Ceres Wunderkid will no doubt be gratified to know that I'm writing this shortly after watching xXx on DVD, so this chapter will feature lots and lots of explosions (see reviews), and also my FictionPress character/alter ego Jonathan West and his adolescent psycho mates the Young Guns. Diehard fans will feel compelled to flame me to smithereens after this one.
A quick recap for those who have just joined us:
Mary Malone develops a method of travelling between worlds. The drawback; it needs a vehicle travelling at at least Mach 2 to work. Luckily, Jonathan Parry's family is owed a very large favour by a former pilot. He designs them an aircraft to take them on a journey unmatched in the field of aviation... a journey to new worlds. He also becomes our narrator, struggling to retain some sort of grip on reality and doing okay, and managing to be faintly amusing from time to time in the process.
Their reception in Lyra's world is hostile, which the Magisterium comes to regret. They have basically picked a fight with the crew of a fighting aircraft unmatched by anything their world has ever seen. Quickly recruiting Lyra, the Aurora Borealis crew ally themselves with rebel forces seeking the overthrow of the corrupt theocracy. The Magisterium would never know what hit it.
"My name is Dave. I agreed to look after Will because his father saved my life, many years ago. If I'd known that this would lead to me: Getting stranded in an alternate dimension, on the run from the law; crashing a hijacked steam locomotive into a bog; getting badly injured by falling masonry in a street battle to rival the one in Black Hawk Down and loads of stuff I haven't written down yet... I'd still have done it. It would have been nice, however, if I could have done all that without Elaine Parry being sarcastic at me for a lot of the time. But, well, I guess I'll get used to that..."
Our attack lost no momentum, with plans being made ready and rehearsals performed as best as we could. With only a couple of books by Andy McNab and Peter Radcliffe, I attempted to instruct the volunteersw in the rudiments of Close Quarters Battle. I was not a good teacher, and knowing sod-all about what I was trying to teach didn't help.
Elaine handed me a newspaper article from just after we had left: TEENAGE KILLERS IN JAIL BREAKOUT.
"Some kid ran away from home and blew up his dad, then went on the run with his girlfriend and a few other kids. He got hold of a gun from somewhere, and shot at least four cops when they tried to arrest him. They finally arrest his girlfriend instead, and the others tool up with a whole bunch of weapons and break her out of jail!" I was appalled, but impressed. Will and Lyra were just impressed. Mary was practical.
"We need these kids; they have skills we can use."
We decided that if we couldn't find and recruit them in 48 hours we'd have to manage without. They were rumoured to be in London, so we headed there as soon as we transited to our own world.
It was late, and this was a very dodgy part of Brixton. The well-spoken, nicely dressed young man was therefore either suicidal or thick, calling a cab on a cellphone in a deserted street. He showed little surprise when a Stanley knife pricked the back of his neck, but casually pocketed his phone and put his hands in his jacket pockets.
"What do you want?" he asked, not alarmed in any way. He was flanked by two kids about his own age; one held the knife, the other a broken bottle.
"How 'bout that phone, dickhead?" The potential victim actually laughed.
"What's the first rule of mugging? Hard and fast, don't give them time to react, and don't let them do THIS!" Both hands left his sides in a blur. The knife wielder's arm locked with the victim's. The Stanley knife jerked away, and the target plunged a knife of his own into his asailant's arm. The blade hit bone.
The other one caught the barrel of a big semi-automatic pistol across the bridge of his nose, and went down hard.
"Second rule of mugging; learn to spot concealed firearms," Jonathan West said, laughing contemptuously. "Honestly, you scare a few old ladies and primary school kids and think you're Jean-Claude van Damme. Pathetic!"
I observed this from a safe distance, and applauded. "Good one, Mr West. You just proved you've got what it takes."
"To do what?" he enquired cautiously. The pistol's safety was off.
"The job I am about to offer you and your colleagues. Is there somewhere we can talk?"
* * *
"It sounds just crazy enough to be true," John pronounced, after hearing as much of the story as I thought he'd believe; not much. "And for this kind of money I'll believe anything. You lot?"
"It's not like we've got anything better to do," a fair-haired kid with a foreign accent declared.
"Five grand is five grand," added a tough looking girl who'd been introduced as Trish.
"The science checks out six ways to Sunday, too," added a black kid with a public school accent. "It might actually be true."
The tall, good-looking one shrugged; a 'what the hell' gesture. A pale, shy-looking girl who hadn't spoken yet nodded.
"Well, 'Mr Smith', you have yourself a deal," John concluded.
"Great! This address, tomorrow at ten. I'll have the money by then, in cash, of course."
"Used, non-sequential small bills, please!" We laughed.
They arrived, carrying a variety of bags. Rucksacks were universal, gym bags almost so; John had a cricketer's bag for some reason, and the good-looking guy -Charlie- just had a rucksack.
"Ready?" I asked.
"Of course," John replied. "Nice little plane, by the way."
"Thanks. I'd better introduce you to the rest of the team. Hey, you lot! Our new friends have arrived!"
The 'Young Guns' hit it off with Will quite rapidly. He'd had bad experiences with the law himself, and found them a refreshing change from his usual peer group. They could talk about combat tactics with authority, and personal firsthand knowledge.
Lyra drew longing looks from the two youngest (and single) members, Mick and Sandy. Mick alternated between da gangsta speak and cultured poshness in the hope that one of them worked, and Sandy increased his accent, which he thought made him sound sexier. Lyra thought this rather sweet, but casually strolled over to Will and gave him a quick kiss. "Lucky bastard," Sandy remarked just loud enough for Will to hear. He was starting to enjoy almost every adult male they ran into envying the bejesus out of him!
We all crammed aboard Aurora, and I took off from Sywell for a second time in a jet, earning me a few strange looks from the ground. We lined up on a suitable fissure and went through the usual proccedures.
"Right, hold tight you lot!" I warned, activating the Drive. It wasn't as bad since we had installed tinted, one-way mirror type windows, which reduced the glare from the Drive as well as looking very flash. I set the autopilot with the course for Svalbard and went into the lounge area. It was rather more crowded than I expected, to say the least.
"I think you might have skipped over a few details so that we wouldn't think you were nuts," John suggested, a large, sleek polecat curled up on his shoulder. "Would you care to explain all this, now that it's actually happened?"
This struck me as Lyra's province rather than mine. I retreated to the cockpit before he asked any more questions, which I currently felt il-equipped to deal with.
They grasped the fundamentals fairly quickly, Mick having only fairly recently grown out of a Digimon fixation. During the flight to our forward HQ we got some kind of a plan together. There were several supply zepplin trips per month, and we would raid the first one that came along and pack it with our forces, and then sail on to the oblivious opposing camp.
"I always fancied a go at fast-roping," John said with a truly alarming grin. "Know anything about it?"
"I'm a fighter pilot. The only combat I'm an expert in is at a distance of a couple of miles with missiles and twenty-mil cannon. That's why I hired YOU," I explained. "I really don't think rappelling from an airship is going to work, anyway."
"How about parachutes? You must know something about using THOSE," suggested Will. "Well, you taught us how, so I bloody hope you do!" I wished I hadn't let him watch all those action thrillers.
Once we arrived we discovered that our ranks had been swelled by a breakaway faction led by a lay preacher and a Summoner. With some reservations, suspecting some sort of clever plan, we permitted them to assist us. They also explained that preparations were being made to deploy what they referred to as explosive-metal bombs, but which to me were simply nuclear weapons.
"They really are getting desperate, then," I concluded. The stakes were getting higher; we had to finish this NOW, no matter what the cost, for whatever price we paid would be paltry in comparison with the alternative.
We made flight preparations in silence, making certain that we had the buildings indicated as important by our new friends marked down precisely. I left Mary to finish checking the FLIR system and wandered in the direction of a small tavern in the town with the intention of obtaining some lunch.
I hadn't even reached the door when I felt a stunning blow on the back of my head, and there was blackness for a long while.
I came to in a small cellar, my head throbbing. "Christ, my head!" I said to myself, looking around. "Anyone else in here?"
"Ah, so you're awake. I wondered how long it would be." The voice wasn't exactly friendly, but not entirely hostile either. Its source was undiscernable in the gloom.
"Who are you?" I asked, guardedly.
"Do you mind if we do the introductions the other way around? You have no daemon, but you don't sound like one of the Severed, so I imagine you aren't from around here. Your voice and manner says 'soldier' but your build doesn't; you don't do much route marching, anyway. And I've got no idea what those clothes are that you're wearing. You have the advantage of me."
"Okay. You got the first bit right, I'm not from this particular world. I used to be a military pilot, and this suit is designed to prevent the effects of high-g turns and low atmospheric pressure; not an issue with the local level of aerospace technology." I paused, thinking. "I'm with the rebels, and I presume they coshed me so that I can be coerced into revealing information about the plan of attack. It's a bit late for that now, seeing as the first phase of the assault is already in progress, but I'm not going to explain right now. I can't tell if you're a plant, and this place might be bugged."
The unseen man's voice chuckled. "I'm impressed. You're doing much better than me when I was first captured. I imagine you will be familiar with me by reputation," he added. "I am Lord Asriel."
"Yes, and I'm the Archbishop of Canterbury. I don't think it's possible to get any deader than him, from the somewhat sketchy account Lyra gave me." He moved into the light, and I was forced to reasess this viewpoint. The resemblance to Lyra was striking, even under a layer of accumulated grime and quite a few bruises. Something showed in my expression.
"I don't know how or why I survived, in fact I can barely recall the whole thing with any clarity, but I'm not the type to look a gift horse in the mouth. So, my friend, how did you wind up in this world?"
"Will Parry's father is an old friend of mine," I explained. "When the kid and a certain Dr Mary Malone came up with a way to travel between worlds it needed an aircraft for assorted technical reasons, so I volunteered to design and fly it. And if they kidnapped me to ground the plane they'll be sadly disappointed, because I taught Mary to fly it as well."
"I see. Before I was captured I heard rumours of such an aircraft. How did you manage to overcome the issues of Dust?"
"It's deflected by the strong magnetic field we need to generate to open a fissure, and they only stay open for a couple of seconds anyway. The working principles are similar to your attempt, only a lot less crude and environmentally damaging, and with a far less inhumane power source." I turned around to treat him to the full force of my glare. "Listen Asriel, -if you really ARE Asriel- I know what you were doing at Bolvangar, which means that A: I think you're an unscrupulous bastard and B: I don't trust you as far as you'd travel if I gave you a good boot up the arse, which I'd be sorely tempted to do under other circumstances. I never thought I'd meet a man with a messianic AND napoleonic complex!"
"Hurling insults isn't going to get us out of here," he replied coolly. "I recommend a temporary armistice until we get back to civilisation. We can punch each other then."
"I'll hold you to that," I warned, examining the door. Escape and Evasion training hadn't covered this, the emphasis being on not revealing anything tactically important and not getting oneself killed in foolhardy escape attempts, like I was doing now. I decided being gunned down whilst running away would be better than enduring the company of this maniac, and checked my pockets for anything I could use. Astonishingly, impossibly, my pistol was still in its holster.
"Me too," Asriel explained, holding up a snub-nosed revolver. "Perhaps they hoped we'd kill ourselves, or each other. Perhaps they just couldn't be bothered to search us. I really couldn't say."
I gave up, glaring at the door with excessive malice. There wasn't even a lock, just a bar on the other side, a heavy one by the way it rattled. There was a small hatch through which food was given to us, which I couldn't prise open despite all my efforts. In desperation, I turned to the hinges, and hit paydirt.
I prised the pins out of them with a pocketknife loaned to me by Asriel, and pulled the door backwards until it crashed against the flagstones. A lively crash indicated that I'd jolted the bar out of its cradles, an unexpected stroke of luck. I gave the door a solid kick, and it crashed to the ground. I emerged cautiously into a badly-lit corridor, and wondered which direction to go in. Asriel immediately turned left, so I decided upon going right.
I came to a flight of steps, leading upwards. I ducked behind a pillar at the sound of voices and approaching footsteps.
"They won't shoot at THIS building, not with him in here."
"Who, the pilot?"
"No, that Belacqua brat's father. If the traitors know about him -and it's a safe bet that they do- they'll blow up everything else but this building. And with the explosive-metal devices stored here, it won't matter." Oh, SHIT!
The renegades hadn't told us about Asriel, even if they DID know, but they had told us where the nukes were stored. I was fairly sure that Lyra wouldn't exactly weep salt tears for her father, but the gyptians were another matter. They owed Asriel one, though having to clear up after the Experimental Station might affect the issue.
My current immediate concern was the fact that this building and several others in the immediate vicinity were soon going to be recieving an AGM-65 Maverick apiece courtesy of Aurora, and I didn't particularly want to hang around for a closeup view, what all with the fissile materials stacked up in here someplace. Asriel could take his chances, not that there was much I could do to help him even if I felt inclined to.
I waited for the guards to retreat, and ascended the stairs cautiously. I heard a hoarse cry of alarm behind me; should have thought to replace and rebar the door, really. I ran up the stairs and found myself in a guardroom, currently unoccupied. I gave the weapon locker's door a solid kick, and examined its contents critically. What appeared to be a Sten gun would do nicely, I concluded, slotting a magazine into the weapon and pocketing a few more. Time to be somewhere else...
Asriel was unsurprised at the sudden blare of klaxons. Stelmaria crawled further into his jacket, grumbling. He ducked a wild burst of shots, and pelted towards the vehicle pool. He noticed distractedly that some wit had removed the second letter L from the sign, and investigated the assortment of trucks, Snowcat-type vehicles and other motive power on offer. He eventually settled on a small vehicle resembling a motorcycle, but with tracks at the rear and a pair of skis instead of a front wheel (it looked a bit like a cross between a snowmobile and those weird half-tracked bikes the Wehrmacht sometimes used in WWII to me).
Soldiers were running everywhere, shouting at each other and firing at anything that moved. The semidarkness, illuminated uncertainly by the Lights, made telling friend from foe next to impossible. Asriel's fellow-escapee would have an easier time of it; he probably regarded everyone, up to and including Asriel himself, as the enemy.
I found my way to the outside, and cast my mind back to the planning session. Six buildings arranged in a rectangle, with a large expanse of prefabricated barrack huts behind, and a short airstrip off to the east a short way. I had a working mental map of the whole base, and set off in the direction of the airstrip. Asriel was getting shot at, having roared off on his new bike, and nobody paid much attention to one shadowy figure.
The airstrip consisted of a runway, several hangars, and a mess building/control tower. I approached the latter, and kicked in the door. Four pilots looked at me in utter astonishment, and caught a full magazine at chest height. A roar above me indicated the supply zepplin coming in overhead, and I wondered if they'd captured it this time.
I hastily put on some flying kit; oxygen mask, parachute, etcetera. Then I headed to the nearest hangar, reloading the Sten as I did so. Those four pilots had probably been on QRA (Quick Reaction Alert), so they would have ready aircraft waiting for them should the base be attacked. Logic dictated that these be in the hangar nearest to the Mess, and probably guarded; Grand Theft L'Avion isn't just the stuff of movies like Firefox.
There was one guard for four aircraft, and he only had a pistol. I dropped him with a three-round burst, and turned my attention to the problem of getting one of the planes in the air. They appeared to be Typhoons, or something similar, with a battery of wingtip rockets as well as some potent cannons. I gave the nearest one's propeller a swing, and started it up. It started okay, so I climbed aboard and taxied out of the hangar. It was set up in such a way as to allow a departing plane to simply scream forwards on full boost, but I had a job to do first. Leaving the plane idling, I climbed onto the wings of all three others and treated their controls to a quick squirt from the Sten. Discarding it, all magazines no being exhausted, I reboarded my own plane and took off.
A frantic voice yelled at me over the radio, and I swung around and treated the control tower to all eight rockets. It fell neatly across the runway, inextricably trapping the remaining aircraft and preventing those in the air from landing. Several such were homing in on me, and I made sure my cannons were ready. I was also attracting groundfire, so I decided that in this instance discretion might not be the better part of valour but was certainly prudent in this instance, and made a run for it.
It had been quite a while since I'd flown anything with propellers. I was far too used to Aurora's long legs and amazing handling. This felt like a breeze block in comparison. I kept up visual search for enemy planes, missing radar, and eventually had to swerve to avoid a burst of fire from a helicopter that swung in behind me unexpectedly. Images of Airwolf dogfighting with a P51 at some point in Series 2 came back to me, and I looped over to get a shot at the enemy's rear. I'd been keeping my airspeed low to avoid leaving easily visible vapour trails, so the chopper had taken its chance. I now took mine, ploughing tank-busting shells into its tail. I was rewarded with a spectacular fireball.
The Magisterium's entire airforce were now turning on me. I shoved the throttles forward and the nose down, and prayed.
Mary saw the aircraft running from the airfield pursued by several more, took in the column of smoke rising from one of the hangars, and shook her head. "Somehow you can tell it's Dave," she said despairingly. "Hold on, pal, here we come!"
Aurora screamed towards the swarm of fighters, guns stuttering. They scattered, trying to evade bursts from the turret guns and each other, and quite a few of them failed.
"Impeccably timed, as always! Thanks you lot!" The fighter rolled in acknowledgement and turned towards home once more. Mary waved in reply, and armed her Mavericks. Quickly tapping her command keyboard, she designated a target for each missile, which were fed into the targeting computer. The ability to target multiple objects had required major upgrading of the software suite, but gave a decided edge in combat. It only worked with self guiding fire-and-forget missiles like the Maverick or Sidewinder, which formed our typical loadout anyhow.
Six streaks of smoke and fire coursed towards the buildings and impacted, blasting them apart. One building was particularly spectacular in its demise; the armoury, which detonated in a dramatic ball of fire. The blastwave hurled the supply zepplin sideways, and parachutes blossomed from it.
"Base, this is Aurora. All primary targets destroyed, engaging secondary targets now, over."
"Acknowledged. We have a couple of escaped prisoners arriving, one of whom is David. The other... well, you'd better wait until you get back. You won't believe me, over and out." Mary shrugged, and started shooting Hydra rockets at tanks.
Asriel dismounted, and winced; he'd gone rigid in what his mother genteely called the dairy air. That snow bike was worse than a horse! He noticed a fighter parked nearby, and a figure approaching him.
"Remember our agreement?"
"Yes. We agreed not to punch each other until we escaped."
"Well, we've both escaped!" Asriel glimpsed a man's forehead moving at great speed, then there was an explosion of stars and pain. "What habened to PUNCHING, you bastard!"
I followed up with a jab to his solar plexus, leaving him doubled up on the ground gasping for breath, and finished off with a good solid kick to his scrotum.
"Hell's bells," Lord Faa exclaimed as he arrived at a run. "You've half-killed him! What'd he done to you?"
"Me? Nothing. Quite a few kids; the worst thing you can imagine. That's Asriel," I explained.
Aurora landed a short distance away, and the others disembarked at a dead run. "We saw what happened," Mary said. "Who is he?"
Asriel chose this moment to stand up. His face was bloodied, but recognisable. "You!" Lyra hissed. There was no warning for what happened next. Her arm blurred, and I dived backwards as her pistol cracked, over and over again. "This is for Roger!" she screamed. There were fifteen shots and nearly as many Dead Man's Clicks before Will gently took the now empty gun from her hand. "It's done," he said gently.
Lord Faa winced. "There should have been a trial," he said. "We've had enough of summary justice. He would have been imprisoned for life, there was no need to..."
"No," Elaine said firmly. "Some monsters shouldn't walk under the living sky. Dave should have put a bullet into him back there."
"Come on," I said. "We're going to need every man or woman on hand on the ground out there. You needn't worry about the nukes, by the way," I added. "The building where they're being stored took a direct hit. They're under a hundred tons of rubble, so some bad loser can't let one off."
The boat jolted from wavetop to wavetop, and I feared for my teeth if this went on for much longer. I gripped my rifle nervously, and hoped I'd live through this.
"Thirty seconds!" somebody yelled. We glanced at each other, each seeing the fear in the other's eyes and hoping it wasn't as obvious in our own. Elaine grinned at me, and I returned the gesture.
Mary nudged Elaine. "I wish you'd just face up to it and snog him," she hissed. "He hasn't spotted it yet, but everyone else has."
"Shut up!" Elaine hissed back, certain that Mary had been overheard. She had; Will was trying not to laugh, and Lyra winked at her.
The boat crunched against snow-covered sand. "GO!" As one, we vaulted over the side, running up the 'beach' at full tilt.
There was very little fire directed at us, with the advance team attracting most of the attention, and the witches drawing a lot of groundfire themselves. There were several small huts scattered at intervals along the beach; lookout posts, I imagine. Elaine and I charged up to one, and simultaneously booted the door. A volley of rounds left the hut at chest height, and I took several of them. I went flying backwards, landing heavily on my back. I had a lopsided but clear view of Elaine letting fly with her shotgun, pumping round after round into the hut's unseen occupants and yelling at the top of her voice.
I sat up, and shook out the flattened bullets from between my sweatshirt and Kevlar vest. Elaine ran over, and I gave her a weary thumbs-up. At this point Elaine decided to take Mary's earlier advice. I won't bore you with the mushy details.
It was about ten minutes before we began taking an interest in the fighting once more. A smoke-blackened, manically grinning Jonathan West was standing over us, clutching a G3A3 assault rifle. His daemon had lost large areas of fur.
"This is better Medal of Honour: Frontline!" he informed us cheerily. "We've taken the airstrip, and we're in a bit of a standoff over by the barracks. Come on, or you'll miss all the fun!" He dashed off.
"Why, oh WHY did we hire that lunatic?" Elaine asked despairingly.
"It was your idea, you tell me," I replied evenly.
"It was a rhetorical question, you berk! Come on, let's go and make sure he doesn't get himself or anyone else killed."
Lyra ducked a rifle shot, which ricocheted off the wall behind her. Kirjava scampered into the Nissen hut, Will not far behind. "It's absolute mayhem out there," he remarked. "I'm not even sure where our lines are or who's shooting at me half the time. God only knows where the others've gone."
One of the Young Guns, the girl Isobel, bullied an obese man in ceremonial robes through the door. "Some Church bigwig," she explained. Her hawk-daemon bit the man's peacock-daemon on the tail, sparking a vicious pecking fight.
"Got a bucket of water handy?" the prisoner asked Lyra wearily. "I'm Sir Charles Sudburgh, the High Chief Pardoner, by the way. And after this is all over you'll be needing men of my profession. The Almighty isn't going to be too pleased about THIS lot, I should say!" Will, who had seen A Knight's Tale the previous weekend and formed an opinion of pardoners in general which Geoffery Chaucer would have sympathised with (try reading the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales), simply glared at him.
The door opened once again, to reveal Mary. She was grimy, her G36 was waving everywhere, and she was smiling broadly. "Boy, if the nuns at the convent could see me right now!" she smirked. "I think we're winning, though nobody can tell friend from foe out there. Elaine took my advice, by the way. I've just been talking to John, who currently can't shoot straight for laughing."
"I'd rather you didn't explain why," Will replied, having a dreadful feeling that he knew why, and not wishing to be proved right. "He caught them spooning by one of those lookout posts on the shore," Mary continued, undeterred. Will cringed. It'd be nice to be wrong occasionally.
"Did you HAVE to tell me that? There are some things you don't want to hear about your mother, you know!" Nobody was paying much attention, Will realised. They were looking out of the window. Will joined them, and beheld parties of soldiers walking out with their hands above their heads.
"We've done it!" he exclaimed. The High Chief Pardoner burst into tears, and Will felt moved to give him a handkerchief.
"We'd never have used those bombs," he informed them once he'd calmed down a bit. "No matter how desperate it got. We aren't THAT bad, you know." This was so utterly ridiculous that everyone broke into laughter, and he burst into tears again.
The next month was truly momentous. With their redoubt destroyed and nowhere to run, the Magisterium was holed below the waterline, and simply gave up. Most Church brass were permitted to go into exile without undue unpleasantness, though those who committed major atrocities were dealt with by hastily convened courts. There was a period of civil disorder in many areas, but this was rapidly cured by the newly established secular regimes. It would take a long while, but we were well on the way to bringing true democracy to this world. I was quite chuffed to have been part of it, despite my early doubts.
It was with some relief, however, that we returned to our own world for a bit.
"So," I said as we transited, "has anybody got any specific destination requests once we drop John and company off? We can probably make the south of France without refuelling, and I am in need of a long, quiet holiday!"
"Ibiza?" Will suggested helpfully.
"I said a QUIET holiday. I'm too old for clubbing and you're too young!"
"Oh yeah, says who?"
"Says me!" Elaine replied, to general mirth.
A quick recap for those who have just joined us:
Mary Malone develops a method of travelling between worlds. The drawback; it needs a vehicle travelling at at least Mach 2 to work. Luckily, Jonathan Parry's family is owed a very large favour by a former pilot. He designs them an aircraft to take them on a journey unmatched in the field of aviation... a journey to new worlds. He also becomes our narrator, struggling to retain some sort of grip on reality and doing okay, and managing to be faintly amusing from time to time in the process.
Their reception in Lyra's world is hostile, which the Magisterium comes to regret. They have basically picked a fight with the crew of a fighting aircraft unmatched by anything their world has ever seen. Quickly recruiting Lyra, the Aurora Borealis crew ally themselves with rebel forces seeking the overthrow of the corrupt theocracy. The Magisterium would never know what hit it.
"My name is Dave. I agreed to look after Will because his father saved my life, many years ago. If I'd known that this would lead to me: Getting stranded in an alternate dimension, on the run from the law; crashing a hijacked steam locomotive into a bog; getting badly injured by falling masonry in a street battle to rival the one in Black Hawk Down and loads of stuff I haven't written down yet... I'd still have done it. It would have been nice, however, if I could have done all that without Elaine Parry being sarcastic at me for a lot of the time. But, well, I guess I'll get used to that..."
Our attack lost no momentum, with plans being made ready and rehearsals performed as best as we could. With only a couple of books by Andy McNab and Peter Radcliffe, I attempted to instruct the volunteersw in the rudiments of Close Quarters Battle. I was not a good teacher, and knowing sod-all about what I was trying to teach didn't help.
Elaine handed me a newspaper article from just after we had left: TEENAGE KILLERS IN JAIL BREAKOUT.
"Some kid ran away from home and blew up his dad, then went on the run with his girlfriend and a few other kids. He got hold of a gun from somewhere, and shot at least four cops when they tried to arrest him. They finally arrest his girlfriend instead, and the others tool up with a whole bunch of weapons and break her out of jail!" I was appalled, but impressed. Will and Lyra were just impressed. Mary was practical.
"We need these kids; they have skills we can use."
We decided that if we couldn't find and recruit them in 48 hours we'd have to manage without. They were rumoured to be in London, so we headed there as soon as we transited to our own world.
It was late, and this was a very dodgy part of Brixton. The well-spoken, nicely dressed young man was therefore either suicidal or thick, calling a cab on a cellphone in a deserted street. He showed little surprise when a Stanley knife pricked the back of his neck, but casually pocketed his phone and put his hands in his jacket pockets.
"What do you want?" he asked, not alarmed in any way. He was flanked by two kids about his own age; one held the knife, the other a broken bottle.
"How 'bout that phone, dickhead?" The potential victim actually laughed.
"What's the first rule of mugging? Hard and fast, don't give them time to react, and don't let them do THIS!" Both hands left his sides in a blur. The knife wielder's arm locked with the victim's. The Stanley knife jerked away, and the target plunged a knife of his own into his asailant's arm. The blade hit bone.
The other one caught the barrel of a big semi-automatic pistol across the bridge of his nose, and went down hard.
"Second rule of mugging; learn to spot concealed firearms," Jonathan West said, laughing contemptuously. "Honestly, you scare a few old ladies and primary school kids and think you're Jean-Claude van Damme. Pathetic!"
I observed this from a safe distance, and applauded. "Good one, Mr West. You just proved you've got what it takes."
"To do what?" he enquired cautiously. The pistol's safety was off.
"The job I am about to offer you and your colleagues. Is there somewhere we can talk?"
* * *
"It sounds just crazy enough to be true," John pronounced, after hearing as much of the story as I thought he'd believe; not much. "And for this kind of money I'll believe anything. You lot?"
"It's not like we've got anything better to do," a fair-haired kid with a foreign accent declared.
"Five grand is five grand," added a tough looking girl who'd been introduced as Trish.
"The science checks out six ways to Sunday, too," added a black kid with a public school accent. "It might actually be true."
The tall, good-looking one shrugged; a 'what the hell' gesture. A pale, shy-looking girl who hadn't spoken yet nodded.
"Well, 'Mr Smith', you have yourself a deal," John concluded.
"Great! This address, tomorrow at ten. I'll have the money by then, in cash, of course."
"Used, non-sequential small bills, please!" We laughed.
They arrived, carrying a variety of bags. Rucksacks were universal, gym bags almost so; John had a cricketer's bag for some reason, and the good-looking guy -Charlie- just had a rucksack.
"Ready?" I asked.
"Of course," John replied. "Nice little plane, by the way."
"Thanks. I'd better introduce you to the rest of the team. Hey, you lot! Our new friends have arrived!"
The 'Young Guns' hit it off with Will quite rapidly. He'd had bad experiences with the law himself, and found them a refreshing change from his usual peer group. They could talk about combat tactics with authority, and personal firsthand knowledge.
Lyra drew longing looks from the two youngest (and single) members, Mick and Sandy. Mick alternated between da gangsta speak and cultured poshness in the hope that one of them worked, and Sandy increased his accent, which he thought made him sound sexier. Lyra thought this rather sweet, but casually strolled over to Will and gave him a quick kiss. "Lucky bastard," Sandy remarked just loud enough for Will to hear. He was starting to enjoy almost every adult male they ran into envying the bejesus out of him!
We all crammed aboard Aurora, and I took off from Sywell for a second time in a jet, earning me a few strange looks from the ground. We lined up on a suitable fissure and went through the usual proccedures.
"Right, hold tight you lot!" I warned, activating the Drive. It wasn't as bad since we had installed tinted, one-way mirror type windows, which reduced the glare from the Drive as well as looking very flash. I set the autopilot with the course for Svalbard and went into the lounge area. It was rather more crowded than I expected, to say the least.
"I think you might have skipped over a few details so that we wouldn't think you were nuts," John suggested, a large, sleek polecat curled up on his shoulder. "Would you care to explain all this, now that it's actually happened?"
This struck me as Lyra's province rather than mine. I retreated to the cockpit before he asked any more questions, which I currently felt il-equipped to deal with.
They grasped the fundamentals fairly quickly, Mick having only fairly recently grown out of a Digimon fixation. During the flight to our forward HQ we got some kind of a plan together. There were several supply zepplin trips per month, and we would raid the first one that came along and pack it with our forces, and then sail on to the oblivious opposing camp.
"I always fancied a go at fast-roping," John said with a truly alarming grin. "Know anything about it?"
"I'm a fighter pilot. The only combat I'm an expert in is at a distance of a couple of miles with missiles and twenty-mil cannon. That's why I hired YOU," I explained. "I really don't think rappelling from an airship is going to work, anyway."
"How about parachutes? You must know something about using THOSE," suggested Will. "Well, you taught us how, so I bloody hope you do!" I wished I hadn't let him watch all those action thrillers.
Once we arrived we discovered that our ranks had been swelled by a breakaway faction led by a lay preacher and a Summoner. With some reservations, suspecting some sort of clever plan, we permitted them to assist us. They also explained that preparations were being made to deploy what they referred to as explosive-metal bombs, but which to me were simply nuclear weapons.
"They really are getting desperate, then," I concluded. The stakes were getting higher; we had to finish this NOW, no matter what the cost, for whatever price we paid would be paltry in comparison with the alternative.
We made flight preparations in silence, making certain that we had the buildings indicated as important by our new friends marked down precisely. I left Mary to finish checking the FLIR system and wandered in the direction of a small tavern in the town with the intention of obtaining some lunch.
I hadn't even reached the door when I felt a stunning blow on the back of my head, and there was blackness for a long while.
I came to in a small cellar, my head throbbing. "Christ, my head!" I said to myself, looking around. "Anyone else in here?"
"Ah, so you're awake. I wondered how long it would be." The voice wasn't exactly friendly, but not entirely hostile either. Its source was undiscernable in the gloom.
"Who are you?" I asked, guardedly.
"Do you mind if we do the introductions the other way around? You have no daemon, but you don't sound like one of the Severed, so I imagine you aren't from around here. Your voice and manner says 'soldier' but your build doesn't; you don't do much route marching, anyway. And I've got no idea what those clothes are that you're wearing. You have the advantage of me."
"Okay. You got the first bit right, I'm not from this particular world. I used to be a military pilot, and this suit is designed to prevent the effects of high-g turns and low atmospheric pressure; not an issue with the local level of aerospace technology." I paused, thinking. "I'm with the rebels, and I presume they coshed me so that I can be coerced into revealing information about the plan of attack. It's a bit late for that now, seeing as the first phase of the assault is already in progress, but I'm not going to explain right now. I can't tell if you're a plant, and this place might be bugged."
The unseen man's voice chuckled. "I'm impressed. You're doing much better than me when I was first captured. I imagine you will be familiar with me by reputation," he added. "I am Lord Asriel."
"Yes, and I'm the Archbishop of Canterbury. I don't think it's possible to get any deader than him, from the somewhat sketchy account Lyra gave me." He moved into the light, and I was forced to reasess this viewpoint. The resemblance to Lyra was striking, even under a layer of accumulated grime and quite a few bruises. Something showed in my expression.
"I don't know how or why I survived, in fact I can barely recall the whole thing with any clarity, but I'm not the type to look a gift horse in the mouth. So, my friend, how did you wind up in this world?"
"Will Parry's father is an old friend of mine," I explained. "When the kid and a certain Dr Mary Malone came up with a way to travel between worlds it needed an aircraft for assorted technical reasons, so I volunteered to design and fly it. And if they kidnapped me to ground the plane they'll be sadly disappointed, because I taught Mary to fly it as well."
"I see. Before I was captured I heard rumours of such an aircraft. How did you manage to overcome the issues of Dust?"
"It's deflected by the strong magnetic field we need to generate to open a fissure, and they only stay open for a couple of seconds anyway. The working principles are similar to your attempt, only a lot less crude and environmentally damaging, and with a far less inhumane power source." I turned around to treat him to the full force of my glare. "Listen Asriel, -if you really ARE Asriel- I know what you were doing at Bolvangar, which means that A: I think you're an unscrupulous bastard and B: I don't trust you as far as you'd travel if I gave you a good boot up the arse, which I'd be sorely tempted to do under other circumstances. I never thought I'd meet a man with a messianic AND napoleonic complex!"
"Hurling insults isn't going to get us out of here," he replied coolly. "I recommend a temporary armistice until we get back to civilisation. We can punch each other then."
"I'll hold you to that," I warned, examining the door. Escape and Evasion training hadn't covered this, the emphasis being on not revealing anything tactically important and not getting oneself killed in foolhardy escape attempts, like I was doing now. I decided being gunned down whilst running away would be better than enduring the company of this maniac, and checked my pockets for anything I could use. Astonishingly, impossibly, my pistol was still in its holster.
"Me too," Asriel explained, holding up a snub-nosed revolver. "Perhaps they hoped we'd kill ourselves, or each other. Perhaps they just couldn't be bothered to search us. I really couldn't say."
I gave up, glaring at the door with excessive malice. There wasn't even a lock, just a bar on the other side, a heavy one by the way it rattled. There was a small hatch through which food was given to us, which I couldn't prise open despite all my efforts. In desperation, I turned to the hinges, and hit paydirt.
I prised the pins out of them with a pocketknife loaned to me by Asriel, and pulled the door backwards until it crashed against the flagstones. A lively crash indicated that I'd jolted the bar out of its cradles, an unexpected stroke of luck. I gave the door a solid kick, and it crashed to the ground. I emerged cautiously into a badly-lit corridor, and wondered which direction to go in. Asriel immediately turned left, so I decided upon going right.
I came to a flight of steps, leading upwards. I ducked behind a pillar at the sound of voices and approaching footsteps.
"They won't shoot at THIS building, not with him in here."
"Who, the pilot?"
"No, that Belacqua brat's father. If the traitors know about him -and it's a safe bet that they do- they'll blow up everything else but this building. And with the explosive-metal devices stored here, it won't matter." Oh, SHIT!
The renegades hadn't told us about Asriel, even if they DID know, but they had told us where the nukes were stored. I was fairly sure that Lyra wouldn't exactly weep salt tears for her father, but the gyptians were another matter. They owed Asriel one, though having to clear up after the Experimental Station might affect the issue.
My current immediate concern was the fact that this building and several others in the immediate vicinity were soon going to be recieving an AGM-65 Maverick apiece courtesy of Aurora, and I didn't particularly want to hang around for a closeup view, what all with the fissile materials stacked up in here someplace. Asriel could take his chances, not that there was much I could do to help him even if I felt inclined to.
I waited for the guards to retreat, and ascended the stairs cautiously. I heard a hoarse cry of alarm behind me; should have thought to replace and rebar the door, really. I ran up the stairs and found myself in a guardroom, currently unoccupied. I gave the weapon locker's door a solid kick, and examined its contents critically. What appeared to be a Sten gun would do nicely, I concluded, slotting a magazine into the weapon and pocketing a few more. Time to be somewhere else...
Asriel was unsurprised at the sudden blare of klaxons. Stelmaria crawled further into his jacket, grumbling. He ducked a wild burst of shots, and pelted towards the vehicle pool. He noticed distractedly that some wit had removed the second letter L from the sign, and investigated the assortment of trucks, Snowcat-type vehicles and other motive power on offer. He eventually settled on a small vehicle resembling a motorcycle, but with tracks at the rear and a pair of skis instead of a front wheel (it looked a bit like a cross between a snowmobile and those weird half-tracked bikes the Wehrmacht sometimes used in WWII to me).
Soldiers were running everywhere, shouting at each other and firing at anything that moved. The semidarkness, illuminated uncertainly by the Lights, made telling friend from foe next to impossible. Asriel's fellow-escapee would have an easier time of it; he probably regarded everyone, up to and including Asriel himself, as the enemy.
I found my way to the outside, and cast my mind back to the planning session. Six buildings arranged in a rectangle, with a large expanse of prefabricated barrack huts behind, and a short airstrip off to the east a short way. I had a working mental map of the whole base, and set off in the direction of the airstrip. Asriel was getting shot at, having roared off on his new bike, and nobody paid much attention to one shadowy figure.
The airstrip consisted of a runway, several hangars, and a mess building/control tower. I approached the latter, and kicked in the door. Four pilots looked at me in utter astonishment, and caught a full magazine at chest height. A roar above me indicated the supply zepplin coming in overhead, and I wondered if they'd captured it this time.
I hastily put on some flying kit; oxygen mask, parachute, etcetera. Then I headed to the nearest hangar, reloading the Sten as I did so. Those four pilots had probably been on QRA (Quick Reaction Alert), so they would have ready aircraft waiting for them should the base be attacked. Logic dictated that these be in the hangar nearest to the Mess, and probably guarded; Grand Theft L'Avion isn't just the stuff of movies like Firefox.
There was one guard for four aircraft, and he only had a pistol. I dropped him with a three-round burst, and turned my attention to the problem of getting one of the planes in the air. They appeared to be Typhoons, or something similar, with a battery of wingtip rockets as well as some potent cannons. I gave the nearest one's propeller a swing, and started it up. It started okay, so I climbed aboard and taxied out of the hangar. It was set up in such a way as to allow a departing plane to simply scream forwards on full boost, but I had a job to do first. Leaving the plane idling, I climbed onto the wings of all three others and treated their controls to a quick squirt from the Sten. Discarding it, all magazines no being exhausted, I reboarded my own plane and took off.
A frantic voice yelled at me over the radio, and I swung around and treated the control tower to all eight rockets. It fell neatly across the runway, inextricably trapping the remaining aircraft and preventing those in the air from landing. Several such were homing in on me, and I made sure my cannons were ready. I was also attracting groundfire, so I decided that in this instance discretion might not be the better part of valour but was certainly prudent in this instance, and made a run for it.
It had been quite a while since I'd flown anything with propellers. I was far too used to Aurora's long legs and amazing handling. This felt like a breeze block in comparison. I kept up visual search for enemy planes, missing radar, and eventually had to swerve to avoid a burst of fire from a helicopter that swung in behind me unexpectedly. Images of Airwolf dogfighting with a P51 at some point in Series 2 came back to me, and I looped over to get a shot at the enemy's rear. I'd been keeping my airspeed low to avoid leaving easily visible vapour trails, so the chopper had taken its chance. I now took mine, ploughing tank-busting shells into its tail. I was rewarded with a spectacular fireball.
The Magisterium's entire airforce were now turning on me. I shoved the throttles forward and the nose down, and prayed.
Mary saw the aircraft running from the airfield pursued by several more, took in the column of smoke rising from one of the hangars, and shook her head. "Somehow you can tell it's Dave," she said despairingly. "Hold on, pal, here we come!"
Aurora screamed towards the swarm of fighters, guns stuttering. They scattered, trying to evade bursts from the turret guns and each other, and quite a few of them failed.
"Impeccably timed, as always! Thanks you lot!" The fighter rolled in acknowledgement and turned towards home once more. Mary waved in reply, and armed her Mavericks. Quickly tapping her command keyboard, she designated a target for each missile, which were fed into the targeting computer. The ability to target multiple objects had required major upgrading of the software suite, but gave a decided edge in combat. It only worked with self guiding fire-and-forget missiles like the Maverick or Sidewinder, which formed our typical loadout anyhow.
Six streaks of smoke and fire coursed towards the buildings and impacted, blasting them apart. One building was particularly spectacular in its demise; the armoury, which detonated in a dramatic ball of fire. The blastwave hurled the supply zepplin sideways, and parachutes blossomed from it.
"Base, this is Aurora. All primary targets destroyed, engaging secondary targets now, over."
"Acknowledged. We have a couple of escaped prisoners arriving, one of whom is David. The other... well, you'd better wait until you get back. You won't believe me, over and out." Mary shrugged, and started shooting Hydra rockets at tanks.
Asriel dismounted, and winced; he'd gone rigid in what his mother genteely called the dairy air. That snow bike was worse than a horse! He noticed a fighter parked nearby, and a figure approaching him.
"Remember our agreement?"
"Yes. We agreed not to punch each other until we escaped."
"Well, we've both escaped!" Asriel glimpsed a man's forehead moving at great speed, then there was an explosion of stars and pain. "What habened to PUNCHING, you bastard!"
I followed up with a jab to his solar plexus, leaving him doubled up on the ground gasping for breath, and finished off with a good solid kick to his scrotum.
"Hell's bells," Lord Faa exclaimed as he arrived at a run. "You've half-killed him! What'd he done to you?"
"Me? Nothing. Quite a few kids; the worst thing you can imagine. That's Asriel," I explained.
Aurora landed a short distance away, and the others disembarked at a dead run. "We saw what happened," Mary said. "Who is he?"
Asriel chose this moment to stand up. His face was bloodied, but recognisable. "You!" Lyra hissed. There was no warning for what happened next. Her arm blurred, and I dived backwards as her pistol cracked, over and over again. "This is for Roger!" she screamed. There were fifteen shots and nearly as many Dead Man's Clicks before Will gently took the now empty gun from her hand. "It's done," he said gently.
Lord Faa winced. "There should have been a trial," he said. "We've had enough of summary justice. He would have been imprisoned for life, there was no need to..."
"No," Elaine said firmly. "Some monsters shouldn't walk under the living sky. Dave should have put a bullet into him back there."
"Come on," I said. "We're going to need every man or woman on hand on the ground out there. You needn't worry about the nukes, by the way," I added. "The building where they're being stored took a direct hit. They're under a hundred tons of rubble, so some bad loser can't let one off."
The boat jolted from wavetop to wavetop, and I feared for my teeth if this went on for much longer. I gripped my rifle nervously, and hoped I'd live through this.
"Thirty seconds!" somebody yelled. We glanced at each other, each seeing the fear in the other's eyes and hoping it wasn't as obvious in our own. Elaine grinned at me, and I returned the gesture.
Mary nudged Elaine. "I wish you'd just face up to it and snog him," she hissed. "He hasn't spotted it yet, but everyone else has."
"Shut up!" Elaine hissed back, certain that Mary had been overheard. She had; Will was trying not to laugh, and Lyra winked at her.
The boat crunched against snow-covered sand. "GO!" As one, we vaulted over the side, running up the 'beach' at full tilt.
There was very little fire directed at us, with the advance team attracting most of the attention, and the witches drawing a lot of groundfire themselves. There were several small huts scattered at intervals along the beach; lookout posts, I imagine. Elaine and I charged up to one, and simultaneously booted the door. A volley of rounds left the hut at chest height, and I took several of them. I went flying backwards, landing heavily on my back. I had a lopsided but clear view of Elaine letting fly with her shotgun, pumping round after round into the hut's unseen occupants and yelling at the top of her voice.
I sat up, and shook out the flattened bullets from between my sweatshirt and Kevlar vest. Elaine ran over, and I gave her a weary thumbs-up. At this point Elaine decided to take Mary's earlier advice. I won't bore you with the mushy details.
It was about ten minutes before we began taking an interest in the fighting once more. A smoke-blackened, manically grinning Jonathan West was standing over us, clutching a G3A3 assault rifle. His daemon had lost large areas of fur.
"This is better Medal of Honour: Frontline!" he informed us cheerily. "We've taken the airstrip, and we're in a bit of a standoff over by the barracks. Come on, or you'll miss all the fun!" He dashed off.
"Why, oh WHY did we hire that lunatic?" Elaine asked despairingly.
"It was your idea, you tell me," I replied evenly.
"It was a rhetorical question, you berk! Come on, let's go and make sure he doesn't get himself or anyone else killed."
Lyra ducked a rifle shot, which ricocheted off the wall behind her. Kirjava scampered into the Nissen hut, Will not far behind. "It's absolute mayhem out there," he remarked. "I'm not even sure where our lines are or who's shooting at me half the time. God only knows where the others've gone."
One of the Young Guns, the girl Isobel, bullied an obese man in ceremonial robes through the door. "Some Church bigwig," she explained. Her hawk-daemon bit the man's peacock-daemon on the tail, sparking a vicious pecking fight.
"Got a bucket of water handy?" the prisoner asked Lyra wearily. "I'm Sir Charles Sudburgh, the High Chief Pardoner, by the way. And after this is all over you'll be needing men of my profession. The Almighty isn't going to be too pleased about THIS lot, I should say!" Will, who had seen A Knight's Tale the previous weekend and formed an opinion of pardoners in general which Geoffery Chaucer would have sympathised with (try reading the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales), simply glared at him.
The door opened once again, to reveal Mary. She was grimy, her G36 was waving everywhere, and she was smiling broadly. "Boy, if the nuns at the convent could see me right now!" she smirked. "I think we're winning, though nobody can tell friend from foe out there. Elaine took my advice, by the way. I've just been talking to John, who currently can't shoot straight for laughing."
"I'd rather you didn't explain why," Will replied, having a dreadful feeling that he knew why, and not wishing to be proved right. "He caught them spooning by one of those lookout posts on the shore," Mary continued, undeterred. Will cringed. It'd be nice to be wrong occasionally.
"Did you HAVE to tell me that? There are some things you don't want to hear about your mother, you know!" Nobody was paying much attention, Will realised. They were looking out of the window. Will joined them, and beheld parties of soldiers walking out with their hands above their heads.
"We've done it!" he exclaimed. The High Chief Pardoner burst into tears, and Will felt moved to give him a handkerchief.
"We'd never have used those bombs," he informed them once he'd calmed down a bit. "No matter how desperate it got. We aren't THAT bad, you know." This was so utterly ridiculous that everyone broke into laughter, and he burst into tears again.
The next month was truly momentous. With their redoubt destroyed and nowhere to run, the Magisterium was holed below the waterline, and simply gave up. Most Church brass were permitted to go into exile without undue unpleasantness, though those who committed major atrocities were dealt with by hastily convened courts. There was a period of civil disorder in many areas, but this was rapidly cured by the newly established secular regimes. It would take a long while, but we were well on the way to bringing true democracy to this world. I was quite chuffed to have been part of it, despite my early doubts.
It was with some relief, however, that we returned to our own world for a bit.
"So," I said as we transited, "has anybody got any specific destination requests once we drop John and company off? We can probably make the south of France without refuelling, and I am in need of a long, quiet holiday!"
"Ibiza?" Will suggested helpfully.
"I said a QUIET holiday. I'm too old for clubbing and you're too young!"
"Oh yeah, says who?"
"Says me!" Elaine replied, to general mirth.
