The blast was enormous. It was as though the steam-barge was lifted into the air by a huge hand and then hurled back down onto the river. Trixie was thrown across the wheelhouse, her head smashing against a bulkhead, bashing her into unconsciousness. She came to, her head throbbing, her left arm twisted at an unnatural angle. Excruciating pain lanced across her shoulders and her ears rang from the crash of the explosion. With laboured difficulty she hauled herself back up onto her feet. All the glass in the wheelhouse windows had been blown in and now the thick snow and the ice-cold wind was swirling around, slashing into her face and eyes. The steam-barge seemed to be alight, burning debris and cinders from the destroyed drifter covered the decking and this, coupled with the black smoke that enveloped the river, made for a Helish scene. The stench of cordite in the air was suffocating, and she retched, spitting dust and bile from her mouth.
Fortunately the compass had survived the explosion. She tore a strip of cotton from her blouse, used it to wipe the glass clean, and checked her heading. Satisfied that she now knew where they should be going, she used her one good arm to drag the barge back to a northerly direction.
As the steam-barge settled on its course, Trixie took a quick look around. At first she thought that she was the only survivor, but then, slowly, painfully, figures began to rise up and after brushing burning cinders from their coats, staggered about as though drunk.
Thankfully Wysochi was one of the survivors, though he had suffered in the explosion. His cap was gone and part of his hair seemed to have been burned away, his face was soot-black and flecked with a myriad of tiny cuts and scratches. Peculiarly, it also appeared that he was steaming: as snow landed on his savaged jacket it dissolved into white steam.
‘Are you hurt?’ he shouted, and that was when Trixie discovered she was deaf in one ear. She touched it with her fingers; part of her right ear seemed to have been sheared away.
‘I think I’ve dislocated my shoulder,’ she shouted back; a ruined ear hardly seemed to be worth commenting on. She barely recognised her voice: torn ragged by all the screaming she had been doing, it seemed to have dropped an octave. ‘I’ll need help to dock the barge.’
Wysochi gave a curt nod and then disappeared into the darkness. He returned a minute or so later. ‘Better than I feared, worse than I hoped. Ten survivors. Some are a bit knocked around but they’ll live.’
‘Major Dabrowski?’
‘Took a bad knock on the head from a piece of flying spar. He’ll make it all right.’ He staggered as the steam-barge bucked against the tide. ‘By my reckoning, Gdansk docks are over there. That’s where we’re headed, maybe a half-mile distant. I’ll take over from here, Miss Trixie… and thanks.’
Trixie had to admire Wysochi’s energy. Despite his wounds, despite the rough bandage that swathed his left hand, despite the savage burns on the side of his face, he still drove the men on. No sooner had they docked the barges than he was all business, dividing what was left of the little army into two groups, braying orders at them to round up men and steamer-trucks and to get them back to the barges as quickly as possible. He wanted the barges unloaded before dawn.
In stark contrast to Wysochi’s energy, Dabrowski sat slumped against the side of the barge. The bang he’d taken to the head had been a bad one and he was only semi-conscious, not quite understanding what was going on around him.
‘I need someone to rouse Dock Captain Kowal,’ Wysochi said to his Major. ‘I need someone to get the winches and cranes working.’
Dabrowski slowly raised his head and stared at the Sergeant through glassy eyes. As best Trixie could judge, his mind was concussed and he would be no further help that night.
‘I’ll go. Let the Major rest,’ she said and before the Sergeant could object she was off striding in the direction of the Dock Captain’s house a hundred yards along the quay from where they had moored the steam-barge. The house was in darkness when she got there, but it didn’t remain so for long, not after Trixie pummelled on the front door with the butt of her pistol.
When the Dock Captain finally opened his front door, he seemed less than impressed by the soot-covered apparition disturbing his sleep. Dressed in just his nightshirt, Dock Captain Kowal studied Trixie as she stood in the doorway, lantern in hand.
‘Who the Hel are you?’
‘I am…’
Trixie paused for a moment, trying to decide just who she really was.
‘… Lieutenant Dashwood of the Warsaw Free Army. We have captured two barges from the ForthRight and need you to round up every docker, yard worker and winch operator you can and assemble them to offload the barges now tethered at Number Two Dock.’
‘Fuck off,’ he said and made to shut the door. Trixie’s boot prevented it closing. She would, she decided, have to be firm with him.
‘It is imperative that…’
‘I said fuck off and I meant fuck off. I’m head of the Guild of Bargees and in that capacity I must tell you that, as we are not at war with the ForthRight, taking those barges by force is an act of piracy. I will not permit my members to risk imprisonment or their lives.’
His oration was interrupted by the cocking of a Mauser pistol. Trixie held the weapon to the side of the man’s head. ‘Unless you follow my orders, Dock Captain, I will have no hesitation to blow your fucking mind out.’
Kowal looked at Trixie, took a moment to assess just how serious she was and then nodded.
The unloading of ten thousand Martini-Henry rifles and five million rounds of ammunition and the transporting of the same to a secure warehouse was completed an hour after dawn. Exhausted and emotionally drained, the men slumped down and gratefully accepted the bottles of Solution that were handed around.
For her part Trixie sat on a crate of ammunition, trying to ignore the pain radiating out from her left shoulder and the throbbing of her ear, and doing her best not to fall asleep. Never had she felt so tired, so completely wrung out. She closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them she found the bulk of Sergeant Wysochi standing in front of her with his hand extended.
‘Would you do me the honour, Miss Dashwood, of shaking my hand? I would like to thank you for what you did tonight, to thank you on behalf of my Major, my men and the Polish people. You are the bravest person with whom I have ever had the honour of serving. If he were alive to see you, Miss Dashwood, your father would be a very proud man.’
Trixie took the hand. It was the most moving moment of her life.
27
The Demi-Monde: 56th to 58th Days of Winter, 1004
The principles of Eugenics may be applied not only to matters of racial management but also to the interpretation as to why certain city-states within the Demi-Monde are more successful than others. This form of macroEugenics has been named ‘Political Eugenics’ (Reinhard Heydrich: Race, Eugenics and the Survival of the Fittest City-States, Party Rules Publications). Using the principles enunciated by the Quartier-Chaudian naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck – that all organisms strive towards perfection and that this struggle is stimulated by competition within the bio-system – and applying them in the political arena, the Great Leader has concluded that the success of the ForthRight is a demonstration of the maxim ‘the survival of the fittest’ writ large. In sum the Demi-Monde is a battlefield wherein the races fight for supremacy and it is the ForthRight – and the Aryan people – that has emerged supreme.
– The Principles of UnFunDaMentalism: His Holiness Aleister Crowley, Ministry of Psychic Affairs Publications
Trixie couldn’t sleep. She was too excited to sleep. Too much had happened, too much was going to happen. Her mind was a whirl of plans and possibilities as she revelled in the thrill of revolution. And, after last night, she was a real revolutionary.
According to Heydrich, revolutions were a natural manifestation of the frustrated will of the People. But as Trixie sat sipping her coffee she was determined that it would not be her will that was frustrated. She might be bone-tired, her arm and her ear might be aching like the very devil and her body might be covered in bruises, but
