Her Majesty's Western Service

by Leo Champion

  “And this evening we have the Albinos; Slick Willy over here out of Little Rock on the saxophone and E.A. Presley – that’s me, ladies and gentlemen – on vocals as always. You all got your drinks, because we got a new song for you this trip! The Southern boys’ blues, and I think you’ll know what we’re talking about.”

  Despite himself, Perry found himself smiling and raising his beer. This was where jazz came from, although a couple of stewards on a Mississippi rustbucket couldn’t be very good.

  He took a sip from his beer and nodded as the kid named Slick Willy opened with a blare on his sax. The other man began to sing:

  Dark night, falls over Memphis

  Feds they’re on the prowl

  We’re not the Klan, there’s not a man

  But the Feds, they’re on the prowl.

  The Feds, they have the khaki

  Their Germans wear light grey

  Like my great-granddaddy wore

  Before he went away

  Me, I’m wearing blues

  Got the Southern blues

  Real bad

  The Feds they got the cuffs on you

  The mercs they’ll simply shoot

  All the work my parents did

  It goes northeast as loot

  I got the Southern blues, man

  - Sing it, brother –

  Got the below-the-Mason-Dixon blues, real bad.

  It went on for a while in that vein – Southern blues singers, it seemed, got a whole lot of material from the Federals’ behavior. And they are jerks, Perry thought; heavyhanded and abusive, while the Imperials looked the other way in total defiance of the Curzon Doctrine.

  Then, the Doctrine didn’t say anything about Imperial allies, just that the Empire itself would respect the absolute right of nations and regions to self-determination. Pieces of the old Empire – most of the Russian Empire now, and the Franco-Spanish Romantics did some pretty atrocious things in Africa and south Asia – had been held in place by force.

  Pieces of the post-1909 Refoundation Empire could leave any time they saw fit; they stayed for the benefits and had a voice in its governance. But the United States was an Imperial ally, and treated its South the absolute opposite way; not even trying to win hearts and minds, holding down the territory through brute force. And the Imperials looked the other way, sometimes actively assisted...

  They’d argued this sort of thing as cadets at the Academy, and as junior officers. As he’d gotten older and been promoted, abstract philosophical bullshitting became less important; you discussed practicals, not hypotheticals.

  But the workers here, the bullied smallholders and dispossessed landholders of the South, the blacks who were abused from both sides, the traveling migrants with him on this boat as it slowly made its way down the black Mississippi – these weren’t abstractions or hypotheticals. The people who’d created an entire musical genre were right here, right around him, and he was working with someone whose family had been wiped out by mercenaries who completely ignored the Geneva Conventions but had been paid, when you came down to the real source, with Imperial money.

  We’re supposed to be the good guys, the Empire. But we look the other way at some pretty damn shady and disgusting behavior.

  It was confusing and disconcerting to think that people like Ahle might have a point, might have valid grievances.

  As the two stewards segued into a new song, about a woman who’d left, as the engines of the heavy steamer thrummed resonantly through the boat, as the Memphis Darling pushed her barges slowly down the wide, dark river, Perry headed over to the bar again.

  “Scotch,” Perry told the off-duty crewman in filthy coveralls, who was filling in as the stewards played. He pushed over a dollar. “And make it a triple.”

  Chapter Twelve

  …also present at the 1875 signing of the Hanoverian Alliance, as part of the British and German entourages respectively, were two officers who, it is known, met. Then-Commander Jackie Fisher, and then-Colonel Ferdinand von Zeppelin.

  Fisher was already well-regarded in the Royal Navy for his work on torpedo development, and it is understandable that he at first saw Zeppelin’s dirigibles as a means to deliver those. His own diaries, however, show that he was quickly saw other military possibilities in airships, and was determined to add them to his Navy.

  In March 1877, four years before the outbreak of the Great War, Fisher was promoted to captain and put in charge of the newly-established Royal Navy Aerial Arm, precursor to the Imperial Air Service that the great military innovator would go on to father…

  From The Air Service: An Abbreviated History, Chatham Press, 1941.

  Karen Ahle loved New Orleans. The Free City, they called it, because it sat on the border of Texas and the United States, looking onto the Gulf of Mexico and its coastlines with Mexico, Yucatan and Spanish Cuba, itself a gateway to vibrant Central America and the teeming Caribbean. There was room for a trade town – trade in goods proper, illicit and stolen – at that intesection, and teeming New Orleans with its thousand fences fit that space as though it had been built for the purpose.

  Lake Pontchartrain, as they slowly exited the canal leading to it, was filled with hundreds of airship support barges, more of them loaded than empty. Water taxis and motorboats ferried people around between the barges, or back and forth to the city whose flood-barrier walls rose on their right. The channel was thick with shipping and a breeze blew in their faces, light soot mixed with thick salt, as Perry stood with Ahle and a dozen of the other traveling workers.

  “How are we going to find this woman once we land?” Perry asked. He seemed to have warmed since their clash, possibly due to seeing first-hand on the ground what the Feds were doing. The boat had been brutally searched in dock at Memphis by a platoon of yellow-uniformed mercenaries, jabbering at each other in fast Italian while occasionally barking an order in broken English at one or another of the stewards.

  They hadn’t paid much attention to Ahle or the heavily-sweating Perry, but they’d roughed up a couple of the other workers and shaken down a ten-dollar bribe from Perry, who’d simply handed it over without trying to negotiate down. They’d gotten smaller bribes from others of the better-dressed passengers – six fifty from Ahle, after first trying to extort ten – and something from the boat’s captain, probably after indicating they’d keep the boat in Memphis indefinitely without it.

  That kind of shit could and did happen; for that matter, some of the units – such as the damned murdering Special Squadrons – were known to simply confiscate boats, airships or whatever they could get their hands on.

  But they’d made it out, and the experience seemed to have maybe given the Imperial some context. Or perhaps the blues the stewards had been playing; it might have been artistically lacking, but it was genuine, more genuine than the smoothed-up performers at upscale clubs in Dodge and Denver played. Those performers were just making a buck; these guys felt it, and maybe some of that had come across.

  She looked back at Perry.

  “We’re not going to find her.”

  Perry seemed bemused.

  “What’s the point of this trip, then?”

  “You’ve never heard of Miss Lynch, have you? She knows everything. We won’t find her; she’ll find us. We’ll check in at the nearest hotel, get a drink, and wait. It shouldn’t take long.”

  It didn’t even take that long. They were met at the dock by a well-built, crew-cut man of about thirty who introduced himself as Johnny Unitas. There was a twinge of northerner to his accent, but that didn’t surprise Ahle; people of all kinds found their way into New Orleans. Looked unarmed to a casual observer, but Ahle could see the tell-tale bulge of a pistol under his silver-trimmed brown leather jacket, and would have bet he had at least one hideout gun plus a few knives.

  “If you’ll come this way, Captain; Vice-Commodore?”

  He led them off the docks and to a waiting car.

  “I trust you have the chip?”


  Perry reached into his jacket and handed over the obsidian chip. Unitas inspected it closely, then put it into his own jacket and nodded.

  “Take a seat,” he said. “The boss will see you after lunch.”

  New Orleans, at the height of noon in late March, was busy and crowded. The open back of the steam-car made a walking pace through the dock district, past loaded freight trucks and colorfully dressed pedestrians, toward and into the dense, crowded French Quarter. Ahle was aware – Perry probably wasn’t – that they were being led and tailed by narrow two-man electro-quadripedes that weaved in and out of the traffic but always kept about the same fifty-foot distance.

  Unitas, riding shotgun, was maintaining a degree of alertness himself. They passed a bronze statue, thirty feet high, of Governor Huey Long, at the center of a rotary, and then the streets became a lot denser and the buildings a lot older. The traffic only increased, though, and even Ahle – a Southerner, used to it normally – was feeling the heat and the humidity as the car inched through crowded traffic.

  Eventually they stopped outside a discreetly upscale cafe with a couple of loitering men smoking cigarettes around it. As Perry watched, one of them ambled off, only for another passer-by – in an expensively fake airshipman’s rig, thigh-high leather boots and a begoggled top-hat; urban trash with money – to take up station a few feet from where the first man had been.

  He wasn’t as familiar with this business as Ahle clearly was, but his few days of accelerated training with Agent Connery had taught him a few things. One of them was that these men were obviously guards, and another was that if a professional like this Miss L apparently was, had two guards visible, there were going to be at least four in the windows and rooftops. A lot of security for a brothel.

  “Welcome to Denard’s Cafe,” said their guide, the man called Unitas. “Why don’t you come in and have a couple of drinks? Miss L will make herself available to you presently.”

  This is a lot of rigamarole to deal with a two-bit information broker, he thought.

  Then corrected himself. Her man had known – she knew – that he was an Imperial Vice-Commodore. He hoped nobody had noticed the chills that ran down his spine at that; he’d never imagined the underworld having resources, information like that implied.

  Surely any intelligent person would focus their efforts through legitimate channels, rise honorably as his parents had, as he was – or hoped he still was – doing?

  The outside of Denard’s was discreetly upscale, but the inside wasn’t the slightest bit discreet about it. They passed through a couple of extravagant anterooms and into an – air-conditioned! – room that stank faintly of expensive cigar smoke. The furniture, including the long bar that ran down one side of the long room, was expensive mahogany decorated with what seemed like real gold.

  At midday, it was about half-full, two thirds women in expensive frilly dresses of bright silk; one or two of them carried parasols, indoors. The men wore suits, for the most part, black and white, a few in white-vested black suits. There was none of your trashy wannabe-airshipman fashion here; pure class, through and through, with about fifty percent more class added on for emphasis. It felt like a bordello.

  Unitas guided them to a table at one side.

  “Drinks while you wait?”

  “Rum.”

  “Of course.” A liveried flunky had followed them to the table. “Rum, for the captain. For the Vice-Commodore?”

  “Just iced water, thank you.”

  “Something we don’t serve, I’m terribly sorry to say. How about Scotch on the rocks?”

  This wasn’t a place to get drunk, or even buzzed.

  It probably wasn’t a place to make enemies, either.

  “Heavily watered.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  Unitas left them as the drinks arrived. Perry took a cautious sip. Well up to Fleming’s standards, and past Flight Admiral Richardson’s; this was close to the best Scotch he’d ever tasted. A single-malt with a light, peaty flavor. He took another, appreciative sip. From the look of her, Ahle was enjoying her rum just as much – more, because she was at ease here. She’d been here before, she’d said, but never been granted an audience with the infamous Miss L.

  A heavily-tanned man in a tricornet – a tricornet! – appeared, came over to the table. The rest of his dress was as idiosyncratic as his hat: double-buttoned red coat, bright white pants, knee-high boots with wholly unnecessary buckles that could only have been solid gold. A cutlass hung by his side.

  “If it isn’t Karen Ahle,” he said. His accent was Australian. “And her renegade Air Service Vice-Commodore. It’s good to see you alive, Captain.”

  Ahle rose, extended the back of her hand. The man flamboyantly kissed it.

  “If it isn’t Captain Brian Carbin,” she said.

  “Her renegade Air Service Vice-Commodore,” Carbin addressed Perry. He’d been carrying a glass, and he raised it. “To true love, Vice-Commodore. And to the wrong side of the tracks.

  Manners required Perry to touch his glass to Carbin’s, which contained a bright pink concoction with an umbrella.

  “To true love,” he agreed, thinking of Annabelle. “A wonderful thing.”

  “A lot of people are wondering how you escaped Hugoton but your officers didn’t make it,” said Carbin. “One might have thought you’d have brought at least one along with you.”

  “I tried,” said Perry. “But the place is an Imperial stronghold.”

  “In the same cells as they were, no doubt.” Carbin was a lot more serious now. “And yet, none of them escaped. While your crew was wiped out by, shall we say, unknown assailants.”

  “And?” Ahle asked.

  “Your accounts in Sonora don’t have to be split so many ways as they had, did they?”

  Ahle became equally cold.

  “What are you implying, Carbin?”

  “I’m not the first to speculate. I’m the first to see you, though, and raise the matter.”

  Unitas coughed discreetly behind Captain Carbin.

  “Captain, Vice-Commodore? The madam will see you now.”

  From what he’d heard of her, and gathered, Perry had formed certain expectations of Miss Lynch. From what he’d experienced so far working for Fleming, at some level he’d expected to be proven dead wrong yet again. It was almost disconcerting that this time, his expectations of Miss Markell Lynch had been absolutely dead right.

  She was a blonde woman with an elaborate hairdo, dressed very expensively in a corset and light jacket. Attractive and in her early forties, her high-heeled boots lay crossed over one another on the top of a broad oak desk in an office that rivaled Fleming’s for luxury. She waved an ostrich-feather fan in front of her face as Ahle and Perry entered.

  “So Fleming finally saw fit to call on me, did he? Sit down. Drinks?”

  “No, thank you,” said Perry, before Ahle could ask for more rum.

  “Captain Ahle?”

  “Another rum, thank you.”

  “You heard the lady,” Lynch said to one of the elaborately-carved wooden panels.

  The door behind them opened – had Unitas really closed it? – and another flunky came in with a glass of the same color of rum Ahle had been drinking in the entrance room.

  “So, Ian Fleming sent you. I’m not remotely surprised that he did at this time; I’ve been expecting it ever since that spy war began. What specifically can I help you with?”

  This woman was probably very good at playing the back-and-forth game, thought Perry, better than he was and probably better than Ahle. You didn’t play to an opponent’s strengths; he’d get straight to the point.

  “We’re looking for a stolen line-class airship designated DN 4-106,” said Perry.

  A smile came across Lynch’s face.

  “For a moment,” she said, “I was afraid you were going to ask me something hard.”

  You know where it is?

  How could this woman in New Orleans, however excel
lently-informed, know where his ship had vanished to? That was insane!

  “I can also give you the last known location of Theron Marko, the man who stole it. I imagine Mr. Fleming would be very interested to learn that.”

  “He would be,” said Perry. “Are you going to tell us, already?”

  Lynch smiled.

  “Certainly. But I need a small favor from you first.”

  “What kind?”

  “Nothing substantial. I simply need you to obtain important documents from one of the better-organized mercenary units in the South. Events have piqued my curiosity.”

  “Buy them?” Perry asked.

  “I could buy them myself if they could be bought. The Special Squadrons have vices; they have rather a lot of vices. Those vices do not include corruption on any substantive level.”

  “Plenty of fucking other ones, though,” said Ahle.

  “Technically,” said Lynch, “rape and murder are sins, not vices. I know they wiped out your family; I was in Raleigh then. You do know what they call Heinrich Himmler, correct?”

  “The Butcher of Raleigh,” Ahle muttered.

  “What they did to Wake Forest, they did far worse to Raleigh,” said Lynch. “I was there at the time. But one depersonalizes and allows the memories to pass. Are you willing, Captain Ahle, to engage these people?”

  “I was already planning to,” said Ahle.

  “Vice-Commodore, do you want your airship back? Do you want your airship back sufficiently as to go to Missouri and get me what I want?”

  “This wasn’t the deal,” said Perry. However nasty these Special Squadrons guys were, they were still employees of an ally! How far did things have to go?

  “It’s the deal I’m offering you,” said Lynch. “Satisfy my curiosity and I’ll satisfy yours.”