Her Majesty's Western Service (57 page)

Secondary weapons - spinners, cannon, pressure-guns and chainguns - opened up as their operators took chances, aiming for lucky hits at extreme range. One of the Armadillo riggers was killed, a direct hit from a pressure-gun round taking him through the chest and tumbling his smashed corpse off the airship and into the fires below.

The airships buffeted by fire, updrafts pushing them up, kicking them around. It made aiming of missiles hard, and more went wide than not.

Others hit. A pair of nine-inchers from 4-106, one of them fired by Rafferty, exploded dead on the center of the
Pith and Vinegar’s
gondola, blasting through the kevlar and setting thirty-some bags on fire at once. Riggers raced to the scene, spraying extinguisher and releasing the catches that sent burning bags loose.

A missile hit 4-106 near her already-damaged nose, striking a support strut whose structural failure slashed through nine helium bags as it, already under pressure, failed. Another one hit near a tailfin, narrowly avoiding major damage but blasting open three more helium bags.

“We’re hurting them,” said Perry, putting his scope down and walking back to his station. His own ship was taking damage, was definitely being bloodied, but the mercenary ship was smaller and it was only a matter of time.

She had three more friends accompanying
the SS, of course.

And as sh
e began to disengage east, Perry wished he had time to land for repairs. Or even better, time to go back to Hugoton for
real
repairs.

The SS was coming. They didn’t have that time.

“Pursue them. And ready the Marines.”

Second Lieutenant Herbert ‘H’ Jones of the Imperial Air Marines was a small man with a big grin. He’d chosen to remain at Hugoton with the last of his men in the hope of seeing
the action he’d joined up for; twenty-two years old he hadn’t yet, and he’d wanted to his entire life.

As he came onto the bridge he drew himself to attention and saluted the Vice-Commodore.

“At ease, Lieutenant. You and your sticks ready?”

Jones
usually commanded a platoon, but he had two four-man sticks now, two thirds of a squad.

“Absolutely, sir. Whatever you need done, the Air Marines will handle.
Gung ho, sir!”

The Vice-Commodore explained what it was. Jones’ grin became a massive one.

“Any questions?”

“No sir.”

“Dismissed. You’ll be ready to drop in five minutes. Any problem with that?”

“Gung ho, sir!”

“Deputy Rig Officer Brown’s dead, ma’am,” came the damage report to Captain Meier. “And they’ve closed to within half a mile.”

Something shook; the
Pith and Vinegar
began to slowly turn to port. The bridge damage officer turned, shouted something into his radio.

Meier didn’t need to hear the response; it was obvious they’d just taken a bad hit on the steering.

Fleeing wasn’t going to work any more. At least they were away from the flames, getting over the eastern Dodge cattle districts. Below them were pens and abbatoirs, not refineries.

And the Imperials had just made her decision for her,
forcing
her to cross their T. Really, there were worse positions to be in.

“Port-side missileers load and engage. They caught us; let’s see if they can swallow us.”

“They’re turning to fight,” Martindale reported. “I estimate them at eleven hundred yards.”

That was close, for the huge airships. Definite pistol range, if not the sword range you often got. Of course, leapfrogging the
Five Speed
had been point-blank.

“Turn to starboard ourselves,” Perry said after a moment. The port side had taken more damage. “Let’s take them down.”

“Oh, and sir? We’re about to be over the cattle yards. Release the Marines?”

“
Tell Jones they can jump any time.”

Missiles lanced from 4-106, blasting out at the
enemy airship as Jones jumped, his men behind him - free fall in light kit, just a combat load augmented by some electrical guns from the ship armory they’d been told would come in handy for this mission.

The wind was coming from the south, not the west; only some of the massive smoke from the burning oil district was around here, but the fires were clearly spreading and there was more of a wood smell to the smoke than there
had
been.

Jones had goggles, didn’t care.

Freefall, loving every moment of it. A glance up showed missiles blasting across the enemy ship, who’d had the class to turn and fight like a real airshipman did - and Jones had
been
there, only as a passenger but still - he’d have a tale to tell his mates in the O-Club about that leapfrogging maneuver the Vice had pulled on the other ship.

Focused down again, on the cattleyards that filled the eastern part of Dodge. Sheds, pens and slaughterhouses, and the cattle seemed agitated; they could smell the wind.

At two thousand feet he hit the ripcord, his parachute opening. His other lads had done so earlier, as they were supposed to; he wanted more precision himself.

He selected a rooftop himself, corrugated iron above what might have been a cowboy bar or something. Brought up his legs as it drew closer, closer - flat square rooftop, then a three-storey drop, but if the other side of the building was anything like the one he was on, there’d be a balcony to break his fall.

Impact! He curled into a roll across the cool iron of the rooftop, turning vertical motion into horizontal. Knife came out of its sheath like he’d practiced a thousand times; cutting the cords, rolling, spreading his leg out, stopped the roll with a good two and a half feet to spare on the balcony.

And the muzzle of a gun less than a foot from his face, was the next thing Jones noted.

Carefully he raised his hands, looking past the muzzle of the gun to see that it was a revolver held by a hard-faced man in a cowboy hat who’d come up a ladder from the balcony.

“You’re trespassing,” the cowboy said.

“Terribly sorry,” said Jones.

“Keep one of your hands where I can see it
. Have the other one drop that battle kit with your rifle. We got a dozen armed men in here, including Deputy Colson. He’ll take you into custody un-til such time as the Imperials can exercise their pre-rog-a-tive and take you fuckers in for trial.”

“Hold up a moment. You think I’m one of those fuckin’ mercs?”

The cowboy grinned.

“Imperials look to be winning that fight up there, don’t they?
Don’t see
them
jumping.”

Jones glanced up at the battle, which had moved northeast a bit with the wind. As he watched, 4-106 took another couple of hits, pieces of something flying off. But the purple merc - that one was definitely taking the
worst of it, burning in a couple of places - another geyser of flame bloomed as he watched, ant-like riggers running to take care of it.

“Imperials always win,” said Jones. “And you don’t recognize my uniform, do you?”

“Ain’t Imperial Army or Air Service.”

“Imperial
Marines
, cowboy. Gung ho Marines, and we got a job to do we could use a few cowboys to help us with…”

A couple of minutes later, Jones was in the common room of the cowboy bar whose roof he’d landed on, holding a glass of cold beer he had no intention of drinking, while t
hree dozen cowboys - and a sheriff’s deputy - listened.

“Of course, we’ll find some way of compensating the owners for the cattle,” said Jones.

“All these ones are branded,” said an older cowboy. “So you want us to
start
a stampede?”

A couple of Jones’ men had found their way into the bar, were standing at the edge of the crowd with weapons ready.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“These beef are spooked already, with all the fire happening. Getting `em going won’t be hard,” said the older cowboy. “The question is,
why
?”

“You,” Jones pointed at the cowboy who’d initially tried to arrest him. “When you were up on the roof, you see any smoke coming from the east? Dust, rather?”

“Some big cattle drive,” said the cowboy. Thinking for a moment. “
Big
one.”

“Not cattle,” said Jones. “That’s an armored division coming to finish the job those mercenaries started, and then go on to wreck Hugoton.
That’s hundreds of armored vehicles on the way.”

The room exploded in shouting;
they hadn’t heard?
was Jones’ thought.

“So our job is to stop them. Vice Perry up there is getting ready to fight their air support, and word is that there might be some assistance coming from the ground, too.” Jones didn’t consider it wise to mention that the assistance would come from pirates, who were an ongoing cattle-rustling nuisance to the ranchers.

“Down here, we’re thinking that a few ten-thousand cattle stampeding into their faces might slow `em down a little as well,” Jones went on.

“And your Governor, he’ll pay market price for any we lose?” said the older cowboy. “Count the double-Bar L crew in!”

About half the men in the bar agreed and nodded.

“You know how to ride a horse, Lieutenant? Rounding the cattle and steering `em west is going to work a hell of a lot better if you do.”

“Played polo at Eton,” said Jones happily.

“Then we’ll saddle you up.
” The double-Bar L rancher turned to the others in the common room. “Boys, let’s get this stampede started!”

Chapter Twenty-Four

…progress through a United Kingdom that had only bitterly been given up in the late 1880s was rapid, more so than expected once the initial hurdles had been overcome, as many of the impoverished residents of the former Communes happily re-pledged their allegiance to legitimate rule.

The Provisional Government of the Irish Free State declared its membership of the Restored Empire in early March
of 1909, subject to full and equal treatment and an acknowledgement of Catholic legitimacy. This was confirmed by an overwhelming margin in a general plebescite a year later.

The last serious resistance to the Restoration ended on March 22
nd
, 1909, when the Allied Midlands Communal Council surrendered. Its chairman, revolutionary general and one-time technofiction writer Herbert George Wells, disappeared and is believed to have been killed in the last of the bitter fighting for the industrial cities…

But the forces of the Restored Empire always have excelled in tough fights, and continue to as of this day…

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

Perry didn’t bother to watch the burning
Pith and Vinegar
crash; his scope was pointed across the plains to the east,  and at the leading-element armored cars that were starting to become visible. Three airships, side by side, flew above them as the beaten and battered 4-106 slowly turned to face east. A smaller fourth one flew much higher above the center of it.

“Sir, we have time to land just briefly?” Martindale asked. “We could really stand to make some field repairs.”

“I don’t think we have time,” said Perry slowly. “In your opinion, Lieutenant-Commander - could we do much in ten minutes?”

Martindale thought for a moment.

“I doubt it, sir. Nothing the riggers aren’t already doing.”

“Then we’ll stay up. Helm, keep the eastern heading and accelerate us to half speed.”

“Aye,” said Ahle. A minute later: “We’ve definitely taken damage. Handling’s not
bad
, but it’s not what it was before the fight.”

“And
what
a fight!” said Swarovski. “Four of the Armadillos!
We killed four of the Armadillos!
”

Perry allowed himself a smile.

“Duty and service, Weapons. Honor and reason. They trump grasping arrogance any day.”

“You think we’ll have to take on the other three?”

“We’re going to kill the SS first,” said Ahle, grinning. “Only got to do that in dribs and drabs before. Now there’s
all
of them
coming right to us.
”

“Flashing us,” Nolan reported. Yes, flashes visible from the center of the airships above the SS. In the foreground, groups of shapes, three thousand feet below and only a couple of miles out, were sharpening into individual vehicles; armored cars and steam-trucks, throwing their o
wn plumes of dust. Behind them fighting vehicles, tanks, self-propelled artillery, ordered in four loose formations across a front maybe four miles wide, a command battalion at the center of it. They were starting to split, the command battalion taking the northern course, to go around the burning center of Dodge City.