Her Majesty's Western Service (16 page)

“
How bad is it?”

“
Three dead, sir. Senior Airshipman Jeppesen, Airshipman First Wold, and Sub-Lieutenant Ross.”

Perry sighed, very deeply.

Fuck
.

“
And wounded?”

“
Seven more, three when they got us with the missile in the cargo hold. And a few second-class injuries. Kent and Rafferty both got burned during that fight in the engine room, and Vescard's nursing five broken ribs from where his vest stopped a subgun burst.”

“
Fuck
,” said Perry.

“
On the bright side, we got a pirate ship,” Martindale said. “And a nice prize, I must say! Cargo hold full of machine-parts.”

“
To be returned to their owners,” Perry said sternly to Nolan. “For whatever their insurer's deal is, or the twenty-five percent standard fee.”

Nolan was grinning widely. His own crew was busily re-inflating the hydrogen sacs from the
Red Wasp
; the pirate, like most, had been loaded with spare sacs and hydrogen cylinders for lifting captured vessels. Perry's people were setting those up, re-inflating the gondola.

“
Whatever you say, captain. But the
ship
?
That ship is mine now?
”

“
Seventy-five percent of it is,” Perry said.

“
The ship. What's the cargo worth? Your quarter can be the cargo and the rewards. The ship?”

“
Maybe we'll get enough from the cargo that you can buy the ship at fair value,” said Perry. “My men will help bring it in, once it's been floated.”

I lost three of my crew
, Perry thought.
Now can you please shut up about your big score?

Nolan and his wife headed away, back toward the
Red Wasp
.

Damnit. He'd been hoping, really, to capture the pirate ship intact. He'd succeeded in doing that. But he'd also hoped to interrogate the captain, or
any
of the crew – none had survived – about where Captain Ahle might be found.

Go to Chicago, check in. Then take a captured pirate ship into the Black Hills, dressed like pirates, with Marines aboard...
and
get 4-106 back
.

Next to that, the fact that he w
as probably a couple of months' pay richer
himself
from this capture – one eighth of the prize, by law, went to Marine officers, and he'd classified 4-106's crew as Marines for Nolan's purpose – was relatively unimportant.

Apprehend
Ahle. Get 4-106 back.

Hands on her hips,
Karen Ahle inspected the work that the Dodge City technicians - and her own crew - had done to disguise the airship that the Imperials had called 4-106, and that she'd renamed the
Adestria
, after a Greek goddess of vengeance.

There wasn't a lot you could do to disguise the multiply-finned gondola, short of removing the
fore and central steering vanes. Those would be hard to remove and replace, and she didn't know how that would affect the handling. So she'd added a second and third set of dummies, instead; side-vanes at one-third and two-thirds along the ship's length. They consisted of nothing more than aluminum sheeting on titanium struts that'd been attached to the gondola's framework, but they'd confuse anybody looking for a triple-vaned airship.

The rest had been relatively easy. Paint the gondola to an extent - messy streaks did the job, especially on the lower half - and blot out the identification number. People would be looking,
and she knew the Imperials well enough to know they
would
search, for a warship, so she had the missile bays and the space between them covered with more aluminum sheeting, painted black. The hold of a particularly sleek high-value cargo ship, whose pressure-guns were pure self-defence.

The best part was that it would all drop away with a couple of minu
tes' work when she needed to clear for action. Her engineering education said that the dummy fins wouldn't be a major problem anyhow, but if they proved to be? The sheeting could be gotten rid of in under five minutes.

“
Good job, people,” she said to her crew. The eight who'd boarded with her, the thirty-five who'd stayed on her main ship, the
Aden
, and the forty-two newbies hired to be split across the two. “We accomplished something
impressive
here today. Now, we're not in the Black Hills; this is Dodge City, and you all know what's a ninety-minute ride east of here.”

A couple of murmurs: Hugoton. Unavoidable
– Dodge was the biggest town on the southern plains, in large part due to Hugoton. It was also the only place within her intended range that you could get repairs like this done. It really didn't hurt that, right now, there were more than forty ships docked amongst the concrete of the pads.

“
So, I'm going to stay with the ships. Officers and I, and the new people, will stay with the ships while you go celebrate. We'll walk you through both ships and introduce you to your stations. Tomorrow, the new men can celebrate; my longstanding crew and officers will conduct ground drills with the new ship. And Thursday, I hope you people don't begrudge us captain and officers a few drinks!”

There were a few laughs and cheers.

“Go have fun, people,” Ahle said. “Ronalds, Hollis, Petersen, the rest of you, we'll go through the
Adestria
first.”

Ronalds
, her chief NCO, took her aside. He and Petersen had been off looking through Dodge's plentiful black market while Ahle and the other officers supervised the ship's disguise.

“
I found the ammunition,” he said. “We should be able to have this thing loaded back up to capacity – and a bit of a reserve besides – by Wednesday. Arranged for fuel, too. How long do you think it will take to get these people ready?”

“
I'd
like
two weeks for a comprehensive set of drills. We may not have as long. We may have longer, depending on what happens with those contract negotiations.”

“
Captain, you're crazy,” Ronalds grinned. “You know that, right, ma'am? Stealing a line-class Imperial warship, and hiding it
this close to Hugoton
?”

“
I do what I have to do,” Ahle said. Deadly serious, all of a sudden. “For justice, for my family. And for a South free of Federal mercenaries and their murdering jackboots.”

“
Hell yeah, ma’am,” said Ronalds, just as quiet and serious. “For a free South.”

Chapter Six

Professor:
“The Curzon Doctrine was established in 1892 during the early period of Imperial post-collapse exile in Newfoundland. It essentially ended the old imperialism, on the grounds that exactly such behavior had led to the Great War. Instead, Imperial policy going forward was to be that nations, territories and peoples had the absolute right to self-determination, and – if they so chose to be a part of the Empire – fair representation within it.”

Student:
“That's a crock of crap, professor! Without the Imperials propping them up, the Feds couldn't run their garrisons or their mercenaries through here! What about
our
right to self-determination as free states? The Empire is a bunch of lying bastards!”

Professor:
“The Doctrine has been a guiding
principle
of Imperial governance and diplomacy.
Only
a principle. As I was going to say, expediency has caused the Imperials to allow certain exceptions to it…”

From a Politics 110 lecture at George Mason University, September 1958.

They arrived in Chicago, Perry and the two airships, at about ten o'clock the next day, to find the other three ships of the escort waiting. With them were
three very scared spies.

“
Martindale, take the ship to an agent and process the prize business,” Perry said. He'd changed into a clean uniform, but there'd been no chance to shower. He felt every bit of his filth, his body covered in dust and blood. “Swarovski, the casualties, please.”

“Already on it, sir,”
said Swarovski.

Nolan enthusiastically shook Perry's hand.

“You've made me a spiff man, Cap’n Perry! Thank you for all you've done. If you ever need a ride again, you can find me in Dodge City, generally. Or here, Denver, maybe, or the Mississippi ports. Just ask around. I know a couple of agents who line up cargoes, sometimes. They can get a message to me.”

“
I should be fine,” said Perry. Nolan seemed like a nice enough fellow for his type, but that wasn't a type Imperial officers associated with.

Nolan
pressed a card into his hand. “No, really, captain. You did me, my wife and the crew a real good turn, sir.
Anything
I can do for you, keep the card. A man never knows.”

Something occurred to him. Perry took out one of his own visiting cards, handed it to Nolan.

“There's a telegraph contact number on that, and a mail router. If you know anyone shady, and you hear talk of a Captain Ahle? Pirate, probably from somewhere in the South. Don't push – I don't want her to know anyone's looking for her. But if you do hear anything about her, let me know immediately.”

“
I'll keep my eyes open in the skeazebars, sir. Your friends are here to see you, and I won't keep you any longer, but thank you again!”

With both hands he took Perry's, and shook it. Perry pocketed Nolan's card, mainly out of politeness, and turned to face his ship captains.
With them were two men and a woman in civilian dress.

“Who are these people?”
Perry asked.

“Oh,”
said Lieutenant-Commander Winston, a spare blond woman aged about forty. The senior of the captains with Perry. “Sir, these are Smith, Mathison, and” – the woman – “Raynham. The base commander put them under our protection. They're MI-7. This is Vice-Commodore Perry, our squadron commander.”

“
Thank you in advance for the ride,” Smith – in his forties with deep-set eyes – said. “We appreciate it.”

“
We're going to Hugoton next, orders say,” said Winston. “These people need a ride there to see Fleming. Someone wiped out the rest of their station here.”

“
Dropped a hydrogen blimp into the building,” said Smith. “And a car bomb outside the fire exit. Twenty civilian dead, too. Fucking Russians.”

“We'll get them,” said Raynham. “
But right now we need orders from Fleming. We're all that's left of the station, as your officer said.”

“
When do the orders say to depart?” Perry asked.

“
Originally, two yesterday. I was playing for time, sir. Oh, and the extra officers and men are here. Sir.” She looked sheepish. “For 4-106.”

“Very well,”
said Perry.
Trying
to be blase about it. “Are the remaining three ships prepared to lift at midday?”

“Yessir.”

“Any civilian escort?”

“
No, sir. Just get ourselves to Hugoton.”

Which
I'd have had to do anyway, to report the loss.

Had attacking that pirate ship simply been a way to play for time, to delay the inevitable humiliation of reporting to
Admiral Richardson? Of looking at the other squadron commanders in the group and saying,
I
was the one who lost a brand-new line-class to a pirate boarding?

“
My personal crew are going to want a shower and a quick meal,” Perry said firmly. “Assemble in the briefing room in an hour. We
will
lift at midday.”

The trip bac
k to Hugoton took about a day, an uneventful trip because
nobody
was going to attack a lone trio of Air Service dirigibles. They were crowded with crew; forty new people had joined the squadron in Chicago, mostly expecting to man the line-class that hadn't made it. They were split crowdedly across Primus Wing's three remaining dirigibles.

Perry seethed as the ships flew south.

Flight Admiral Richardson was a stern-faced, grey-haired woman in her mid-forties, although she looked a decade older. Her left hand was a prosthetic, as was much of her left arm, and scars on that side of her face indicated skin grafts. The ribbons on the right breast of her day uniform included the Distinguished Service Order, the second-highest Imperial decoration, and the Distinguished Flight Cross, the highest Air Service decoration. She was the second-ranking Service officer in continental North America.