Her Majesty's Western Service (41 page)

“So, yeah,” he told the
eighteen assorted men – well, fourteen men and four women – that Nolan had gathered up. They were rougher than the norm, scarred and hardened, with more than just the odd gas gun or .22 in their rigs. But not
bad
ones; Nolan knew them all personally or by first-degree reference, and Nolan didn’t rate further down Perry’s scale than ‘a bit shady at times’.

“We’re going to be cutting out a stolen Imperial ship.
We’ll make a pass over it to confirm she’s actually
there
, then drop in on top of her the way Ms. Ahle did. Take out what crew are on the thing, being especially careful for a tall man with a moustache – he’s a dangerous one, I hear, and shoot to kill if he comes in front of you. Lift, then head east. We’ll be flying the thing to the Imperial base at Hugoton, where you’ll collect your pay.”

And I’ll regain my honor
.

“Mr. Vice-Commodore,
” said a sleek-looking woman from Nolan’s crew. Elegant, black-haired and rigless, and Perry wasn’t sure if she was actual crew or a longstanding passenger. “Mr. Nolan says – from the map, we’re about twenty miles away. Half an hour. He says your men had better begin getting ready.”

Perry checked his watch: about half past three. Plenty of daylight in which to conduct the operation.

Nervous. Nervous like he’d never been on official service. He’d be going into action with men he didn’t know, men who hadn’t passed through any Academy, technical school or Service apprenticeship. Men who could be unreliable, who might be – Nolan himself was a bit shady when you got down to it! – little better than pirates.

The one person he
did
know under fire was an avowed pirate officer herself!

One who’d taken this very ship, with fewer people than he had right now.
Count your blessings. Ignore the nerves
.

Perry stood on the bridge as they made their approach. They were about fifty miles past the Front Range, the rather stark mid-Colorado border between the high plains and the Rockies. The ground below them was most definitely mountains, peaks rising higher at times than the
Red Wasp II
herself. Winds buffeted them, knocking the airship left and right faster than the crew could adjust. It was rough going.

“Coming up on the canyon now,” said Nolan. They were flying high, about three thousand feet above the average ground level, although that varied hard with the rugged slopes.

“I can read a map,” Perry snapped.

“Sorry, Mr. Vice-Commodore.”

“No, my own apologies. I’m nervous. Not your fault.”

“Fully accepted, then, si
r. I can understand your nerves.”

If Lynch was lying to me, after all of this…

Or if her information had changed… airships were eminently portable constructions. He could probably tell if 4-106
had
been there, or at least if some airship had been parked in the location. But that would be useless.

The canyon was deep and relatively wide, according to the topographic map. According to what Perry could see with his own eyes as they approached it…

He went to the very front of the bridge, craning down to see directly below them. Looking for signs, looking for –

4-106!

He’d have recognized the triple-finned design anywhere, and the thieves had made no effort to disguise it. It was right there, in full bulk, sitting at the bottom of the canyon for the taking!

The relief was immense.
Lynch wasn’t lying to me! It’s there! The raid, all of this, was completely justified! My God!

Until that point he hadn’t realized just
how much
he’d doubted Lynch’s word, how desperate he’d been to believe it. Now that it was proven true…

“We’ve got her!” he exalte
d. “We’ve got my ship! Turn your ship around, Nolan! Ahle, prep the boarding crew!”

He drew his own pistol. The .40 – lethal ammunition was most definitely called for
in this case, and he
hoped
he’d get to use it against that moustached man who’d cut the rope!

Ahle
had been conferring with one of the picked-up men, a guy of about forty-five with a black goatee and a rig loaded with weapons. Like Ahle –
like I should have thought to get
, Perry thought – he held a pair of binoculars.

“Like hell we do, Perry,” she said. “You were looking at the ship. Did you look at the
location
at all?”

How was that relevant? Perry shook his head.

“Galvanny here” – Ahle gestured at the other man – “spent a decade as a US Marine officer. He saw the same things I did. There’s at least three rocket batteries in the area, well-camouflaged but not invisible. I would bet there’s a fighting reserve, and the people on that ship are
not
going to be taken by surprise for very long.”

Perry looked at her. No. He
hadn’t
been looking at the area around the ship.

She’s lying
, a part of his mind desperately wanted to believe. His mouth opened to repeat the order:
Go in
.

“The people who stole that ship have dug in and are guarding it well,”
Ahle said.

Galvanny, the former Marine officer, nodded in agreement.

“It’s how I’d set an ambush. My money’s on five rocket batteries minimum, if we can only see three.”

“Perry, if we go into that with eighteen roughnecks – twenty including ourselves – then that trap will close on us, and we are all going to die.”

“And our men are no fools,” said Galvanny. “Some of them in the hold, they’d have seen just what we did. Jackson was a staff sergeant in your own Air Marines, and I
know
he’d have noticed. If there were a hundred of us – sure, maybe. But we signed on to fight, not walk into an ambush. Pay or no pay, none of us are dropping into that shit.”

“You’re sure it’s an ambush,” Perry said. “Let’s make another pass.
Lower.”

“Rocket batteries,” said Nolan. “And they might
decide to bring us down if we seem too inquisitive. No, sir. I’ll take a certain amount of risk but I won’t commit suicide.”

“A hundred men,” said Perry. “
Even assuming we could find a hundred reliable fighters, this ship couldn’t carry them all.”

“I know
where we can easily get a hundred – a hundred and fifty – men,” said Ahle. “And combat-capable airships to carry them, and deal with those rocket launchers.”

“I still say we go in,” Perry insisted.

Rafferty shook his head.

“You might not trust the pirate, sir. But I’m an airshipman myself, and I seen the elephant a few times
as you know. Classic ambush configuration, sir. I saw the same shit Cap Ahle and the former Marine did.”

Rafferty –
was
an airshipman. A drunk and an incorrigible, but not disloyal and not incompetent. His judgment meant something.

“Very well,” Perry found himself saying. “Where do we get a hundred and fifty men and combat-capable airships?”

“Cap Nolan,” Ahle asked respectfully, “how are we on fuel?”

“Near full bunkers, ma’am. We topped
up in Denver, as you’ll recall.”

“Very well,”
Ahle said. “Are you with me on whatever needs to be done, Vice Perry? So you can get your ship back?”

Perry nodded. Ceding command, for now. Shocked, but – you adjusted plans, didn’t you?

“Captain,” Ahle said, “set a course for the Black Hills.”

Chapter
Sixteen

Cordova’s Armadillos: The real-life exploits of the world’s finest mercenary unit, heroically serving Texas on our western frontier!

Interviewed live:

Commodore Jason Cordova, the
Lone Star
– as noble as the name of his own ship!

Captain Bill Snider, the
Scimitar of Silence
– scything down those in his way!

Captain
Jennifer Atkinson, the
Squeeze
– until only blood drips from her enemies!

Captain Paula Handley, the
Vorpal
– swift death to those who oppose her!

Captain Richard Evans, the
Dread Wyvern
– on wings of death they fly!

Captain Peggey Rowlan
d, the
Five Speed
– but her enemies’ deaths come in only one: Fast!

HEAR the true-as-life discussions between the legendary airship captains, their banter and their battle talk!

FEEL the heroic attitude amongst the mercenaries who made Texas their home – the latter-day Spirit of the Alamo!

WATCH the combat actions that turned our tide in the Sonoran War! Plus five more that could happen – and might, as soon as tomorrow!

BUY the conjunctive novels, comics and rig accessories of our number one auxiliary unit, Cordova’s Armadillos (tm), the Desert Heroes (tm) of the Sonoran War!

Texas Wire Communications Network hyperkinematograph series promo, January 1962.

Early on in his ride, Agent David Cornwell had drilled, with his pocket knife, a tiny eye-slit in the side of the wooden packing crate he’d snuck into, quietly disposing of the well-wrapped drill bits the crate had formerly contained. It had been luck getting onto the train in the first place, with its international manifest.

Through it, as the northbound train clicked
slowly along from Houston, he’d seen things. Occasional details that would have been irrelevant to most civilians, but he was a field agent who knew what to look for. Military convoys going north. A base he’d recognized, empty.

Texas was mobilizing. Texas was quietly but most definitely mobilizing north. And he was quite probably the last MI-7 agent left in the place.

The train had moved slowly, at one point being shunted aside for some hours on a siding. Cornwell had tried to sleep, but fitfully and without any real success. He was no longer running on nervous energy – that had burned itself out in the dockside boarding house, the last of it expended getting aboard this train – but on terror and urgency:
If they catch me, I am most definitely dead. Not exchanged, not now the Russians are clearly backing Texas. Dead, like everyone else in the station
.

That and the urgency
. Very conscious that he was probably the last MI-7 agent alive in Texas. And the word about Texan mobilization north was word he had to bring. Hugoton was only a few dozen miles north of Amarillo. Texan activity, a new war, would be bad news for the United States; it was also a potential disaster, certainly a hard fight, for the admittedly impressive Hugoton garrison.

And with Russian support? There was only one thing the clearly-present Russians could hope to achieve from backing an invasion of the United States.

Hugoton has 93% of the world’s helium reserves
. Imperial warships, and quite a few
passenger
ships, ran on helium, which didn’t burn, whose survivability in combat was infinitely better than flammable hydrogen. Simply
destroying
Hugoton would be an immense strategic victory for the Tsar.
Taking
it?
Russians
having access to all the helium they wanted, as their prize for backing the Texan invasion?

Nig
htmare scenarios danced through his mind, dimly aware that the train had stopped.

And then the nightmare became real, from the noises around him. Someone was in the boxcar. Someone was searching the crates.

We’ve reached the border
, Cornwell thought.
And they’re not fucking around.

He reached into his jacket. If
a customs inspector opened
this
crate, there was only one thing he could do. Whatever it took, he had to get to Fleming.

Heinrich Himmler was a surprisingly small man to Ferrer’s eyes, given his reputation.
Small, slim and mostly bald – what was left of his hair was tightly cropped, like his crew-cut guards – it was almost a challenge to remember that this man commanded fifteen thousand hard-bitten soldiers.

Almost. The security
Marko, himself and the others had been through – everything short of a body cavity search,
despite
the letters from Houston and the Third Department with their enclosed photographs and detailed physical descriptions – made it hard to forget. Even in the commander’s office, Ferrer could sense that they were being watched. The top-floor office was huge but Spartan, with extraordinary views but no decorations except for a suit of medieval Germanic armor and half a dozen swords.