The Demi-Monde: Summer (27 page)

Efficient as ever, CommanderNon Jiao Yu gave her an immediate update. ‘We have had semaphore messages from AdmiralNoN Zheng Heii advising that the WarJunks
MostBien, Wu, Dark, Borgia
and
Ptah
are in position a few hundred metres from Hub Bridge Number Four. They are just fifteen minutes’ steaming time from Rangoon.’

Trixie sighed: five WarJunks wasn’t enough. Intelligence reported that Clement had twenty of the ForthRight’s new Monitors patrolling the Volga, and, though the considered opinion amongst naval experts was that the Coven’s WarJunks were more powerful and tougher than the Monitors, odds of four to one were simply too great to be overcome.

‘Send a signal that Heii is to hold his position. Inform him the invasion is anticipated to begin within the hour, and when the order is given to attack, he is to concentrate his assault on the enemy’s drifter barges. His first priority is the destruction of the troop transports.’

Jiao Yu relayed the order and a communicationsFemme began pulling the levers that operated the semaphore.

‘Are the rocket batteries in position?’

Jiao Yu bowed. ‘Seven batteries are in position and their rockets are ready to be launched at your command, General-Femme. I must respectfully report that the eighth has been destroyed by enemy artillery fire.’

Trixie nodded. She didn’t need anybody to tell her that: she’d seen the fireworks display from the observation port of her bunker. The prematurely ignited rockets had created mayhem as they whizzed around like demented comets before smashing into the ground and turning the downtown district of Rangoon with its tightly packed wooden houses into an inferno. It was the one time Trixie had been pleased to see the rains: she simply
didn’t have enough fighters to bring the blaze under control. If the rain didn’t douse the flames, then Rangoon would just have to burn.

‘How many salvoes of rockets do we have?’

‘Five per battery. Each salvo will constitute twenty rockets.’

Trixie made a quick calculation: seven batteries, five salvoes, twenty rockets per salvo, giving a total of seven hundred rockets, each with a warhead of one hundred kilos of high explosive. Seventy tons of death and destruction plummeting down on the UnFunnies. Impressive, but again, not enough. If each battery had
fifty
salvoes, then, maybe, she could smash the UnFunnies’ invasion barges where they were berthed and end the invasion before it began, but all five salvoes would do was discomfort the invasion fleet.

Trixie gave a rueful smile: she didn’t want to discomfort the UnFunnies, she wanted to kill the bastards. This was her time to take revenge for all the suffering and pain Heydrich and his cronies had inflicted on her and her family.

‘You will hold your fire until I give the word and then concentrate your fire along the St Petersburg docks. I want to burn the barges when they are packed with StormTroopers.’

Another bow from the NoN. Jiao Yu was a good soldier; he would do his duty and, more importantly, would do what she fucking told him to do. She was just thankful that all the NoN officers had accepted her appointment with similar grace, but unfortunately it had been different with the female officers. There had been more than a little bitching in the Femme ranks when she had been elevated to command the Covenite army, and there were no bigger bitches than the Trung sisters currently standing sullen and silent in the corner of the bunker.

Let ‘em stew
.

Now for the key question. ‘Status of the Geek Fire?’

This was the Coven’s ace in the hole. Jiao Yu seemed to
brighten a little: he had obviously been as impressed by the weapon as Trixie had. ‘Everything is in order, GeneralFemme Dashwood. All five of the reservoirs are full and all the siphons are ready to discharge immediately you give the order.’

‘I understand that one of the siphon valves – the one controlling the reservoir nearest to the Anichkov Bridge – is giving problems.’

‘I have had Leading EngineerNoN Li Chang check the valve and he has pronounced it fully operational.’

‘Good.’

BANG! Another mortar shell landed nearby and Trixie had to pause to let the reverberation of the huge explosion dissipate. Absent-mindedly she brushed concrete dust from her
jiangs
and was pleased to see her hand had stopped shaking. ‘You must understand, CommanderNoN, that I intend to deploy the Geek Fire
after
the first wave of invasion barges has landed.’

Even Jiao Yu’s formidable inscrutability was tested by this pronouncement. ‘With the greatest of respect, GeneralFemme Dashwood, it is against all the precepts of war to allow an invading army to gain a foothold—’

‘We are heavily outnumbered, CommanderNoN Jiao Yu, and the only way we will defeat the enemy is by securing local superiority. By allowing the enemy to land and
then
deploying the Geek Fire we will be able to destroy the barges intended to reinforce the first assault and leave the troops who have already made shore vulnerable to counter-attack.’

‘The evacuation of civilians from the western side of Rangoon has still not been completed, GeneralFemme; I am concerned that these tactics will lead to a great many casualties. The fighting around the landing points will be fierce.’

Trixie took a deep breath. This was one of those moments when a military commander had to be hard-hearted, when the few had to be sacrificed for the greater good. ‘I know, but we
have no alternative. The Empress has decreed that the gates in the Great Wall are to remain closed, so there is nowhere for refugees to go to escape the fighting.’

One of Jiao Yu’s eyebrows twitched as he registered the veiled criticism of the Empress. ‘It is the belief of Her Majesty that should the gates be opened, those in Rangoon and Tokyo will fight with less enthusiasm. She has ordered that there can be no retreat: the army and the people must understand that if the enemy is victorious, they will die.’

Trixie said nothing. It was unbelievably callous of the Empress to leave her people to suffer like this. And not only callous, it was, in her opinion, bad strategy. The panicked civilian population of Rangoon and Tokyo were already making her army’s work difficult, and anyway, she knew from her time in Warsaw that soldiers who were worried about the fate of their loved ones didn’t have their mind on killing the enemy.

‘I understand. And that’s why we must not let the enemy advance beyond their initial landing grounds. We must destroy them on the shores of the Volga. I am relying on you, CommanderNoN Jiao Yu.’

Again Jiao Yu bowed his acceptance of the order, even as a signalFemme handed him a message.

‘It appears, GeneralFemme Dashwood, that the first of the barbarians’ invasion barges has been observed preparing to leave its moorings.’

‘Then fire the rockets.’

At precisely seven in the morning the order came down to Comrade Captain John Worden that he had the honour of leading the assault on Rangoon. It was a proud moment for Worden and he had to fight hard to stop himself whooping with excitement as he shouted his instructions to the officers
of the ForthRight Fighting Ship, the
FFS Heydrich
, ordering the vessel to go to action stations. But it wasn’t just a proud moment: it was also a historic one. The
Heydrich
was the first Monitor-class ironclad ever deployed by the ForthRight Navy and Worden was determined that, come Hel or high water, he would prove worthy of the honour he had been given in commanding her.

Caught by the tide, the
Heydrich
rolled against her moorings and Worden had to steady himself against a guard rail. Designed to sit menacingly low in the water – most of her bulk sat below the waterline safe from enemy fire – the
Heydrich
was a bitch of a ship to handle, especially in an ebb tide. Beautiful she wasn’t, graceful she wasn’t: the
Heydrich
was an uncompromising and brutal weapon of war, line and aesthetics having been sacrificed for strength, power and stealth. Yeah … stealth. With only the huge double-gunned turret, the smokestack and the pilothouse Worden was currently occupying standing proud of the deck, the
Heydrich
was almost invisible to attacking warships.

Worden took a look along the length of his ship, checking that all was as it should be. Satisfied, he picked up a megaphone and shouted to the group of tars standing ready by the hawsers tethering the
Heydrich
to the two troop-transport barges he was responsible for towing safe across the Volga.

‘Are the barges secure, Midshipman?’

‘All secure, Comrade Captain.’

‘Then cast off.’ Worden didn’t pause to watch them carry out his order – they were good men who knew their business – instead he called down the speaker tube to his second-in-command sweating away in the fetid bowels of the
Heydrich
. ‘Full steam ahead, Mr May.’ He listened while his order echoed along the
Heydrich’s
one-hundred-and-seventy-foot length to the engine room. The first indication Worden had that his order
had been received was when the ship began to tremble as the engine’s two huge pistons began to reciprocate. Then the propeller bit and the
Heydrich
slid its massive thousand tons slowly – almost reluctantly – away from the dock. But barely had the warship got under way, barely had she picked up any momentum, when there was a huge tug from behind as the hawsers ran out of slack and the
Heydrich
took the first of the barges she was hauling under tow.

‘Battle stations. Close all watertight hatches and doors. Load guns.’

Hardly had the order been issued than all Hel was let loose. The noise of the pounding pistons of the
Heydrich’s
steam engines and the clanging of the hatches as they were slammed shut were as nothing to the shrieking, screaming, nerve-shredding howl that suddenly enveloped the
Heydrich
. Worden’s world seemed to explode in a twisting turmoil of fire and noise. All around the Monitor were ear-killing explosions and, as the
Heydrich
pitched and yawed, a deafened and bemused Worden flinched back as the armoured skin of the ship was peppered with shrapnel. There was a huge
BANG
and though the ship’s hull comprised two feet of oak and four inches of steel plate, the force of the explosion was such that he had the distinct impression that the walls of the ship bowed inwards. Worden was hurled against the side of the pilothouse and it was only by making a mad grab for the guard rail that he prevented himself tumbling down the stairwell into the innards of the ship. For several stunned seconds he lay on the deck before an instinctive sense of duty forced him to his feet and persuaded him to shove his head out of the observation porthole. The scene that greeted him was one of flaming carnage.

Rocket attack
.

There had been whispered rumours within the SS that the Chinks were developing surface-to-surface rockets based on the
design that had made life so dangerous for the ForthRight’s Zeppelins, but he had never imagined that they would be so powerful. The whole of St Petersburg docks seemed to have been reduced to a burning chaos, but worse, one of the rockets had struck the second of the two barges the
Heydrich
was towing, turning it into a floating bonfire. As he watched, he saw screaming soldiers, burning from head to foot, leaping into the river.

‘Damage report,’ he yelled into the speaker tube.

It took a moment for Lieutenant May to respond, and when he did, he sounded shell-shocked. ‘We took a hit amidships, Comrade Captain. Nothing too serious. Couple of timbers cracked and one man killed by flying splinters.’

With a grim nod of understanding, Worden turned his attention back to the two barges the
Heydrich
had in tow. He made a mental scan of the second barge’s inventory, reminding himself that it was transporting all the reserve ammunition and grenades for use by the two hundred SS StormTroopers carried by the first barge. He was shouting orders before he was even conscious he’d made a decision: ‘Cut barge number two free.’

Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth three burly sailors carrying axes raced down the
Heydrich’s
deck, scrambled across the hawser to the first barge and then disappeared in the direction of the second. When the
Heydrich
leapt forward, Worden knew his order had been carried out and the burning barge had been cut adrift. It wasn’t a moment too soon: even as he watched, there was a huge explosion that sent the
Heydrich
pitching and waves crashing over its low sides. The second barge had exploded.

There was no time to bemoan its loss or to grieve for the fifty StormTroopers destroyed in the explosion. Satisfied that the
Heydrich
was still river-worthy, Worden turned his telescope
towards Rangoon and watched open-mouthed as wave after wave of rockets speared skywards. It was a terrifying sight to see them arch through the air – their progress marked by the trail of fire they left in their wake – hover for a moment at the apogee of their trajectory and then plummet, wailing like daemons, back Demi-Monde-wards. Fortunately for the
Heydrich
, the target of the whiz-bangs seemed to be the docks, which were now receding rapidly in the ship’s wake, the fury of these devastating salvoes being borne by those Monitors and barges still waiting to sail. Breathing a sigh of relief, Worden pulled his hip flask out of his back pocket and took a calming swill of Solution, wondering as he did so what else these bastard Chinks had up their sleeves.

He didn’t have long to find out.

‘Five enemy WarJunks to port!’ screamed the lookout.

Five
…

As Worden scanned the smoke-shrouded river searching for sight of the enemy, he knew it was going to be a long and very dangerous day. He just hoped ABBA was inclined to smile on him.

Satisfied that her orders regarding the deployment of the rockets were being carried out, Trixie turned – reluctantly – to the Trung sisters who were waiting impatiently in the far corner of the bunker. They were tiny women – almost childlike – but had an air about them carried by those who had seen more than their fair share of fighting: they had, after all, commanded the forces of the Femme Liberation Movement that had stormed the Forbidding City during the fighting in 995 AC. They were tough cookies, but they were also disaffected.