenant Harrison and his section caught up with Perry's group. Perry gestured at the bar.

  “Ring out and surround the exits. Send a man off to find the Dodge sheriffs.”

  “Kinley, you heard the Vice.”

  Perry drew his automatic.

  “I'm going in. Those who are coming, follow me.”

  The party was still going, although with a more subdued tone. Happy roistering had become a few knots of serious conversation, while some of the other crew and their guests played poker. Hollis and Petersen had tried to drum up a four for bridge, without much luck; they were now playing a somewhat tipsy chess variant, occasionally throwing dice to determine the outcome of a particular move. Ronalds had kept to himself, slowly sipping beer and smoking a chain of Cubans. Every so-often he glanced out the window.

  “Look, after this much bad blood, a diplomatic solution just isn't possible,” Ahle was saying to Pete Augustin. “The Feds say they want to integrate the South, but do you see any signs of it?”

  “They elect legislators, don't they?”

  “And they limit the franchise so absurdly that nobody takes it seriously,” said Ahle. “Now, if they were to stop saying that family of anyone who'd been involved in an incident couldn't vote, they might have respected delegations. But then the people we’d send to Congress would make deals to let us secede anyhow.”

  “Or just make it worthwhile for us to stay in the Union. Slavery's gone, Captain, and it's not coming back. So what's the fight over?”

  “It stopped being about slavery when the Crash hit. This is about our rights as free states,” said Ahle.

  Suddenly, Ronalds froze.

  “Shit,” he said. “There's people. Outside. Packing something. Spreading out.”

  “Who?” Ahle asked. She was tipsy – Ronalds didn't seem to be at all drunk, he'd been his usual guard-dog self when she was around – and slowed. “Those little Japanese fellows in black with the swords?”

  “None of them this side of the Rockies,” Ronalds growled, pacing fast across the room to the front door. The noise in the bar seemed to have abruptly stopped. That wasn't a good sign. “Walk like Imperials. Imperials in civvies.”

  Shit. She'd feared this. But how could the Imperials have known?

  “We get out of here, then!” Hollis said.

  Ahle – a bit unsteady on her feet, but you couldn't choose, should have drunk in the fucking Black Hills, should have held the celebration there and had better security when I had to leave the ship! – drew her own pistols, cocked the revolver and then primed the pressure-gun. A glance at the ticker on that showed gel rounds; good. She'd not kill Imperials unless she was forced to.

  Hollis was going through the door that led to the kitchen and the back exit; Ronalds was moving to the closed door to the common-room, getting ready to cover them. Pistol in his hand.

  Suddenly the double-doors to the common room were kicked open, the lock breaking. Men with pistols and submachineguns burst in, spreading across the room. Leading them was a black man in plain clothing,
two-handedly gripping an automatic pistol.

  It took her a moment to recognize him as the Imperial vice-commodore from the bridge of the airship.

  “You're under arrest, the lot of you! Pirates!”

  From the back came noise and shouting. A burst of gunfire.

  “Throw down your guns!” the vice-commodore yelled. “Captain Ahle, you are charged with capital piracy against an Imperial ship!”

  “Guns down!” said a moustached young man who looked to be in charge of these soldiers. “Guns down or we kill every last one of you where you stand!”

  The vice-commodore walked over to Ahle. His gun was pointed squarely at her head.

  Ahle let the pistols fall out of her hands, one after the other, onto the rug at her boots.

  “Against that wall. All of you. Hands in the air!”

  Against the wall. More men came in, Imperials in plain clothes.

  Oh, hell. I knew this had gone too smoothly.

  “Cuff them, MacGreg!”

  One after the other, the plain-clothed Imperials fitted solid handcuffs tightly around everyone in the room.

  “I'm no pirate,” said Hollis. “I was just a guest! Not a member of her crew.”

  A few other voices came up in agreement.

  “Wrong place at the wrong time and it was never you, huh?” the black Imperial vice-commodore said.

  “That's just right, sir.”

  “You'll get a fair trial. The British Empire does not conduct summary court-martials outside of emergency circumstances. If you are found to be innocent, you will be released with due compensation.”

  “Anyone who consorts with pirates is guilty of something,” growled another man. “You'll hang.”

  “Shot while trying to escape, MacGreg? If they give you the opportunity, please feel free,” said the vice-commodore coldly. “You pirates hear that? This is your town, but if your friends are looking at springing you, they are invited to try. My men are under instructions to cut you down if you look like you're thinking of running. So don't.”

  This is the vice-commodore whose ship I took, Ahle thought. Oh, hell. He's pissed.

  Since when have Air Service vice-commodores supervised arrest squads?

  Something occurred to her.

  “Vice-Commodore,” she said.

  “Ahle.” He pointed the gun at her face again. "How does it feel, Captain Ahle, for the gun to be in the other hand?”

  “It was better the first time, really. But what you really want is your ship back, correct? How about a trade?”

  “We don't trade with criminals. You're taking me to the ship.”

  “What, to sell out my crew?” Ahle sneered. “Hang me and the hell with you, Imperial. I'm not trading my peoples’ lives for personal clemency.”

  “I didn't offer you personal clemency,” the vice-commodore said.

  “Sir!” came a young man's voice. “Lieutenant Harrison, sir? Sir!”

  “Private Rook,” said the moustached leader of the soldiers.

  “Sir! That warrant sent me from the airfield. Sir, we found the ship but there's fighting! Someone attacking the pirates there! Shooting and everything!”

  The vice-commodore straightened up as though he'd been electrocuted.

  “Not Vescard. Vescard didn't attack on his own, did he?”

  “Not your engineer, sir! No! Some other bunch that came in a line of trucks! There’s a fight all over the ships, the pirate's one and the one your engineer said was your 4-106. Whole lot of gunmen.”

  “Pirates robbing pirates? I am not losing my ship. How'd you get here?”

  “Lance-Corporal Innis told a man to give me his horse or else, sir.”

  “Take us back there. Quick march! Harrison! Leave one of your teams to guard the pirates. MacGreg, stay and help. Guard them, take them to the sheriff's cells when one of them shows up. Understood, MacGreg?”

  “Clear, sir.”

  “Except for this one.” The vice-commodore indicated Ahle. “Their captain's coming with me. Vidkowski, she's your responsibility.”

  “Aye, sir,” said a stringy-looking man Ahle recognized as having been on the airship’s bridge.

  “Get transport! Commandeer vehicles and let's move! Private, which way?”

  Marko carefully wiped the blood off his last knife, concealed it back in his sleeve. The pirates, about sixty of them, had been half-drunk and half-asleep, and it had been far less a battle than a butchery.

  That was, of course, after carefully slitting the throats of any port staff who might give the alarm. Which would unhappify the mercenaries, but wasn't that just an incentive for them to stay with him, another option crossed off the list for if they didn’t?

  “Get those kinematographs into the rocket bays!” Ferrer was shouting. Directing a crew unloading the heavy things from their trucks.

  “Signed up to fight or steer. Not smash boxes,” one man growled.

  “You do as the boss says or I’ll blow your lazy head off,” Rienzi told the man, pointing his revolver at that man's head.

  “Captain Caine,” Marko said.

  A weathered man in his fifties, with short grey hair and a well-worn rig, appeared. He looked rather askance at the butchery that had taken place through the bunkhouse.

  “The old crew,” Marko explained. “You’re in charge of the new crew. Pre-flight this Imperial piece of shit. We're lifting outta here pronto.”

  “Right, uh, mister. Pronto.”

  The drivers of the two steam-trucks they'd commandeered hadn't been happy. Driving a steam-truck was work - you had to keep fueling the boiler via a foot-pump, while steering and maintaining speed - and these two had been nearing the end of their shift of ferrying materials between the freight terminal and an outlying factory.

  Perry had thrown some money at one of them and stuck a gun in his ear. Frantic.

  “Now!” he yelled. “By Imperial authority, I said!”

  “Fuck you, mister. Wait, that’s a ten!”

  “That's for your company owner,” Perry said, as the man did hit the release and his truck began to roll again. Men were all over the rear of it. “I'll have two more for you personally if you get us there fast! I’ll also reimburse damage, just get us to that ship!”

  “Yes sir!” said the driver.

  Perry turned to Captain Ahle, who was in the crew-sized cab with Vidkowski. Vidkowski's gun, he noticed approvingly, had never been more than six inches from the pirate's back. He knew exactly how tricky this pirate was.

  “Who might be attacking your crew, Captain Ahle? Or my ship?”

  “I have no idea,” Ahle said. Her own expressions, since learning of the attack, had been shock. Perry believed her.

  “Who might be? Rival pirates? Do you have any known enemies? Because they're about to get wiped out, if you do; I have a fighting platoon here. Think of it as a small consolation.”

  “There are always rival pirates,” Ahle said evenly. “This sort of behavior is very much against the Code, and will bring down trouble.”

  “Pirates seek out trouble.”

  “Not this kind. It isn't profitable.”

  The truck-driver rounded a sharp corner. Twenty dollars would be about a week's pay for him; making that much in twenty minutes was a great deal from the driver's perspective, and he was earning it.

  Perry made a note to give the man twenty-five. They were approaching the airship park; various ships’ electrical top- and side-lights could be seen, towering high above them. The ground became empty, bumpy dirt.

  “This way, sir,” said Private Rook, pointing. “Yeah. This way.”

  The steam-truck rocketed between two freighters, each five hundred yards long and towering high enough to completely blot out the sky. Steel cables held them down, running between deep-set concrete blocks through the keels of their cabins. Past an unlit shanty, half-underground, where crews without money might sleep, or goods might be stored. Then another unlit shanty.

  “There!”


  In the moonlight, silhouetted, was 4-106. Two extra steering vanes had been added, and so had a lot of bright paint. A casual job of deception, but probably good enough for most.

  She was wobbling. Buoyancy adjustment. Getting ready to lift. Still cabled down, but men moving around now.

  “Take us in,” Perry said. “Take us right in. We're going to evict whoever the hell has taken my ship.” He glared at Ahle. “Having already arrested the first person to.”

  “Looks like we got trouble coming.” McIlhan gestured, from 4-106’s bridge, at the two steam-trucks that were approaching at speed.

  “Those pirates’ friends?" Rienzi asked.

  “None of them got away to give the alarm,” said Cannon. “There was that group sorta hovering around the distance near the other ship, though. Their friends?”

  “Something going on we don’t know about?” McIlhan asked.

  “Who gives a fuck?” Cannon asked. “You two know how to use a pressure-gun?”

  “I’m an engineer,” Rienzi boasted. “I can learn anything.”

  “Learn to use a pressure-gun now. Get down into that fore turret and fucking kill them, whoever they are. Hey! How’s prep going?”

  “Engines heating well,” came a reply. “Two minutes!”

  “Hold them off for two minutes. And then blow the fuck out of that other ship, the pirates’ one. But those other people might know something. Waste them.”

  The fore pressure-gun mount turned. If Perry hadn’t been intently focused on 4-106's bridge, and the people he could see moving about in there, he might have missed it.

  “Guns!” he shouted instead. “Brake and bail!”

  The first burst fired high, missing completely. The truck driver brought the vehicle to a screeching halt, kicking up the hard-packed dust and spinning the truck ninety degrees. Men were thrown around and off.

  The second burst of pressure-gun fire, poum-poum-poum-poum-poum, riddled the truck, smashing tires and boiler. Perry threw himself out, hitting the dirt ground and rolling. 4-106's cabin was two hundred yards away, and whoever was inside definitely did not want visitors.