Her Majesty's Western Service (54 page)

Governor
Lloyd was silent for a long, long moment.

Then he nodded.

“Mr. Kennedy, I will make this policy and recommend its ratification as Crown policy,
if
you deliver on your promise and save Hugoton.”

Kennedy extended a hand. The Governor, after a pause, shook it.

“In the presence of these witnesses,” Kennedy said, “we have a deal.”

“We have a deal,” Governor Henry slowly agreed.

“Now” – Kennedy spoke to Fleming – “get me to a flasher. We don’t have much time.”

From the roof of Hugoton’s Government Tower,
Kennedy – assisted by a pair of Army communications personnel that one of the Air Service ground officers had picked up from the garrison stay-behinds – carefully aimed the heliograph, checking against a compass. Fleming, Connery and Buff hovered watching in the background.

“There,” said
Kennedy. “No – another quarter-degree. Now. Corporal, are you ready with your binoculars?”

“Yes, mate.”

“Yes
sir
, Corporal.”

“He a sir
– Mr. Lieutenant, sir?”

“For
now,” said the Air Service lieutenant, “he’s a ‘sir’ if he wants to be. Get to it.”

“Yes, sir
. Sir.”

“Transmitting,” Kennedy said, and began to flash.

A tense few moments.

“Sir,” reported the corporal. “We got a respons
e. Acknowledged, he says. No – acknowledged and conveying, sir.”

From one temporarily-assembled fiel
d heliograph station to another, Kennedy’s message flashed north until it reached a field command post about seventy-five miles away, on the Kansas plains. There, nine combat airships and a bobbing flotilla of three dozen pirate ships sat low, amidst heliographs pointed north and south, east and west.

Joseph Kennedy, Junior was in co
mmand on the ground. With him were Bill Colby and Joseph’s youngest sibling, Ed.

“Mr. Kennedy, sir” said the senior flash officer – a uniformed Lakota lieutenant. “Looks like you got a reply. Blue
four, sir, he says. Hugoton.”

Blue four. That was Jack’s prearranged code for ‘we have made an acceptable deal.’

Joseph fought to restrain the euphoria that rose in him.

Legitimacy! My God, legitimacy!

“Very good, Grey Eagle,” he replied, hoping he could stay calm.

Legitimacy at last, if we can win this thing!

He and the family had taken on ridiculous odds before. And won.

“Reply,” Joseph Junior ordered. “Acknowledge. Your other flashers can spread the word. We have some new Imperial friends
.”

“My God,”
Colby said. “Jackie fucking did it. I owe that fucker a grand.”

Ed Kennedy produced a flask.

“Wouldn’t you say this calls for a drink?”

“New message, sir,” said the Army signals corporal. “
Says, ‘Acknowledged Joseph. Relaying and lifting.’”

John Kennedy nodded.

“So they’re coming?” the Air Service officer asked.

“They’re on the way,” Kennedy said.

Captain Shirley Meier of the purple
Pith and Vinegar
, with Captain Peggey Rowland of the sky-blue
Five Speed
, had arrived over Dodge City about forty minutes earlier. Challenging them on station had been a Federal, United States Air Force, wing of four large escort-class airships, presumably – Meier had thought – hastily deployed out of Amarillo.

One of them had bolted upon seeing the
two Armadillo ships arrive. Meier’s second signalwoman had reported flasher communications between the largest of the Federal airships and that one – ‘Come back, you coward!’

The coward, at least, had lived.

The
Pith and Vinegar
and the
Five Speed
had split wide over downtown Dodge as the remaining three Federals had turned to engage.

C
annon chewed back and forth across the four miles of intervening sky. Neither really, among the wind-blown, slightly bobbing, airships, got lucky. Four miles became three. Two and a half. Two.

The Federals came on in a close
trio, only a few hundred yards apart. Below them were the Dodge railyards and industrial district – targets of convenience anyway, although the SS would be coming soon enough. Smokestacks reached toward the sky; cracking towers and storage silos.

One and a half miles.

“Turn,” Meier ordered. “And broadside.”

Eight
nine-inch missiles blasted across the sky at the Federal formation, which itself was beginning to turn in response, to show a broadside to the mercenaries.

Rowland had thought the same thing. Another broadside followed – twelve six-inch missiles, as
Meier knew full well.

Two of them scored hits, one on the nose
of a Federal airship, another amidships. Flaming bags were jettisoned into the sky, riggers sprayed foam, ballast was ditched. The airships survived easily. Another bag was jettisoned as a tracer from one of Meier’s pressure-guns went home.

Angling toward one another, the two Armadillos and what remained of the Federal
wing had met over industrial Dodge City at the range of a mile and a quarter.

Missile volleys blasted back and forth.

Meier felt her ship hit, didn’t need the rig officer’s report – the falling as burning hydrogen bags were unleashed, the recovery as inert lead bags were correspondly released.

One of the Federal ships began to burn. She fought as she fell, a final
ragged volley going out as she descended in flames toward the cracking towers and smokestacks of the Dodge industrial district.

A mile.

Meier could see that she was scoring hits, but the other two weren’t catching fire. Helium birds, then. She’d heard of those – fought one, once, over Chile. You had to expect helium from an Imperial ally.

There were ways to deal with helium.

“Missiles, aim for the cabin,” she directed her weapons officer. “Guns, pound away. They don’t have an indefinite supply.”

The weapons officer looked at his captain as though her brains were granite.

“
Duh
,” he pointed out. “Our missileers have already figured that out. Aiming for cabin. Is free fire authorized?”

Duh herself. That meant, could
each battery fire as soon as they were loaded without waiting for the others.

“Free fire authorized,”
Meier said. “Just bring those Federal
impediments
down.”

“There’s a fight going on!”
ten-year-old Ernest Perry exalted from the window of the hotel room. “Those two Armadillos – it’s the real Cordova’s Armadillos, Mother! I can
see
the purple and blue ones – are attacking the Feds right above us!”

“Get away from the window,” Annabelle Perry ordered. “
I told you this before, Ernest!
No
, Jeremiah! You are not to join him!”

“N
o, you are not to!” snapped Christine Dorsett, the wife of Thirty-Second Squadron’s commander, Vice-Commodore Jody Dorsett. “Tripp, get away from that window right now!”

They were in a top-floor,
executive-grade, hotel room on the edge of Dodge City’s industrial and business districts; some perhaps-foresighted entrepreneur had built a six-storey hotel on the edge of the two neighborhoods.

Some
idiot
, Annabelle thought – not for the first time – had assigned the higher-ranking Imperial officers’ partners the ‘better’, top-floor rooms of the place. Lieutenants’ partners and children occupied the safer, lower-storey rooms.

Tripp Dorsett
moved away from the window. Ernest, being the brat he was, refused to. “Holy crap, Mother! They just scored a hit on the
Five Speed
! Fires – no, they jettisoned a sac! And one of the Feds is going down! And the other’s turning to – oh, no he just got hit, he’s descending – scored another good hit on the
Five Speed
as he’s down, now he’s leveled – no, cannon fire is cutting him up! He’s going down!”

“Get away from the window, I said,” Annabelle repeated, moving to physically wrench
her son from where he stood exalting.

At the
enemy’s
victory. Didn’t he realize that the colorful, photogenic Armadillos were working against Imperial interests this time? Were fighting the allies of their father’s Service?

“So we’ve lost,” said
Christine from one of the luxury suite’s two king-sized beds. “They own the skies over Dodge now.”

“The Armadillo
s
never
lose, Mom,” said Tripp.

“They’re the
bad guys
,” said Ernest. “They better lose. Or Father will shoot `em to shreds when he’s back!”

“Yo
ur father,” the wife of Thirty-Second’s commander said slowly, “might not be coming back.”

A glare from
Annabelle kept her from going further. But for a mutter: “I wouldn’t get my hopes up, is all.”

“Dodge City is ours,” came across the flasher from
Meier to Rowland, as the last Federal ship crashed flamelessly somewhere amongst the corrals and abbatoirs of the eastern cattle district.

“
Shall we begin trashing the place?” Rowland flashed back.

“Shall we?” Meier
had replied, as the
Pith and Vinegar
’s missiles lashed at a petroleum refinery.

Perry relaxe
d in the command chair of 4-106.

“
Preparing lift,” he said into his command mike. “Final check, confirm.”

“XO confirms,” said Martindale. “Checks?”

“Engineering and rigs, fully crewed, sir,” came Lieutenant Vescard’s voice over the bridge loudspeakers. “Boilers hot and check.”

“We
apons, fully manned, sir,” said Lieutenant Swarovski. “All twelve missile batteries. All guns loaded and check.”

“Helm is check,” said
Ahle from that station. “But you knew that already, Perry.”

“Communications?”

“Communications are check,” said Nolan, from the station that would have properly belonged to the deceased Sub-Lieutenant Ross. Two specialist-grade enlisteds sat to his right. “Ready as according to your protocol, Mr. Imperial, sir.”

“And it looks like we have ground clearance,” said
Ahle.

“Very well,”
said Perry. “Lift and turn for Dodge. It’s time for Trotsky’s mercenaries to learn some Imperial discipline.”

Chapter
Twenty-Three

One by one, starting in Canada, the capitals of the Imperial colonies - except for India,which had become hopelessly fragmented - re-pledged their allegiance to Parliament, Crown and the Restored Empire.

Retaking the British Isles themselves, expected to be a bitter fight against the populations of the Communes, began in November of 1908 with an unopposed  landing in the Hebrides, followed by incursions into North Scotland.

Initial resistance was high and deaths included the commander of one Expeditionary Force, Major-General Douglas Haig, known for his innovative tactics, care for the lives of his men and insistence upon leading them from the front…

From
A Young Person’s History of the World, Volume X.

“
Commander SS, respond and confirm,” Commodore Jason Cordova’s communications officer flashed the vicinity of where the SS command cars would be. Center of the broad phalnax as it advanced. A small, built-for-speed escort-class ship was already hovering high over the general vicinity; Captain Judd and a couple of Russian agents. He’d met them earlier; the observers.

“Commander SS here,” the command car’s communications off
icer flashed back.

“Thirty minutes from Dodge;
two hours from Hugoton,” said Cordova’s ship. “Let’s do our jobs, shall we?”

“Let’s kill some things,” Himmler responded as they approached Dodge City.

Dodge was burning. Or at least, that was how it appeared to Perry, as 4-106 came in on the industrial cowtown from the west-southwest.