Her Majesty's Western Service (27 page)

“Ma’am. Yes ma’am,” said Ricks. “We were wondering—”

“Of course you’re wondering,” said Richardson. “Understandable and justified. I’m here to do two things, ladies and gentlemen. The first is to confirm Commander Ricks as the acting commander of Thirty-First Squadron until such time as a replacement for Vice-Commodore Perry is appointed. Hereby you are, Commander. The second is to illuminate you regarding the matter of Vice-Commodore Perry. At ease and sit down.”

The room settled, people taking their seats. Ojibwa had a pen and notepad out, ready to take something
down.

Scary bitc
h, that one
, Swarovski thought. Perry was alright, but the Flight Admiral had seen some
real
shit and it had left a mark on her more than physically. Mid-forties was young, in peacetime, for a rank that equated to Army brigadier or Navy commodore, and you didn’t get that high that fast by being nice. Or normal.

“Regarding Vice-Commodore Perry; Sophie, the papers, please.”

“Ma’am.” The adjutant passed her boss a sheaf of papers. Swarovski was close enough to read the print on the wanted poster when Richardson held it up. A blurred black-and-white photo – something from file, Swarovski thought, the magnification was badly off – of Vice Perry, with a physical description. Reward of five hundred Imperial pounds –
damn
, that was more than what Swarovski made in five months. Wanted for desertion, assault, gross property destruction and attempted murder.

“Your former
squadron commander is a wanted criminal,” said Richardson. “Pass these around and take a close look. He has committed – you know what happened last night.”

Ricks, next to Swarovski, very much looked as though he wanted to say something, like he was straining to keep his mouth shut.

“Vice-Commodore Perry is a deserter and a traitor,” Richardson said. “I know you have other questions; I am not going to answer them. I’m aware of the speculation; I am not going to comment on it. Acting squadron commander Ricks, what is the philosophical foundation of our Service?”

An Academy question, and one that the XO answered as promptly as the cadet he’d been at Biggin Hill fifteen years ago.

“Reason and logic, ma’am.”

“What is the tradition of the Air Service?”

“Duty and service, ma’am.”

“And?”

Jeez
, thought Swarovski,
she’s going to ask for Admiral Fisher’s birthday next.

“Nothing else, ma’am,” responded Ricks like a cadet. “The Air Service was created from whole cloth out of reason and logic, to serve the
Empire through the Great War and beyond.”

“Reason and logic,” Richardson transparently pretended to muse. “
And the evidence is precisely what you see in front of you. Vice-Commodore Perry has betrayed his country and his Service. Full stop. Now, I am specifically prohibiting further discussion of the matter. Is
that
understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” came murmurs.

Richardson raised her voice.

“I don’t think I made myself understood, Thirty-First Squadron. I am
specifically prohibiting
speculative discussion regarding your former squadron commander. Is that
understood
?”

Much louder: “Yes, ma’am. Understood, ma’am.”

“Specific prohibitions my ass,” Rafferty said to Duckworth at lunch in the enlisted mess. The two were off by themselves in a booth, half-eaten corned beef sandwiches in front of them.

Duckworth took another bite of his
and thoughtfully chewed it.

“Men crack, Raff.”

“Not that one. I was with him on that pirate ship. He’s a spy, I’m a fuckin’ Lud bomber. Don’t have the skills to. May be a fine airship commander, but he just don’t have the jack skills to do what they say he is.”

“Hush up, Raff,” said Duckworth. “You heard what the hag lady told the officers this morning. Offence even to discuss it.”

“And how about that for a sign? Don’t tell you it’s a crime to discuss a regular bust-up, do they?”

“Rafferty,” said Vidkowski, sitting down with a plate, “shut up. You don’t know the hag lady. I’ve been in her division for years. Don’t fuck with her.
Don’t even
think about
fucking with her. Shut up.”

“Bullshit,” said Rafferty.

“Rafferty.” Vidkowski’s voice was raised. “Shut. Up. And that’s an
order
.”

Rafferty’s mouth curled in a snarl.

“Yes
sir
, Admiral fucking Vidkowski. Since when did you become such a straight-edger?”

“I don’t want to see you on the third floor,” Vidkowski said. He lowered his voice. “Of
course
something’s fucking going on. Do you think the rest of us don’t know it, too? We don’t
talk
about it. We pretend that what the hag lady wants us to believe is true. Fake it and keep your fuckin’ yap shut when drunk.
Understand
?”

“Yes
sir
,” said Rafferty with a bit less malice. Thinking.

“He’s
what
?” Annabelle Perry asked the MP lieutenant at around the same time. He’d come into her firm’s offices with a submachinegun-armed squad of Air Marines, throwing the entire operation – outside a couple of executives who’d come up from field mining operations and were taking the entire thing in full stride – into complete disruption. ‘Duke’ Marion, the CEO, was standing by impassively.

“Yes, ma’am. Your husband has taken off with a pirate and is now a wanted fugitive. On orders from the Governor of Hugoton Lease, you and your children are being taken into protective custody.”

“You can’t just take my second-ranking financial away like that,” Marion objected. He was a big man of fifty-five, a self-made company founder who’d started as a prospector and then a miner, and wasn’t ready to take shit from any kid lieutenant. “In case you haven’t been informed,
Lieutenant
, the city of Denver – the State of Colorado – is
not
the Hugoton Lease. You have no jurisdiction here.”

“Staff Sergeant Kawa?” the lieutenant said.

A man with stripes on his arms produced a document from a folder.

“The Colorado State Rangers
do
have jurisdiction here,” the lieutenant said. “This warrant authorizes the operation. Would you like me to put you on the line to the man who signed this, Mr. Morrison?”

Marion
looked at the warrant and snarled.

“I know Colonel Taylor.”

“You can’t just – what
happened?
It doesn’t make any sense!”

“Ma’am, my orders come directly from the Governor,” said the lieutenant. “Your children are presently being taken from school. Now, if you’d come with us to Stapleton?”

This is insane. Marcus can’t have done this.
Can’t
have.

Not hurt. Too shocked and confused to be hurt. Yet. Maybe there’d be pain later.
For now
, Annabelle told herself,
just go with it. Do what the nice man says
.

“You can’t give me any explanation at all?”

“
I
could use an explanation, too,” said Marion.

“I don’t know any more than what I’ve told your associate CFO, Mr.
Morrison,” said the MP lieutenant. “Now, Ms. Perry, the ship is waiting for us.”

At Stapleton, Annabelle met the two children, who’d been taken straight out of school. They weren’t upset; they were military children, used to the uniform and to obeying orders. For them it was an exci
ting adventure with an airship ride.

“Wow,” said ten-
year-old Ernest, looking at the ship they were about to board. MPs had come by their apartment as well, packed clothing. “That’s a warship! An escort-class warship! Is Daddy on it?”

Annabelle thought for a moment. How much to reveal to them? The MPs apparently hadn’t said anything.

“Daddy’s going to be away for a while,” she said.

“We’re not going to see him at Hugoton?” Ernest asked.

And why are we being taken to Hugoton in the first place? Protective custody just doesn’t make sense.

But the highest-ranking
officer they’d seen so far was the lieutenant XO’ing the ship, which – Annabelle had been around her husband’s service long enough to know – was a streamlined escort-class, built for speed and not fighting capability. She had the feeling it was a very high-level taxi. With the exception of a pair of scout-classes being refueled, it was the only Service ship at Stapleton,which was unusual as well; escort-classes normally operated in two-ship flights.

What is going on?

She didn’t believe the story about Marcus falling in love with a pirate and running off with her, not for a moment. They’d been married twelve years, known each other for fifteen, and Perry simply wasn’t that type. It didn’t make the slightest bit of sense, which meant that something else had to be going on.

The lieutenant clearly didn’t know; he was your typical Army MP who saw his job as being to obey orders, not think about them too much.
Maybe they’d find out at Hugoton.

She hoped.

“If you’ll come along and board, ma’am,” said the lieutenant. “We’ll be at Hugoton by six.”

The train had been going all night and all day, and on in
to the next night, stopping only briefly to onload more coal and water, perhaps to change crews. They crossed sparse Kansas plains, occasionally seeing airships, once a flight of Service vessels and, another time, a low-flying Federal escort-class, the whole of it painted a bright Union blue, prominent stripes and stars so big he could count all thirty-four of them.

Egotistical, aren’t we?
, he thought, not for the first time, as the boxcar trembled along. They were maintaining a steady pace that amounted to about thirty miles an hour, through territory that had been slowly growing more developed and civilized. Of course, this was the Texas border, most definitely a hostile border, and the railway line to Hugoton was under Imperial protection.

Thirty-four stars, of which Texas was most d
efinitely not one. Neither were the seven Western states of Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado, although the Federals had enough of a presence in that last one.

Sonora and Deseret were respectable countries but not especially hostile; Sonora was dynamic and ambitious, b
ut her ambitions lay more to her north than her east; she’d gobbled up southern California a few years ago – Ahle had been involved in that, hadn’t she? – and everyone expected her to move north when she’d finished assimilating that, probably war with the Free City of San Francisco before long. Deseret had military strength and was no friend of Sonora, but the Mormons were insular to the point of paranoia, not even trading very much with outsiders.

Still, Federal authority maintained a claim over the entire state of Colorado, and in practice that claim was respected only so far as the Department of the
West had the troops to enforce it. Nobody but pirates contested the rest of the West.

More troops here, down along the Texas border. Texas had successfully seceded during the Collapse; th
ere’d been a short war over it in the early `20s, which the Empire had negotiated an end to in what Parliament had called the Southern Compromise. Washington could stomp on the rest of the South all it wanted – at best a very limited respect for the absolute-right-of-self-determination Curzon Doctrine, for diplomatic reasons – but Texas would go free.

Washington had eventually come to accept the deal – the same negotiations had given the Empire the Hugoton Lease, and Washington a huge stack of money with which to fund its Reconstruction of the South –
but the results had included a steady stream of disaffected, pissed-off Southerners emigrating to Texas.

In theory, that was supposed to be an outlet. But London hadn’t considered how strongly these people would still consider themselves to be Southern. Texas didn’t have the military strength to
be a real threat to the United States, but they certainly had the motivation to be a prickly-bad neighbor.

Not my problem
, Perry thought, as the train rumbled on through the darkness. He’d eaten earlier – Fleming had included a couple days’ worth of ration tins – and now he lay back on a pile of the cardboard boxes and attempted to sleep.

I broke the law. God knows what the squadron’s going to think.

God knows what Annabelle is going to think. Dear God.

The sleep didn’t come easily.

Ferrer woke from an uneasy sleep to a bad feeling. Marko was standing over him in the darkness, a knife in his hand.