I swept my G36 across the street, and nodded to the others. "All clear, I think." We advanced cautiously, covering each other. With three assault rifles and a twelve-gauge autoloading shotgun between us we made a pretty formidable team.
Mary was currently aboard Aurora, waiting outside the city in case of trouble. The JSFs were back at our base, the spare aircrew manning the turrets. McAllister had tried to convince me to let him fly the Aurora, but I wasn't about to let anybody who hadn't had a bit of practice at handling her anywhere near the controls. I can't honestly say I was altogether behind the idea of putting relative strangers in the gun turrets, but I needed people I could rely on in a scrap behind me.
We had recently reached Peckham, after a long period of extremely cautious walking. I was only vaguely aware of my location, but I'd seen a lot of fighting in and around this area from the air. All we had to do was walk into a few black people, and convince them not to blow us to hell, and we were sorted.
It had been a nightmare flight, with SAM and AAA radar lighting us up every couple of minutes, and no idea who the enemy were. I didn't dare retaliate when we were swept by potentially hostile radars, because we must have confused the hell out of the good guys as well as the enemy. Thankfully nobody had fired on us, presumably being in a similar bind.
There was a sudden whiplash crack up ahead as somebody let off a pistol. I ducked behind cover, searching for hostiles. A quick rattle heralded a submachine gun burst, followed by a single sharp BANG, which might have come from an assault rifle. "Cease fire!" somebody yelled. "We're not with the coup!"
"That's not why we're shooting at you!" a familiar voice replied. "We're shooting at you because you opened fire on us!"
"One of these days your gung-ho attitude to cops is going to get you in trouble, Johnny boy!" I laughed. I heaved myself over a wall, and beheld a group of armed police officers crouching behind some dustbins. A round smashed against the brickwork near my head, making me flinch.
"It's us, you dickhead!" Lyra bellowed irritably as she vaulted nimbly over the wall.
"Oh, sorry." John climbed down from the roof of a nearby building, G3A3 rifle at port-arms; not actually pointing at anybody, but held in a manner which suggests this can change quickly if the need arose. "Didn't recognise you for a minute, I'm afraid." He hadn't changed much from the seventeen year-old I'd first met about a century ago. The unruly mess of black hair was partly contained by an old baseball cap apparently obtained from some bullfighting ring in Spain, and the same tatty jeans, battered trainers and old originally-white jacket were in evidence. Isobel landed behind him, shouldering her MP5K. She was as pale and elfin-pretty as ever, though I noticed a slight abdominal bulge that elicited excited squeals from Lyra and Elaine, who were evidently overwhelmed with warm female something-or-other. Will looked at me ruefully. I shrugged.
"So what happened to John and his mates being mentally unstable, Ellie?" I enquired mildly.
"You men keep out of this!" she replied crossly. "This is girl stuff!"
//Jesus wept,// I silently groaned. //Can things get any more complicated than this?//
"Hi," said John awkwardly. "Long time no see."
"Yeah. Congratulations, mate. How's it feel-?" John stuck his gun almost up Will's nose.
"Don't, just don't. I never asked for this, and I've seen fatherhood at it's worst too many times. I'm bloody terrified of this, and I don't need anybody bloody well saying Well Done!" he growled. "You're only making this harder than it already is, dammit!"
"God, I'm sorry, John. I had no idea," Will apologised. "Listen, I don't know if it helps but I think you'll be a fantastic father, a million times better than your own. You WON'T turn into him, right?"
"Thanks," John said quietly. "I'm sorry I over-reacted a bit, it's been an absolute bitch of a day, you know?"
Isobel shook her head sadly. "It's me who's supposed to get pre-natal depression," she said in a feeble attempt at a joke. "But I'm fine. It's John who's upset and scared."
The cops looked rather surprised at this turn of events. The list of mental problems they'd encountered during their careers was huge, but this was pretty much the first serial killer with clinical depression they'd come across.
"So where's everybody else?" I asked.
"Christ knows. It's been absolute mayhem for the last few hours," John replied. "Mick was saying something about getting 'technical help' earlier, whatever he means by THAT, and I haven't seen him or the others since."
"Isn't 'technical help' an accounting euphemism for one of those pickups with machine guns on the back in the less politically stable African countries?" Will pointed out.
"Oh, come ON, even Mick wouldn't..."
A Ford pickup truck skidded to a halt nearby, a machine gun mounted on a swivel mount in the rear bed. A madly grinning Mick stuck his head out of the driver's window. "Like it?"
"Where the hell did you get hold of this lot?" Isobel asked curiously.
"You don't want to know. Hop in!" We clambered aboard, John insisting that Isobel rode in the front. I took over the big gun, a US Army-issue M60. "He's compensating for something," Elaine giggled. Will and Lyra winced.
"You've never complained before," I said tonelessly. Elaine blushed nicely.
"Just shut up," John said wearily. "Please. I've had a bad enough day without you two squabbling like an old-married couple."
"Married, yes, but I object to being referred to as old," I replied. "Maybe I'll never see forty again, but..."
"I'm warning you, Dave." There was a click as John took the safety catch off his assault rifle. "Mick, please get us out of here."
We roared off, leaving several extremely confused policemen behind.
"We should've arrested them, really," one remarked.
"Why bother? We've got more important things to sort out. And besides," said another, who'd had dealings with the Young Guns previously and would show the scars to new recruits who he thought were a bit too cocky, "I imagine they'll be an even bigger pain in the arse for the bad guys -whoever the hell THEY are- than they are for us!"
"Guess so. I wonder who those others were?"
"Who cares? Let's just get the hell out of this warzone."
The strange cavalcade halted outside a grim and grubby Peckham flatblock. Several armed men on the balconies and walkways levelled weapons at us, but shouldered them at the sight of John and friends. We were waved on past a barricade of furniture and junk, which Peckham has in abundance. A crowd of people were waiting, including a few soldiers.
"They've got the army infiltrated," John explained, "but they've been recruiting on an individual basis, so it's fairly chaotic. We haven't got a clue who to trust and who to kill. It's a bloody nightmare."
"I can imagine. Christ knows what it must be like out at sea with the Fleet." Will slung his G36. "HMS Cunningham's at the bottom of the Irish Sea, and the rest of the Navy must be tearing itself to pieces. I wonder if the rest of Europe's doing anything about it?"
"Well, we helped sort their fascists out. It's only fair, don't you think?"
I reached for my cigarettes, ignoring the resigned sigh from Elaine's direction. I lit one... and it exploded into flame.
"Yeouch! Shit, Jesus, that isn't funny!" I spluttered, trying to brush the burning tobacco off my clothes. "Who the hell came up with a joke like that?"
"Well, I've tried everything else to make you quit. Dipping the tips in barbecue lighting fluid was the last card to play," Elaine said seriously.
"Huh, ingenious!" I said sulkily. "Can anybody spare me one? I'll probably get second degree burns from these."
"Don't give him any!" Elaine ordered. Everybody had a good laugh, Elaine included when she saw my expression. I wandered off to scrounge a smoke in peace, asking myself -not for the first time- why somebody couldn't have warned me what I was in for when I asked Elaine to marry me. On the other hand, I bet she wishes somebody had warned her what SHE was in for when she said yes. Will, Mary and Lyra watch the two of us bickering with wry amusement, though my stepdaughter-in-law can compete with Elaine when she wants to.
My cellphone buzzed. "Hello?"
"Dave, it's Mary. We have a BIG problem. You probably aren't going to believe this, and you definitely aren't going to like it."
"I'm listening."
"My sensors just went crazy. Somebody just cut a portal about half a mile away from you, a big one."
"What?" I nearly dropped the ancient Trium Eclipse. "You can't be serious. Some lunatic's made another Knife or something?"
"Dave!" Elaine yelled. "You'd better see this!" I came running, and climbed the stairs to the third-floor walkway of the flatblock. "Oh my GOD!"
A huge portal had opened in a clearing, and tanks were rolling out of it. I didn't recognise the make, but I recognised the insignia. Each tank was painted with the twin lightning bolt of the SS. Behind them I caught a glimpse of some sort of laser device or something on the back of a truck.
"I don't know what form this Democratic Socialist Republic of Narnia or whatever is supposed to take," I told Will, "but Neo-Nazis don't feature anywhere in the gameplan, of that I am certain!"
"Well said. I think we'd better get the hell out of here before they start shooting at us."
John was already sprinting for the nearest 'technical'. He vaulted into the driving seat and revved the engine. "I need a gunner. Everybody else start heading into the city while I try and distract them." I took up the gunner's position, hastily calling Mary back.
"Mary, we need you airborne RIGHT NOW. There's hostile armour coming through that portal, with SS markings. They're about ten minutes from blowing us sky high. Me and John are going to distract them in a technical."
"A WHAT?"
"Haven't you watched Black Hawk Down?"
"I know what a technical is, you moron. It's the part about enemy tanks. It's suicide!"
"Suggest a better way of buying everybody else some time, then." I rang off. "You don't have to do this, John. Let that kid know their dad."
"Trust me, the poor little bugger wouldn't thank me for it. Hold tight!" We roared out from behind the barricade, blasting wildly at the tanks. The second technical was soon rushing out behind. The tanks completely ignored us, evidently seeing right through our plan, so John headed straight for the nearest.
"There's a crowbar by your feet!" he screamed at me. "Take this!" He reached throught the cab's rear window and thrust a grenade into my hands. Even by John's standards it was a crazy plan, but in the absence of anything resembling an alternative...
I dropped my G36 to the bed of the truck, and braced myself as John braked right next to the tank. I jumped across, and quickly wrestled the crowbar into position. "Come on," I hissed, "come ON, you bloody thing!" I saw another tank swing its turret around. //Holy shit, they aren't going to...// A volley of 7.62mm fire erupted from the tank's coaxial machine gun, ripping the technical's rear to pieces and narrowly missing me. //Right, sod this for a game of soldiers!// I grabbed my rifle and ran, John not far behind. We dived for cover behind a low wall, safe from small arms fire for now. I prayed I hadn't annoyed them badly enough to make them use their main armament.
My phone vibrated again, a single longish burst which signalled a text message. The name displayed read 'Al B', an innocuous cover for the number of a SIM card plugged into the Aurora Borealis's brand new microwave comms antenna. It might seem an expensive and needlessly technical alternative to a perfectly ordinary carphone set, but having a regular mobile switched on aboard an aircraft in flight buggers the instrumentation, radio and navigation systems. I found this out for myself the hard way, damn near crashing into the sea on our third proving run; partly my fault for buying Will a posh Nokia 7210, and forgetting to warn him to turn it off.
I read the message, which was immaculately typed: "You're a lunatic. Elaine will kill you even if the tanks don't. Now get the hell outta there!" I smiled ruefully, shaking my head. //Point taken, Mary.//
"Time we weren't here, John!" I yelled, geting to my feet. "Here comes our air support!"
Aurora made a single fast flypast, lower and rear turrets humming. Mary looped over, arming the quartet of AGM-65 Maverick antitank missiles under the wings. Carrying so many of these was a risk, leaving us with only two air-to-air missiles for self-defence, but it was just as well we'd gone in for them. Without some serious heavy firepower we'd be sunk, and besides, we could always leg it and use the jump drive if we were attacked by hostile fighters.
Four of the six tanks blew apart under direct hits, and the others began to scatter. The large missile pods mounted on one side of their turrets swung upwards, and what I had taken to be something like a Milan antitank job rocketed towards the aircraft. It must have been a Stinger or something, because Aurora rocketed upwards, flares spilling from the dispensers.
"Bugger!" I hastily reloaded my G36 with full metal jacket rounds, which moved so fast that they could go through a man's body like an icepick without him noticing. I fired a five round burst into the nearest tank's missile pod, which exploded in a shower of sparks and shrapnel. I ducked the return fire, and decided to make a run for it.
"Hop in mate!" John called, skidding the technical to a halt beside me. I climbed aboard, and manned the M60. Two helicopters were vectoring on us, and a missile exploded where I'd been standing a few minutes ago.
"Hit it!" I yelled, letting off an answering burst. John didn't need telling twice. He put his foot down and swerved into a side street. Another missile jetted into a wall behind us, showering me with brick dust. "Keep away from buildings!" I screamed over the roar of the pickup's engine. "They don't care who they kill!" Under other circumstances we would have stayed in fairly crowded areas, with the enemy helicopters unable to fire because of their rules of engagement, but we weren't up against soldiers any longer. We were up against thugs, and possibly the SS as well, so neither were likely to HAVE rules of engagement. "Our Father who art in heaven," I said to myself, "I know we haven't always seen eye to eye in the past, but I really could use a little help right now!"
I carried on firing, and caught the lead chopper -a Puma rigged out with wing mounted rocket launchers and miniguns- just beneath the rotorhead. It heeled over and slammed into the river, blowing apart in a gratifying fireball.
"Thank you, Lord. I owe you one for that."
The other Puma blew a hole in the road in front of us, pitching the front end of the pickup into an Underground line and catapaulting me into the tarmac, ten yards down the road. My knee smashed into the rollbar atop the truck's cab, splintering viciously. I hit the ground, rolled and skidded along, my tough flightsuit saving me from friction burns.
//Oh well, He giveth and He taketh away,// I told myself philosophically, just before succumbing to the pain and passing out.
I regained consciousness in my bunk aboard the Aurora. I could feel and move all four limbs, which was a good sign. The lower part of my right leg appeared to be missing, which was not. The bandages covering the stump suggested that my leg had taken an even worse beating than I'd realised.
"Shit," I said without much feeling. I had at least 20cc of morphine in my bloodstream at this point, and I was actually feeling fairly cheerful under the circumstances.
"Hey, I hope you recovered my other shoe, that was quite an expensive pair!" All right, perhaps 'cheerful' isn't quite the right word. 'Stoned out of my mind' might be a little nearer the mark. Saved me a fortune in dismemberment therapist's fees, though.
Elaine came to the door. "How are you feeling?" she asked.
"A wee bit legless," I giggled. "How much of the white stuff did you give me?"
"Probably too much. Don't you get used to this, Dave. The cigarettes are bad enough!" Elaine gave me a kiss, and handed me a mug of tea.
"How long was I out for?" I asked after a few sips. "Ugh. Was it Mary's turn?" Americans can't make tea. Fact of life.
"About eight hours, including the time under anaesthetic while an Army medic patched you up. He couldn't save your leg, though. It was about two feet from the rest of you when backup got to your position. And yes, Mary made the tea."
"I see," I replied, putting my cup down on the AOL free trial CD which served as an inexpensive coaster (Author's note: Does everybody do this, or just me, my dad and my FanFiction OCs?). "How's John?"
"Smashed up his collarbone and a couple of ribs, with whiplash and a concussion on top. He hadn't come round yet when I last checked."
"Nasty," I said reflectively. "Now how the hell do I get out of bed and go to the bog?"
"I managed to scrounge you some crutches, though God knows there's barely enough medical supplies to go around. I suggest you wait until the morphine wears off, though." She leaned a pair of crutches within my reach.
"Under other circumstances I'd agree, but I REALLY need to go." I grabbed them, and stood awkwardly but without falling over. I'd been on crutches twice before years ago after messing up a practice parachute landing and more recently after that embarassing business with the Ministry of Theology, so this wasn't an entirely new experience. My body now massed less, but not by enough to put my sense of balance out, and the worst challenge the lack of one foot would provide for the moment was how to pee standing up.
A short while later, I was sitting in the radar operator's station as we returned to base, with our new friends in the gun turrets. I was off flying for the forseeable future, which annoyed me as this seemed a relatively minor injury compared with some. A fellow Harrier pilot I knew quite well lost an arm when he was forced to eject and the canopy didn't shatter fully, and another colleague ended up in a wheelchair after his Sea King blew an O-ring seal and nosedived into some power cables. And these are examples of a relative minority who didn't crash badly enough to die. I couldn't really complain, when I thought about it, which is probably the only reason I didn't go to pieces once the drugs wore off. That and a crtain amount of inbuilt natural resillience bolstered by twelve years of hectoring from Elaine, including the ten we've spent actually married, I suppose.
Will had empathised quite strongly, since he'd lost most of two fingers in that nasty knife -sorry, Knife with a capital K- some years ago. My reassuring remark at the time? "Don't worry, the ladies love a few scars." In reply he had picked up a handy breadknife (we were in the kitchen) and asked if I wanted some, then. Quite witty from a guy who'd supposedly been eternally separated from his soulmate, except that he had been in deadly earnest, and the humour in this had only occured to either of us some weeks later.
"You know, the whole 'Nazis from another universe' thing explains a lot, really," Jack remarked. "The British Nationals and the like are a shambles, and there is NO WAY they could infiltrate the Navy the way they did."
"Or the Army and the RAF," Will remarked. "If we were in the US it might work, though!" This was a pleasing trend, which had seen the various branches of HM Armed Services cast aside their old rivalries, and gang up on the US military instead. Suits me, I never forgave the American military-industrial complex -Lockheed Martin especially- for bribing half the defence procurement personnel in Western Europe into buying the F104, which killed off more pilots than any war with the Russians would have.
"It makes things even harder than they already are, though," Mary added. "They could screw up the whole ecosystem of both worlds if they keep cutting portals like that. Even if they close them properly there's Spectres to deal with."
"Nice strategic weapon, really." Carrie-Anne. "Can you imagine the chaos one of those would cause if our forces came across it? And there have to be ways of sheilding yourself against them."
"Yeah, and what this aircraft's built out of is one of them," Elaine added, making final approach preparations. "We figured out a way of killing them off with the jump drive, so maybe we can..."
"Cittigaze," Lyra said speculatively. "The survivors turned the Drive into a portable Spectre-zapping system, yeah?"
"I think we ought to borrow a few," I said, guessing what she meant.
"First things first," Elaine said, putting us in a shallow glide. "If what they say about woman drivers is true it probably applys to woman pilots as well, so hold on tight everybody."
"It isn't," Mary, Lyra and Carie-Anne said firmly.
"Hah! Tell that to Dave!"
"What?" I spluttered. "I have NEVER complained about your driving skills, and not letting you ride my Ducatti is completely different!"
We continued arguing until Elaine slowly taxied through the water into the cave we used as a base. Will went with Jack, Mitch and Carrie-Anne to take their fighters on a strike mission somewhere, whilst the rest of us set about refuelling and rearming Aurora. I was relegated to checking over the weapon control systems, running various self-test routines from the cockpit.
In a blaze of white light and a burst of harps and rather off-key choiral singing, which made me wince slightly with the whole tweeness of it, Xanthania appeared. "Hi," Mary remarked casually, jacking a Sidewinder into position below the left wing before turning to talk to her. Her bird-daemon had appeared, I noticed with mild surprise.
"Greetings, my children," she boomed in reply, making me shake my head. Lyra was twenty-five, for God's sake, and she was the youngest regular Aurora Borealis crewmember. I'm forty-eight, Elaine's six months younger and Mary's on the edge of reaching the big 4-0, so why she insisted on referring to us as 'my children' I have no idea.
"Hello again," I said conversationally, making my way to the door. "Am I right in guessing that the whole weird prophetic dreams bit was something to do with you? The whole Jewish grandfather bit was a touch theatrical, but otherwise, great!"
"Yes, it was indeed me. I am glad you thought it was effective," she said lightly. "I see that you have not escaped unscathed from recent events." I glanced down at where my leg wasn't, and nodded with a rueful grin.
"Yeah, second time I've narrowly avoided death in London. That'll teach me to let John drive!"
Xanthania laughed, and sat down on a nearby HARM anti-radar missile. Elaine and I winced, and Mary took cover. Lyra tried not to laugh. "She's an ANGEL, people! And a missile won't explode if you sit on it anyway!"
"Don't you believe it," I replied. "I heard of a bloke who sat on the end of an Exocet and sparked the detonator, blew half a deck section sky high..."
"Yeah, right."
"Do you know how long the Nazis from that world have been in cahoots with the ones here?" Elaine asked, ever practical.
"We are not certain, but they have been creating portals for some time. Mercifully they seem to have realised the dangers of leaving them open, and somehow they have shielded against Dust leakage."
"Thank God for small mercies," I replied sourly. "You'd think one world would be enough, even for a maniac like Hitler or his cronies."
"Wasn't enough for my father, was it?" Lyra remarked rather bitterly. "And he was just as barmy." Couldn't argue with that, really; 'a napoleonic AND messianic complex', I believe my exact words were last time I saw Asriel.
"True. However, I have important information for you, and I cannot stay long," Xanthania said urgently. "There is a meeting between the forces of the Reich and their allies, in Lyra's world and yours, three days from now. If you can infiltrate them, you can gather information about their plans."
"Okay, but how?"
"There is a cocktail party or some similar event being used as cover, in the London of Lyra's world. With care you might gain entry," she explained.
"Oh, what fun!" I cried, with a brittle edge in my voice. "You know, I'm starting to develop a serious phobia about the old smoke. And if this means I've got to wear a tuxedo..."
Mary was currently aboard Aurora, waiting outside the city in case of trouble. The JSFs were back at our base, the spare aircrew manning the turrets. McAllister had tried to convince me to let him fly the Aurora, but I wasn't about to let anybody who hadn't had a bit of practice at handling her anywhere near the controls. I can't honestly say I was altogether behind the idea of putting relative strangers in the gun turrets, but I needed people I could rely on in a scrap behind me.
We had recently reached Peckham, after a long period of extremely cautious walking. I was only vaguely aware of my location, but I'd seen a lot of fighting in and around this area from the air. All we had to do was walk into a few black people, and convince them not to blow us to hell, and we were sorted.
It had been a nightmare flight, with SAM and AAA radar lighting us up every couple of minutes, and no idea who the enemy were. I didn't dare retaliate when we were swept by potentially hostile radars, because we must have confused the hell out of the good guys as well as the enemy. Thankfully nobody had fired on us, presumably being in a similar bind.
There was a sudden whiplash crack up ahead as somebody let off a pistol. I ducked behind cover, searching for hostiles. A quick rattle heralded a submachine gun burst, followed by a single sharp BANG, which might have come from an assault rifle. "Cease fire!" somebody yelled. "We're not with the coup!"
"That's not why we're shooting at you!" a familiar voice replied. "We're shooting at you because you opened fire on us!"
"One of these days your gung-ho attitude to cops is going to get you in trouble, Johnny boy!" I laughed. I heaved myself over a wall, and beheld a group of armed police officers crouching behind some dustbins. A round smashed against the brickwork near my head, making me flinch.
"It's us, you dickhead!" Lyra bellowed irritably as she vaulted nimbly over the wall.
"Oh, sorry." John climbed down from the roof of a nearby building, G3A3 rifle at port-arms; not actually pointing at anybody, but held in a manner which suggests this can change quickly if the need arose. "Didn't recognise you for a minute, I'm afraid." He hadn't changed much from the seventeen year-old I'd first met about a century ago. The unruly mess of black hair was partly contained by an old baseball cap apparently obtained from some bullfighting ring in Spain, and the same tatty jeans, battered trainers and old originally-white jacket were in evidence. Isobel landed behind him, shouldering her MP5K. She was as pale and elfin-pretty as ever, though I noticed a slight abdominal bulge that elicited excited squeals from Lyra and Elaine, who were evidently overwhelmed with warm female something-or-other. Will looked at me ruefully. I shrugged.
"So what happened to John and his mates being mentally unstable, Ellie?" I enquired mildly.
"You men keep out of this!" she replied crossly. "This is girl stuff!"
//Jesus wept,// I silently groaned. //Can things get any more complicated than this?//
"Hi," said John awkwardly. "Long time no see."
"Yeah. Congratulations, mate. How's it feel-?" John stuck his gun almost up Will's nose.
"Don't, just don't. I never asked for this, and I've seen fatherhood at it's worst too many times. I'm bloody terrified of this, and I don't need anybody bloody well saying Well Done!" he growled. "You're only making this harder than it already is, dammit!"
"God, I'm sorry, John. I had no idea," Will apologised. "Listen, I don't know if it helps but I think you'll be a fantastic father, a million times better than your own. You WON'T turn into him, right?"
"Thanks," John said quietly. "I'm sorry I over-reacted a bit, it's been an absolute bitch of a day, you know?"
Isobel shook her head sadly. "It's me who's supposed to get pre-natal depression," she said in a feeble attempt at a joke. "But I'm fine. It's John who's upset and scared."
The cops looked rather surprised at this turn of events. The list of mental problems they'd encountered during their careers was huge, but this was pretty much the first serial killer with clinical depression they'd come across.
"So where's everybody else?" I asked.
"Christ knows. It's been absolute mayhem for the last few hours," John replied. "Mick was saying something about getting 'technical help' earlier, whatever he means by THAT, and I haven't seen him or the others since."
"Isn't 'technical help' an accounting euphemism for one of those pickups with machine guns on the back in the less politically stable African countries?" Will pointed out.
"Oh, come ON, even Mick wouldn't..."
A Ford pickup truck skidded to a halt nearby, a machine gun mounted on a swivel mount in the rear bed. A madly grinning Mick stuck his head out of the driver's window. "Like it?"
"Where the hell did you get hold of this lot?" Isobel asked curiously.
"You don't want to know. Hop in!" We clambered aboard, John insisting that Isobel rode in the front. I took over the big gun, a US Army-issue M60. "He's compensating for something," Elaine giggled. Will and Lyra winced.
"You've never complained before," I said tonelessly. Elaine blushed nicely.
"Just shut up," John said wearily. "Please. I've had a bad enough day without you two squabbling like an old-married couple."
"Married, yes, but I object to being referred to as old," I replied. "Maybe I'll never see forty again, but..."
"I'm warning you, Dave." There was a click as John took the safety catch off his assault rifle. "Mick, please get us out of here."
We roared off, leaving several extremely confused policemen behind.
"We should've arrested them, really," one remarked.
"Why bother? We've got more important things to sort out. And besides," said another, who'd had dealings with the Young Guns previously and would show the scars to new recruits who he thought were a bit too cocky, "I imagine they'll be an even bigger pain in the arse for the bad guys -whoever the hell THEY are- than they are for us!"
"Guess so. I wonder who those others were?"
"Who cares? Let's just get the hell out of this warzone."
The strange cavalcade halted outside a grim and grubby Peckham flatblock. Several armed men on the balconies and walkways levelled weapons at us, but shouldered them at the sight of John and friends. We were waved on past a barricade of furniture and junk, which Peckham has in abundance. A crowd of people were waiting, including a few soldiers.
"They've got the army infiltrated," John explained, "but they've been recruiting on an individual basis, so it's fairly chaotic. We haven't got a clue who to trust and who to kill. It's a bloody nightmare."
"I can imagine. Christ knows what it must be like out at sea with the Fleet." Will slung his G36. "HMS Cunningham's at the bottom of the Irish Sea, and the rest of the Navy must be tearing itself to pieces. I wonder if the rest of Europe's doing anything about it?"
"Well, we helped sort their fascists out. It's only fair, don't you think?"
I reached for my cigarettes, ignoring the resigned sigh from Elaine's direction. I lit one... and it exploded into flame.
"Yeouch! Shit, Jesus, that isn't funny!" I spluttered, trying to brush the burning tobacco off my clothes. "Who the hell came up with a joke like that?"
"Well, I've tried everything else to make you quit. Dipping the tips in barbecue lighting fluid was the last card to play," Elaine said seriously.
"Huh, ingenious!" I said sulkily. "Can anybody spare me one? I'll probably get second degree burns from these."
"Don't give him any!" Elaine ordered. Everybody had a good laugh, Elaine included when she saw my expression. I wandered off to scrounge a smoke in peace, asking myself -not for the first time- why somebody couldn't have warned me what I was in for when I asked Elaine to marry me. On the other hand, I bet she wishes somebody had warned her what SHE was in for when she said yes. Will, Mary and Lyra watch the two of us bickering with wry amusement, though my stepdaughter-in-law can compete with Elaine when she wants to.
My cellphone buzzed. "Hello?"
"Dave, it's Mary. We have a BIG problem. You probably aren't going to believe this, and you definitely aren't going to like it."
"I'm listening."
"My sensors just went crazy. Somebody just cut a portal about half a mile away from you, a big one."
"What?" I nearly dropped the ancient Trium Eclipse. "You can't be serious. Some lunatic's made another Knife or something?"
"Dave!" Elaine yelled. "You'd better see this!" I came running, and climbed the stairs to the third-floor walkway of the flatblock. "Oh my GOD!"
A huge portal had opened in a clearing, and tanks were rolling out of it. I didn't recognise the make, but I recognised the insignia. Each tank was painted with the twin lightning bolt of the SS. Behind them I caught a glimpse of some sort of laser device or something on the back of a truck.
"I don't know what form this Democratic Socialist Republic of Narnia or whatever is supposed to take," I told Will, "but Neo-Nazis don't feature anywhere in the gameplan, of that I am certain!"
"Well said. I think we'd better get the hell out of here before they start shooting at us."
John was already sprinting for the nearest 'technical'. He vaulted into the driving seat and revved the engine. "I need a gunner. Everybody else start heading into the city while I try and distract them." I took up the gunner's position, hastily calling Mary back.
"Mary, we need you airborne RIGHT NOW. There's hostile armour coming through that portal, with SS markings. They're about ten minutes from blowing us sky high. Me and John are going to distract them in a technical."
"A WHAT?"
"Haven't you watched Black Hawk Down?"
"I know what a technical is, you moron. It's the part about enemy tanks. It's suicide!"
"Suggest a better way of buying everybody else some time, then." I rang off. "You don't have to do this, John. Let that kid know their dad."
"Trust me, the poor little bugger wouldn't thank me for it. Hold tight!" We roared out from behind the barricade, blasting wildly at the tanks. The second technical was soon rushing out behind. The tanks completely ignored us, evidently seeing right through our plan, so John headed straight for the nearest.
"There's a crowbar by your feet!" he screamed at me. "Take this!" He reached throught the cab's rear window and thrust a grenade into my hands. Even by John's standards it was a crazy plan, but in the absence of anything resembling an alternative...
I dropped my G36 to the bed of the truck, and braced myself as John braked right next to the tank. I jumped across, and quickly wrestled the crowbar into position. "Come on," I hissed, "come ON, you bloody thing!" I saw another tank swing its turret around. //Holy shit, they aren't going to...// A volley of 7.62mm fire erupted from the tank's coaxial machine gun, ripping the technical's rear to pieces and narrowly missing me. //Right, sod this for a game of soldiers!// I grabbed my rifle and ran, John not far behind. We dived for cover behind a low wall, safe from small arms fire for now. I prayed I hadn't annoyed them badly enough to make them use their main armament.
My phone vibrated again, a single longish burst which signalled a text message. The name displayed read 'Al B', an innocuous cover for the number of a SIM card plugged into the Aurora Borealis's brand new microwave comms antenna. It might seem an expensive and needlessly technical alternative to a perfectly ordinary carphone set, but having a regular mobile switched on aboard an aircraft in flight buggers the instrumentation, radio and navigation systems. I found this out for myself the hard way, damn near crashing into the sea on our third proving run; partly my fault for buying Will a posh Nokia 7210, and forgetting to warn him to turn it off.
I read the message, which was immaculately typed: "You're a lunatic. Elaine will kill you even if the tanks don't. Now get the hell outta there!" I smiled ruefully, shaking my head. //Point taken, Mary.//
"Time we weren't here, John!" I yelled, geting to my feet. "Here comes our air support!"
Aurora made a single fast flypast, lower and rear turrets humming. Mary looped over, arming the quartet of AGM-65 Maverick antitank missiles under the wings. Carrying so many of these was a risk, leaving us with only two air-to-air missiles for self-defence, but it was just as well we'd gone in for them. Without some serious heavy firepower we'd be sunk, and besides, we could always leg it and use the jump drive if we were attacked by hostile fighters.
Four of the six tanks blew apart under direct hits, and the others began to scatter. The large missile pods mounted on one side of their turrets swung upwards, and what I had taken to be something like a Milan antitank job rocketed towards the aircraft. It must have been a Stinger or something, because Aurora rocketed upwards, flares spilling from the dispensers.
"Bugger!" I hastily reloaded my G36 with full metal jacket rounds, which moved so fast that they could go through a man's body like an icepick without him noticing. I fired a five round burst into the nearest tank's missile pod, which exploded in a shower of sparks and shrapnel. I ducked the return fire, and decided to make a run for it.
"Hop in mate!" John called, skidding the technical to a halt beside me. I climbed aboard, and manned the M60. Two helicopters were vectoring on us, and a missile exploded where I'd been standing a few minutes ago.
"Hit it!" I yelled, letting off an answering burst. John didn't need telling twice. He put his foot down and swerved into a side street. Another missile jetted into a wall behind us, showering me with brick dust. "Keep away from buildings!" I screamed over the roar of the pickup's engine. "They don't care who they kill!" Under other circumstances we would have stayed in fairly crowded areas, with the enemy helicopters unable to fire because of their rules of engagement, but we weren't up against soldiers any longer. We were up against thugs, and possibly the SS as well, so neither were likely to HAVE rules of engagement. "Our Father who art in heaven," I said to myself, "I know we haven't always seen eye to eye in the past, but I really could use a little help right now!"
I carried on firing, and caught the lead chopper -a Puma rigged out with wing mounted rocket launchers and miniguns- just beneath the rotorhead. It heeled over and slammed into the river, blowing apart in a gratifying fireball.
"Thank you, Lord. I owe you one for that."
The other Puma blew a hole in the road in front of us, pitching the front end of the pickup into an Underground line and catapaulting me into the tarmac, ten yards down the road. My knee smashed into the rollbar atop the truck's cab, splintering viciously. I hit the ground, rolled and skidded along, my tough flightsuit saving me from friction burns.
//Oh well, He giveth and He taketh away,// I told myself philosophically, just before succumbing to the pain and passing out.
I regained consciousness in my bunk aboard the Aurora. I could feel and move all four limbs, which was a good sign. The lower part of my right leg appeared to be missing, which was not. The bandages covering the stump suggested that my leg had taken an even worse beating than I'd realised.
"Shit," I said without much feeling. I had at least 20cc of morphine in my bloodstream at this point, and I was actually feeling fairly cheerful under the circumstances.
"Hey, I hope you recovered my other shoe, that was quite an expensive pair!" All right, perhaps 'cheerful' isn't quite the right word. 'Stoned out of my mind' might be a little nearer the mark. Saved me a fortune in dismemberment therapist's fees, though.
Elaine came to the door. "How are you feeling?" she asked.
"A wee bit legless," I giggled. "How much of the white stuff did you give me?"
"Probably too much. Don't you get used to this, Dave. The cigarettes are bad enough!" Elaine gave me a kiss, and handed me a mug of tea.
"How long was I out for?" I asked after a few sips. "Ugh. Was it Mary's turn?" Americans can't make tea. Fact of life.
"About eight hours, including the time under anaesthetic while an Army medic patched you up. He couldn't save your leg, though. It was about two feet from the rest of you when backup got to your position. And yes, Mary made the tea."
"I see," I replied, putting my cup down on the AOL free trial CD which served as an inexpensive coaster (Author's note: Does everybody do this, or just me, my dad and my FanFiction OCs?). "How's John?"
"Smashed up his collarbone and a couple of ribs, with whiplash and a concussion on top. He hadn't come round yet when I last checked."
"Nasty," I said reflectively. "Now how the hell do I get out of bed and go to the bog?"
"I managed to scrounge you some crutches, though God knows there's barely enough medical supplies to go around. I suggest you wait until the morphine wears off, though." She leaned a pair of crutches within my reach.
"Under other circumstances I'd agree, but I REALLY need to go." I grabbed them, and stood awkwardly but without falling over. I'd been on crutches twice before years ago after messing up a practice parachute landing and more recently after that embarassing business with the Ministry of Theology, so this wasn't an entirely new experience. My body now massed less, but not by enough to put my sense of balance out, and the worst challenge the lack of one foot would provide for the moment was how to pee standing up.
A short while later, I was sitting in the radar operator's station as we returned to base, with our new friends in the gun turrets. I was off flying for the forseeable future, which annoyed me as this seemed a relatively minor injury compared with some. A fellow Harrier pilot I knew quite well lost an arm when he was forced to eject and the canopy didn't shatter fully, and another colleague ended up in a wheelchair after his Sea King blew an O-ring seal and nosedived into some power cables. And these are examples of a relative minority who didn't crash badly enough to die. I couldn't really complain, when I thought about it, which is probably the only reason I didn't go to pieces once the drugs wore off. That and a crtain amount of inbuilt natural resillience bolstered by twelve years of hectoring from Elaine, including the ten we've spent actually married, I suppose.
Will had empathised quite strongly, since he'd lost most of two fingers in that nasty knife -sorry, Knife with a capital K- some years ago. My reassuring remark at the time? "Don't worry, the ladies love a few scars." In reply he had picked up a handy breadknife (we were in the kitchen) and asked if I wanted some, then. Quite witty from a guy who'd supposedly been eternally separated from his soulmate, except that he had been in deadly earnest, and the humour in this had only occured to either of us some weeks later.
"You know, the whole 'Nazis from another universe' thing explains a lot, really," Jack remarked. "The British Nationals and the like are a shambles, and there is NO WAY they could infiltrate the Navy the way they did."
"Or the Army and the RAF," Will remarked. "If we were in the US it might work, though!" This was a pleasing trend, which had seen the various branches of HM Armed Services cast aside their old rivalries, and gang up on the US military instead. Suits me, I never forgave the American military-industrial complex -Lockheed Martin especially- for bribing half the defence procurement personnel in Western Europe into buying the F104, which killed off more pilots than any war with the Russians would have.
"It makes things even harder than they already are, though," Mary added. "They could screw up the whole ecosystem of both worlds if they keep cutting portals like that. Even if they close them properly there's Spectres to deal with."
"Nice strategic weapon, really." Carrie-Anne. "Can you imagine the chaos one of those would cause if our forces came across it? And there have to be ways of sheilding yourself against them."
"Yeah, and what this aircraft's built out of is one of them," Elaine added, making final approach preparations. "We figured out a way of killing them off with the jump drive, so maybe we can..."
"Cittigaze," Lyra said speculatively. "The survivors turned the Drive into a portable Spectre-zapping system, yeah?"
"I think we ought to borrow a few," I said, guessing what she meant.
"First things first," Elaine said, putting us in a shallow glide. "If what they say about woman drivers is true it probably applys to woman pilots as well, so hold on tight everybody."
"It isn't," Mary, Lyra and Carie-Anne said firmly.
"Hah! Tell that to Dave!"
"What?" I spluttered. "I have NEVER complained about your driving skills, and not letting you ride my Ducatti is completely different!"
We continued arguing until Elaine slowly taxied through the water into the cave we used as a base. Will went with Jack, Mitch and Carrie-Anne to take their fighters on a strike mission somewhere, whilst the rest of us set about refuelling and rearming Aurora. I was relegated to checking over the weapon control systems, running various self-test routines from the cockpit.
In a blaze of white light and a burst of harps and rather off-key choiral singing, which made me wince slightly with the whole tweeness of it, Xanthania appeared. "Hi," Mary remarked casually, jacking a Sidewinder into position below the left wing before turning to talk to her. Her bird-daemon had appeared, I noticed with mild surprise.
"Greetings, my children," she boomed in reply, making me shake my head. Lyra was twenty-five, for God's sake, and she was the youngest regular Aurora Borealis crewmember. I'm forty-eight, Elaine's six months younger and Mary's on the edge of reaching the big 4-0, so why she insisted on referring to us as 'my children' I have no idea.
"Hello again," I said conversationally, making my way to the door. "Am I right in guessing that the whole weird prophetic dreams bit was something to do with you? The whole Jewish grandfather bit was a touch theatrical, but otherwise, great!"
"Yes, it was indeed me. I am glad you thought it was effective," she said lightly. "I see that you have not escaped unscathed from recent events." I glanced down at where my leg wasn't, and nodded with a rueful grin.
"Yeah, second time I've narrowly avoided death in London. That'll teach me to let John drive!"
Xanthania laughed, and sat down on a nearby HARM anti-radar missile. Elaine and I winced, and Mary took cover. Lyra tried not to laugh. "She's an ANGEL, people! And a missile won't explode if you sit on it anyway!"
"Don't you believe it," I replied. "I heard of a bloke who sat on the end of an Exocet and sparked the detonator, blew half a deck section sky high..."
"Yeah, right."
"Do you know how long the Nazis from that world have been in cahoots with the ones here?" Elaine asked, ever practical.
"We are not certain, but they have been creating portals for some time. Mercifully they seem to have realised the dangers of leaving them open, and somehow they have shielded against Dust leakage."
"Thank God for small mercies," I replied sourly. "You'd think one world would be enough, even for a maniac like Hitler or his cronies."
"Wasn't enough for my father, was it?" Lyra remarked rather bitterly. "And he was just as barmy." Couldn't argue with that, really; 'a napoleonic AND messianic complex', I believe my exact words were last time I saw Asriel.
"True. However, I have important information for you, and I cannot stay long," Xanthania said urgently. "There is a meeting between the forces of the Reich and their allies, in Lyra's world and yours, three days from now. If you can infiltrate them, you can gather information about their plans."
"Okay, but how?"
"There is a cocktail party or some similar event being used as cover, in the London of Lyra's world. With care you might gain entry," she explained.
"Oh, what fun!" I cried, with a brittle edge in my voice. "You know, I'm starting to develop a serious phobia about the old smoke. And if this means I've got to wear a tuxedo..."