The Yeoman: Crying Albion Series - Book 1 (18 page)

At Malthar’s gateway by two figures, a man
and a woman in casual clothing now appeared. The man was tall and, even from a hundred
yards away seemed to have a vein-riddled face. With the two figures were nearly
a dozen auxiliary police who trailed behind them. The threatening menace intensified
as the vein-man fixed his cold gaze on the spy. The young agent thought he
could slip past unnoticed but Cordell Mastock lunged forwards for Malthar. With
a sideways move that took the police by surprise he managed to elude the plainclothes
man with a low turn and ran for it. The woman had already drawn her baton
though and hurled it sideways, causing the rod to crack into his shin. Malthar
felt a bolt of agony tear up his leg and he fell to the grass with a womanly shriek.
Biting back the pain he reached into his pocket with trembling fingers. Moments
before he was swarmed with police he sprayed a full canister of CS gas
defensively around him.

The effects upon the authorities agents were
apparent. Cordell caught the brunt of it and went to the ground choking while
the woman went staggering back, struggling to breathe. Malthar tried to crawl
away but the fallen one gripped onto him while more auxiliary police swarmed
over him.

“Malthar! Ahh, they have him!” Gearson said
with anxious tension.

“There’s too many Kallan!”

They left through the other gateway which
was clear, but beyond it in both directions many uniformed Enforcers and more auxiliary
police were moving towards them. One shouted on seeing them and as one they
surged forwards.

“Back inside!” !” Gearson said to her and
they re-entered the green haven. “This way come on!”

Together they ran across the square towards
the high wall. Although there were small viewing gaps in it the top was decorated
with razor wire.

The coughing and wheezing woman pointed and
hoarsely ordered the dull-minded auxiliary police at the pair of fugitives.

“Them! Get them!” The Ministry Elite agent
coughed.

“Stop! You’re under arrest!” said one of the
lawmen who now moved ahead of another three to intercept them.

“We can’t get out this way!” Riley said
almost in despair. “We’ll have to shoot our way out!”

“That’s what you think.”

Gearson activated the Artifact device in the
case and deployed it onto his back. The thigh and shoulder straps automatically
snake-locked into place he took his arm around Lorraine’s waist. The wrist unit
that dangled from a thick wire cord .

He made a long rotational twist of the wrist
units dial, activating the device.

“Hold on this will be rough!”

The Flight Unit made a reassuring whine
before it intensified into an explosive roar and sent the pair of them roaring
into the skies. Two seconds later the posse of Enforcers stopped just short of
where they’d been and could only stare as their quarry vanished skyward.

The intensity of their ascent took them
level with the two-storey rooftops within three seconds. Five more seconds saw
them over three hundred yards on top of that, only then did Gearson cycled back
the power using the wrist controller. As the explosive whine faded to a
pleasing hum he leaned forwards so they were almost horizontal, sending them in
a south-westerly direction. Few men could be capable of piloting a Flight Unit
while carrying a 140 pound woman with one arm, but Kallan Gearson could. Gearson
was born and raised in another place where such things were as common as
football and pints of beer in Albion. A glider-line was ideal for taking a
passenger, but there had been no time for that.

“Kallan you’re a genius!”

“I just know how to escape a trap when
there’s no other way.”

“I knew you had gadgets but this is unreal.”

“I was hoping to get it tested up in Albion
for Seymour’s Rangers to play with but we’re the test pilots now though!” he
shouted.

“What do you mean?” she replied puzzled.

“I’ve not had time to test or tune his thing,
it’ll do for now though.”

“But poor Malthar! I hope they don’t hurt
him”

“Such are the ways,” Gearson said fatefully.

“Are we leaving the city?”

“Yes, but we’ve got to head back to your place,
there’s my other Artifact cases. We can’t allow them to fall into the wrong
hands.”

Using a Flight-Unit required not only
discipline, nerve and courage but a high-standard of fitness. Gearson had the
right mettle but lacked a helmet with built-in instruments to guide him. Riley
knew London’s layout fairly well and guided him by sight. With the Thames
estuary to his north-east Gearson manually flew back south-south-west towards
their Croydon base. The speed of their travel was over seventy miles an hour and
by staying below four hundred feet they remained at a reasonably low profile.

After nearly ten minutes of flying from
Market Square Gearson and Riley had closed the distance to her safe house. The
cloudy skies had become thick and dark though and they felt a few droplets
start to fall from above. The atmospheric gauge on Gearson’s wrist unit dropped
down to the red-zone and with it so did their altitude.

“We’re losing power!” Gearson warned as they
made their descent. “This pressure is too lean, so get ready for a rough
landing!”

“What?! Can’t you increase it?”

“I can’t, it’s tuned to fair-weather only!
We’re in a power-fade, very dangerous! Especially with a passenger!”

“Retune it then?!”

“This isn’t a Storm Pack, just a souped-up
Glider Unit!” Gearson admonished, his eyes and brain making frenzied
calculations. “Hush now while I work out a landing spot.”

Finding a landing spot and successfully
landing was not going to be easy. With a power-fade you only got one shot at
landing before the Flight Unit failed completely. It required timing and expert
agility. Normally a parachute would provide an additional safeguard. Yet the
model Gearson was using had forgone that in favour of a customized turbo-start
package. It had saved them at Covent Square but now they needed to land and
quickly.

They were flying at over sixty miles an hour
and an opposing, thrust vector was required. It had to be balanced, at an
opposing diagonal to the descent path. If he tried too much, too soon they’d
plunge like a stone. If he tried too little, too late they’d end up ploughing
into the ground. The latter was a shade more preferable, but with no lakes or
soft terrain they’d crash into the urban obstructions in no time.

Below them it was row after row of houses as
the packed urban landscape of south London took on a new challenge. Alleys that
were too small showed no promise nor did the roads that either had busy traffic
or parked cars everywhere. Street-lights that obstructed were now dangerously
below their feet, along with power-lines cross-crossing every so often. They
barely cleared two more rows of houses when Crystal Park opened up before them
to the right. Gearson vectored over to it. The auto-stabilization field was now
degrading and he fought to prevent them spinning out of control.

At the moment when their fragile air-unit
was on its last burst of speed, Gearson acted. He aimed towards a dense clump
of oak trees so they were slightly on their right. Just prior to passing them
over he gave Riley a warning shout before releasing her into the thick
branches. As this was happening he made his flare-movement. He wrenched at
muscles while leaning backwards with all his might. As he was doing all this
his right hand slowly increased the throttle control on his left wrist. According
to his old teacher not only was an opposing angle to the descent path required
but an extra ten degrees as well. This would, in theory, allow for a perfect
landing without a forward roll being needed. Gearson had no time for that, he
worked on raw intuition, not angle plotting or computer assistance. As the
ground came rushing up he opened the throttle completely. He slowed down but
even with the ground-effect he had a rough and tumble impact. The landing was
on grass though and the flying man rolled over three times. Almost immediately
he took to his feet like a person arising from an accidental fall.

Gearson raced over to the oak trees, to his
relief Riley was unhurt except for the mildest scratches and bruises.

“That’s one way to get me down I suppose,”
she joked. The old oak tree was plentiful with branches to the lower trunk and
she climbed down unaided.

“Come on, it’s only five minutes to your
apartment from here.”

Their descent was noticed and attracted a
small crowd of teenagers. They had been flying small race drones around in the
park and several filmed the aftermath of Gearson’s landing.

For now they were both free but the ministry
machine was relentless. Unseen wheels and cogs would be turning and organs
pumping at full speed as the cities authorities went onto full alert.

Malthar was cuffed
and frogmarched by the strange civilian duo brutally. Then found himself
bundled into the waiting police van. His small, slight frame was an organ of
pain. His arms were almost numb but his legs were hardly able to support him.
His skull felt as though it had been split open and if he moved in the wrong
way his spine would send jolts of pain rippling about. Both the man and the
woman had beaten him with frustrated rage after the effects of the CS gas were
wearing off. If it wasn’t for the Enforcer sergeant who stepped between them he
feared they’d have baton-struck him to death. It was only then that he heard
his charge being read out. Malthar did not make it all out but caught the words
‘Espionage’ and ‘Terrorist’ among the litany of legalize wordings.

Now inside the van raised voices could be
heard.

“They escaped! They escaped! How could you
let this happen!?” he could hear them saying.

“It’s not easy to catch people that fly you
know!”

“If your rentacop idiots had moved in
quicker we’d have all three of them!” The accent sounded foreign from the
angry-voiced one. It sounded like one of those who had beaten him.

“We have their agent, so don’t worry. We’ll
get the others soon enough.”

“Does control have an address on them?” the
female voice asked. She too was foreign-sounding. “I heard one of the other
spies gotten away?”

Malthar groaned as the engine started and
the voices faded. He was captured and now would face goodness knows what fate.

After a short drive to Frostrise Police
Station he was processed, then left in a solitary cell. From in there he could
faintly hear the down-pouring rain from outside. After half an hour footsteps
came to the door and it was thrown open. A plain clothes man was there with a
uniformed Enforcer.

“Out! It’s time for a chat,” said the
uniformed man.

“Where’s my legal representation?”

“Terrorists don’t get that anymore! Now
OUT!”

In his weakened state the Enforcer
practically dragged Malthar to the interrogation room while the plain-clothes
man followed.

Once inside he was sat down inside. The
other man who had not spoken took a seat opposite him, while the uniformed one
stood by the door.

“Hello Henry,” he said pleasantly. “I’m
Junior Commissioner Raines and the uniformed gentleman is Detective-Sergeant
Green.”

Malthar said nothing.

“I understand you’re in a spot of bother?”

Again he responded with no answer.

“Well, we have enough charges against you to
put you inside for a long time.”

“What charges?” Malthar protested. “I was
just talking with strangers at Covent Square.”

The uniformed officer spoke now. “So the
lies begin eh? Well besides carrying section 5 weaponry, resisting arrest, espionage,
having illegal devices on your computer and so on we’ve got you on the
grand-daddy of them all.” Detective Green leaned in close. “Aiding and abetting
a hostile power. That alone that will get you fifty years in prison. On top of
the other charges probably sixty years total with little to no chance of
parole.”

Green leaned back and Malthar felt his world
crumbling from within.

“However,” Raines began, “you’re fortunate
because you aren’t the one we really want.” He moved in before speaking up. “Also,
because you’ve been arrested first you could win the lucky-prize. That’s your
freedom. You only win that prize though by telling us EVERYTHING!”

“Now what’s it going to be?” asked Sergeant
Green. “Help us get the terrorists you met with or you get the full treatment.”

“Oh and in case you’re wondering, we have
the two plain-clothes agents outside and a few friends. You know, the ones who
you sprayed with gas. They are very keen to speak to you in private.”

He let the words hang for maximum impact
before speaking on.

“We don’t have to let them in here though.”

To emphasize the point Green opened the
window slot of the door and sure enough the angry red face of Mastock was outside.
He glanced in at the sound and glared at Malthar. The frightened spy’s heart
sank at the sight.