Her Majesty's Western Service (13 page)

“
You coming on board, Vice-Commodore?” Nolan asked from the bridge. A gangway had been thrown up, a low ramp going into the cargo hold.

I'm not sure it's safe to
, Perry thought. He could hear murmurs from the rest of the crew.

“
Chicago by sunrise or it's free!” Nolan yelled.

“
Let's get moving,” Perry said. “On board.”

Perry's crew, carrying their bags,
began to file aboard.

The two
deputies, Danhauer and Norris, were standing by.

“
If you need anything from the Service, Sergeant,” Perry said, “let me know. You and your department have gone well out of your way to help us, and we take care of our friends.”

They shook hands.

“I've counted to infinity, Vice-Commodore,” Norris told him. “Twice.”

Chapter
Five

Reporter,
Chicago Sun
:              Mr. President, you are cancelling your company's push to build a line from Chicago to Lincoln, it having completed the first stage to Madison, but not reached the second stage to Dubuque. Let alone to Lincoln. Why is that?

President Rockingham:
              We are. And the reason is that it is simply impossible. Until the point where our government can stop wasting resources on attempting to subjugate - sorry, attempting to
integrate
- the former Confederacy and begin to focus them where they are
needed
, on the Plains, we can not build and maintain a railway. We cannot build and maintain a railroad line through unpoliced anarchy.

Reporter,
Springfield Daily News
:   The Central Southern Railroad has a line, and a telegraph, clear through to Hugoton. Along essentially similar ground.

President Rockingham:  
Because the government can be bothered protecting the border with Texas. Because the Imperials, damn their eyes, assist them. If Washington or London decided that the West was
important
, beyond London's precious helium supply, then we would be able to do the same thing.

Reporter,
New York Times
:  I simply don't get why it's so hard. We had four transcontinental railroads and three transcontinental telegraph lines at the time of the Crash.

President Rockingham:
  Because at the time of the Crash, it was not so easy for a band of opportunists in a zeppelin to rip up five miles - and four thousand dollars to buy and lay, I'll add! - of telegraph wire for the value of its copper. Because at the time of the Crash, it was neither easy nor profitable for those same roving thieves to destroy railroad for the fuel value of the ties and the scrap value of the rails. Because the West is infested with those things, and because we as a corporation simply
do not have
the resources to deal with this constant, un-ending, expensive problem!

Reporter,
Boston Globe
: Can't you just sell something and get the resources?

President Rockingham:
  This press conference is over.

Transcript of Q&A with David Rockingham, President of the Northern and Chicago Railroad; June 22, 1961.

The bridge of the
Red Wasp
was every bit the mess that Perry had expected. A mishmash of rusted control levers, and a helm-wheel that looked like it had come off the axle of a horse-drawn chariot. Captain Nolan stood behind the helm, on the right, and a grey-haired woman in a dress -
a dress!
- and a multitooled rig whose function seemed primarily aesthetic, was in charge of what seemed like the type of balancing station that had been obsolete at Refoundation, in 1909. Spirit levels and long cranks, which would signal mechanically to the riggers.

“
What d'you think?” Nolan asked proudly. “My ship. Well, mine and my wife's, and the crew's got shares. Our bird.”

“It's…
very nice. It's impressive. You've had her how long?”

“
Ten years, and a bit. Won her in a poker game down Dodge way. We've been going back and forth across the country ever since.”

“
Last owner must have seen a sucker and folded,” murmured Swarovski.

Perry gave his weapons officer a glare.
We're guests on this ship
, he mouthed,
and don't you forget your manners.

“
Making enough to get by?”

Nolan shrugged.

“Just enough. Scavenging here, high-premium special there. We don't have capacity, but low operating, so… Got to admit, thirty-two Imperials, fifty bucks a head plus whatever our scraps'll bring in Chicago? Sixteen hundred,
that'll
keep us in coal and hydrogen for a bit!”

“
Maybe keep the creditors off our heads for a week longer,” the grey-haired woman muttered sourly.

“
That too, Elise. That too!”

“
Made quite a score off of us, didn't you?” Martindale asked.

“
Hey, you benefit, I benefit, the ship benefits. And like my bridge engineer said, the creditors benefit. Isn't free trade and mutual benefit what you Imperials are all about?”

“
Damned right it is,” Martindale grinned. “I was being congratulatory.”

“
Well, that said, looks like the man on the ground is giving us the signal to lift.”

Nolan looked out the window.

“Go!” he shouted, with a thumbs-up for emphasis.

Cables slid from their hooks, and there was the sound of ground ballast being dumped. The
Red Wasp
lifted, shaking and swaying –
damn
, thought Perry,
does this rattletrap sway!
– into the afternoon darkness.

“
Take us north,” Nolan said, and turned the helm.

Four or five secon
ds later, the dirigible began to ponderously turn.

Nolan
shouted into his speaking tube again.

“
Stop in five. Four. Three. Two. One. Stop turn!” He wrested the helm around in the other direction. The dirigible began to pick up speed.

The grey-haired woman yanked a lever, found it stuck, put weight into it, and ponderously moved it down. Something came through one of her speaking tubes.

“Say it again!” she yelled through her end, and pressed an ear to it.

“
I'm going to visit my crew in the hold,” Perry said.

“
Just down that passageway, Commodore. But you know that. Tell your men I say welcome aboard, if you will! And I'll show you how my baby flies!”

The hold was a ten-by-
forty-foot cage, mostly consisting of a three-inch lattice of bars. They had the silvery tint of titanium, except that in some places they'd broken loose and been replaced by iron ones, welded in. Roped here and there, mostly along a set of struts running down the center of the hold, was various junk: large boxes, pieces of titanium scrap, pieces of aluminum crap. A propeller. Most of a large electrical dynamo. A lot of hydrogen cylinders.

The crew sat, mostly on the
ir bags, along the sides of the hold, some holding onto the bars for support.

“
Everyone doing alright?” Perry asked.

“
Sir, I got a question,” said one of the riggers, a senior airshipwoman named Hayden. “When we were folding our parachutes after we came down? It was dark.”

Perry paused for a couple of seconds, then said,
“And? You have a question?”

“
No, sir. Just an observation.”

“
We're flying low, Hayden,” said Martindale. That was true; they seemed to be maintaining a height of about six or seven hundred feet. Ground was slipping past under the cage. “So don't worry. You can always jump without one.”

Hayden tried to force a smile.

“Thank you, sir.”

“
Don't worry, people,” said Perry. “Captain Nolan's been operating this bird for more than a decade without a serious incident. Should be fine.”

“
Begging your pardon, sir, but nine serious incidents since `58 when the rigger I spoke with joined,” said Rafferty.

“
And he survived, so they weren't
too
serious,” said Perry.

The engine
hall was even more commotion, thicker smoke from the low-grade crap they used down here. The feed seemed to be –
oh no
, Perry thought,
it is
– linked to a hydrogen cylinder.

That was dangerous. That was extremely dangerous, and none of the thre
e engineering crew - including the woman Nolan had described as his wife - appeared to have the
faintest
idea just what kind of a bomb they were playing with. Hundred-times compressed hydrogen in the engine room?
Linking it through a feed into your boiler?

Slowly shaking his head, he backed out.

Don't distract them. They've got to know what a jerry-rigged contraption, how barely airworthy a deathtrap, it is they're flying. They're used to it.

The trouble came around five
o'clock. Perry was exercising the privileges of his rank and hanging out with Nolan on the bridge, where there was at least a functional seat.

From the west, descending out of a bank of clouds
about a mile away, came a small civilian airship. Maybe half again the length of the
Red Wasp
, and a glance through his monocular told Perry she was probably a passenger ship.

They also showed her flashes:
‘S-O-S. S-O-S. J-R. J-R S-O-S.’

J-R meant Jolly Roger.
Pirates
.

Oh, shit
, thought Perry. And then, a moment later:
Oh, good
.

“
Pray there's only one of them,” Nolan said, putting his own telescope down. “They'll focus on the liner, not us. But if there's
two
?”

“How are you armed?”

“One pressure-gun. A couple of rifles. Oh, and a four-inch cannon we picked up today, no ammo.”

“
You
do
have a flasher.
Right
?”

Nolan shook his head.

“Just signal flags. Why?”

“Where are they?”

“In that box. What are you going to do?”

“
Bear with me. Signal flags. And hook that pressure-gun up.”

“What are you doing?”

“You want to save your ship,” Perry said. “I'm a Service veteran. Bear with me, captain.”

Out of the clouds behind the civilian liner came the pirate. A smaller freight model, perhaps
two hundred yards long. Bigger than the
Red Wasp
, and much better-built.

Perry took the signal flags
–
hope I'm not too rusty
– and lowered his goggles. Then he went into the hold.

Some of the men were agitated. They'd seen the liner and read the signals.

“We going to do something?” Kent asked.

Perry gave him the signal flags.

“I want you to get up on top, where that pirate can see. And I want you to signal the
freighter
the following: Give Self Up. Protect Our Gold. Will Reward You For Distracting Him. Our Bank Will Reward You And Your Owners. Signal that three times to his flashermen. Clear?”

“
We gonna kill the bastards?” Swarovski asked. He stroked the barrel of his rifle.

“
We
better
kill the bastards,” Perry said. “Pirates took my ship. I'm going to take theirs.”

Captain Damon Mack of the
Jolly Rapist
gritted his teeth, trying to make out the signal flags.

“
What the
fuck
is that tramp piece of shit saying, Weaver?”

“
She's talking to the liner,” said Weaver.

“
I didn't think the asshole would be hailing
us
. What's she fucking saying to the liner.”

“
Something about gold. Reward us for. Oh, fuck that.
No way
is that piece of shit carrying gold.”