The UnTied Kingdom (7 page)

‘But how did no one know America existed?’ Eve yelled. ‘I’ve heard of Isolationism but this is ridiculous!’

‘Yes,’ Lucille said, smiling. ‘It is the thing unimaginable! A nation complete with the aeroplanes and the television … can you imagine how it is not to know what television is?’

‘
What, you mean like every single person in this country
?’ Eve snapped.

‘Uh, perhaps I should be fetching someone,’ Lucille said, taking another step backwards.

‘Well, unless it’s Doctor Who then I can’t see them being any use.’ Eve closed the books all on top of each other, and looked up at Lucille. ‘It’s just all wrong. These books have us as basically a third-world country. We used to be just another part of Europe but then they all advanced and we were left behind and we made bad choices, one after another. We lost every war we’ve ever had, even the ones against ourselves! We’re on our fourth civil war, Lucille, our
fourth
, and that’s counting all those in the seventeenth century as one. I mean, look at this place. Clearly there was money here once, but it looks as if nothing has changed for hundreds of years. The rest of the world continues to evolve and this place goes
backwards
.’

Lucille nodded, but continued to back away.

‘When I was at school they told us no battles had been fought on British soil for two hundred and fifty years. And now we’re at war with ourselves, again.’

Lucille was almost to the door now.

‘No wonder Harker thought I was mad,’ Eve said. ‘I’m the only person in the world who’s heard of the British Empire.’

Lucille gave her an encouraging smile that in no way reached her eyes.

‘Which must mean that Harker was right,’ Eve concluded, her head drooping to her hands. ‘I am mad.’

Several annoying days passed, during which Harker met his new second-in-command and hourly invented ways to kill him and General Wheeler.

It wasn’t that Captain Wilmington was a bad man. He wasn’t even a bad officer. It was just that he was a terrible soldier.

‘I checked into his history, sir,’ Charlie whispered as they watched Wilmington blundering about in No Man’s Land. ‘He’s never actually seen active service. He can train and drill the men at home, but he’s never been out in the field.’

‘If he took my men out in the field, I’d have to shoot him,’ Harker said grimly. He took a cigarette out of his top pocket and lit it, cupping his hand against the wind. ‘I swear, Charlie, she must have something against me.’

‘Wheeler, sir?’

‘No. I bet this was Saskia. What did I do to her?’

‘You did divorce her,’ Charlie pointed out mildly.

‘No, she divorced me. I just allowed myself to be divorced. It’s entirely different.’

Charlie, showing some restraint, stayed silent.

‘He can’t even read a map!’ Harker exploded, watching Wilmington turn the paper around and around, and point off vaguely in the wrong direction. ‘Jesus wept.’

‘Seventh Platoon!’ Wilmington’s voice carried across the empty ground, cleared of all the shacks and tents clustering it a few days ago. Guarded every few hundred yards by soldiers with very large guns, it was nonetheless an ideal space to test manoeuvres. ‘To me!’

Seventh Platoon milled about hopelessly until the very capable Sergeant Milson got them into order. She caught Harker’s eye and gave him a despairing eye-roll.

‘He’s going to kill them,’ Harker said, closing his eyes. ‘We go out into the field, he’s going to get them all killed.’

‘Technically, sir, he won’t be the one giving commands,’ Charlie said.

‘Yeah, but unless I tie him up somewhere and gag him, he’ll still manage to do something wrong.’ He thought about it for a second, then opened his mouth.

‘No,’ Charlie said.

‘I didn’t say anything!’

‘You didn’t have to. You can’t tie him up anywhere.’ Harker opened his mouth again and she added quickly, ‘Or gag him.’

‘Excuse me, who is the Commanding Officer here?’ Harker complained. Brotherly relationship, yeah right. Sometimes he wondered if Charlie forgot he was her CO and not just her mate. He sucked on his cigarette, inhaling deeply, and regarded it with suspicion. ‘I read the other day these things are bad for you.’

‘You gonna stop smoking them, sir?’

Harker put the cigarette back in his mouth. ‘Nope.’

Charlie snorted.

‘In fact, after this, I may take up drinking as a hobby.’ He blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘This is a bloody joke, Charlie.’

‘I don’t see anyone laughing, sir.’

Back at the barracks, he made good on his promise to take up drinking, leaving the company in Wilmington’s hands and heading straight for the mess, where the barman, seeing his face, got out a whisky tumbler.

‘No,’ Harker said, ‘I hate that stuff.’ And it was expensive, as it had to be imported from Scotland. Or smuggled over the border. ‘Give me a beer.’

‘The whisky will get you drunk quicker,’ said a voice behind him, Saskia’s voice, and he turned with a scowl.

‘Don’t you start,’ he said. ‘Don’t you bloody start.’

Several other officers went very quiet.

‘He even asked for a batman,’ Harker said, disgusted.

‘Did you assign him one?’

‘I told him he could have one while we were at base, but he was on his own in the field. My men have better things to do than wash and dress their superior officers.’

Saskia, who had always employed the custom of taking a batman to act as her personal servant, said nothing.

‘And you know what he said,
Colonel
?’

‘I can’t possibly imagine. Major.’

‘He said he’d never been in the field before, and was it frightening?’

‘And what did you tell him?’ Saskia asked pleasantly.

‘I told him that with his command skills, it wouldn’t be frightening for long.’

Saskia made the mistake of smiling at that, and Harker had to resist the urge to throw his drink at her.

Right then a creak of the door heralded Captain Wilmington himself, and Harker forced a smile.

‘Ah, Captain,’ said Saskia. ‘We were just talking about you.’

‘Yes, sir?’ Wilmington looked at them with a hope that rapidly faded when he saw Harker’s expression.

‘Major Harker was telling me of your bravery in the field,’ Saskia said, and Harker turned away before he thumped one or the other of them.

‘On second thoughts,’ he said to the barman, ‘whisky would be great.’

In the morning, head pounding and mouth dry, Harker woke up cursing Saskia, Wilmington, Wheeler, the barman in the mess, and all whisky distilleries. His mood wasn’t improved when, over breakfast, he was summoned to General Wheeler’s office.

‘Major Harker,’ she greeted him as he saluted. ‘At ease. Take a seat.’

Harker did, with bad grace.

‘How are you getting on with Captain Wilmington?’ Wheeler asked, without looking up. Which was just as well as Harker was pressing his hands to his forehead, trying to stop his brain from expanding out of his skull.

‘Harker?’

He sighed and dropped his hands from his throbbing head. ‘Permission to speak frankly, sir?’

‘I don’t believe you have ever required anyone’s permission for that,’ Wheeler said mildly.

‘Why the hell did you send him to me, sir?’

She laid down her pen and looked up at him, eyes sharp in a face only slightly softened by age.

‘You don’t like him, Major?’

‘Oh, I like him fine, sir, but if he takes any of my men out into the field he’s going to get them all killed. He has no experience, sir. Where did he come from, QM stores?’

‘No, but I suspect that’s where he’d prefer to be,’ Wheeler said. ‘He is very good at drilling the men, I hear?’

‘Yes, sir, but he can’t fire a weapon. And if he ever took command of the company …’

‘Why would he do that, Major?’

He gave her a heavy look. ‘Because sooner or later some bugger’s going to hit me somewhere they can’t patch up,’ he said. ‘And in that case –’

‘In that case, Lieutenant Riggs will surely step into the breach, Harker, because by the time I send C Company out on campaign, she will be its captain.’

Harker opened and closed his mouth several times before he said, ‘What, sir?’

Wheeler smiled. ‘You didn’t think I really wanted to hold either of you back, did you, Harker? No. I have something I need you to do, a special mission, and I’m quite sure you’ll be wanting to take the good lieutenant with you. Were she your second, you could not in all good conscience do that without leaving C Company commanderless.’

‘I’m not sure I could in all good conscience do that now, sir,’ Harker muttered.

‘I give you my word, Harker that, barring unforeseen circumstances, I will not send your company out on active service until you return.’

Harker, who couldn’t believe anything had ever happened to General Wheeler that she hadn’t already foreseen, nodded warily.

‘What mission, sir?’ he asked.

Wheeler smiled.

‘She wants us to
what
?’ Charlie said, as Harker went around the mess kitchen searching out eggs, bacon, and strong coffee to soothe his hangover.

‘Go up north, break into a rebel stronghold, steal a computer, find out how to work it, and use it to track the Coalitionists’ movements,’ Harker said, breaking an egg into a skillet and watching in dismay as the yolk broke.

‘Apparently, her intel says that’s how they’ve been tracking ours.’

Charlie closed her eyes momentarily. ‘That’s how they knew there was only a skeleton force in Oxford.’

‘Yep. And in Peterborough. And in Southend.’ Harker took a breath and let it out slowly. Wheeler had given him the estimated casualties for those cities, and they hadn’t been pretty. The people had gone down fighting; but they’d really gone down.

He laid a couple of strips of bacon down in the pan and watched them sizzle. ‘She’s set us up to stay with someone in the Lincolnshire Wolds.’

Charlie frowned. ‘We’re not going to another base up there? We still have Hull, don’t we?’

‘Aye, but it’s too far from the front. And she doesn’t want us obvious. I’m to take a small party, stay with civilians–’

‘Wear civilian clothes?’ Charlie asked, with a gasp of mock-horror. At least, he thought it was mock. Briefly, he wondered if she’d been born with dogtags round her neck.

‘Mock not, Charlie. Wheeler wants us to start looking in Leeds.’ A city which had been under Coalitionist control for a while. ‘Shame Smiggy’s not with us, that were his old ground. Wonder if we might bump into him.’

‘And who is “we”, sir?’

‘Well.’ Harker flipped the bacon. ‘She’s letting me choose–’

‘She is?’

‘–but she has recommendations.’

Charlie smiled. ‘Of course she does.’

The door opened, and a man in a grubby chef’s coat came in. Harker and Charlie stared at him until he went away, then Charlie asked, ‘Who’s she recommending?’

Harker added a generous helping of salt to the pan. ‘You, obviously, and Tallulah.’

‘Tallulah Watling-Coburg? People are going to start thinking you have a favourite.’

‘How many other poor kids in this army have been named Tallulah? Apparently she speaks fluent French and German, so if we run into translation difficulties–’

‘In Lincolnshire, sir?’

He gave her a look. ‘Clearly, that’s why she’s sending me. No, she thinks the computer may be in French.’

‘Do they have languages, sir?’

Harker raised his palms. ‘How the hell should I know?’ He didn’t even know what a computer looked like, never mind how one worked. The whole mission was a disaster waiting to happen, but then weren’t all army missions? He continued, ‘Which brings me to her next recommendation. A Captain Darren Haran.’

‘Darren Haran?’ Charlie said, her eyes wide, her mouth twitching.

‘’Fraid so. Joined us recently from the Medical Corps. Wanted to be an engineer, but couldn’t get the training, so joined as a doctor, and learnt medicine at the army’s expense.’ At Charlie’s look, he added, ‘Well, it’s all a sort of engineering when you think about it. Just … squishier.’

Charlie made a face. ‘Remind me not to get injured when he’s around.’

Harker, unconcerned, turned off the heat and flipped his splattered egg and bacon on to a plate. ‘Pass us that bread, will you?’

She did, and Harker cut two thick, uneven slices, slathered them with butter, and squelched egg and bacon into a sandwich.

‘Hangover?’ Charlie asked, watching him eat it.

‘If you tell anyone,’ Harker began, and had to chew and swallow before he could continue, ‘I’ll have to kill you.’

‘That whisky gives you a headache?’

‘Whisky does not give me a headache. Whisky makes me feel wonderful, and then in the morning I feel like a piece of old carpet. And I do not want my men knowing I feel like old carpet.’ He glanced around the kitchen, nodded at the larder. ‘Any juice in there?’