Her Majesty's Western Service (50 page)

Eight o’clock. Time to make sure the new shift was in place. Kick some ass if they weren’t.

Tomorrow they’d lift for Hugoton and join Marko in the attack.

The
Viking
and Kennedy’s other two ships had moved fast through the afternoon, the sunset and the night. Faster, actually, than Perry had thought a
Fuego del Gato
was capable of, but it had been years since he’d read those specs and aftermarket engineering rebuilds were common enough anyway.

Now, all lights off except for dim shrouds on the bridge, they flew by moonlight through the Rockies, three large, dark shadows full of tense men.
It was one thirty in the morning and they were about half an hour from the objective.

“Over the plan one final time,” Kennedy
said to the lieutenant and his four squad leaders, as Perry and Ahle looked on. “Lieutenants Gosford and Jones drop their men in across the outer area, take down their outer perimiter. We know they have rocket launchers; those are Gosford and Jones’ responsibility. We’re the center element. All clear so far?”

The three men and two women made noises of agreement.

“Taking the airship itself is our responsibility. Squads A and B, you’re landing on top of the ship. Subdue whoever you find there, rappel down and meet us inside the ship. Squad D, you’re landing immediately behind the ship; make entry and move from aft to fore. I’m going in with Squad C, Lieutenant Wyclef, and our Imperial friends. We land around the nose of the ship and move on the cabin, going aft and linking with D. And the rest of the platoon, when they get down. All clear on that?”

There were nods and noises.

“Perry, Ahle, are you fine with your part?”

“Yessir,” said
Ahle.

“
Vice-Commodore?” asked Kennedy. “It’s your operation, although I’m in tactical command. Any last-minute objections to the plan or your place in it?”

“None I can think of,” said Perry.
That I’m working with pirates
crossed his mind, but not heavily. He was getting 4-106 back; he was finally getting 4-106 back!

Hig
h altitude, wearing steerable rectangular assault `chutes, they dropped. Kennedy was first, cradling a submachinegun. Perry moved to be next, but Lieutenant Wyclef politely pushed him aside as his men jumped, pair after pair.

“Boss said you’re not to incur any undue risk, sir” Wycl
ef said. “You’re his – their – ticket to something big.”

“B Squad!” shouted a sergeant, and ten more men jumped from the stationary airship.

“Go now if you insist,” Wyclef said.

“I insist,” said Perry, and leapt.

A few seconds of freefall, and then the ripcord ran out and the parachute opened. Below them, spread out, was the canyon. 4-106 hidden in there, vaguely discernible from a mile up.

Perry’s weapon – an Imperial-issue Sterling submachinegun that the Kennedys had provided – was slung across his back. He
gripped the steering cords of the `chute and aimed down for the nose of 4-106, light wind buffeting him as he descended.

We have the equivalent of a company of Air Marines
, he thought.
This time we can’t fail.

About time.

Ahle had jumped a moment after Perry. Now, bursts of automatic fire rang out from around the site as her feet touched dirt. She shrugged away her parachute and drew her two revolvers. Lethal ammunition; lethal ammunition was most definitely called for in this situation. They were going up against the bastards who’d killed her crew.

As she began to run for the bridge, following Kennedy, Perry and the Kennedy Organization squad, lights started to come on across the massive airship. The bridge first,
then running lights, the missile bays, everywhere. Dark figures, moving back and forth, appeared silhouetted in the bridge. It looked as though someone was panickedly just pulling switches.

An alarm on the ship began to wail – a deep, penetrating noise.
Thrummm. Thrummm. Thrummm.

She was under the cover of the airship’s gondola now, running for the cabin, overtaking a pair of Organization troops.
One of them paused to raise his battle rifle to his shoulder, aiming for the figures on the bridge, but then the lights there went out.

“
Follow me!” Jack Francis shouted, a few steps ahead of her.

Ahle
had no intention of doing otherwise. She ran.

What the hell is going on?
thought Pratt Cannon, a revolver in one hand as he stood on the bridge of 4-106. He’d killed the lights on the bridge, was tempted to blow away the
moron
who’d turned them on in the first place. But then the fucker had shown the good sense to hit the alarm.

They were under attack. That much was clear. Dark figures were coming
toward them, looked like about a squad’s worth. But flashes of gunfire – around the rocket positions and the Texan camp – implied more in the area. And panicked messages had already come through from the aft station, and the rig station on top.

Concerted attack from a meaningful force.

Who could have known this location?

How can I react?

Or escape?

Not much time. They were in a canyon, but Cannon hadn’t lived to see forty-eight without good planning. There was a narrow path up, about two hundred yards southwest of the aft end of the airship.

And there were men coming at him,
right now
, and he had to deal with that threat first.

“To arms! Guns up and – repel boarders, you lot!” he shouted
as another of the crew stumbled half-awake into the bridge. A middle-aged woman, half-dressed and bootless but her rig was on and there was a gun in there.

“Wha’s happening?”
she asked.

“We’re under attack, fuckup,” Captain Caine snarled. “
Arm yourself and fight back!”

Jack Kennedy ran for the ship, his
submachinegun – a pistol-grip .355 with a now-extended folding stock – raised and ready. He’d originally led the attack, but a three-man fireteam of the squad had overtaken him. Yeah, they’d want to protect their boss.

Shooting going on all around as the Texans were overwhelmed.

It was dark, the heavy gondola of 4-106 obscuring even the night’s faint starlight.

“Attack!” shouted the corporal of the fireteam ahead, pushing up the lowered staircase into the airship’s bridge. His men followed.

Shooting on the inside. A man in buckskins, two pistols drawn and handling them like an expert. One man’s, then the corporal’s, body fell backwards, out of the airship.

Kennedy was next, although he could tell the Imperial Vice-Commodore and his bodyguard were a moment behind him. He lunged up the airship’s folding staircase and into the bridge, firing as he went.

For a moment he faced his enemy, a tall man in buckskins with a pair of long revolvers.

Time slowed for a moment.

“Johnny Kennedy.” The man in buckskins recognized him. Raised his guns toward Kennedy’s face, correctly assuming body armor.

“Johnny Kennedy,” said Kennedy,
whose gun was already raised. A burst of .355 lead took the man through the face.

He
crumpled, brains blown out the back of his skull.

“We surrender!” shouted one of the other crewmen, as the Vice-Commodore and his bodyguard piled in behind them. A submachinegun
clattered to the floor. Three other weapons followed, and hands reached for the ceiling.

Rafferty
lowered the Service automatic and looked at the prisoners. Kennedy was already covering them; more elements of the assault squads were coming in, going through the ship.

A Kennedy man came back, herding three more prisoners into the bridge.
They looked shocked and only half-awake;
typical pirate riff-raff
, he thought.

Well, he was a Service career away from being
that kind of riff-raff himself.
But
, he thought proudly,
I’m
Service
riff-raff.

“Don’t touch the controls,” Vice Perry was snarling. “Or I’ll blow your worthless heads off. Keep those hands up in the air where I can see `em or it’ll be the worse for you.”

The Vice seemed disappointed not to have gotten to kill anyone, was clearly itching for the chance now. Rafferty didn’t envy the poor bastards on the other end of his gun.

Ahle
seemed equally pissed as she helped Perry cover them. Her crew had been murdered en masse by this lot, and the rapid surrender had denied her a chance at revenge. As four more prisoners, one of them in his underwear, were pushed onto the bridge, the pirate captain tensely caressed the trigger of one of her guns.

Guys
, Rafferty hoped to telepathically convey to the now-a-dozen prisoners,
don’t try anything. Don’t get smart, either. You guys are in deeper shit than you begin to realize.

Captain Caine made himself b
reathe. Deeply, as he continued to talk. He knew exactly how deep in shit he presently was, and he wanted to live.

Routine operation blather. Johnny Kennedy, and that nasty black guy who was apparently an Imperial officer, could
know it all. About how that crazy black-clad guy with the broken teeth had made them fly over Hugoton.

“Look, I’ll
fuck with Imperials,” he pleaded to Kennedy. “
You
guys do. It’s part of the business. But – Mr. Kennedy, I’m sorry. If I’d realized that these were friends of
yours
, Mr. Kennedy.”

That didn’t seem to impress the black Imperial officer, whose gun twitched in Caine’s direction. Hastily he moved to apologize.

“And I’ve never hurt Imperials, sir. Mr. Commodore, sir. Maybe traded shots with them a few times, but… sir, I was Code through and through. Never killed a man in my life to my knowledge.”

“Get back to the point,”
the black man coldly ordered. “The bastard went to the Black Hills. Where was he going to go from there?”

“Don’t know,” said Caine. “We were just supposed to prep the bird – this bird, sir, Mr. Commodore and Mr. Kennedy
– for departure at six this morning. He’d know.” A gesture at Cannon’s smashed corpse, which nobody had bothered to move from where it lay.

“Would have known, that is. He’d have told us where to go.”

“I didn’t do nothin’,” put in one of the other prisoners. “Code pirate, Mr. Kennedy. Good Code woman, always followed your rules and shit. Like the cap’n said, if I’d known we was goin’ up against
you
–”

“Shut up,” the black Imperial ordered in that
disconcertingly – frighteningly, given the circumstances – upper-class-English accent of his. “You shot down two Imperial ships and murdered my friend’s crew. Tell it to a judge.”

My friend’s crew
, thought Perry, realizing what he’d just said. Well, Ahle…

She was a damned pirate and the bitch who’d originally stolen 4-106 from him. If she hadn’t, none of this operation would have been necessary.

And she was small fry, another part of Perry’s mind came back. She’s honorable in her own way, she has legitimate grievances –
her family was murdered by second-degree Imperial proxies!
– and she’s saved your back more than once.

He was an Imperial officer. How could he be friends with a pirate?

How could he
like
John Kennedy, as he was finding he did. The man had a certain boyish charm, could tell a story well, and knew his work.

The man would make a fine Imperial officer
, he thought.

For that matter, so would
Ahle.

But he had more urgent matters to attend to.
Bigger things were going on than a lost airship. Much bigger things. Hugoton itself was under threat; perhaps the entire West.

“Get these trash off my bridge,” he ordered Kennedy for the first time. Reports had come through, a few minutes ago,
confirming that 4-106 was solidly under Kennedy’s control. A group of – twenty or so – Texan prisoners were being herded just now into the space in front of 4-106.

“You heard the Vice-Commodore,” Kennedy ordered the prisoners. “Get off his ship. Join your Texan friends over there.”

“One
hint
of funny business and you’re all dead,” Ahle snarled.

“Wasn’t us who killed your crew, cap’n,”
one of the prisoners pleaded. “That psycho in black was who did it.”