Her Majesty's Western Service (37 page)

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 probl
em we can’t explain. A renegade and an escaped pirate.”

“Wh
o 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 signatures, 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.”

“Trouble’s what we’re for,” said Marko.
“But we’re going to need men. Round up your connections. We have forty-five minutes.”

A walk,
through crowds and the ever-present sticky heat, took them into the French Quarter, in the direction of Denard’s.

“She moves, I hear,” said
Ahle. “I’ve been to Denard’s before, but she also owns several other places. And there has to be at least a couple nobody knows about.”

“You’re implying a woman with cause to wo
rry about her own safety,” said Perry. Although a woman capable of ordering attacks on Federal contractors just to get information – with
every
indication she’d done stuff like this before – was, yes, going to very rapidly make some powerful enemies.

“Damn straight. But they’ll know where to find us at Denard’s. They may even be expecting us.”

They were. In fact, Unitas himself met them at the entrance to the place.

“Heard you were on your way,” said the henchman.
“Come in. The bosslady’s in a meeting right now, but she’ll see you in a few minutes. Care for drinks?”

“You know what I get,” said
Ahle.

“Of course. And a whisky for the Vice?”

“Sure.” After the last couple of days, come to think of it, he
needed
a drink.

“Mr. Johnny?” A pre-teen urchin
approached Unitas.

“Yeah?”

“Got word for you, Mr. Johnny. Urgent, sir.”

“I’ll deal with this,” said Unitas.
“You two can go in. The boss will know you’re here.”

Seated at a booth inside Denard’s,
Ahle and Perry raised their drinks.

“
To your airship,” Ahle said. “And my crew.”

“My airship. And may your crew have learned a lesson. You’re skilled. Can’t you find mercenary work somewhere?”

Ahle glared at him.

“Mercenaries are who killed my family. And a lot of others.”

“An honest living, then,” said Perry. “
Don’t
tell me you’re going to go right back to piracy.”

“Honest piracy,” said
Ahle. She sipped on her rum.

“No such thing,” said Perry. “Code or not.”

“Maybe you can at least plunder outside Imperial spheres of influence? The Romantics and the Russians are a lot sloppier about their convoy protection, you know.”

“And not as wealthy as the Imperial client states,” said
Ahle. “Bad governance has its drawbacks. They run things like the Feds run the South; brute force and corruption.”

“At least consider it. I’d hate to see you hang after all of this.”

“Maybe once I’ve done something about the Squadrons. Avenged my family. That was why I wanted your airship, you know. As a weapon against them. If they transferred to Texas... attack them en route. Or if they did renew the contract, sail straight into Columbia with that line-class and all those nine-inch tubes.” Ahle’s lips hardened. “Fly an Imperial flag. Hit their headquarters building. That Bavarian
bastard
Himmler works on the top floor.”

“You’ve been researching this,” Perry observed. Treason? Well, these people were involved with people
actively
scheming against the Empire, who had overflown Hugoton with
some
sort of nefarious purpose. His sympathies to them were more limited than they had been a few days ago... and besides, he’d seen a taste of what the German and the Italian units did in the South. Not treason, perhaps not even a whole lot more than disapproval.

He drained the rest of his glass to try to wash that thought from his mouth. Of course it was treason! The Hugoton maps weren’t his department; 4-106 was. This woman had stolen 4-106.

“Oh, you think I’m bad,” said Ahle. The flicker of a challenging smile was on her face. “Tell me, would the good people of London, St. John’s, Dublin, Edinburgh, Sydney or Cape Town think I was so bad, if they knew what Himmler and his goons did to Wake Forest? The kind of thing Imperial policy is designed to
avert
, not turn a blind eye to?”

“The
good people of the Empire can make up their own minds and vote accordingly,” said Perry reflexively. “But – you were planning to take 4-106 not to sell its technology to the Russians, or its firepower to the Sonorans, but
purely
to make a one-sided attack out of personal vendetta? A one-way attack, too. You would have been blown out of the sky.”