Her Majesty's Western Service (52 page)

Nothing more than maintaining Imperial honor, thought
Specialist Second Ernest Vidkowski. A worthy objective, but not one
he’d
signed on for.

And their
way out had just been blown to flaming trash.

Very well. If he was going to die, he’d die as he’d lived.

As an Imperial airshipman.

“Mr. Martindale,” he shouted.

Lieutenant-Commander Martindale turned.

“Specialist Second Vidkowski.”

“Gimme a rifle, sir. They’re coming and our way out is shot to crap. I’ll do my bit.”

“You’ll get one,” the lieutenant-commander snapped back. “We all do our bit. For Imperial honor, if nothing else.”

Captain Peggey Rowland and her ship, the
Five Speed
, flew over grassy Kansas plains toward Dodge City, flanked by Shirley Meier’s
Pith and Vinegar.
The light line-class ships flew straight, under the darkening clouds.

As they approached the railway line, they saw a train. A long line of tankers and – mostly – boxcars, making haste out of Hugoton, racing east ahead of the oncoming storm.

Too bad, thought Rowland.

“Signals, tell Captain Meier the obvious,”
Rowland ordered. “Helm, you know what to do.”

“Aye, ma’am.
”

The
Five Speed
, paced on the other side of the railway line by the
Pith and Vinegar
, matched speed with the train from Hugoton and then descended to obliterate it.

Six-inch missiles lanced out, pounding into the engine and the tankers.

Those went up in blazing fireballs. The
Five Speed
’s experienced helmsman slowed the ship to a crawl, following the train.

As
flames and thick black smoke boiled into the sky from the wrecked engine and the burning tanker cars, Rowland slammed missiles, cannon fire – and, as she drew closer, descending to three hundred feet – 30mm Gatling bursts into the powerless train.

“Next stop Dodge City,” she murmured, as something in one of the boxcars went up in a blazing pyre.
“If they fire on us, kill them. If they lift, kill them. If they
can
lift? Kill them.”

Otto Skorzeny
grinned as the flasher reports came in.

He could see perfectly well from his own maps, of course
. They were approaching Dodge City, which itself was an hour and a half away from Hugoton.

“Destroy everything that pumps or moves
,” came the flasher orders from Himmler’s own command car. “We are now in free-fire mode. Kill everything.”

“Sir,”
Fleming reported to Governor Lloyd. “We’ve just lost contact with Dodge. More of those Armadillo bastards must have cut our wire.”

“Then they
must have cut our wire,” said Lloyd calmly – pleasantly? “We have a job to do, Mr. Fleming. We die well.”

The two
brightly-colored line-class ships had been comfortably holding station, at about twenty-five hundred feet relative, above Hugoton for about twenty minutes since they’d destroyed Admiral Richardson’s
White Lightning
and the two civilian ships.

Presumably waiting for more troub
le to erupt, thought Lieutenant Swarovski, cradling the semi-familiar US Cavalry carbine. He’d kept it over the Army rifle he’d been offered. He and the rest of 4-106’s crew, and the fifty or so ground crew, who had been disassembling and packing the last semi-portable material from the air base, were milling around the flight pads. Taking care never to congeal into clusters so big that the hovering Armadillo airships might bother to fire at them.

Soon, Ensign Hastings had informed him a few minutes ago, they were due to
move into defensive positions against the SS. A final stand.

Swarovski would have desperately
appreciated a final drink. A final hand of cards or spin of the roulette wheel. He’d joined the Service because Pater had required him, as the fourth son of an aristocratic family, to make his own way. He’d chosen the Service because neither salt water nor rigid Army discipline had appealed much to him. And an airshipman got to see the world, right?

But, very well.
If he was going to die here on this rig-filled ugly Kansas plain, he was going to die here. A man couldn’t always have what he wanted.

Sudden cry out.

“Someone’s coming!”

Yes. A new speck on the northern horizon. A big ship, Swarovski could make out.

He raised his binoculars for a closer look.

Oh shit
.

He recognized that ship, unless he was
very wrong.

He’d flown on it.
Briefly been its weapons officer.

DN 4-106.

Hope.

“Oh shit,” came Specialist
Singh’s voice. “She’s flashing the bastards. She’s with them.”

“We carry Theron Marko,” Perry told Nolan. “We request loudhailer distance from
senior present airship. Wish to convey intelligence.”

“Got it the first time, Vice,” said Nolan.

A short pause.

“But repeating the flash now. Hold on –
the red fucker’s responding.”

“Go on,” said Perry. Tense. He looked at Kennedy. “
Acting Weapons, you ready?”

“Primed and loaded on all stati
ons,” John F. Kennedy reported.

“Says to come in,” Nolan went on.
“They know who your Marko is, apparently. Message is, ‘We’re listening’.”

“Get as close as we can,” Perry ordered
Ahle, who was at the helm. “And then on my order” – to Kennedy – “destroy them.”

Captain Handley was a little confused,
watching through a monocular scope as the big line-class moved to rendezvous with them. Hadn’t Mr. Marko, the apparent Russian agent, been aboard the
other
airship?

Covert operations be damned. That shit confused her.

But she’d also been told to expect an airship matching this one’s description, designated 4-106 as this one was. She put down the monocular.

“I still say we kill them,” Brad muttered from the helm.

“You say to kill everything, dearest,” Handley replied.

The airship designated 4-106
was moving to within loudhailer distance. A couple of hundred yards away, half its length and two thirds the
Vorpal
’s.

“Engage loudhailer,” Handley ordered.

“Loudhailer engaged,” reported the crewman. “You have the speaker.”

Handley reached for the mike.

“Mr. Marko,” she said pleasantly. Her words were amplified by loudspeaker over two hundred yards of airspace to the massive –
damn, that’s an Imperial line-class
– airship across from her. “What can I do for you?”

The answer came in
an upper-class Imperial accent.

“You
can jump, mercenary.”

Trailing fire, a dozen
missiles followed.

At effective point-blank, even the relatively untrained missileers on 4-106, handling heavy nine-inch
launchers that were all but completely unfamiliar to most of them, couldn’t miss. The twelve rockets slammed into the
Vorpal
before anyone aboard could begin to react, twenty-five pound warheads detonating along the cabin and the lower edge of the gondola.

One of them scored a direct hit on the airship’s engine hall, which was armored but not well enou
gh to withstand nine-inch missiles. Bright yellow secondary explosions erupted as one, then another, of the boilers blew out.

Another rocket smashed into the
Vorpal
’s aft battery, a revolving cannon mount. The battery was obliterated and its stock of ammunition began to cook off, another wave of secondary explosions.

One detonated amidst empty crew cabins, sending a rain of
flaming junk down toward the plain.

The other nine rockets hit along the edge of th
e gondola, detonating along its thin kevlar armor. Burning shrapnel cut through the airship’s hydrogen-filled bags, setting them ablaze. In seconds, two thirds of the
Vorpal
was an inferno, riggers and crew beginning to bail.

The flaming wreck
began to drop – slowly at first, but faster as her hydrogen burned or escaped, the fires spreading – toward the grassy plains of Hugoton.

“Engage his friend, and
now
!” Perry snarled, as the shattered
Vorpal
went down in flames.

“Miss
,” Kennedy reported from the Weapons station. “Hit, and that’s a good one – got her fins!”

“Who?”

“Aft station,” said Nolan before Kennedy could. “That pressure-gun of yours” – Halvorsen’s, Perry thought, and Hastings’ – “did a job on them.”

“Bring them down before they can repair it,” Perry ordered
.

“Enemy civil war?”
Specialist Singh asked as the bright-red airship went down burning.

As a missile volley at point-blank would do to you, yeah, thought Swarovski. Those missiles
hadn’t just lanced the mercenary’s gondola; at that range they’d been more than able to aim precisely and the
Vorpal’s
engine room had taken at least one, possibly two, direct hits. He’d seen it go up.

He tuned out
Lieutenant-Commander Martindale’s shouted orders for men to round up the survivors and get them into custody. 4-106 had just fired – ventral and tail guns – on the lime-green mercenary.

Looked like a
t least one critical, too.

“Don’t know,” Swarovski replied to the Specialist. He didn’t lower his binoculars as 4-106 closed in for the kill on the
Dread Wyvern
, who appeared to have lost steering control
.
“But it looks like good news.”

“Missile Ten reloaded
and ready,” Kennedy reported finally.

“Slackers,” Rafferty remarked. “
An
Imperial
crew’d have taken thirty-five seconds. Not eighty-five.”

“At this point,” Perry said, “I don’t care.
Full volley, Weapons. Blow them out of the sky.”

Guns – fore, ventral and rear, since 4-106 had turned broa
dside to the crippled
Dread Wyvern
– had already been pounding at the airship, making sure her disabled steering fins stayed that way.

Now 4-106’s twelv
e missile batteries opened up. The dozen-strong nine-inch missile broadside smashed into the
Dread Wyvern
’s aft.

The steering had been
hurt a moment ago by a lucky hit from 4-106’s surprise attack. More pressure-gun and cannon fire had all but destroyed the tailfins and started a small fire. Now, twenty-five pound high explosive loads tore apart the
Dread Wyvern
’s aft third, and set alight most of its remainder.

Th
e second of Cordova’s Armadillos followed its sibling down in flames.

Perry smiled. This was his job; this was him
doing
his job aboard the finest airship he’d ever commanded.

John Kennedy coughed.

Fair enough.

“Nolan, flash base,” Perry said. “Tell them we’re coming in.”

The returning airship – formerly Vice-Commodore Marcus Perry’s 4-106, Ian Fleming had recognized from his own data – had come in. Flashed the enemy ships saying he was a friendly. Claiming to be Theron Marko, although Fleming had doubted that.

The captain of, at least, the
bright-red
Vorpal
– Paula Handley, if he remembered correctly – hadn’t had the same information Fleming did. She’d allowed 4-106 to come within loudhailer distance.

And been
thoroughly blasted out of the sky by a full broadside at effective point-blank. Gunnery – lucky shots? – had crippled its lime-green friend’s – the
Dread Wyvern
’s – steering. A minute later, a second concerted missile volley had destroyed the
Wyvern
, too.