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The Companion: Part 46: WARNING

Monday, 31 Jan 2011, 20:43
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Edited by William Justin Thirsk-Gaskill, Monday, 31 Jan 2011, 20:51

This part contains references to physical suffering which some readers may find disturbing. 

To prepare for the start of Operation Meat-grinder, we needed to get all of our people out of Hardboard City.  Some of Anna’s girls had already left.  I tuned into what Layla could see and hear.  She was walking down one of the streets in the early morning, and two invaders with automatic rifles were coming to towards her.  They told her to accompany them.  I didn’t want her to do anything that would arouse suspicion.  They headed for the edge of the town.  I could not work out what was going on at first, but then I saw the tank, and it began to dawn on me.  Spalding and Brunton were there.  Layla asked what they wanted her for, but they ignored her.  Just then, Ben Stewart appeared and spoke to Spalding.

            ‘Sir, what do you want with this woman?’

            ‘I am going to put her inside this tank when the captured shell is test-fired.’

            ‘Sir, could I respectfully ask why you want to do that?’

            ‘Insurance in case anything goes wrong.’

            ‘Sir, is your army not a man’s army?  A tank is no place for a female.’

            ‘Are you contradicting me?’

            ‘Not at all, sir.  What I am suggesting, sir, is that I should go inside instead of her.’

            ‘Why?’

            ‘I used to be a tank-gunner.  I could help your tank crew to assess the firing and give you a technical report on how the ammunition behaves.’

            ‘Mm.  It is true that the crew are rather raw and inexperienced.  All right.  I accept your suggestion.’  Layla watched as Ben mounted the tank, opened the hatch on top of the turret, and climbed inside.  He was still in civilian clothes, but his practised movements silhouetted in the half-light picked him out as a soldier. 

            The tank’s engine roared as it manoeuvred so that it was pointing in the direction of a hillock about 500 metres away.  There was a muffled whirring of electric motors and the turret moved to exactly the right angle, and the gun slightly increased its elevation.  And then came the explosion, which ripped the turret off, and sent it flying through the air.  All the onlookers, including Spalding, Brunton, a few of their troops and Layla , ran.  In the furious moment of the disaster, it was impossible to judge whether the hulk of spinning metal was heading in one’s own direction.  A few seconds later, there was another explosion as the fire spread to the fuel tank.  I sent Layla an instruction to just keep running.  I heard a few bullets whine past her as she left the town.

            Ben’s last act before he went to his death had been to wipe with meticulous care the grains of sugar from around the nozzles of the cans of kerosene he had just adulterated. 

            He had sacrificed himself to save Layla, a moderately-sophisticated android whose entire set of data, software and hardware I could have rebuilt.

            Ben had explained to me how the booby-trapped shells would work.  They were designed by Holt.  They had no propellant, and no firing-ring (that is the part that contains the expanding gases and makes the shell fly out of the gun-barrel).  The outside of the shell had a concealed gadget on it to lock it in place inside the firing mechanism.  Inside the shell-casing was just a detonator, and a charge.  The charge in this case was high explosive plus depleted uranium.  When the gun was fired, the cylindrically-shaped explosive would have gone off inside the chamber, and shock waves spread, both outwards and inwards.  The outward one would have started to crack the firing mechanism of the gun to pieces.  The inward one would have encountered the depleted uranium core, and driven it like a bullet backwards, towards the inside of the crew compartment.  The depleted uranium would be starting to liquefy as the metal was driven through a hole that, under normal conditions, would have been far too small for it to travel though.  Hundreds of beads of uranium would then have flown and bounced around the interior, like lead shot inside a washing machine.  Any soft object in their way (such as a person) would have been penetrated.  A few milliseconds after that, the depleted uranium would have burst into flames. 

            I sent Kelvin a message to say that the tank had been destroyed.  This was the trigger to start Operation Meat-grinder.

            While Spalding strutted and shouted and looked for some-one to lash out at, his men were getting ready for a parade and inspection.  They climbed down the metal rungs into the Kettle, to immerse themselves in the warm, mist-shrouded water.  I counted them in.  When I got to eighty, I sent Kelvin another signal, ‘You can put the Kettle on.’  The aluminium rungs, both inside and outside, received a jolt of electricity which made them so hot that they melted and fell from their fastenings.  The temperature of the water also began to rise.  The water was too shallow, and the sides of the pool too high for the invaders to climb out.  The cries of horseplay soon turned to panic and then to agony, as the bathers’ naked flesh began to cook.  The screams attracted other invaders to climb onto the lip of the Kettle to see what was going on, but they were delayed until they could find something to substitute for the metal rungs.  The first few stood and gawped helplessly.  Eventually they shouted for some-one to fetch rope or more things to serve as makeshift ladders.  The men were all brought out alive, exactly as we had planned. 

            When the invaders were having their breakfast, they began to discover that sauce bottles, food cans, and even pieces of food, were starting to explode.  These devices were not enough to kill a man: they would just blow part of his hand off or fire small bits of shrapnel into his face.  Cigarette packets had two behaviours.  Some of them exploded, like the other booby-traps.  Some of them seemed to behave normally, until a few minutes after the first cigarette was lit (the tobacco had been impregnated with cannabis and heroin). 

            Those who decided to wash their food down with liquor, contrary to Wolf’s express orders, experienced severe abdominal pain, blindness and, in a few cases, death, because all the beer, whisky and vodka had been heavily laced with methanol.

            Not long after breakfast, vomiting and diarrhoea began to spread throughout Wolf’s men.  Some of them had collapsed face-first into their porridge, because of the morphine we had put in the milk.  A few of the men discovered by accident that the morphine-laced milk was quite a good medicine for alleviating the stomach cramps caused by the contaminated food and drink. 

            Kelvin by that point was in a forward position, in a trench within sight of Hardboard City.  He wore a small piece of board (one of the off-cuts from the building of Hardboard City) on a strap round his neck.  Clipped to this were the sheets of paper he used to write orders on.  He wrote the orders in pencil, and then rolled the sheet up and put it inside a metal tube, sealed at both ends with cork.  He had the metal tubes and corks and spare pencils in a pouch round his waist.  He also had a walkie-talkie, but he only intended to use this for the orders which had been worked out in advance and given code words. 

            Behind Kelvin was the artillery, with a battery of the 10-kilogram guns which Kelvin had demonstrated to the newspaper people.  Their guns were trained on Hardboard City, but they had not received the order to fire yet.  In front of him in the centre was his main force of infantry,  in concealed positions, and with instructions to repel anything that tried to flee from Hardboard City inland.  A small force had already re-claimed the remainder of the ships in the harbour.  On Kelvin’s left and right were the Gurkhas, whose mission was to hold onto the flanks and make sure that no invaders escaped by finding a way round Kelvin’s army. 

            We started to put methanol into the water supply to Hardboard City, and then a little while later cut the water and the electricity off.  The artillery waited impatiently for the order from Kelvin.

*

I am Kelvin’s bayonet.  I am still in the scabbard on his belt.  He loves his rifle, but that is nothing to the way that he feels about me.  To fire his rifle,  he needs to be calm, composed, and accurate.  As soon as he fixes me, his intellect shuts down and he becomes a machine for expressing anger and hate.  I am a steel spike and he polishes every nick and scratch out of my surface with whetstone, oil, and chamois leather.  This is not just because he cares about my appearance, but because he doesn’t want me to catch on a bone or sinew when he tries to withdraw me from a man’s innards.  He has been practising impaling and withdrawing for months on special dummies with artificial ribs and spinal columns.  Most of his men hate bayonet practice.  They think it is too much like hard work, or they can’t take it seriously and they feel self-conscious when the instructor tells them to scream, or they are appalled by the prospect of impaling another human being with a weapon they hold in both hands.  Kelvin can hardly wait to issue the order.  One evening, after a whole day spent with him in training, he spoke to me.  He looked at me and said, in a very contemplative voice, ‘There are over a million words in the English language, but there may come a time when only three will do: fix bayonets: charge.’ 

*

That foul regime has collapsed.  The constitutional monarchy has been restored.  The Firm is back in business. 

            I invited the new Minister of Culture round for tea at the palace and told her to organise an international cricket tournament as soon as humanly possible.  There are rumours that at least one new nation could be accorded full test status in time for it (Ghana, Singapore and Malaysia are all strong contenders).  I had a speech all prepared, but it turned out that I was preaching to the converted.  She is a season-ticket holder at Edgbaston.  She showed me a programme that had all the Warwickshire players’ autographs on it.  We had great fun.  I got a pomegranate out of the fruit bowl and we discussed the relative merits of a googly versus a doosra to both right- and left-handed batsmen.

            The stock exchange sky-rocketed on the first full day of normal trading after proper government was restored.   If it weren’t for my position, I think I would have had a little flutter myself.  

            We are back.  The United Kingdom has returned to its senses.  Please, God, let us not make the same mistake ever again.  

 

Tags: bayonet, android, violet, the_companion, layla, henry_ix, ben_stewart, hardboard_city
Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by William Justin Thirsk-Gaskill, Monday, 31 Jan 2011, 22:16)
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WT

The Companion: Part 43

Tuesday, 25 Jan 2011, 21:43
Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by William Justin Thirsk-Gaskill, Friday, 28 Jan 2011, 13:31

In the teeth of strong opposition, Kelvin succeeded in arranging for the construction of a small harbour near Hardboard city complete with crane.  Most of our settlements are coastal, and a crane to a coastal town is like a cathedral was in mediaeval times: both a status symbol and a great stimulant to the economy.  When asked to account for this act of lunacy, he calmly explained that it was of paramount importance to make Spalding and his followers believe that they were in a real town, with a real past and a real future.  Once they got the idea that the whole place was a trap, they would be gone.  Hence, not only was Kelvin prepared to allow Spalding to transport his remaining tank and helicopter to I-3, but he would oblige him by providing the means to unload them as well.  The harbour was the finishing touch. 

            The invaders first set eyes on their new home on a breezy afternoon at what was the coldest time of the year for that part of the planet.  After they had landed on the new quayside (spied on by cams concealed inside a row of bollards) the first thing they saw was an old-fashioned telephone box.   Most of them were cramped from the over-crowding imposed on them after picking up the survivors from their main vessel, thirsty, hungry, and tired.  Most of them did not know what a telephone box was but, for those who did, it was the last thing they had been expecting to see.  They peered at it and circled it and looked through the glass sides.  They saw that, inside, it was plastered with stickers.  The stickers had pictures, writing and numbers printed on them.  The numbers looked like phone numbers.  The words were mainly women’s names.  The pictures showed women: bare-breasted or naked women; women in stockings and suspenders; women in thigh-boots and corsets holding whips; women in various kinds of uniform; women who smiled, beckoned, pouted, sneered, or sucked their fingers. 

            I watched and listened to them: nearly everywhere in Hardboard City was under surveillance.  I was partly on the look out for names or other identifiers.  I wanted if possible to build up a dossier which contained a photograph of every invader, a sample of his voice, and his name. 

            Eventually, one of them opened the door of the phone box, and went in.  He picked up the receiver.  It was an old-fashioned one: large and black and connected to the rest of the telephone apparatus by a cable.  The invader listened to the dialling tone.  It was loud and clear.  I could see his whole face and its perplexed expression as he regarded and then fingered the coin slots.  There were two: one labelled “1d”, and the other labelled “1s”.   He pushed the door open, and spoke to the onlookers huddled just outside.

            ‘It needs coins.’

            ‘What sort of coins?’

            ‘You know – coins.  One D or one S.’

            ‘What’s a one D or a one S?’

            ‘I don’t know.  We need to find one of the locals.’ 

            This was the cue for an appearance by Layla.  She was conservatively dressed, in a long, rustic skirt, blouse buttoned up to the neck, and long shawl.  In one hand, she held a small, leather, draw-string bag.

            ‘Quick!  There’s one of them.  Get her!’  shouted one of the invaders.

            ‘Stop!’  commanded Layla.  She was operating independently, but I was still watching and listening intently, including to what Layla herself was seeing and hearing.  The invaders did stop for a moment, mostly out of surprise that a lone, unarmed woman would attempt to give them an order.  Layla walked slowly towards them, right along the edge of the quayside nearest the water.  One of the men still had his automatic rifle levelled at her, but she seemed not to notice.  Layla stopped about ten yards from the men.  One of them took a stride towards her: she took a stride back.  She held her arm out so that the bag was suspended over the water.  ‘Do you want some money for the phone box?’  No-one replied.  ‘Do you want some money for the phone-box, or don’t you?’

            ‘Er, yes we do.’

            ‘Well one of you come here, and I’ll give it to you.’  Four of them started walking.  ‘One of you one of you one of you,’ corrected Layla, like a drill-sergeant.  They looked at each other.  One only of them moved forward hesitantly.  He took the bag from Layla as if it were a suspect package. 

            Three of the men tried to fit inside the phone box to witness the experiment with the new coins.  They dialled one of the numbers.  It was from a label which said, “Starlight Escorts.  200m from quayside.  All tastes catered for.  Rooms available overnight.  Satisfaction guaranteed.  Call Anna on 172169’.  The phone had just started ringing when their leader appeared, and demanded to know what they were doing. 

            ‘Hello.  Starlight Escorts.  What can I do for you?’  Anna said, at just the point when the man holding the receiver was dragged from the box and cuffed on the chin.  The line went dead shortly afterwards: the invaders were about to discover that the telephone system in Hardboard City was expensive. 

            Wolf, as he calls himself, wanted them to go back to their ships and help to unload the tank, the helicopter, and the guns.  The men were halfway through these tasks when, in a cold and overcast afternoon, the proprietor of The Blue Sky Taverna turned on the neon sign and the sound system.  The invaders looked through the windows of the pub into the warm, yellow glow of the interior, where the barman was testing the pumps and polishing the glasses. 

            The sun had gone down and a cold night was descending by the time the ships were unloaded.  Wolf seemed to be looking around for other work for his men to do.  Despite two breaks for food and hot drinks which Wolf  had grudgingly allowed them, they wanted to go off duty and see what the town had to offer. 

            At that moment, I signalled to Sergeant Stewart, who was hiding near the quayside in civilian clothes.  He emerged, and interrupted a conversation between Wolf and his side-kick about the organising of patrols.  I would not have blamed Stewart for wishing that his mission was a double-assassination.  He was carrying a wooden box painted khaki, with rope handles.  Wolf saw the box in the lamplight which now illuminated the quay. 

            ‘You, there.  Stop.  Show me what you have got there.’

            ‘Er, it’s nothing, sir.  Nothing.’

            Never mind nothing.  Bring that box here and open it.’  The box contained six hand grenades.  ‘Where did you get these?  Tell the truth, now, or I’ll have you shot!’ 

            ‘Over there,’ indicated Stewart, pointing to a small warehouse further down the quay. 

             ‘Show me.’ 

            Stewart took them to the door.  Wolf un-holstered his automatic pistol and, pointing it at Stewart, gestured for him to open the place up.  It was dark inside.  Stewart stepped into the deep shadow, knocked something over which sent metallic clatterings echoing all around, and disappeared.  I was still watching them, on infra red.  The side-kick shone a torch.

            ‘Brunton, over here!’  The side-kick’s name was Brunton. 

            ‘Where is that man?’

            ‘No idea.  Never mind about him: look at these.’ 

            ‘What have you found, my Leader?’   

            ‘Shine the torch down here, quick.’

            It was another row of khaki-painted wooden boxes.  Two of them were labelled “120 MM CANNON SHELLS”.  Each box contained six shells (and was very heavy).  Each shell had a small red dot near its base. 

            Meanwhile, in the Blue Sky Taverna, Kyla and Angel were handing out business cards.

            ‘But, remember, my darlings, pleasure in this town is intense, and available night and day, but it comes at a financial cost.’

            ‘What cost?’

            ‘4 gold coins for a full, unhurried fuck.  Prices for other services available on request.’

            ‘We haven’t got any gold coins.’

            ‘Well in that case you need to talk to Anna and sell something.’

            ‘Sell what?’

            Two minutes later, the man who had asked was in the phone box talking to Anna.

            ‘I’ll give you ten sovereigns for any machine gun – light, medium or heavy, plus at least fifty rounds of ammo.’

            ‘How I am supposed to manage that without Spalding shooting me?’

            ‘Get the sections who are usually furthest from the action to sell theirs first, and I guarantee that in return I’ll give you convincing replicas which make the right noise when you pull the trigger.’

            ‘Mm.  I’ll think about it.’

            He thought about it for all of five minutes.  Stewart took delivery of the first batch of light machine guns and ammunition belts.  The invaders were grudgingly impressed with the quality of the replicas. 

Tags: sky_blue_taverna, android, violet, the_companion, starlight_escorts, anna, layla, kyla, wolf, angel, ben_stewart, paul_brunton, hardboard_city
Permalink 3 comments (latest comment by William Justin Thirsk-Gaskill, Friday, 28 Jan 2011, 13:25)
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