Once Aurora was in the water, I started both engines and ran through the checklist.
"So how exactly do we do this?" John asked me. "You create mayhem whilst we sneak in and grab the projector truck?"
"Honestly, I haven't got a clue. We need to get there, locate a vehicle and assess the security precautions we'll be dealing with before we can plan properly, so we'll need to do some reconissance. That'll entail hiding Aurora somewhere and going in on the ground; she's a little... distinctive, shall we say?" He winced beneath his helmet. I throttled up and took off, and powered up the jump drive. "Okay, everybody, we're about to make a runup to a jump. This part's quite bumpy, so brace yourselves."
I kept my eyes glued to the screen, trying to line the crosshairs up with the fissure that I was aiming at and wishing that I'd brought one of the others along to help me out. This was like trying to manually tune a car radio whilst negotiating rush-hour traffic on the M1. Eventually I got it close enough, and hit the jump drive.
WHAM! There was the usual jolt as our kinetic energy bled away, accompanied by a flash that was painfully bright even through the tinted windscreen. I reduced power to the engines after a few seconds, and turned towards the coast. "Okay people, I'm heading for the Fens. There are people there who'll help us, unless they've been hit by the Nazis. It'll be a safe laying-up point, anyhow."
"Hey, I can see... Oh, bollocks." John and I looked at one another, and then at the twinkling patterns of light. Gun flashes and tracer, and a lot of both. "Get to the turrets, fast!" I ordered.
I made a low, swooping pass over the gyptian town, trying to work out who to shoot at. "Jesus, it's like a bar fight with guns!" I said to myself. The phrase wasn't mine; I'd first heard it used by a character in a Tom Clancy techno-thriller. This was pretty much the sort of situation that Clancy'd had in mind, though. From up here, everybody seemed to be shooting at everybody else all at once. I spotted a couple of armoured vehicles that looked too modern to be local, and watched as one exploded a building with its turret armament. It seemed unlikely that John Faa's forces would do that, so I let fly with a neatly placed quartet of rockets and splashed the vehicle responsible.
"David? Is that you?" a familiar voice shouted above crackling static from the old radio and the noise of battle. "Thank God! They're tearing us to pieces down here!"
"I'll do what I can to help, but try and get your people clear of the town; I can't tell friend from foe up here."
"We're mostly concentrated around the meeting hall, with a few others near the harbour. The rest are the enemy!"
"Got it," I replied. I began making gun passes over the town, keeping away from the areas he'd indicated. Gradually, things began to settle down, and I pulled away to let Lord Faa's forces mop up. I set us down and taxied to the jetty I'd used the last time this place had been attacked.
Lord Faa was waiting for me, a small rifle in his hands. On closer inspection it proved to be a Mauser pistol with a long barrel and a wooden shoulder stock bolted to the grip, with a very long magazine. The barrel also had a wooden grip underneath. "Nice," I said appreciatively.
"Crude, but more accurate than it looks and a ferocious rate of fire when the need arises. Cheap, too." He tucked it under his arm. "Your timing is as impeccable as always, my friend. That's another one we owe you."
"I was coming to ask for your help anyway," I replied. "The same forces are in our world, and we aren't having things a great deal better, quite frankly. What we need to do is outflank them; go right to the rotten heart of the regime and blow it sky high. To do that, we need one of those portal generator things they use, and with your help I reckon we can steal one and make off with it."
"Well, that's hardly going to be easy. The only one we've seen is behind their lines," he replied. "A very long way behind. The Aurora Borealis won't get within twenty miles without getting spotted, and the defences are pretty formidable. Even the legendary silver bird would have a hard time." This last remark carried a little mockery; Lyra had told him a few stories about what the Fleet Air Arm Typhoon could do. I'd always been vaguely embarassed about our formidable combat reputation anyway.
"I was expecting that. I had something a little stealthier in mind. What can you tell me about their base of operations?"
We went over the layout of the encampment, which was set up on the northern bank of the Thames about thirty miles downriver from Oxford. To approach by boat would be risky, as there was a constant watch by guards with night vision gear. The guards were highly attentive, as their CO had issued dire and graphic threats involving electrodes and red hot pokers about what he'd do if anybody was caught napping. Any approaches by land would be a similarly tough proposition.
"Shame we aren't back home," John remarked. There's a pipe running from the river to a water treatment plant big enough to walk through ten abreast right under that; and before you ask, no, they haven't set their camp up in the same place back where we came from. We looked into it."
"Shame," I replied. "Well, any ideas, anybody?"
"HALO drop from the Aurora Borealis?" suggested Charlie. Too many Vin Diesel films, I concluded.
"Even if we had the right equipment, you'd need to jump out of the Space Shuttle. Anything between the altitudes of forty and forty thousand feet would be spotted thirty miles away, and be blown out of the sky. Aurora's many things, but she's no stealth fighter."
"Then what the hell are we going to do?" one of the tank drivers asked. "Every avenue of approach has fifty MGs on it, and we'd need a full mechanised infantry battalion, a tank company and artillery support to make a frontal assault."
"We have precisely none out of three," I replied bitterly. "Besides, if the people in charge have any sense they'll destroy the projector vehicle before they let us capture it."
"Wait a second," cut in Mick, privately educated, science buff and the only person currently present who had a clue how the Malone Dimensional Transition Drive worked. "I've got an idea. The jump drive uses electromagnetic radiation, right?"
"An EMP weapon," John said, comprehension dawning.
"Theoretically, maybe, but almost impossible in practice. Too powerful and we'd destroy the electronics in the projector, rather than just trip the circuit breakers, and we'd have to be less than half a mile from the encampment. Besides, I'd expect armoured vehicles showing that level of technical development to be EMP-hardened, especially if that projector system uses the same basic principle as ours. Nice idea, though," I replied. "Any other suggestions?"
"If we hijacked an enemy vehicle and stole some uniforms, we could bluff our way in," Trish suggested. "Could you pass as German, Sandy?"
"A Sudetenlander, easily, and that ought to be enough. If you don't mind all being Other Ranks, we might get past the outer defences. A few of us could slip away and grab the projector vehicle whilst I chat to the commandant."
"It sounds like a film script, but it's almost silly enough to work," I concluded. "If nobody has a better idea...? Right, that's settled."
Lord Faa's forces found and took control of a truck ferrying supplies from the delivery point at base camp to some outpost further afield, and its cargo included uniforms and weapons. We equipped ourselves carefully.
"Okay," I said thoughtfully. "Lord Faa, can you get some good riflemen in vantage points near the camp? As soon as we start moving, they can start picking off machine gunners, officers, and just generally causing chaos."
"Works for us!" John chipped in. "Trish, Mick, one of you can borrow my G3 for that; neither of you would make convincing stormtroopers, anyway."
The remaining Young Guns, not to mention me, turned to him in shock. John was normally possessive of his preferred weapon, to the point of being mildly neurotic as only somebody with Asperger's Syndrome can be [Author's note: before anybody leaps all over me for being offensive to people with autism, can I point out that I actually HAVE Asperger's?]. I was hit by a sudden insight, and dragged him to one side.
"You've got nothing to prove, John," I told him firmly.
"I don't want to prove anything," he replied hotly. "I'm just tired of being the one who's safely out of the action. I only ever see my targets through a zoom scope, and part of me always feels guilty because the others are out there being shot at whilst I'm half a mile away."
"You what?" Trish blurted. "You've been diving headlong into every single firefight like you don't give a damn if you get hit every day for weeks..."
I was hit by a recollection of the day we'd met in London, and I looked at John properly for the first time. There was a drawn, haunted look in his eyes, as of a man wrestling with a fear he could barely control.
"John, what demon is it you're trying to fight?" I said gently. "What's got you so scared?"
"My father. Myself. My child," he said in a monotone. "I had to kill my own father, remember? I'm hoping I'll save him or her the trouble. I'm scared of what I might become; scared of myself. I'm a killer, a criminal with so many dead men to my name I've lost count. The honest truth is, every time I go into battle I pray I won't live through it. I'm scared to live, but not brave enough to just stick my gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. At least if I go down in a firefight the kid'll have a dead hero for a dad and not a living bastard."
"you don't know that's how you'll turn out, John," Trish insisted. "Isobel's not daft enough to go out with somebody like that."
"My father fooled my mother for a lot longer than ten years, Trish."
"She wasn't getting shot at half the time, though. Besides, if you're still capable of thinking like that then there's something better in you," I replied. "Hey, look at it this way. If you DO turn out to be a bastard then Isobel can kill you long before your sprog feels the need to."
"You know, that's actually sort of reassuring," John replied, brightening a little. However, gloom and pessimism are terribly tenacious. His face, which had lifted somewhat, did that slow crashing thing that glaciers in summer are renowned for. "My mum could have as well, though."
"Whether that's true or not, you're staying here. I'm not fighting alongside anybody wish a death wish like yours; people like that tend not to be only the only ones who get killed," I said severely.
"Now, hang on a minute!" he said furiously. "When was the last time I endangered anybody but me?"
"He's right," Trish conceded. "He's almost always drawn fire AWAY from everybody else, to be honest. If it wasn't John I'd be quite happy about it."
"Well, I for one don't intend to treat him as expendable. You aren't going anywhere, John. I don't want to be the man who explains to Isobel why her child will never know their father. Give me your gun."
"If you want it, you'll have to take it from me," he snarled.
"What are you going to do?" I asked patiently, reasonably. "Shoot your way out and launch a solo assault on the camp? Go out in a blaze of glory?"
"I can think of worse options right now. Look, I need to get out there and do as much damage as I possibly can before I die. Right now, I'd run screaming at a machine gun nest if I thought it'd be useful, but it won't. I'll do anything I possibly can to achieve the objective, and I mean anything."
I weighed my options, and decided that if I left John behind he'd probably end up doing something crazy. At least Sandy and I could keep an eye on him.
"Okay, you win. Get a uniform on."
We drove up to the checkpoint. Sandy played the Arrogant Waffen-SS Officer, whilst I was Prisoner With Important Information. If we could bluff our way into the commandant's tent or command vehicle or whatever, we could hold him and anybody else present at gunpoint- we couldn't afford to allow the commandant to REALLY question me, as I was rather attached to my toenails and devoutly wished for this to remain the case.
Our two tank drivers and a couple of the best of Lord Faa's men slipped away to gain entry to the projector vehicle, equipped with the silenced weapons thoughtfully provided by Owen. The remainder, including John, escorted me to the large tent where Oberst Lucien Rommel was trying very hard to live up to his famous ancestor's well-deserved reputation.
"Not exactly the most challenging task they could have set me," he complained. "These people are no further along than my grandfather's adversaries." I briefly wondered why he was speaking in English.
"I quite agree, colonel. The only serious threat we will be facing is a single aircraft from Target-World Beta equipped with a form of the technology onboard your own JU-857s," a depressingly familiar voice replied seductively.
I'd been more than half expecting Marissa Coulter to turn up here. If I hadn't had the privilege of seeing Asriel being gunned down in the North, just before the final collapse of the Magisterium's forces at their redoubt near the old Experimental Station, I'd have been listening out for him as well. I'd dearly love to know how they got away from that Abyss, but that's something I never got to ask either of them.
"Ah," she said as we entered the tent. "It appears that even that problem is solved. Well done indeed, Oberleutnant...?"
"Dzerhinsky, ma'am; Mikhail Dzerhinsky," Sandy replied, overlaying his English with an accent part German and part Czech, as befitted a native of the mainly German-speaking communities of Czechoslovakia near the border. //You missed your vocation, friend,// I thought admiringly. //You're West End material! Let that bitch-queen from hell [It is the considered opinion of every member of the crew that Arnold Rimmer's maternal issues pale in comparison with mine- Lyra] think you're lapping it up!//
"You think?" I said defiantly. "All four of the others can fly Aurora, and they'll be coming for you. It won't just be my aircraft, either; we managed to shoehorn jump systems into several of the Royal Navy's most potent carrier aircraft, and I can personally vouch for the skill of their pilots."
"Do you think I know nothing of these things?" she laughed. "I have seen the equipment required for such an undertaking. No fighter that was not expressly designed for the purpose can support the technology without losing most of its capabilities."
"More than just a pretty face, I see," I replied smoothly. "But a touch overconfident nevertheless." That was the trigger phrase. The others immediately levelled their weapons at the soldier and the tart. I removed the quick-release knots on the bindings around my wrists and drew my handgun from beneath my flightsuit, which was baggy enough to conceal almost anything.
Rommel Jr began to swear in German, but quietly. He was no fool, even if we'd duped him. "I should have known," he grumbled. "No Aryan would have the same surname as Iron Felix." Felix Dzerhinsky was Stalin's head of internal security and personal hatchet man, played very well by Bob Hoskins in Enemy At The Gates (I think), and a sort of Communist Himmler. Sandy does not like being reminded of this, and had to be restrained from clouting him one with his rifle butt.
"You know your history, if nothing else," I conceded. "Now we are going to leave quietly in a vehicle that some friends of mine are acquiring and there is precisely nothing you can do about it without getting killed in the process, so don't waste your time and energy trying to work out exceedingly clever ways of raising the alarm, because they will be no more than a minor inconvenience to us but will cost you your lives."
"In other words, you're buggered," John replied cheerfully.
"Letting me live will be a mistake that I swear by all that's sacred will cost you your life!" Mrs Coulter said through gritted teeth.
"Oh, I'm not letting you live," I replied. "I just owe Lyra the chance to finish what she started with Asriel, personally. Besides, we don't have the bullets to waste on something like you." There was a general outcry as a vehicle engine started up outside. I heard some shots, and hoarse cries of alarm. "That'll be some friends of ours," I said with a winning smile. "Take note, Colonel; harassing fire from distant snipers can cause as much disruption as an artillery barrage, if not more." I performed a mocking Party salue. "Auf wiedershen!"
The projector vehicle pulled up outside, and we packed inside. It was a converson from an armoured personnel carrier chassis, much as most armies fitted APC bodies out as anti-air or wired guided anti-tank missile platforms. The projector unit was on the roof, operated from within the troop compartment for some reason, and somewhat unexpectedly it included a machine gun mounted coaxially [zeroed to the same crosshair as the primary weapon, typically the gun of a tank]. Presumably this was to provide suppressing fire should there be hostile forces on the other side of the portal. The screen seemed broadly similar to the one on Aurora, usually operated by Mary. I pointed it at a fissure, and a stream of text scrolled along the bottom of the screen with the heading of 'Target Beta'.
"That's home!" I said. "How do I turn this thing on?"
"Button on the left, under the plastic safety cover!" Sandy replied, glancing at the controls and reading the label. He'd warned me that his written German was pretty poor, but I supposed that 'Open Portal' and 'Self-Destruct' wouldn't look much alike, so I took his word for it and pressed the button. Thankfully Sandy was right, and a portal opened in front of us. Our driver -I never found out his name- floored the accelerator, and we lurched forward. I turned the turret around -the joystick in front of the screen was self-explanatory, at least- and fired the coaxial gun at a soldier raising something that bore an ancestral resemblence to the old WWII Panzerfaust anti-armour weapon. He went down.
"We're through! Seal it up!" The implications of the portal staying open didn't register with me at the time. "Button below the activator!" I pressed it, and whatever process that had wedged a fissure open indefinitely reversed itself. The leakage of Dust ceased.
"The damn fools," I said quietly. "Don't they realise, or don't they care?"
"What?" asked John, curiously.
"The static you saw on the screen is dark matter. If too much of it's allowed to pass through one of those barriers, it messes up the Law for the Conservation of Energy, and that'll frazzle the whole fabric of space-time or something; I don't know all the science, but I do know that it won't be good."
"Great; I trust that your own jump drive doesn't do anything like that."
"No, and it should be relatively simple to correct the problem with the right equipment. I can only assume that the Nazis just don't care." We all got out of the vehicle to check the map. We decided to head for the approximate location of the gyptian town, and open another portal there to get back to Aurora. We'd then figure out how best to get the projector system back to our forces. I reckoned that our best bet was to strip the turret and computer systems out, shove them in the back of Aurora and fly home with them, but Sandy recommended calling in a pickup helicopter and shifting the whole thing. There was merit in both ideas, and the compromise that we settled upon was to drive down to the Fens and open a portal so that we could retrieve Aurora and return Lord Faa's men home, then call in a pickup; we doubted that Owen would risk one of his carrier's two heavy lifting choppers this far inland anyway.
"So long as we don't run into any enemy patrols -they'll very much want to know why a vehicle as important as this one is so far from base, and even you can't bluff us out of that, Sandy- we'll be fine. Keep your guns cocked, though, just in case."
Two hours later, we arrived at the right spot and opened a portal. "Oh, shit!"
Another attack was underway. Somebody had got Aurora's dorsal turret going, and was spraying a steady stream of suppressing fire at some unknown target. I yelled at the driver to drive through, swinging the turret around in the hope of doing something to help. The others piled out, weapons at the ready.
We were facing at least eighteen soldiers backed up by a big Infantry Fighting Vehicle, a cross between tank and armoured personnel carrier. I took in the huge 30mm cannon that could cut this thing in half, and the two huge anti-tank missiles. I gave some thought to our own glorified shoulder arm.
"We have a problem."
John was running like hell towards the IFV. What in God's name was he doing? He clambered up the turret, and turned his attention to the missiles. Oh Jesus God he was...
John fired his beloved Browning High-Power handgun into the explosive warhead of the missile. The whole upper body of the IFV was blown apart, and it began to burn. The crew scrambled out just before it blew up completely.
We stood over the burning wreckage, our grief and shock mingling with admiration. "Well, John, you got your wish," Sandy said quietly, his voice quavering. He picked something up; John's gun. He pointed it at the sky and pulled the trigger. It fired! He fired three times more in succession, as slowly as a military guard of honour.
"Isobel should get this," I concluded. "We need to... find what we can to bury and-"
"Ahem," a voice remarked as somebody lifted a large sheet of armour plating off himself. "In the words of Granny Weatherwax, I ain't dead!"
Grubby but indomidable, John reclaimed his sidearm. "Not a conventional tankbusting technique, but quite effective!" he said cheerily, swaying gently.
"Isobel is going to have a bloody fit!" Trish said, half angry and half ecstatic with relief.
"Only if you tell her," I replied pointedly. "I suggest you don't; apoplexy can induce miscarriage." Isobel was also possessed of a temper that made even Elaine duck for cover when she unleashed it, even when not up the stick. The mess that her unborn offspring was making of her hormone levels had done nothing to improve matters.
"Let's just get back, shall we?" Mick suggested.
"Good idea. The sooner we set up for a counter attack the..." John fell backwards, out cold before he hit the ground.
"We'll stick him in one of the bunks and give him a cup of tea when he comes around, and we DON'T tell Isobel. She'll strangle him with her bare hands," I said firmly. "Give me a hand with him, will you?"
"So how exactly do we do this?" John asked me. "You create mayhem whilst we sneak in and grab the projector truck?"
"Honestly, I haven't got a clue. We need to get there, locate a vehicle and assess the security precautions we'll be dealing with before we can plan properly, so we'll need to do some reconissance. That'll entail hiding Aurora somewhere and going in on the ground; she's a little... distinctive, shall we say?" He winced beneath his helmet. I throttled up and took off, and powered up the jump drive. "Okay, everybody, we're about to make a runup to a jump. This part's quite bumpy, so brace yourselves."
I kept my eyes glued to the screen, trying to line the crosshairs up with the fissure that I was aiming at and wishing that I'd brought one of the others along to help me out. This was like trying to manually tune a car radio whilst negotiating rush-hour traffic on the M1. Eventually I got it close enough, and hit the jump drive.
WHAM! There was the usual jolt as our kinetic energy bled away, accompanied by a flash that was painfully bright even through the tinted windscreen. I reduced power to the engines after a few seconds, and turned towards the coast. "Okay people, I'm heading for the Fens. There are people there who'll help us, unless they've been hit by the Nazis. It'll be a safe laying-up point, anyhow."
"Hey, I can see... Oh, bollocks." John and I looked at one another, and then at the twinkling patterns of light. Gun flashes and tracer, and a lot of both. "Get to the turrets, fast!" I ordered.
I made a low, swooping pass over the gyptian town, trying to work out who to shoot at. "Jesus, it's like a bar fight with guns!" I said to myself. The phrase wasn't mine; I'd first heard it used by a character in a Tom Clancy techno-thriller. This was pretty much the sort of situation that Clancy'd had in mind, though. From up here, everybody seemed to be shooting at everybody else all at once. I spotted a couple of armoured vehicles that looked too modern to be local, and watched as one exploded a building with its turret armament. It seemed unlikely that John Faa's forces would do that, so I let fly with a neatly placed quartet of rockets and splashed the vehicle responsible.
"David? Is that you?" a familiar voice shouted above crackling static from the old radio and the noise of battle. "Thank God! They're tearing us to pieces down here!"
"I'll do what I can to help, but try and get your people clear of the town; I can't tell friend from foe up here."
"We're mostly concentrated around the meeting hall, with a few others near the harbour. The rest are the enemy!"
"Got it," I replied. I began making gun passes over the town, keeping away from the areas he'd indicated. Gradually, things began to settle down, and I pulled away to let Lord Faa's forces mop up. I set us down and taxied to the jetty I'd used the last time this place had been attacked.
Lord Faa was waiting for me, a small rifle in his hands. On closer inspection it proved to be a Mauser pistol with a long barrel and a wooden shoulder stock bolted to the grip, with a very long magazine. The barrel also had a wooden grip underneath. "Nice," I said appreciatively.
"Crude, but more accurate than it looks and a ferocious rate of fire when the need arises. Cheap, too." He tucked it under his arm. "Your timing is as impeccable as always, my friend. That's another one we owe you."
"I was coming to ask for your help anyway," I replied. "The same forces are in our world, and we aren't having things a great deal better, quite frankly. What we need to do is outflank them; go right to the rotten heart of the regime and blow it sky high. To do that, we need one of those portal generator things they use, and with your help I reckon we can steal one and make off with it."
"Well, that's hardly going to be easy. The only one we've seen is behind their lines," he replied. "A very long way behind. The Aurora Borealis won't get within twenty miles without getting spotted, and the defences are pretty formidable. Even the legendary silver bird would have a hard time." This last remark carried a little mockery; Lyra had told him a few stories about what the Fleet Air Arm Typhoon could do. I'd always been vaguely embarassed about our formidable combat reputation anyway.
"I was expecting that. I had something a little stealthier in mind. What can you tell me about their base of operations?"
We went over the layout of the encampment, which was set up on the northern bank of the Thames about thirty miles downriver from Oxford. To approach by boat would be risky, as there was a constant watch by guards with night vision gear. The guards were highly attentive, as their CO had issued dire and graphic threats involving electrodes and red hot pokers about what he'd do if anybody was caught napping. Any approaches by land would be a similarly tough proposition.
"Shame we aren't back home," John remarked. There's a pipe running from the river to a water treatment plant big enough to walk through ten abreast right under that; and before you ask, no, they haven't set their camp up in the same place back where we came from. We looked into it."
"Shame," I replied. "Well, any ideas, anybody?"
"HALO drop from the Aurora Borealis?" suggested Charlie. Too many Vin Diesel films, I concluded.
"Even if we had the right equipment, you'd need to jump out of the Space Shuttle. Anything between the altitudes of forty and forty thousand feet would be spotted thirty miles away, and be blown out of the sky. Aurora's many things, but she's no stealth fighter."
"Then what the hell are we going to do?" one of the tank drivers asked. "Every avenue of approach has fifty MGs on it, and we'd need a full mechanised infantry battalion, a tank company and artillery support to make a frontal assault."
"We have precisely none out of three," I replied bitterly. "Besides, if the people in charge have any sense they'll destroy the projector vehicle before they let us capture it."
"Wait a second," cut in Mick, privately educated, science buff and the only person currently present who had a clue how the Malone Dimensional Transition Drive worked. "I've got an idea. The jump drive uses electromagnetic radiation, right?"
"An EMP weapon," John said, comprehension dawning.
"Theoretically, maybe, but almost impossible in practice. Too powerful and we'd destroy the electronics in the projector, rather than just trip the circuit breakers, and we'd have to be less than half a mile from the encampment. Besides, I'd expect armoured vehicles showing that level of technical development to be EMP-hardened, especially if that projector system uses the same basic principle as ours. Nice idea, though," I replied. "Any other suggestions?"
"If we hijacked an enemy vehicle and stole some uniforms, we could bluff our way in," Trish suggested. "Could you pass as German, Sandy?"
"A Sudetenlander, easily, and that ought to be enough. If you don't mind all being Other Ranks, we might get past the outer defences. A few of us could slip away and grab the projector vehicle whilst I chat to the commandant."
"It sounds like a film script, but it's almost silly enough to work," I concluded. "If nobody has a better idea...? Right, that's settled."
Lord Faa's forces found and took control of a truck ferrying supplies from the delivery point at base camp to some outpost further afield, and its cargo included uniforms and weapons. We equipped ourselves carefully.
"Okay," I said thoughtfully. "Lord Faa, can you get some good riflemen in vantage points near the camp? As soon as we start moving, they can start picking off machine gunners, officers, and just generally causing chaos."
"Works for us!" John chipped in. "Trish, Mick, one of you can borrow my G3 for that; neither of you would make convincing stormtroopers, anyway."
The remaining Young Guns, not to mention me, turned to him in shock. John was normally possessive of his preferred weapon, to the point of being mildly neurotic as only somebody with Asperger's Syndrome can be [Author's note: before anybody leaps all over me for being offensive to people with autism, can I point out that I actually HAVE Asperger's?]. I was hit by a sudden insight, and dragged him to one side.
"You've got nothing to prove, John," I told him firmly.
"I don't want to prove anything," he replied hotly. "I'm just tired of being the one who's safely out of the action. I only ever see my targets through a zoom scope, and part of me always feels guilty because the others are out there being shot at whilst I'm half a mile away."
"You what?" Trish blurted. "You've been diving headlong into every single firefight like you don't give a damn if you get hit every day for weeks..."
I was hit by a recollection of the day we'd met in London, and I looked at John properly for the first time. There was a drawn, haunted look in his eyes, as of a man wrestling with a fear he could barely control.
"John, what demon is it you're trying to fight?" I said gently. "What's got you so scared?"
"My father. Myself. My child," he said in a monotone. "I had to kill my own father, remember? I'm hoping I'll save him or her the trouble. I'm scared of what I might become; scared of myself. I'm a killer, a criminal with so many dead men to my name I've lost count. The honest truth is, every time I go into battle I pray I won't live through it. I'm scared to live, but not brave enough to just stick my gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. At least if I go down in a firefight the kid'll have a dead hero for a dad and not a living bastard."
"you don't know that's how you'll turn out, John," Trish insisted. "Isobel's not daft enough to go out with somebody like that."
"My father fooled my mother for a lot longer than ten years, Trish."
"She wasn't getting shot at half the time, though. Besides, if you're still capable of thinking like that then there's something better in you," I replied. "Hey, look at it this way. If you DO turn out to be a bastard then Isobel can kill you long before your sprog feels the need to."
"You know, that's actually sort of reassuring," John replied, brightening a little. However, gloom and pessimism are terribly tenacious. His face, which had lifted somewhat, did that slow crashing thing that glaciers in summer are renowned for. "My mum could have as well, though."
"Whether that's true or not, you're staying here. I'm not fighting alongside anybody wish a death wish like yours; people like that tend not to be only the only ones who get killed," I said severely.
"Now, hang on a minute!" he said furiously. "When was the last time I endangered anybody but me?"
"He's right," Trish conceded. "He's almost always drawn fire AWAY from everybody else, to be honest. If it wasn't John I'd be quite happy about it."
"Well, I for one don't intend to treat him as expendable. You aren't going anywhere, John. I don't want to be the man who explains to Isobel why her child will never know their father. Give me your gun."
"If you want it, you'll have to take it from me," he snarled.
"What are you going to do?" I asked patiently, reasonably. "Shoot your way out and launch a solo assault on the camp? Go out in a blaze of glory?"
"I can think of worse options right now. Look, I need to get out there and do as much damage as I possibly can before I die. Right now, I'd run screaming at a machine gun nest if I thought it'd be useful, but it won't. I'll do anything I possibly can to achieve the objective, and I mean anything."
I weighed my options, and decided that if I left John behind he'd probably end up doing something crazy. At least Sandy and I could keep an eye on him.
"Okay, you win. Get a uniform on."
We drove up to the checkpoint. Sandy played the Arrogant Waffen-SS Officer, whilst I was Prisoner With Important Information. If we could bluff our way into the commandant's tent or command vehicle or whatever, we could hold him and anybody else present at gunpoint- we couldn't afford to allow the commandant to REALLY question me, as I was rather attached to my toenails and devoutly wished for this to remain the case.
Our two tank drivers and a couple of the best of Lord Faa's men slipped away to gain entry to the projector vehicle, equipped with the silenced weapons thoughtfully provided by Owen. The remainder, including John, escorted me to the large tent where Oberst Lucien Rommel was trying very hard to live up to his famous ancestor's well-deserved reputation.
"Not exactly the most challenging task they could have set me," he complained. "These people are no further along than my grandfather's adversaries." I briefly wondered why he was speaking in English.
"I quite agree, colonel. The only serious threat we will be facing is a single aircraft from Target-World Beta equipped with a form of the technology onboard your own JU-857s," a depressingly familiar voice replied seductively.
I'd been more than half expecting Marissa Coulter to turn up here. If I hadn't had the privilege of seeing Asriel being gunned down in the North, just before the final collapse of the Magisterium's forces at their redoubt near the old Experimental Station, I'd have been listening out for him as well. I'd dearly love to know how they got away from that Abyss, but that's something I never got to ask either of them.
"Ah," she said as we entered the tent. "It appears that even that problem is solved. Well done indeed, Oberleutnant...?"
"Dzerhinsky, ma'am; Mikhail Dzerhinsky," Sandy replied, overlaying his English with an accent part German and part Czech, as befitted a native of the mainly German-speaking communities of Czechoslovakia near the border. //You missed your vocation, friend,// I thought admiringly. //You're West End material! Let that bitch-queen from hell [It is the considered opinion of every member of the crew that Arnold Rimmer's maternal issues pale in comparison with mine- Lyra] think you're lapping it up!//
"You think?" I said defiantly. "All four of the others can fly Aurora, and they'll be coming for you. It won't just be my aircraft, either; we managed to shoehorn jump systems into several of the Royal Navy's most potent carrier aircraft, and I can personally vouch for the skill of their pilots."
"Do you think I know nothing of these things?" she laughed. "I have seen the equipment required for such an undertaking. No fighter that was not expressly designed for the purpose can support the technology without losing most of its capabilities."
"More than just a pretty face, I see," I replied smoothly. "But a touch overconfident nevertheless." That was the trigger phrase. The others immediately levelled their weapons at the soldier and the tart. I removed the quick-release knots on the bindings around my wrists and drew my handgun from beneath my flightsuit, which was baggy enough to conceal almost anything.
Rommel Jr began to swear in German, but quietly. He was no fool, even if we'd duped him. "I should have known," he grumbled. "No Aryan would have the same surname as Iron Felix." Felix Dzerhinsky was Stalin's head of internal security and personal hatchet man, played very well by Bob Hoskins in Enemy At The Gates (I think), and a sort of Communist Himmler. Sandy does not like being reminded of this, and had to be restrained from clouting him one with his rifle butt.
"You know your history, if nothing else," I conceded. "Now we are going to leave quietly in a vehicle that some friends of mine are acquiring and there is precisely nothing you can do about it without getting killed in the process, so don't waste your time and energy trying to work out exceedingly clever ways of raising the alarm, because they will be no more than a minor inconvenience to us but will cost you your lives."
"In other words, you're buggered," John replied cheerfully.
"Letting me live will be a mistake that I swear by all that's sacred will cost you your life!" Mrs Coulter said through gritted teeth.
"Oh, I'm not letting you live," I replied. "I just owe Lyra the chance to finish what she started with Asriel, personally. Besides, we don't have the bullets to waste on something like you." There was a general outcry as a vehicle engine started up outside. I heard some shots, and hoarse cries of alarm. "That'll be some friends of ours," I said with a winning smile. "Take note, Colonel; harassing fire from distant snipers can cause as much disruption as an artillery barrage, if not more." I performed a mocking Party salue. "Auf wiedershen!"
The projector vehicle pulled up outside, and we packed inside. It was a converson from an armoured personnel carrier chassis, much as most armies fitted APC bodies out as anti-air or wired guided anti-tank missile platforms. The projector unit was on the roof, operated from within the troop compartment for some reason, and somewhat unexpectedly it included a machine gun mounted coaxially [zeroed to the same crosshair as the primary weapon, typically the gun of a tank]. Presumably this was to provide suppressing fire should there be hostile forces on the other side of the portal. The screen seemed broadly similar to the one on Aurora, usually operated by Mary. I pointed it at a fissure, and a stream of text scrolled along the bottom of the screen with the heading of 'Target Beta'.
"That's home!" I said. "How do I turn this thing on?"
"Button on the left, under the plastic safety cover!" Sandy replied, glancing at the controls and reading the label. He'd warned me that his written German was pretty poor, but I supposed that 'Open Portal' and 'Self-Destruct' wouldn't look much alike, so I took his word for it and pressed the button. Thankfully Sandy was right, and a portal opened in front of us. Our driver -I never found out his name- floored the accelerator, and we lurched forward. I turned the turret around -the joystick in front of the screen was self-explanatory, at least- and fired the coaxial gun at a soldier raising something that bore an ancestral resemblence to the old WWII Panzerfaust anti-armour weapon. He went down.
"We're through! Seal it up!" The implications of the portal staying open didn't register with me at the time. "Button below the activator!" I pressed it, and whatever process that had wedged a fissure open indefinitely reversed itself. The leakage of Dust ceased.
"The damn fools," I said quietly. "Don't they realise, or don't they care?"
"What?" asked John, curiously.
"The static you saw on the screen is dark matter. If too much of it's allowed to pass through one of those barriers, it messes up the Law for the Conservation of Energy, and that'll frazzle the whole fabric of space-time or something; I don't know all the science, but I do know that it won't be good."
"Great; I trust that your own jump drive doesn't do anything like that."
"No, and it should be relatively simple to correct the problem with the right equipment. I can only assume that the Nazis just don't care." We all got out of the vehicle to check the map. We decided to head for the approximate location of the gyptian town, and open another portal there to get back to Aurora. We'd then figure out how best to get the projector system back to our forces. I reckoned that our best bet was to strip the turret and computer systems out, shove them in the back of Aurora and fly home with them, but Sandy recommended calling in a pickup helicopter and shifting the whole thing. There was merit in both ideas, and the compromise that we settled upon was to drive down to the Fens and open a portal so that we could retrieve Aurora and return Lord Faa's men home, then call in a pickup; we doubted that Owen would risk one of his carrier's two heavy lifting choppers this far inland anyway.
"So long as we don't run into any enemy patrols -they'll very much want to know why a vehicle as important as this one is so far from base, and even you can't bluff us out of that, Sandy- we'll be fine. Keep your guns cocked, though, just in case."
Two hours later, we arrived at the right spot and opened a portal. "Oh, shit!"
Another attack was underway. Somebody had got Aurora's dorsal turret going, and was spraying a steady stream of suppressing fire at some unknown target. I yelled at the driver to drive through, swinging the turret around in the hope of doing something to help. The others piled out, weapons at the ready.
We were facing at least eighteen soldiers backed up by a big Infantry Fighting Vehicle, a cross between tank and armoured personnel carrier. I took in the huge 30mm cannon that could cut this thing in half, and the two huge anti-tank missiles. I gave some thought to our own glorified shoulder arm.
"We have a problem."
John was running like hell towards the IFV. What in God's name was he doing? He clambered up the turret, and turned his attention to the missiles. Oh Jesus God he was...
John fired his beloved Browning High-Power handgun into the explosive warhead of the missile. The whole upper body of the IFV was blown apart, and it began to burn. The crew scrambled out just before it blew up completely.
We stood over the burning wreckage, our grief and shock mingling with admiration. "Well, John, you got your wish," Sandy said quietly, his voice quavering. He picked something up; John's gun. He pointed it at the sky and pulled the trigger. It fired! He fired three times more in succession, as slowly as a military guard of honour.
"Isobel should get this," I concluded. "We need to... find what we can to bury and-"
"Ahem," a voice remarked as somebody lifted a large sheet of armour plating off himself. "In the words of Granny Weatherwax, I ain't dead!"
Grubby but indomidable, John reclaimed his sidearm. "Not a conventional tankbusting technique, but quite effective!" he said cheerily, swaying gently.
"Isobel is going to have a bloody fit!" Trish said, half angry and half ecstatic with relief.
"Only if you tell her," I replied pointedly. "I suggest you don't; apoplexy can induce miscarriage." Isobel was also possessed of a temper that made even Elaine duck for cover when she unleashed it, even when not up the stick. The mess that her unborn offspring was making of her hormone levels had done nothing to improve matters.
"Let's just get back, shall we?" Mick suggested.
"Good idea. The sooner we set up for a counter attack the..." John fell backwards, out cold before he hit the ground.
"We'll stick him in one of the bunks and give him a cup of tea when he comes around, and we DON'T tell Isobel. She'll strangle him with her bare hands," I said firmly. "Give me a hand with him, will you?"