Her Majesty's Western Service

by Leo Champion

He nodded firmly.

  “Lined up a string of technically-not-curses befitting the Service but giving `em hell,” said Swarovski. “Say go, sir.”

  Perry shook his head.

  “Exchanging trash-talk with movie-star mercenaries isn’t befitting the Service and we’ve done enough of it. I think I have better people we can talk to.”

  “E-R”, Earnest Perry read the flasher, with his nose pressed to the window. “N-E-S-T. Ernest!”

  4-106 was tilted upwards, rising fast, buffeted and pushed higher by the flames it was above, heading on an intercept course for the bright-purple airship, which was also rising, the other one closing on it like halves of a vice. A grey shape several thousand feet up, but the bright flashes were unmistakable.

  Ernest whirled. “Daddy flashed me! He flashed my name, E-R-N-E-S-T spells Ernest!”

  That had to be for them, thought Annabelle. Since that airship had to be commanded by Marcus now, who would have some idea where the Staff idiots would have put them. And of course, coming from an airship’s flasher, Ernest was taking it like literal Word of God.

  “And he hasn’t stopped, dear,” Annabelle Perry pointed out.

  The airship was still flashing.

  “Away,” said Ernest.

  “You missed the ‘safer.’ Safer away.”

  “From - that - window - end”

  Marcus, I love you.

  Ernest turned, a broad grin on his face.

  “Father flashed me personally from his command ship!”

  “And you saw what he said?”

  “Ernest, safer away from the window,” said Ernest, firmly turning his back on it. Heading to where Maria was sitting against the wall, hands over her eyes.

  “Father’s fine,” Ernest told his seven-year-old sister.

  “How do you know he’s fine? You haven’t spoken to him.”

  “He seems to have got his missing ship back and come to fight the pirates,” Annabelle said. “He gave them his regards - and then he flashed Ernest!”

  “Underground,” Ernest insisted, pulling Annabelle toward the door. “Come on, Father said to with his flasher!”

  Annabelle Perry hated the wives who wore their husbands’ rank - or the husbands who wore their wives’, rarer but not unknown - on their sleeve, tried to pull it on the other spouses. She had not so much as earned an ensign’s commission in the Service; she had no right to wave Vice-Commodore’s rank.

  And she wasn’t going to wave that rank now, but the squadron commander’s wife also had responsibilities. To take care of the enlisted crew in the lower floors and the basement - give them some encouragement, set a careful watch on those fires and draw an evacuation plan in case they got too close…

  A final glance over her shoulder saw 4-106 still rising fast, closing in at a right angle on the bright purple airship amidst smoke and flames from the burning industrial district.

  God, I love you,Marcus, Annabelle thought.Win this one. Come back to me, please.

  “They’ve been planning this for a while,” said Perry as the ship rose, the gap from the sky-blue Five Speed closing to within a mile on their twelve, visible through wisps of boiling black smoke from the firestorn below. The Pith and Vinegar closed on their five, a little further away, only intermittently visible through the smoke from a furiously burning refinery.

  “They’ll have gathered some idea of what kind of a man I am - that I’m going to fight carefully and logically.” Perry smiled thinly.

  “A careful and logical man would run away when he’s outnumbered two to one, outclassed in firepower by about one point eight to one,” said Ahle, probably speaking for the whole ship.

  “I didn’t say,” said Perry, “that I was going to prove their intelligence right. Besides, we have a job to do.” He outlined the plan.

  “You’re crazy,” said Nolan.

  “You forgot the ‘sir’,” said Perry. “Now, Comms, your part in this - start talking again. Random two-letter code groups.”

  “There’s no friendlies nearby, sir,” said Nolan.

  “They don’t know that. Give them something to worry about, take their mind from what we’re really about to do to them.”

  4-106 flew through the smoke above Dodge City, kicked and buffeted by heat columns, the wind behind her as she rose on a T-bone course for the Five Speed as the Pith and Vinegar closed in at a right angle. Soon they’d be within missile range; the Five Speed would be in a position to turn and broadside Perry’s nose.

  If 4-106 turned to face Five Speed with a broadside, they’d be exposing either the vulnerable nose or tail - without being able to shoot back with missiles - to the heavily-armed Pith and Vinegar.

  You didn’t need an Academy commission to know it was a bad situation.

  “What’s he doing?” Airshipman Gilford asked as the purple airship closed on them. There was another ship to their twelve, that they had to be racing toward. Was Vice Perry trying to get them killed, were those rumors true about him being a traitor? Fires below would be a hell of a thing for a man to jump into…

  “Have a piece of gum,” said Rafferty, chewing on his own. The grin hadn’t left the Specialist Third’s face since he’d returned on the newly-recovered 4-106, and from what Gilford had been able to gather so far, there was reason for that - Raff had done some crazy shit.

  He took the gum.

  “Attention all stations,” came Lieutenant Swarovski over the ship intercom as, buffeted by the winds behind them,. “Here’s what you’re going to do…”

  By the end of it, Rafferty was grinning even more widely than he had before. He clapped Gilford on the shoulder.

  “We got this one.”

  Something impacted 4-106. Missile hit. They were closer to the ship on their twelve than Gilford had thought.

  Those flames below. The whole industrial district of Dodge City burning. Not to mention the airship park, the Boot District, everything you could see if you looked down.

  It would be a hell of a thing for a man to have to bail into.

  “Yes, nose return fire!” Swarovski shouted.

  “Damage report, sir!” said Martindale.

  “Report,” said Perry. Calmly, his veins ice.

  “Four hits. Fore port fin damaged. Lost six sacs, nose compensated. Aerodynamics affected perhaps five percent.”

  “We going to turn and engage that fucker,” Nolan asked plaintively, “or just let `em give us another volley right down the gullet likethat first one?”

  The hissing vibrations below their feet began to jerk slightly; pressure-gun fire opened fire, one ball after the other firing at the smoke-darkened sky-blue airship that was now within a mile and a half, closing very fast to a mile.

  Engines thrummed faster as 4-106 picked up speed, redlining the boilers.

  Perry imagined the Five Speed’s missileers, mercenary trash for all their noisy celebrity, frantically reloading, calculating, aiming. They’d get a second volley. Maybe a third.

  They wouldn’t get off a fourth, not in the time they had left.

  “Estimate her at a mile, sir!” reported one of the bridge crew.

  Perry turned to Nolan.

  “We follow the plan, Signals.” Then to Ahle: “Prepare to turn.”

  Followed by the wind, 4-106 turned on her axis as the sky-blue airship came within a thousand yards; nine hundred, eight hundred, pushed hard by the wind and rocking, bumping back and forth from the unsteady fire-driven air currents below.

  Another salvo of missiles from the Five Speed hit as it turned, some of them going wide. Others tore into the airship’s kevlar and aluminum plating, ripping apart sacs; ballast was automatically dropped to compensate, and the airship stayed as level as the firestorm-driven currents allowed.

  As 4-106’s tail gun brought to bear, more fire poured into the Five Speed, wild shots but also hits, explosions amongst the gondola setting hydrogen bags alight. Ballast fell from her, too, and riggers danced to release flaming bags - some quite low, requi
ring the release of ones above before they could catch light and the burns spread - into the smoke-filled sky.

  What was that insane Imperial doing, Captain Rowland thought, as a nervous crewman reported point after point of minor damage and 4-106 drew closer.

  Four hundred yards. Less than the Five Speed’s own length. She could see missilers, nine-inch, and the coming broadside was going to hurt.

  But then what? He’d only get one, with the wind blowing into her like this. Side-on collission.

  “He’s crazy,” Rowland’s exec murmured from the helm. “He’s an Imperial. He’s supposed to be-”

  “Men crack,” said Rowland. Raised her voice, spoke into the microphone.

  “All hands! Prepare to repel boarders!”

  “Missiles,” Perry said calmly to Swarovski, “you may fire. Ballast, release when they have.”

  “Missiles free. Kick their asses, boys!” Swarovski cried into his microphone.

  “Weapons,” said Perry mildly, “we’ve spoken about appropriate language on the bridge.”

  “You heard the chief,” said Rafferty. “Do it.”

  Standing clear, Airshipman Second Gilford hit the trigger of the already-aimed nine-inch missile launcher. Flaming backblast blew through their bay;the missile streaked out, along with eleven others, toward the huge sky-blue airship.

  “Starboard side,” Rafferty yelled, bracing himself for what was about to happen. “Come on!”

  A half-assed third volley of missiles crossed 4-106’s from the Five Speed, mostly wildly fired as that ship’s crew raced to draw cutlasses and prepare pistols. One shot hit the gondola, destroying four bags; ballast ditched automatically to compensate. There was no risk of fire with the inert helium bags; only those four had to be ripped open, not the dozens that a similar hit might have cost a hydrogen bird.

  Another missile scored a lucky direct hit on one of 4-106’s engines, blasting it - and its propeller - into whirling debris. A piece of the shattered propeller lanced up and ripped through two more hydrogen bags.

  In his engine-hall station, Vescard swore as the report came in.

  “Tell Bridge and reroute power,” he ordered Warrant Second Rodgers.

  “Already rerouted. Telling Vid now,” said Rodgers.

  The Five Speed wasn’t nearly so lucky. Missiles exploded along her gondola - not the series of direct cabin strikes that had smashed the bright-red Vorpal a couple of hours ago, but bad enough regardless. One hit did rip open a section of the cabin, hitting crew cabins and a missile bay; one missileer, stunned by the blast and teetering over the space where his balance had been, lost his balance and fell.

  The revolver, which he’d drawn against the anticipated boarders, dropped faster as that missileer yanked his parachute’s cord and hoped the flames wouldn’t get him; a moment later another man came past, a rigger knocked off balance by hits above.

  4-106’s other eleven missiles slammed into the Five Speed’s gondola, ripping apart hydrogen sacs and turning sections of the aircraft into brief infernos as her remaining riggers dashed to release hydrogen.

  And then 4-106, still being swept broadside on what would have been a collision course, jumped.

  Every man aboard had been expecting it, as almost a metric ton of inert ballast dropped from the ship. The kick still came as a surprise, the deck of the airship surging up toward them as the ship jumped a hundred feet in a couple of seconds.

  “She’ll be right below us, sir!” Vidkowski reported - “Now!”

  “Away,” Perry ordered curtly.

  Another half-ton of ballast fell from 4-106. Unlike the ton from before, this load was not inert.

  Four hundred pounds of blazing, ignited thermite fell onto the top of the Five Speed, ripping through the airship’s thin kevlar-aluminum armor in fractions of a second and falling through her gondola, lighting waves of bags as, burning at four thousand degrees Fahrenheit, the loads tore through the Armadillo airship like drops of molten steel through tissue paper.

  Riggers screamed and one recent recruit saw the writing on the wall, checked his parachute and bailed.

  The rest were longer-term Armadillos who believed the legend, and most of them had been at Alamogordo the day they’d become one. They’d fight on regardless.

  As 4-106 released helium bags to drop again, and her starboard-side missiles came to bear on the cripped and burning Five Speed, it was noble futility.

  “Get `em, boys!” came Weapons Officer Swarovski’s voice into the starboard-side missile bay.

  “My turn,” said Rafferty, and hit the missile they’d loaded and timed earlier.

  Twelve more twenty-five pound, nine-inch missiles streaked out at the Five Speed.

  Airships had a lot of buoyancy, and fighting airships kept plenty of refillable sacs and hydrogen cylinders in reserve. Damage like the Five Speed had taken could have been repaired - if the three strikes had occurred with minutes between them, rather than seconds.

  With only a few seconds between the point-blank missile barrage, a bombload of thermite and a second point-blank barrage from the other side, the Five Speed had no chance. Experienced riggers realized this, as did the rig officer, who called a report into the bridge and then raised one of his paddles to wave in the pattern that meant Abandon Ship.

  Below, on the bridge, Rowland cursed under her breath as more reports came in, feeling her ship begin to fall as the hydrogen that kept her flying, burned or was jettisoned.

  Others on the bridge were looking at her, waiting for her to make the call. They were brave, not stupid, and they knew what it meant when a ship began dropping like this.

  “Abandon ship,” she muttered. Raised her voice again: “We’ll fight again another day! Abandon ship!”

  From a mile and a half away, Shirley Meier on the purple-gondola-ed Pith and Vinegar had watched in shock as the Imperial’s suicide charge had become an improbable, daring, deadly leap-frog of Peggey’s ship. Parachutes now bloomed as the wreckage of the Five Speed started to fall from the sky.

  “They took hits,” Meier said aloud. That much was apparent; the Imperial’s sleek, shape was battered now, her armor pitted from chaingun damage, her maneuvrerable form that much less so.

  “We’ll finish those dirtbags off, then,” said Borean, her helm officer. “Fuckers.”

  “Turn to engage,” said Meier. “Weapons free to fire at will. Take them down.”

  Cheers sounded across 4-106 as the burning wreckage of the Five Speed slowly fell out of the sky, through smoke plumes and up to where a lick of flame from a refinery stack licked her, brought her into the flames. Her crew in parachutes around, steered for the least flames and the best safety.

  “Good job,crew,” Perry spoke through the intercom. “But there’s another one left, and we’re going to have to fight it out with her. Every serviceperson will do their duty.”

  “Fire at will,” came Swarovski’s voice over the intercom to Rafferty and Gilford. They could see incoming missiles from the bright-purple ship, their trails of fire coming toward them.

  Mercenary trash, thought Rafferty with pride, as he and Gilford loaded a missile into its tube. Careful - yep, looked about nineteen hundred yards.

  “Bay clear? Fire!”

  As rapidly as their crews could fire them, missiles ranged across the smoke-filled sky between 4-106 and the Pith and Vinegar, the two ships angled just off broadside to each other, slowly closing; nineteen hundred yards, eighteen hundred, a mile between them.

  Secondary weapons - spinners, cannon, pressure-guns and chainguns - opened up as their operators took chances, aiming for lucky hits at extreme range. One of the Armadillo riggers was killed, a direct hit from a pressure-gun round taking him through the chest and tumbling his smashed corpse off the airship and into the fires below.

  The airships buffeted by fire, updrafts pushing them up, kicking them around. It made aiming of missiles hard, and more went wide than not.

  Others hit. A pair of nine-inchers from
4-106, one of them fired by Rafferty, exploded dead on the center of the Pith and Vinegar’s gondola, blasting through the kevlar and setting thirty-some bags on fire at once. Riggers raced to the scene, spraying extinguisher and releasing the catches that sent burning bags loose.

  A missile hit 4-106 near her already-damaged nose, striking a support strut whose structural failure slashed through nine helium bags as it, already under pressure, failed. Another one hit near a tailfin, narrowly avoiding major damage but blasting open three more helium bags.

  “We’re hurting them,” said Perry, putting his scope down and walking back to his station. His own ship was taking damage, was definitely being bloodied, but the mercenary ship was smaller and it was only a matter of time.

  She had three more friends accompanying the SS, of course.

  And as she began to disengage east, Perry wished he had time to land for repairs. Or even better, time to go back to Hugoton for real repairs.

  The SS was coming. They didn’t have that time.

  “Pursue them. And ready the Marines.”

  Second Lieutenant Herbert ‘H’ Jones of the Imperial Air Marines was a small man with a big grin. He’d chosen to remain at Hugoton with the last of his men in the hope of seeing the action he’d joined up for; twenty-two years old he hadn’t yet, and he’d wanted to his entire life.

  As he came onto the bridge he drew himself to attention and saluted the Vice-Commodore.

  “At ease, Lieutenant. You and your sticks ready?”

  Jones usually commanded a platoon, but he had two four-man sticks now, two thirds of a squad.

  “Absolutely, sir. Whatever you need done, the Air Marines will handle. Gung ho, sir!”