Even the rain had stopped for New Albion’s glorious “ascendence.”
Cher followed Chad through the packed crowds thronging the wide concrete avenues, Davis trotting at her heels. She wondered just how the news was being taken back on Earth, and suspected that it wasn’t with as much gravity as the New Albion government imagined. Maurice Pepper had been right about one thing: out of sight, out of mind.
New Albion was a corner of a foreign field that was forever—or so everyone had assumed—England, but it was a long way from home, and outside of the main cut and thrust of diplomatic life. Was it even a very great consideration for most people on Earth?
Most likely not.
That said, the New Albion secession wasn’t an isolated incident. There might be many on Earth worrying about how it would fit into the colonial unrest on the Frontier worlds, where the Union of Progressive Peoples had started an aggressive expansion program and had, quite naturally, come up against the aggressive United Americas. There was even talk that the UA was going to instigate a draft on the Frontier worlds, which would signal an all-out war.
How would what was conducted out on space be mirrored on Earth? For most people on the homeworld, what happened out on the Frontier was so distant that it was abstract. But if that conflict spilled over to war on Earth…
“Do you always get that look on your face when you’re lost in thought?”
Cher blinked. “What look?”
He shrugged as they stood on a corner of two wide intersecting avenues. “Kind of like…” He screwed his face into a frown, nose wrinkled, biting his bottom lip.
“That’s my ‘resting journalist face.’” She looked up and down the intersection, crowds spilling into the roads, cheering and waving bottles. “What are we doing, anyway?”
“Getting a cab to the terminus.” Chad waved his hand as a black taxi negotiated the throng, pulling in beside them.
“You didn’t stay long,” the cabbie said, putting Cher’s bag into the trunk. It was the same guy who’d brought her from the port two days ago.
“You the only cabbie in New Albion?”
“Nah, just the hardest working,” the driver said, opening the doors for them to get into the back. “Where we going?”
“You know the airspace is closed?” the driver said, pulling away from the curb and nosing through the revelers. “Big mistake if you ask me. Where we gonna get our stuff from? We’re not self-sufficient here. And what we going to do when the ICSC warships turn up? Shoot ’em down with pulse rifles?” He snorted at that as the taxi cleared the central crowds and turned on to a pitted concrete highway, the buildings and control tower of the terminus ahead of them at the end of the straight road.
“I mean, it’s not like we got a military to speak of. Not really. All these tin soldiers with Duke of Wellington patches. What we need is ships. Big ships! With big guns!”
Cher looked out of the window at the grey scrubland that passed by the window.
“Well, there’s the Royal Marines, right?” Chad said.
The cabbie laughed. “Bunch of toothless old dogs.” Davis growled from between Chad and Cher. “Sorry, Fido. No offense, but the Three World Empire ain’t exactly what you call aggressive, is it? Runs from a fight like a mangy cur with its tail between its legs.” Davis growled again. The cabbie laughed. “It’s like he really understands me. Anyway, Royal Marines. They forgot how to have a scrap, that’s their problem. Besides, they ain’t ours, are they? New Albion’s I mean. They’re 3WE. We see a Royal Marine Dreadnought in the sky, it’ll be getting in line behind the ICSC to kick our arses.”
The cab rolled smoothly to the outside of the terminus departure building.
“What you doing here, then?” the cabbie pressed. “You heard what I said, right? Nothing coming in and out without permission.”
“We heard,” Cher said. “I’ve got to say, you’re very… philosophical about the whole thing. It almost seems like you find it funny.”
“Well, you have to laugh, don’t you? Or you’d cry. It’s what we do here, innit? Only happy when it rains.” There was a crack of thunder high above them. “Which is a good job on this bloody planet.” He helped Cher get her case out of the trunk and gave Davis a hearty ruffle of his head. “Well, whatever you’re up to, best of British to you. Ta-ra!”
* * *
The three of them stood at a wire fence topped with razor wire, to the side of the departures terminal, looking out on to a broad concrete expanse dotted with ships of all sizes. Chad pointed through the fence to a small, tidy Level II cruiser on the east side.
“There she is. The Elvik.”
“Nice,” Cher said. “Must have cost you a pretty penny.”
“He won her in a card game. Same way he won me,” Davis said, sitting between them. “That’s our Chad. Lucky at cards, unlucky in love.” Chad shot the dog a warning look. He was trying far too hard with this being human business. Cher looked at them both.
They’d already tried to get through the terminus via the proper channels, but been told by two armed Duke of Wellingtons that there was no chance they were getting to their ship—even when Cher broke down in tears and told them that her mother’s medication was on the vessel and without it she would surely die. Chad was quietly impressed. If the journalism business was ever a bust for her, she could definitely make it as an actress.
“One less mouth to feed then,” one of the soldiers said, grinning viciously. “You think I was born yesterday? You don’t have a sick mother. Clear off, the lot of you, and take that dog before it does a shit.”
Chad couldn’t help but smile as Davis cocked his leg and peed on the animatronic Beefeater by the door, imploring the empty terminal to come back to New Albion soon, adding a resounding, “Best of British!”
“I didn’t even know you could pee,” Cher said.
“When the occasion demands,” Davis said as they hastily left the terminal, the soldier bellowing at them. “The woman from whom we procured this body must have demanded thorough authenticity.”
Chad peered through the fence. “I see one guard hut for this whole section, though there may be more behind those other ships,” he said. “They’re really not expecting anyone to want to leave.”
“Where would they go?” Davis said. “I mean, New Albion is a glorious paradise, isn’t it? Best of British?”
Chad and Cher exchanged a glance then both looked down at Davis.
“You know,” she said, “you’re getting better at this humor thing. Which gives me an idea. Brits love dogs, don’t they?” Then she added, “How’s your dexterity?”
* * *
“The problem with this place, see, is—”
“The rain.”
Corporal Terry Smith shot Corporal Bob Jones a withering look. “No, Robert, the problem with this place isn’t the fucking rain. The problem with this place—”
“The noise, innit? All the construction.”
“Robert.” Corporal Smith stood up in the metal cargo container that had been repurposed into a guard hut on the main departure apron of the New Albion terminus, and went to put the kettle on. “Let me finish. Please.”
“Do go on, Terrence.”
“I will, Robert. As I was saying, the problem with this place is—”
“A dog.”
Smith slammed the tin containing their teabags onto the work surface.
“Flaming bloody Nora, Robert, did I not just—”
“No,” Jones said. “There’s a dog. Here.”
Smith turned round to see Jones pointing his pulse rifle at a brown, fluffy hound standing in the doorway, head cocked on one side, tongue lolling out happily.
“Hello, boy,” Smith said, crouching down. He looked at Jones. “Robert, put your bloody gun away. You’re going to shoot a dog?”
“We were told nobody comes on or off the site,” Jones said doubtfully. “Orders is orders, innit?”
“It’s. A. Dog,” Smith replied flatly. “Gordon Bennett, Robert, you are as thick as two short planks sometimes.” He looked to the dog and patted his knees. “Hello, boy. What you doing here? Lost?”
“He doesn’t look like a stray,” Jones said doubtfully as the dog padded over to Smith and started to lick his outstretched hand. Then the animal turned to him, and started to sniff his gun.
“What a good boy,” Smith said. “Here, he wants to play with your gun. Look, he’s trying to grab it.”
“Ow!” Jones said suddenly, pulling his hand back. “The fucking thing bit me!”
Smith laughed uproariously as the dog bounced back to the door, Jones’s gun in its mouth.
“You idiot, Robert. You lost your bloody gun.” He grinned at his colleague as the dog, stopped, sat down, and positioned the weapon between its front paws, looking intently at it as if for all the world it was trying to work out what it did. Then Smith said, “Here boy, better give me that. Could be nasty if it went off by accident.”
“Oh, it won’t be an accident if it goes off,” the canine said. Jones and Smith froze, and their jaws went slack as a man appeared from around the corner of the hut, grabbing up the gun and pointing it at them.
“Terrence…”
“Yes, Robert, the dog just fucking talked.”
“Hand over your weapon,” the dog said. “Or he will, to employ your colorful vernacular, blow your bloody bollocks off.”
Smith started toward the new intruder, but Jones grabbed him by the arm. So Smith carefully and deliberately slid his gun across the floor, and stepped back.
“You’re not going to shoot us, are you?” he said, still talking to the dog. “You’re a good boy, right?”
* * *
When Chad had finished ripping the guards’ shirts into strips, then tying and gagging them, he went to join Davis and Cher at the computer terminal in the cargo container. Abruptly, there was a cacophonous drumming as rain started to batter down on to the metal roof.
“Well?” he said.
“Two more guard huts within a hundred meters of the Elvik,” Davis said as Cher operated the terminal. “We’ll be in both their sightlines when we head for the ship. There’s no avoiding it.”
“Can we get there before they can get to us?”
“Only if they’re as stupid as these two, and the law of averages would suggest that it’s very unlikely,” Davis said, to a volley of muffled grunts of objection from the bound guards. Chad looked back at them in their vests and shorts.
“But not impossible,” he said slowly. “I’ve got an idea.”
* * *
They were within fifty meters of the Elvik when four guards—two from either side—began to run at them, weapons out, hollering for them to stop. They stopped on the concrete, the rain pounding down around them.
“State your business!” the first soldier to reach them said.
“Isn’t it bleedin’ obvious?” Cher said, glowering at each of the men as they surrounded them, guns out. “I’m taking this bloody trespasser for questioning.”
The men turned their attention to Chad, his hands tied behind his back, then looked back to Cher. The first man said, “Who are you? Haven’t see you around.”
“New, ain’t I?” Cher said. “Corporal… Poppins.”
The guard raised an eyebrow. “Poppins?”
“Wanna make something of it, friend?”
“Not at all,” the man said, standing back a little doubtfully. “Get on with it, Corporal.”
“Hang on,” another soldier said, looking narrow-eyed at Cher and the case she was pulling behind her. “Where did you say you were garrisoned?”
“I didn’t,” Cher said. “You trying to tap me up for a date, soldier?”
The others guffawed, but the man wouldn’t be put off.
“Where are you stationed, Corporal?”
“I’ve just transferred from…” Cher desperately tried to think of something, anything, that sounded vaguely British. “… from Apples and Pears Station.” The men looked at each other, then frowned and started to move in.
Cher groaned, and said, “Davis, sic ’em,” just as Chad pulled his hands free from his loose bonds and aimed a punch at the nearest soldier.
Cher followed suit with a swinging hammer-blow to the head of the guard that had questioned her, while the poor sap who’d been first on the scene got Davis closing his jaws around the man’s crotch with a muscle-rending crunch that momentarily sickened Cher.
“Go!” Chad yelled, whipping out one of the weapons they’d taken from the guards and firing a series of haphazard shots over the heads of the four soldiers, who dove to the ground in disarray. Cher didn’t need to be told twice. With Davis at her heels, she pounded the wet concrete toward Chad’s ship, dragging her case and yelling as a pulse blast hit the ground just a meter away from her.
As she reached the cruiser, she risked a look behind her to see one of the guards down on the ground, and another holding an injured arm, while the other two traded pulse blasts with Chad. He was running for the ship and firing over his shoulder.
“They’re getting close!” Chad shouted, dodging a blast as he reached Cher. They sheltered behind the cruiser’s stubby engine, and he pulled a small object out of his pocket, tapping in a command. The ship vibrated, and a hatch opened in the side of the squat vessel. Chad didn’t wait for the access steps to descend but threw Davis and Cher’s bag up into the ship then leapt up behind, holding out his hand for her.
She grabbed for it but screamed and pulled back as a pulse blast bounced off the ship’s hull.
“Come on!” Chad urged. The ship was already starting to tremble and she could feel heat from the engine block. Chad must have initiated the take-off procedures remotely.
“Halt, or we shoot!” one of the two guards shouted as they bore down on them. The ramp was almost down. Cher grabbed Chad’s hand and he hauled her up, then slapped the door control and pulled her back as the ramp reversed and the hatch closed. One well-aimed pulse beam made it through the tightening gap and exploded beside Cher’s head.
“This is your captain speaking,” Cher heard Davis’s voice say over the internal comms as the ship shuddered and bucked and started to lift off. “Welcome aboard this Air Davis flight to LV-187. We will shortly be leaving New Albion airspace, providing we don’t get shot down for gross infringement of local laws. At our next stop we will be welcomed by murderous living weapons who wish us only the most gruesome deaths imaginable. Don’t forget to fasten your seatbelts.” The Elvik angled up sharply and accelerated quickly to enter New Albion’s upper atmosphere
“We really shouldn’t let the dog watch so much TV, you know,” Cher muttered.