“Please excuse my presentation, in particular the feral odours. I have been on a field operation for several days.” Lawrence extended a dirty hand to the grade lieutenant.
“Cost-Centre Lieutenant Lawrence London for your information.”
The grade lieutenant’s eyes were on Lawrence’s left ear, which was still pierced from the Value System tag. “Do you have ID, sir?”
“No. We never carry ID into the field. If we were killed or captured, it could be used by the bandits.”
He continued with some chit-chat about the tedious operational reports one had to fill in after a field trip. The forms were real. They had been the bane of his life as a sergeant preventing fenland bandits. He joked about the euphemisms: “ammunition expended on target practice”, “replacement of trenching tools”, “biomass for composting” etc. The hearty manner and intimate knowledge of glory bureaucracy was having its effect, despite the suspicion aroused by the pierced ear.
“Why did you jump on this train, sir?”
“It’s part of the op.”
“But this train is a special, the account-captain only announced it at dinner time—so you could not have known about it in advance.”
“It was the account-captain who advised me to use it.”
“Where are you going, sir?”
“To Norwich.”
This was a calculated gamble. Most of the Peterborough garrison’s domain lay to the east and included the city of Norwich. A calamitous irruption in any other direction would have been solved by troops from Leicester or Cambridge. In the subtle rustle of wool, the stiffening of alertness, he sensed the gamble had failed.
“This train is going to London.”
“It’s what? It can’t be. That makes no sense... In all logic, why would Peterborough relieve London? My briefing clearly stated—”
The grade lieutenant drew his pistol.
“There hasn’t been a train to Norwich in two years. General Wardian lost a court case under Frite and had to yield the line. It’s peculiar the account-captain misled you on that point.”
Lawrence fought with total desperation. In prime condition, he might have beaten them back enough to get the door open and jump, but days of semi-starvation had worn out his magnificent physique. They bound his wrists and ankles with his leather boot laces, before fastening him to a steel frame of the wagon’s structure. Finally, they gagged him to shut up his manic ranting. He writhed about wide-eyed and heaving like a fish landed in a world it could not believe, gaping into a fate too terrible to accept.
*
As the hours passed, Lawrence’s plans focused on how to kill himself. A parapet. A passing train. A nervous guard. Death was the price of failure.
By the by, from the conversation in the stinger, it filtered through his suicidal fixations that there was trouble around the Central Enclave of London. The industrial asylums around the Central Enclave were afflicted by agitation. Two weeks previously, Brent Cross had been shelled under Naclaski for sheltering a radio transmitter. Then Elephant and Castle got the same ‘education’. Just yesterday, Holloway got it too. These lessons had provoked a torrential flow of outraged slummies down the Holloway turnpike to pool outside the Caledonian fort of the Grande Enceinte. Only rain and high winds had cooled tempers to disperse the pool back to slummy little hovels. The situation required a demonstration of safety features. The brigade on the train was going to occupy Holloway asylum where it would provide a little reminder that guns and gold reigned supreme.
This reading of events was not universally accepted. While the grade lieutenant and his master sergeant espoused the need for ‘education’, Lawrence saw less enthusiasm from the ordinary ranks, especially the older, passed-over leading basics. Their faces soured and a few of them leaned close and exchanged what sounded like dissent. Now aroused from his funnel of morbid gloom, Lawrence picked up telling details. He was amazed to notice some of the basics and leading basics wore a badge of an orange circle on a dark green background. He recognised the motif as the old symbol of radical politics, a representation of the sun (SUN stood for Solidarity, Unity, Nation, the chant of the nationalist radicals). Times must have changed in recent months for glory troops openly to be displaying sympathies for radicals. Division meant opportunity. The critical point was that none of them recognised him as being a wanted man, nor did any display much interest in him now that he was subdued. Amid all the excitement of embarking on the special train, none of them had paid attention to the poster.
The train slowed to a dawdle. The troopers manned the machine guns and ammunition belts, while the grade lieutenant and his master sergeant ascended to the observation cupola. The brakes uttered a long scream and the train stopped. Things clanged off the armour. From what Lawrence overheard of the grade lieutenant’s nervous telephone discussion with the train commander, the railway line was broken and they were surrounded by a mob of “riff-raff and sub-humanity”. Lawrence heard shouts and jeers, more things clanged off the armour—stones probably. From the front of the train they heard a roar, the roar of a mob, answered by a vicious, tearing rasp—brass-muncher, the sound was unmistakable. Several troopers openly cursed the murdering swine at its triggers. Lawrence strained and wrenched his utmost at the leather laces binding his wrists. He began rubbing against the rusty edge of a steel frame. Being entirely taken up with events outside, not one of the troopers in the stinger paid him any attention.
The train lurched, buffers banged, they started to move again. The stinger rumbled over a rough stretch, which must have been the repaired section. The train proceeded at a crawl, the gunners intent at their posts, whilst Lawrence rubbed at the rusty beam with all his force, the effort sliming him in sweat from head to foot. He could feel he was making progress. Quite suddenly, the lace yielded and fell loose. He was free—but now he had to hide
