Across the river was the railway line south to London. It was a rare Public Era artefact as most railways had been ripped out in accordance with the Frite laws. He could hear a diesel locomotive rumbling and a clunk of shunting. Ahead, the old town bridge was lit by a string of floodlights. It seethed with glory troops and armoured cars. Those inside the artificial sunlight must be night-blind, so he felt confident to approach within thirty yards, close enough to see faces, ranks, teeth. The string of lights curved north, towards the central railway station. It was plain this was a major operation.
The ancient lanes and courts of the medieval core around the cathedral were dark as a mine and deserted at this hour. By touch, he found his way around to the far side of the cathedral and approached the railway station along an alley lined by high brick walls. He found the wide street in front of the station floodlit, as he expected. Troops halted with a crisp stamp, got bawled at by their team lieutenant and broke up at the double to disappear inside the low brick façade of the station.
Immediately to the right of the station entrance, a poster broadcast a message to the world. Even from the far side of the street and somewhat up an alley, the image and block text were clear. The image was his own face. The block text read: “Reward 50 TAu for the recovery of Lawrence Aldingford, Night and Fog fugitive. To be apprehended on sight and brought before your superior officer.”
‘TAu’ was short-hand for Troy ounces of gold. Fifty ounces was equivalent to two or three months’ pay for low-ranking troopers. Lawrence retreated to think. Two things were obvious. One, he absolutely had to be clear of Peterborough by dawn. In these dirty, Value System overalls he would be picked up anyway as a vagrant, after which identification was a foregone conclusion. Two, there must have been a calamitous irruption—a severe one—on a sovereign land. Troops were being rushed to repair the frontier and extract infestations. That train was his way out—a gift he could not miss.
Keeping to the dark alleys of the town centre, he tried to get north, beyond the floodlights. Familiar buildings, pubs and night clubs appeared, disappeared and reappeared. Damn these medieval streets! He happened to glance down a passageway and remembered it was a short-cut through to the main road. After various exasperating wrong turns and dead ends, he found his way to a bridge over the tracks just north of the station. The risk of broken ankles did not hinder him—one glance over the parapet, then down the bank he went on his backside to the permanent way of the railway.
This was a good position. From the deep shadow beneath the bridge, he had some leisure to survey the scene in the light cast from the floodlit platform. The train was made up of troop coaches at the front and flat cars loaded with armoured vehicles to the rear. The last wagon was a so-called ‘stinger’, an armoured box equipped with machine guns to guard the rear of the train. What he had to do was get on a flatcar without being spotted from the stinger.
He rolled across the lines beneath the bridge and crawled along the far side of the shunting area until he was half a dozen flat cars forward of the stinger. What he now had to do was cut back across the tracks—devoid of cover—and get onto a flatbed.
From down the line came the rising bellow of locomotives. The train started to move, to begin with disarmingly gently although with a persistent acceleration like a rope disappearing off a cliff. He sprinted, tripped, sprawled across a set of points banging a knee, jumped up again spitting in pain to find the train was gaining and the stinger was catching up. His right shin whacked some obstacle and he flew beside the singing wheels. By sheer instinct he grabbed a chain fixing down an armoured car and was yanked faster than he could run, his boots banging and bouncing on the blur of sleepers. His feet would be smashed if he could not get them up. An extra great stride, a spasm like a high-jumper, one boot hooked on the edge of the flatbed while the other swung at the wheels... A writhing slither and he was under that armoured car. Barely had he begun to exhale a blast of relief when something grabbed his shoulders and dragged him out again. A couple of glory troopers stood over him, pistols in his face.
“Get up!” shouted one of them.
He climbed to his feet, rocking due to the wagon motion, hands raised. He faced a basic and leading basic—two guys barely out of childhood. They quailed back, alarmed by his unexpected size. He made a disarming gesture.
“Easy… Do not shoot. I’m one of you… Let’s go into the stinger and I’ll explain everything.”
Every scrap of the social poise, the elocution, the calm superiority of his background went into those words. A little of their edginess relaxed. The leading basic wagged his pistol and shouted above the clatter of the wheels:
“Keep it nice and slow. It’s nothing to us if you go under the train.”
*
Lawrence ripped open his laces, dragged the filthy boots off and shoved his feet at the stove. A flustered grade lieutenant second class winced at the foul reek rising from the body now starting to fume in the cosy air of the stinger.
“What
