Her Majesty's Western Service

by Leo Champion

  About a hundred and fifty yards down the line – they passed another disgracefully negligent yard worker, who saw them and kept going with his flags as though he hadn’t – Ahle found her hole in the fence. On the other side was a loose trail that might have been made by deer; she headed down confidently.

  Perry wanted to draw his pistol, but restrained himself.

  A very short walk later, they came to a clearing where several men slept around the remains of a bonfire. Various trash and debris were strewn around, and a lean man dressed in black sat on a log absently strumming a guitar. He looked up as Perry and Ahle appeared.

  “Well, well, well,” he said.

  “If it isn’t the money man,” said Ahle.

  Money man?, thought Perry. The thirtyish guy didn’t look like he had a nickel to call his own.

  “Cap’n Ahle, ma’am. How you doin’, boss?”

  “Doin’ just fine, Johnny. How you been?”

  “Well,” said Johnny, “I ain’t been back to Folsom. That’s saying enough, ain’t it?”

  “Good enough for me, Johnny. The black man here’s Mark Perry, late an officer of the Air Service.”

  Johnny gave Perry another look. Strummed a couple chords on his guitar.

  “Running with Imperials now, cap’n?”

  “Sprung me out of Hugoton. We’re hoping – you been around St. Louis, haven’t you?”

  “I been here. I been there. When you get right down to it, I been everywhere.”

  “Hoping you might direct us to a place. Maybe we can buy you a drink when we get there.”

  The ‘money man’ got to his feet, swung the guitar on its strap around to his back.

  “Always up for a drink, cap’n Ahle. Where’s it you’re looking to buy me one?”

  “Green Gables. You know the place?”

  “Downtown. Near the Arrow, hike from here. You’ll owe me two drinks.”

  “We can do five if you want,” said Ahle.

  “Five might be about reasonable,” said Johnny. “I hear what happened to your last crew. Like to know, if you wouldn’t mind explaining, although that man next to you says a bit, maybe.”

  “They were killed by a son of a bitch we’re going to track down and execute,” said Ahle flatly.

  “Hold on,” said Johnny. He bent down, shook one of the sleeping men until he came to a wakeful grunt. Johnny said something to him that Perry couldn’t quite make out.

  “Telling him I’ll be back in three hours,” said Johnny. “And if I ain’t, he’ll know who to look for. So’ll the others. No offence, cap’n, but I hear what happened to your last crew.”

  “I know what happened to my last crew. The bastard’s going to pay.”

  “He better. But Bobby here’s just to make sure. Cap, you were a good boss, but those rumors they swirl, hear me?”

  “I hear you,” said Ahle. “Just take us to the damn Green Gables, will you?”

  A walk. Through industrial streets, then a nicer neighborhood, then into downtown, where the giant silvery St. Louis Arrow – a four-hundred-foot-high tourist attraction pointing west – was visible between lines of skyscrapers. It was early in the morning, but the first clerks and data-punchers were making their way in, men and women in bowler hats and trilbies, some with fashionably fake airshippers’ goggles around their foreheads.

  To them, Perry thought, the frontier is romantic and exciting.

  How little they knew.

  They stopped at an automat for coffee; quarters went in, the – amplified, fake? – sound of gears clanked, and coffee poured out in cups. The drink was light and fluffy by Service standards, where squadron messes and ship cooks vied with each other to brew the harshest, most burned and brutally caffeine-loaded coffee that they could.

  But the clericals around them were treating the stuff like harsh `Dimers brew, and Perry pretended to do the same. It did have caffeine, and he ordered another cardboard cup to walk with before they left. He was tired; the cardboard had insulated some of the damn boxcar’s shaking but not all of it, and between that and his uneasy nerves he hadn’t slept well. The coffee helped.

  “So you escaped,” Johnny was saying as they walked through tenement streets on the other side of downtown, loosely following the river. It seemed to be a dockside district.

  “He got me out,” Ahle motioned at Perry. “They were cashiering him already. He decided, what the hell.”

  “Fuckin’ Service,” Perry put in for plausibility.

  “Uh-huh. So what you looking to do now? Lost your ship, lost your ossifers, lost your crew.”

  “Got my money. Bank of Sonora. We’ll get my officers back.”

  “Bust them out of Hugoton?”

  “Do something,” said Ahle. “They’re my people. Might need a new crew before then. You looking for a job?”

  Johnny thought for a moment.

  “Maybe. Music’s good, but I could stand to be on a ship again.”

  “You were in the hobo jungle. Where you headed?”

  “North. Figure might be someone hiring in Minnie. Failing that, get a ride for the Hills.”

  “The Black Hills,” Ahle explained to Perry.

  “So we’re going pirate, are we, Mr. Imperial Officer?” Johnny addressed Perry directly for the first time in a while.

  “They cashiered me. Got to go somewhere,” Perry said. “Gaol isn’t my idea of a fun time.”

  “So off you run with this pirate lady.”

  “Right.”

  “Still uncertain, huh?”

  “A bit,” said Perry.

  “You’ll get to like it. Ahle, she’s Code through and through. Ethics, just like your Service rules. Don’t kill. Insurance companies cover it all anyhow. You’re not really doing a whole lot of harm. Even shoot up the bad pirates who are, rob the robbers.”

  “Honorable pirates don’t rob other honorable pirates,” Ahle said to Perry. “Anyone else is fair game. How do you think the Code got established.”

  Perry wanted to say he didn’t give a damn for that publicity-driven Code bullshit, but it would have been tactless given the circumstances. Besides, this was a new aspect he hadn’t considered.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “How far are we from this place?”

  “It’s on the docks,” said Johnny. “Just a few more minutes.”

  Shady, but Perry had expected that; the sub-basement of his expectations had been mined the night before last, and he hadn’t expected anything above the most utterly dismal. The Green Gables was a vile bar on a street that overlooked the docks, a place where disreputable riverboatmen got wasted. The bouncer was a four hundred pound Samoan with a spiked club who eyed the three of them with utter contempt as they entered.

  The inside was dark and greasy, and populated even at seven in the morning. Dockhands – pirates and thieves no doubt, too – drinking whisky and beer. A couple of bindlestiff hoboes lounged in one corner.

  Ahle approached the bar with reasonable confidence.

  “Johnny, what d’you want?” asked the bartender, a small mousy man with a face of stubble.

  “I want a rye whisky. These two have business here.”

  “Business, huh? What’ll you have?”

  “Just a beer. Whatever you have,” said Ahle.

  “I’m good,” said Perry.

  Ahle elbowed him.

  “Two of those,” said Ahle. “One for him, too.”

  The three sat down at the bar. Johnny downed his shot of rye, signaled for another.

  “You owe me a buck besides this, Cap’n Ahle.”

  “Have five and get out of here,” said Ahle. “And pass the word. I got out, maybe I could use new crew.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you in the Black Hills.” Johnny downed his second rye and headed off, probably – Perry thought – to spend the five bucks getting hammered elsewhere.

  “So he showed you here, you two. What do you want?” asked the bartender.

  “We wanted some drinks,” Ahle said. “What’s
it to you?”

  “Don’t ordinarily see a nigger and a bitch together,” said the bartender indifferently. “Especially you, Cap Ahle.”

  Ahle raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, yeah, we heard of you. Stole an Imperial line-class and then got jacked yourself. Came over the wire last night. Looks like the nigger’s the same Imperial vice they got wanted for treason and a bunch a’ other shit.”

  “You heard?”

  The bartender poured their drinks, savoring it. Perry took a taste of his beer; awful crap. One sip was enough.

  “Yeah,” said the bartender. “I hear things. So what do you want?”

  Perry had been over the lines enough times to rote-memorize them. “We’re here for Josiah. Said to say we’re with Methuselah.”

  The bartender looked sharply at them.

  “With who?”

  “Methuselah, I said. You want to get Josiah or not?”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Hey, I ordered a fuckin’ beer two minutes ago!” one of the other patrons shouted as the bartender headed for the back room.

  “You can wait,” the bartender yelled back. “This shit’s important.”

  Joseph Capdepon the Second was a heavy-set, burly man, with a full beard that was greying already; he was only thirty-three. His first act when the bartender shook him awake was to reach for the .44 revolver under his pillow. His second was to ask what was going on.

  “Man comes in asking for Josiah,” said the ratty little bastard. Privately, Capdepon suspected him of palming money, but he didn’t have the evidence and Fred was good at keeping his yap shut. “From Methuselah. You said that was a big deal.”

  Josiah from Methuselah. Fucking right that was a big deal.

  “Drinks on the house to them while I get dressed.”

  Ian Fleming. Bastard should have died years ago; Methuselah, the old man of the Bible, was fitting enough.

  He had some idea of what the asshole might want, too. Anyone asking for Josiah specifically? That was good.

  Meant he’d be rid of them faster.

  He rolled out of bed, pulled on pants and boots and a kevlar vest underneath his coat. Any connection with that scheming bastard Fleming, you couldn’t be too careful around.

  The bartender ushered them, drinks in hand, into a back room. It looked like an office; there were old beer kegs stacked in one corner, but bills were pinned to a noticeboard on one wall, and the desk was crowded messily with papers.

  Capdepon, a big bearded man, came in through a door behind the desk and sat down at it. He eyed Ahle and Perry like they were poisonous snakes.

  Perry eyed the bar owner – he was obviously that – the same way back.

  “So. You’re from Fleming.”

  “Maybe we are,” said Ahle.

  “Maybe you can prove it. There’s a rum bottle.”

  A rum bottle?, Perry thought.

  “The flask that rum came in,” said Ahle, thinking faster.

  Right. Nice silver flask. He hadn’t thrown that away. He fished in his bag for it and handed it across the desk into the bar-owner’s thick, grasping fingers.

  Capdepon held it up to the single flickering light in the room. His eyes widened slightly as he inspected the crest on it, some thin engraving Perry had felt but not given a moment’s thought to.

  “Miss L. Shit. Fleming’s cashing in his chip with her?”

  “Who the hell,” Perry asked, “are you talking about?”

  “Miss L,” Capdepon repeated. There seemed to be relief in his voice. He reached down to his desk, opened a drawer, rummaged for a moment and pulled out an obsidian chip the size of a playing card. Pushed it across the desk at Perry, who took it. Engraved in the chip was lettering that might have been Viking runes but wasn’t English.

  “What’s this?”

  “Give it to her man. He knows what it is. You need transport?”

  “We could use it,” said Ahle. “Miss L, huh?”

  You know this woman, whoever she is, Perry thought. Probably be time to ask questions later.

  “Barge going south in twenty minutes. Fred’ll get you on board. Get out of here.”

  As they got up, so did Capdepon. “And tell that shady bastard Fleming, if you see him again, that I’m done with him. It’s over. Hopefully the spider will kick you right out on your asses. Give her my regards, by the way. Joseph Capdepon’s highest respects and regards.”

  Now that, Perry thought, is interesting. Doesn’t give a damn for Fleming, but respects this woman in New Orleans like, unless he was very wrong, not much else.

  Interesting person to meet, he decided. New Orleans seemed like the wrong direction, but – given the context – probably not.

  “Take us there,” he said. “I’ll pass it on. And to Fleming, too.”

  Perry had seen – from ground-level and from two thousand feet – some of the pretty steamers that cruised up and down the Mississippi, colorful boats with names like Delta Queen, Natchez XII and Belle of Cincinnatti. Elegant vessels that played to wealthy people and tourists, and the Memphis Darling was absolutely not one of them.

  She was a gunmetal-grey hulk whose noisy engines belched thick smoke as she warmed up. An industrial ship whose only passenger class was steerage, and not even much of that; her main function seemed to be the pushing of a pair of barges, each her own eighty-foot length and twenty-foot width. They were loaded with grain, piled under tarpaulins that still spilled enough to keep a flock of circling birds interested.

  “Tickets,” said a late-twenties crewman in a frayed white jacket. He was very good-looking, with the fashionably slicked black hair of the younger generation. “We’ll be in Memphis tomorrow morning, Orleans midday after. Welcome aboard. Take any empty cabin.”

  The cabins were tiny two-bunk things that wouldn’t have gone amiss on an airship, except that they stank of old cigarette smoke. Perry wondered aloud just how many people seemed to be crammed into this ship.

  “More than you figure. Migrant workers, traveling mechanics, probably a downed airshipman or two,” said Ahle. “Everybody meets in New Orleans.”

  Perry considered dumping his bags here – but no, this was the only change of clothes he had, and he wasn’t leaving some of the gadgets Fleming had given him. Traveling workers probably included their share of thieves, and he wasn’t about to take chances.

  Only about a half the Darling was devoted to passengers, two dozen cramped cabins below decks and a small common room with a cash bar. Most of the stern was devoted to cargo – crates stamped ‘Machine Parts’ – and powerful engines that resonated through the entire ship. Back above decks, they left the common room – a poker game was already starting up – and found a quiet space on the deck. For certain low values of quiet, as the engines bumped and shook.

  A large, sleek passenger airship passed overhead, following the river south, and Perry wished he were aboard it. Was there a good reason they’d taken steerage on a freighter as opposed to train or airship, or at least one of the nicer riverboats? It wasn’t as though they didn’t have the money; Ahle was carrying several hundred, and Perry several thousand, dollars from MI-7’s operations account.

  “Never did the ocean type of piracy,” mused Ahle. “A couple hundred years ago, it might have been fun. White sails and cannon booming.”

  “Robbing and stealing,” said Perry. “Not to mention murder.”

  “True, those pirates never had a Code to speak of. And their victims never had insurance. You can tell the insured ships, you know. Most of them. Always a bit cocky. The other ones will jettison their cargo rather than be taken, and we’d let them go. The crews of the insured ones never cared. Owner-operators we tried to leave alone.”

  “Even when they had money?”

  Ahle shrugged. The steamer was moving slowly, enormous rear paddle wheel churning spray. They seemed to have reached full speed, and by Perry’s eye that full speed wasn’t much more than ten or twelve miles an hour. No wonder it
was going to take them almost three days to reach New Orleans!

  “If you have money, you can afford insurance,” said Ahle. “We’re just skimming a little bit off the top.” She paused. “You know, I never killed anyone as a pirate. Ever.”

  “I find that hard to believe. You stole enough.”

  Ahle’s lip curled in a slight snarl. “You know, I have to work with you to keep Ronalds, Hollis and the others alive. I don’t have to like you, Imperial, and I don’t. I’m going to the common room for a drink. Alone.”

  Ahle stormed off.

  Loyal to her people?

  Well, pirate scum. Loyal to her people meant loyal to scum, even if it meant denying they were scum. For a moment he’d almost felt sorry for her, with her officers’ lives held to ransom over a mission she wasn’t guaranteed to succeed at.

  Bastards deserved to hang, of course.

  Worry about yourself, Marcus. Worry about Annabelle and what the children will think if you don’t succeed at this and you’re a fugitive, not a respectable Imperial airshipman, for the rest of your life.

  Which won’t be long.

  Eventually night fell. A couple of hours after sunset, they stopped by a rickety pier at Cape Girardeau to offload a few passengers and onload a few more. Ahle cooled down, possibly after a few drinks, and got Perry to buy her one – “and one for yourself, we may as well spend Ian’s money” – in the common room.

  The steward with the slicked-back hair was joined by the other steward, a tubby blond kid who couldn’t have been older than seventeen, and who’d given them their tickets at the St. Louis pier. Now the older steward had a microphone, fritzing faintly through a speaker in one end of the common room, and the kid had a sax. The thirty or so traveling workers aboard the steamer gathered in an appreciative crowd in front of them.