Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

watched the
British national democratic revolution in the time she’d
been able to spare from following the Siberian Popular
Front’s assault on Vladivostok.
    The dell opened to a larger valley, thickly settled. Old stone
houses, geodesic domes, wattle huts, new thatched cottages, a few
nanofactured carbon-shell constructions. A lot of cattle and
sheep in the fields; kids running everywhere. The path became a
gravel road which widened, at the centre of the main street, to a
small cobbled square. In the centre, just by a verdigrised copper
statue of a Tommy with a fixed bayonet, memorial to the fallen of
three world wars, was an outdated but still effective
anti-aircraft missile battery. No higher than the statue itself,
it held a rack of a dozen metre-long rockets. Myra could read the
small print of what they were tipped with: laser-fuser tactical
nukes.
    People crowded around, welcoming the returning raiders. They
called the red-haired man what she thought at first was
‘Red’, which made sense; then realised it was
‘Rev’, which made no sense at all. It certainly
wasn’t the name her search had come up with. The kids were
cheering and doing the high-stepping, highjumping Zulu war-dance
called toyi-toying.
    Fix reined in his horse in front of a large stone building
which had a low-ceilinged front room open to the street: a cafe.
Myra followed suit, dismounted and was led through into a back
room with a fire, and high leather chairs around a table. The
roomsmelt of woodsmoke and alcohol and unwashed humanity and damp
dogs.
    ‘Have a seat’
    Myra sat and the two men and the woman sat down opposite her.
They regarded her in silence for a moment. She decided to hazard
the Grolier’s guess.
    Jordan Brown,’ she said. ‘And you must be Cat
Duvalier.’ That name was in the entry’s small print
as Jordan Brown’s wife.
    ‘Well done,’ the man said, unperturbed.
‘Nifty little machine you’ve got there.’
    Myra flipped the eyeband back. ‘Yes. So tell me, Mr
Brown, what it is you want.’
    ‘It’s Reverend Brown,’ he said.
‘First Minister of the Last Church of the Unknowable
God.’ He smiled. ‘But please, call me Jordan.’
He looked over his shoulder and shouted an order. ‘Beer and
brandy!’
    He slung his cloak over a chair; without it, leaning over the
table in his T-shirt and wild hair, he looked somewhat more
intimidating. Some absence in his gaze reminded Myra of spetznatz veterans, or old Af-ghantsi. The Blue Beret
slogan on the T-shirt just might not be ironic, she thought. A
boy padded in carrying glasses and bottles.
    ‘All we’ve got at the moment,’ the woman
called Cat said. ‘What’ll you have?’
    ‘I’ll have a beer.’
    She accepted the drink without thanks, and lit a cigarette
without asking permission or offering to share. Damned if she was
going to act as though she was enjoying their hospitality.
    ‘You were saying, Reverend.’
    Jordan Brown spread his hands. Just to talk things
over.’
    ‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to do
that.’
    T sure have,’ he said. Tve risked the lives of my
fighters, I’ve exposed one of my agents, I’ve had a
man slaughtered like a pig – which he was, but that’s
nothing to you – and had another train guard shot in the
belly just for trying to do his job. Quite possibly, some of the
passengers have already fallen to friendly fire.’ He
shrugged. ‘And I would have killed more, if I’d had
to. The point is, I’ll get away with it’ He waved his
hand above his head. ‘We all will. The helicopter was the
worst the British can do against us.’
    Myra looked straight at him. ‘Like I care. You might not
get off so lightly when this gets back to the Kazakhstani
Republic’
    Jordan nodded soberly. ‘No doubt I’m trampling all
over diplomatic niceties. But it’s you that came to Britain
to get help, not the other way round. So you’ll forgive me
for not worrying too much.’
    ‘Hah!’
    ‘Anyway,’Jordan went on, Tve no wish to get into a
pissing-contest. I have something more important to say to you.
So. Are you willing to have a serious conversation?’
    Myra shrugged, looking around theatrically. ‘Why not? I
don’t see any better entertainment.’ She poured a
brandy chaser, again without false courtesy.
    Jordan Brown leaned forward on his bare forearms, took a swig
of brandy and began to speak.
    ^You’ve come to Britain to get military aid