Her Majesty's Western Service (34 page)

Tense moments. The second-hand of Perry’s watch, as he stood with mask on and gas gun pointed down the stairs, clicked painfully slowly.
Ahle muttered something about a bitch of a lock.

Eventually it
came open with a click. Triumphantly, Ahle opened the still-chained briefcase. It had taken more than three minutes.

“You’ve got
a bag,” she said. “Get that shit in there while I cover you.”

Perry nodded, and they changed places. Inside were several small cases that could have held either decks of playing cards or, much more likely, chips for an analytical. They were numbered, and he scooped them into the bag. Underneath that were folders, and Perry froze.

He didn’t read much German. The under-text on the label of the top one, he couldn’t read. Teil eins von sechs something-something-something.

The label, he could clearly read. The last words of it struck him like a hammer to the face:

Karten
,
Hugoton Lease.

Hugoton?

Hugoton?

What in God’s name would Federal mercenaries want with maps – and
chips
– of Hugoton?

A unit that’s talking about not renewing its contract, mind...

“Perry! Perry, damnit!”

“Hugoton. These are maps of the
Hugoton Lease!”

“Who
cares
? Just get them into the bag and we’ll go! Worry about content later!”

The sound of stamping boots on the stairway. “Because it looks like we’ve got friends coming.”

Hugoton
, Perry thought, and shoveled the rest of the material – folders and then more chip-cases – into the backpack. A scan for interior compartments – no, nothing – and then picking up the gun.

“Oberst?
Mein Oberst?” shouted a man, half-appearing at the top of the stairwell. Perry sprayed him in the face and he tumbled backwards, rolling down the stairs.

A shout came from below.

Oh, fuck
, thought Perry,
that’s torn it
.

“Move! Down, and
we’ll
find
a way!” Ahle snapped. “Before they mobilize!”

Down the stairs, which led into a garage with
a hulking eight-wheeled combat vehicle parked under a refueling chute. The door leading out – he could taste the fresh air, see the darkness – was a few feet away.

A figure ran through it, blinked to deal with the light and shouted something.
Ahle shot him – not with a gas gun, with the
real
submachinegun she’d never put down, fired a burst into him.

Shit, shit and
shit
, thought Perry;
we’ll never be able to pass this off as a training exercise now.

The man had friends, too. They were gathering on the other side of t
he door, talking in fast German.

It was obvious that they were preparing to storm the door; they had no idea how many people were inside and were being hesitant. As soon as an
officer or NCO showed up...

“Into the vehicle!”
Ahle shouted, already stepping up the ladder on its side.

He followed her. It was the only hard cover, yes. And – he took position behind
the thing – it had a gun.

Benefits of being a counterinsurgency organization. An Imperial vehicle in the shop would
never
have had live ammo in the hopper for its turret-mounted chaingun, but these guys weren’t behind safe lines; they were an isolated garrison in the middle of territory that collectively hated them.

He
began to chamber a round into the gun he was behind, then thought better of it. Raised the gas gun instead, pointed it at the door. Maybe he could gas the first ones to come through, but the others – they
did
carry masks. They’d be impervious.

Shit. Shit. And Fleming was going to be
very
interested in why this mercenary organization had an emissary coming from Texas – Texas, with no love for the United States – with maps of Hugoton.

Maps that
, he realized in a jolt of shock,
they must have obtained from 4-106 when it flew over the place!

These people had a connection, although it was impossible Miss L could have realized it, with the bastards who’d stolen 4-106!

He put down the gas gun and racked the bolt of the chaingun back.

Ahle
was in back, doing something. He heard something clank. She moved forward, took position below him, in the driver’s seat. Muttered something.

“Was that for me?” Perry asked.

Somebody had arrived outside the door, was barking orders. Perry aimed the chaingun – it worked the same as an airship’s weapons turret, pedals turning the turret by air compression – at the door and gave them a warning burst.

“Pressure gauge in the vehicle,” she said, louder. “Warming up. Let’s see if these controls work as they should.”

“You know how to drive one of these?”

“You don’t realize, do you? I’ve
studied
the Special Squadrons. I’ve seen a spec sheet for this vehicle. Cheetah IV, and the crew hasn’t done too much personal modification to this particular one. Just keep these assholes off us for a few minutes while the boiler warms and we’ll get
out
of here!”

“The garage door’s closed!”

“And?”

“With your hands up surrender!” one the SS men – the officer? – outside the door yelled.

Perry considered saying something back, then swept the door with another burst. These people weren’t going to be insane enough to charge, would they?

No. But they had heavy armored vehicles – more of this particular type, and three much
larger
tanks, at least one of which was operational. With bigger guns.

“How’s that boiler coming?” he called down to
Ahle.

“Just a couple more minutes.”

The lights – not many of them – of the small town of Joplin, Missouri, drew closer to Roeder’s bouncing command car, which was pushing sixty miles an hour across the barely-paved road. The tanks had been left behind, were chewing that road up into a gravely mess at their own top speed a few miles ago.

“Just a few mor
e minutes,” Roeder’s driver assured him.

“They’re coming from
behind us!” the hooded man next to Unitas snarled, turning around.

Yes. Headlights.

Oh,
shit
, thought Unitas.
The bastards had reinforcements a lot closer than we realized.

The Klansman was already blowing a whistle. Unitas had to agree.

Those two in there are just shit out of luck, if they’re not gone already.
We’re
getting the hell out.

The
Cheetah armored car was getting hot, which
had
to imply the boiler was heating up. And the men outside were getting very antsy; Perry had held them at bay with bursts from the chaingun so far, but how long before they dug out high-explosive grenades or simply brought in one of their already-activated heavy tanks?

“OK!”
Ahle said. “Get your head down, because we’re
going
!”

Perry braced himself. Then something occurred to him.

“This thing’s in the maintenance shop.”

“And?”

“You don’t take things into the maintenance shop without a
reason
!”

“You don’t take things through the closed front door of a maintenance shop without a reason, either!”
Ahle yelled back, and hit the steam.

The car surged forward, Perry ducking behind the gun and its shield. Thin aluminum scraped hard, gratingly, painfully against the top of the
Cheetah, and bullets slammed into the vehicle’s armor. SS men on the other side of the door threw themselves clear.

“Shit shit
shit
!” Ahle yelled, and swerved hard.

Something big exploded behind them.

“Cover us! Aim for his vision slits! Aim for the commander!” she screamed.

Perry got up again, hunched over the
gun’s shield and hit the right pedal, rotating the tub in the direction of –
oh God
, he thought – the massive steam-tank twenty feet away. Thirty feet. Forty. Both of its two broad turrets were swiveling slowly toward the accelerating armored car, as Ahle shifted gears.

P
erry raked the tank with fire, and he could
see
the sparking rounds bounce off. Oh,
shit
, he thought, but they were gaining speed, crunching over the multiple layers of razor wire.

“Flaregun,” he said. “Gimme that flaregun for our pickup!”

“Later,” Ahle snapped, and hard-turned the vehicle forty-five degrees right to keep from slamming into a tree. This area was almost a plain; smooth ground with a few copses of light trees here and there, a handful of bigger trees standing alone.

Ahle
jerked the vehicle to the right, and a shell blasted dirt into the ground where they had been.

“We’re on their twelve,” said
Ahle. “They can hit us, but we can outrun them. Heavy support tanks. Big boom. Great range. Not so great on accuracy.”

She swerved and jinked the still-accelerating armored car again. Another shell exploded twenty feet to their right.

“They have more of these
little
ones,” Perry pointed out, breathing hard. Turning the chaingun around one-eighty, just in time to see the double-muzzle-flash of a second heavy tank.

One of the shells whistled overhead; the second hit not far ahead of them, and
Ahle practically drove the armored car through the explosion. Dust and debris whipped Perry’s hunched-over back.

“And
they
don’t have to zag to avoid gunfire.”

“Right,” said
Ahle. “You wanted that flaregun?”

Roeder turned the flasher one way and then another, repeating the same code: First company to the right, second to the left, go around. There was something going on at the other side of Joplin
base, although the fight here – his track bumped over another hooded corpse – had mostly ended.

A purple flare shot up into the night sky. Followed by another.

Descending fast, a couple of miles away, came a sleek escort-class airship. Unlit.
Not
a friendly.

The
Cheetahs’ light chainguns wouldn’t do much to affect the thing, not without tracers they didn’t have. But the Tiger IIbs had guns
designed
for taking down airships, with the elevation to boot.

His own heavy tanks
were miles behind. The ones belonging to the Joplin base, however, were very immediately handy.

“There she is! Go for it!” Perry shouted.

“I see her,” said Ahle. The two-hundred-yard-away
Marlyville Zephyr
had stopped descending at about thirty feet, and a rope ladder had been thrown down. Perry could see men in the open hold, ready to ditch emergency ballast and leap their ship right up again.

Ahle
changed course, aiming for the airship’s rope ladder. Another shell, then another one, exploded around them.

A hundred yards. Seventy-five. Fifty.

We’re going to make it
, Perry thought, as the armored car decelerated.

Then the tail assembly of the airship exploded into burning fragments.

Suddenly without its steering, the airship began to turn on its axis.

The men with the emergency ballast released
their loads, swinging the heavy lead-and-sand-laden sacks off and cutting their ropes. They impacted the ground as the airship shot up –

Another shell caught her high-amidships, and burning hydrogen blazed a fount into the sky.

“She’s going down!” Perry shouted. “Avert!”

“What did you say?”
Ahle accelerated as the airship, desperately releasing sacs of flaming hydrogen, began to descend.

Perry ducked into the turret, slammed the hatch hard behind him.

Another tank shell blasted somewhere close by. The flaming remains of the now-devoid-of-airworthiness
Zephyr
crashed down on top of them.

For a few moments, through
Ahle’s plexiglas-covered vision slit, all that she could see was fire. We’re driving right into the inferno, she thought.