Her Majesty's Western Service

by Leo Champion

  A smile spread across Nolan’s face.

  “The Free City, huh? Got some business to do there?”

  “Everyone,” said Ahle, “can find business in New Orleans.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Great War, historians agree with practial unanimity, divides Early Modern history, defined as 1789 to 1881, from Modern, defined as postwar to present.

  Where historians disagree on is when the Great War ended. Certainly its start is known - June 5th, 1881, when the Third French Republic declared war on Germany over the disputed territories of Alsace-Lorraine. Within a week, interlocking treaties - some of them secret until that point - had brought Europe into conflict, the two great alliances being the relatively modern Anglo-German powers (with lesser allies including Norway, Denmark, Holland, Greece and a wavering odd-man-out of Austria-Hungary) of the Great Alliance into war with the Royal Entente of Russia, France and Spain, their lesser allies including most of the rest of Europe.

  It is beyond the scope of this work to discuss the ensuing warfare in detail, but the invention of the machine-gun had changed expectations considerably. Fluid, mobile warfare became bloody trench stalemate by midsummer, and what followed were years of grinding warfare between equally-matched powers.

  The colonies were the first to show strain, native units rebelling when it became clear their home countries were too occupied in Europe to suppress those outbreaks. Other colonies, such as the generally-loyal Australians, were brought into the war more directly; the attempted Russo-Japanese invasion ofAustralia was a bloody failure, but the carnage wreaked by Tsarist troops during their brief occupation of eastern New South Wales remains a horrifying memory to this day.

  But after years of fighting, social tensions at home surfaced, workers’ movements demanding international unity and an end to the war. Many of the troops ordered to suppress the ensuing General Strikes mutinied, and by 1895 the war efforts had fallen apart. In the United Kingdom this was typified by the Revolt, as three years of bloody, vicious warfare between left-wing Commune and right-wing Royalist forces effectively destroyed the old - and Restored - Empire’s heart for a generation…

  From A Young Person’s History of the World, Volume VIII.

  “We found him playing dead,” Captain Metz said to Skorzeny, gesturing at the wounded man strapped to a chair in the interrogation room at the Joplin base. He’d received cursory first aid, enough to stabilize the minor head wound that had knocked him unconscious.

  “He’ll be dead soon enough unless he co-operates,” said Skorzeny.

  The wounded man looked on with horrified eyes. He could see the implements on the table next to the chair. He’d been stripped naked and firmly manacled in, wrists and ankles. From the clothes and bearing, he was some kind of a dockside thug. But that could be faked.

  Skorzeny turned to address the man directly.

  “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, friend. One way or another, I’m going to learn who sent you and why.”

  “I don’t know anything,” the man pleaded.

  Skorzeny picked up a sharply-serrated knife.

  “Maybe you’ll know more in a few minutes.”

  “No, really! I don’t know anything! We were just sent in to do a covering operation, that’s all I know!”

  “A good start,” said Skorzeny. “You may come out of this intact. Who were you covering for?”

  “I” – the man’s eyes looked to the table of implements and back – “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Skorzeny, and moved forward with the knife.

  The man had lasted almost ten minutes, a little above average. Skorzeny, whose uniform was now spattered heavily with blood, nodded to First Lieutenant Schierbecker.

  “Did you get all of that?” he asked his young aide. “How we applied pain visibly and selectively?”

  “Yessir,” said Schierbecker, who was looking a bit blanched by it all.

  “You’ll get used to this kind of thing. It’s standard practice. If we’d asked him nicely, do you think he would have told us all about this woman in New Orleans he works for? Or this renegade Imperial named Perry or Parry they were taking in?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What we’re going to do about her is a different method. But first things first.”

  Skorzeny drew his sidearm, racked the slide, and shot the prisoner through the temple.

  “Next,” he said, calmly putting the Luger back in its holster, “we get on the line to our friends...”

  The small escort-class airship, a narrow fighting vessel a hundred and ten yards long, nosed through the canyon where 4-106 sat, late in that afternoon. She flashed the proper code, which kept Pratt Cannon’s crew – on a dismounted rocket launcher – from blowing her to skeletal wreckage – and came in.

  A very short, rig-less man dressed in bright red from the toes of his thick-soled boots to the tip of his beret, jumped out. A brace of pearl-handled revolvers hung on a bandolier across his chest.

  “Pratt Cannon!” he said to the guards. “Any of you know who Pratt Cannon is? I’m here to meet him. Him and somebody named Marko.”

  “Jebediah fucking Judd,” said Cannon, coming forward. The two of them shook hands. “Thought the Sonorans got you last year!”

  “Sonorans think a lot of things,” said Judd. “Sonorans think too much, maybe. They got my ship. I got a new one, courtesy of some friends of yours. Just in exchange for a bit of work, is all. OK, a lot of work. But fuck it, new ship!”

  “Somebody wanted me?” asked Marko. “You’re my transport out?”

  “I’m your transport out,” Judd said. “Also got a few more men.” He took a harmonica from around his neck and blew a discordant blast.

  A hatch of the slender airship opened and men piled out, carrying packs and rifles. They wore rough civilian dress, but from their bearing and the way some barked at others, they were obviously soldiers. Forty or so of them. The 4-106 crew eyed them warily; soldiers had never been good news for the likes of this lot.

  “What’s going on?” Marko asked.

  “I’m just the delivery boy,” said Judd. “But it looks to me like you’ve got a platoon of Texans for added security. Maybe my other man can tell you more.”

  The same Third Department man who’d taken the 4-106 documents a few days ago, appeared.

  “New orders,” he said to Marko. “You’re off standby. There’s been developments. I want you to take your crew and get moving.”

  “Where?”

  “Taos, to begin with.” A military town that marked the Republic of Texas’ northwestern corner, right on the Sonoran border and not far from the Colorado line. “Further orders when you’re in the air.”

  “You got a name, Third Department?”

  “Call me Ivan. Now get your men together, and a dozen of these thugs, and move.”

  “Cannon, you stay here,” said Marko. “You’re in charge while I’m gone. The rest of you – you heard the man.”

  Fleming reviewed the telegram that had come to him from – Memphis – with greater and greater alarm.

  Reached for his drink. Another sip.

  There simply hadn’t been time to teach many codes to the supposedly-renegade Air Service officer Perry. No more than a few ciphers for keywords that might come up.

  The ones that appeared were bad enough. They fit into the picture he was gathering, cleanly. Too cleanly. Hugoton. Texas. 4-106. Maps. Although without proof…

  Mind, he was looking forward to hearing the story from Perry himself. How he’d been gulled into attacking a supposedly-friendly occupation unit’s base. He supposed nonlethals had been used unless forced, but he also knew exactly how that pirate Ahle felt about the SS.

  Did she sucker him that fast? I didn’t have him as the type. Must have been some other reason.

  Something from Lynch’s end? More likely. He didn’t know that woman’s motivations.

  Very bad news either way, he thought.
He didn’t have much in the way of resources; didn’t have anything to speak of but a fragment.

  May be time to send that fragment – named Moore – to Texas, though. Just to see if there was anything left to pick up.

  Screw what had convinced the vice-commodore to attack the SS. He didn’t peg the Service officer as a liar and he wasn’t the type to argue with results.

  Yes, he decided. We send Moore with the last codes to Houston, to see if there’s anything left of the network there.

  And as for Perry – there’s not a whole lot we can do. We just hope he’s wrong.

  MI-7 Agent David Cornwell flinched as the heavy truck rolled past in the night. They were common enough on the Houston docks, of course, but he was in a state where everything and anything spooked him. Had been for weeks now.

  Huddled in the laborers’ rooming house, he ticked the reasons off on his fingers. Only blind luck had kept him from getting blasted in the initial attacks. Or busted in the following sweeps. Texan authorities weren’t friendly to MI-7 or Imperials overall, with their support for the United States of America.

  He’d had a private alley or two he’d kept open, despite that vainglorious idiot Fleming’s insistence on all channels being shared within the agency. MI-7’s encryption had been broken hard, that much he knew. The Okhrana here had been wiped out in response, but the Third Department were well and truly active. He hadn’t thought those guys operated outside interior Russia!

  They knew he was alive. They knew someone from MI-7 had escaped, and they were hunting him. His fieldcraft had assured him of that. They knew his drops. They’d busted his sources. They were getting close.

  Texas was gearing up for something. Although he couldn’t get the word out, although his sources had been busted, he could still see with his own eyes.

  Reserve bases had been activated. There seemed to have been call-ups.

  And the docks were gearing up to receive something big. Military shipments, from the number of soldiers around.

  And, point five – his ticked-off fingers made a fist – he was sure, from his remaining sources, that some Russian big-shot was in town. The Priest. The Reaper. The Hammer. Conceivably the wheel behind all the wheels, Count Leon Trotsky himself.

  Any of those would be bad news. Texas becoming a Russian client state would be very bad news, and that was where all the signs were pointing. Fleming had to know.

  He had to get the word out.

  He had to get himself out, if he wanted to live much longer.

  He caught himself. Made himself breathe.

  Breathe, David, breathe.

  No. Pseudonym. He had to be that man if he wanted to make it alive through the tightened-up Texan customs.

  Breathe, John, breathe.

  Texas was gearing up for war. Not against the Sonorans, because a sweep against MI-7 would have been irrelevant and unwarranted in that case. Texas was gearing for war against the United States and expecting heavy Russian support, because why else that activity on the docks?

  Yes.

  Huddled on the laborer’s bed in the dockside worker’s room, MI-7 agent David Cornwell resolved to himself:

  He had to get to Hugoton. Texas was gearing for war, and the Russians were backing them. As viciously blinded as MI-7 supposedly was, that only made his mission the more important.

  Fleming had to know. Whatever the cost.

  True to his word, the Third Department man whose real name almost certainly wasn’t Ivan, filled them in on the ride to fortified Taos, Province of Texan New Mexico. They sat – just the four of them minus Pratt Cannon, the dozen hired men were in the main cabin – in Jebediah Judd’s large and well-decorated private cabin.

  “The SS men taking their copies of the documents were attacked on their way back from Texas,” ‘Ivan’ said. “Pinpoint strike clearly aimed at taking the reconnaisance and the analysis. Roughed up the emissary, didn’t kill him.”

  “An Imperial response?” asked Marko skeptically. “I thought you Third Department bastards sacrificed the Okhrana’s presence on this continent in order to blind Fleming’s boys.”

  “We don’t think so. We’ve identified the two as Captain Karen Ahle, known to the Texans as a pirate. Mostly operates on the Plains, but she’s crossed borders; only flag she’s never attacked is Sonora. And the other one as” – ‘Ivan’ produced one of the Imperial wanted posters of Perry – “Marcus Perry, late Vice-Commodore of the Imperial Air Service. Cashiered after losing a ship. Your ship, as it happens.”

  Marko’s thin, skeptical smile became a wide, broken-toothed grin.

  “Discordia at work! These chains of events!”

  “These chains of events have given us a problem we can’t explain. A renegade and an escaped pirate.”

  “Who did that attack for a reason,” Ferrer said. Being logical. The implications went on. “Which implies you’ve got a leak somewhere. To tell someone those documents were valuable for some reason.”

  “Or at least interesting,” Marko said. Giggled. “Logic doesn’t fit into the real world.”

  “Worthwhile for whatever reason. Also worth a damn to the Imperials; Fleming may be low on assets, but he’s going to reward whoever takes that shit to Hugoton. Maybe a pardon. Maybe a lot of cash. Perhaps reinstatement to his rank. These two were commissioned by a madam in New Orleans. Known as a high-level information broker. That’s where you’re going.”

  “By airship?”

  “Not enough time. Special train, full priority to the eastern border. Faster than any airship.”

  “And then?” Rienzi asked. “We go kill this madam before she can figure out who to sell the shit to.”

  “You, the goons you brought with you, and whatever assets you can sweep up on the ground at short notice, by which we mean immediately. We lost our old muscle there blinding the Imperials. You’re the troubleshooters. Tie off this thread.”

  The Red Wasp II touched down at the massive Pontchartrain airship park, clumsily maneuvering onto a barge, deflating to negative buoyancy and tying down onto the barge’s heavy, rusted iron stanchions.

  “What business were you on, anyway?”, Perry had asked Nolan some hours earlier.

  The captain had shrugged, spread his palms.

  “Bit of this, bit of that. We’d just dropped a load in Memphis when we got the tip about you.”

  “From who?”

  Nolan shrugged. “Just something I heard in one of the bars, that you might be in a spot of trouble and headed the way you were. So we headed up that way ourselves. But, we’ll find a cargo here. Take it” – Perry shrugged – “maybe to Dodge. If that’s what you really want to do after this.”

  “Maybe we do,” Perry had said. Thinking of 4-106. Thinking, this man thinks he owes me and he’s the closest thing we have to a trusted ally at this point. And he’s got a ship. “Or maybe you might want to think Denver instead. Or the Rockies. And take on a few more men who know how to crew a ship a short distance.”

  Now, as they tied down, a Port Authority motorboat coming in to collect the landing fee, Perry had a whole different set of problems. Their contact, Unitas, was gone, dead or missing; certainly the Marlyville Zephyr hadn’t survived to pick him up as planned. Finding Lynch’s hangout would probably be possible, but without a chip or an intro, how did they get in?

  Ahle elbowed Nolan.

  “They’ll hit you up for a bribe, but don’t pay more than twenty. Less than that and they’ll get troublesome, though.”

  “Been here before a thousand times, cap’n. I don’t have so much to hide as a real pirate. They’re getting five plus the docking fee.”

  The two port officials wore wet, dark-blue uniforms; one of them, the woman, had a cigarette in her mouth that had somehow managed to stay alight. Perry found himself sweating slightly – not just the heat – as the two looked them over; the wanted posters of him had had time to get to a lot of places. But nothing except boredom registered on the officials’ faces as they exchanged s
ignatures, paperwork and money.

  I hate being uncomfortable around authority, Perry thought. Well, not for too much longer. Assuming Lynch was honorable – and after what they’d been through yesterday morning, she damn well had better be! – then in a couple hours, they would have the location of 4-106 and be off to recover it. This time three days from now, they could be sailing into Dodge with a hired crew, reputations restored and an honorable accomplishment on his record.

  There are Wanted posters of me. He tried not to think of that, of the work it would take to scrub a deliberately-blemished reputation.

  They boarded one of the several boats that had, on seeing an airship land, come along to take passengers or light cargo, and in a few minutes were on the docks proper, lost in a crowd.

  “You go recruit some more bodies,” Perry said to Nolan. “We’ll meet you back at the airship. Don’t lift until we’re back. We will have a job for you.”

  “Mind if I pick up a cargo, if I find something?”

  Perry didn’t have the money, he realized, to personally charter this airship to the Rockies. Nolan might have owed him a favor, but after saving their lives, he didn’t owe them much. And that ship would cost money to run.

  “Go ahead.”

  The United States and Texas were by no means friendly, but there was peace and a reasonably open border. Getting across, with the sets of papers the Third Department had given them, had been easy, and from the border it was a very short train ride to New Orleans.

  “We’re going to need weapons,” Marko said. “But that’s not going to be so much of a problem; I have connections in New Orleans.”

  “We need real firepower,” said the leader of the dozen picked toughs Marko had brought from Colorado. A burly Irish brawler named Tate. “I heard of this L bitch. Real high-level, she is. You taking her down is gonna be trouble.”