Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 2

many head of surplus had he killed, directly or indirectly, in his life? He could only make a guess based on the number of patrols he had completed, of which he had kept a mental tally. Seventy-eight patrols as a commander, forty-one as executive officer and twenty-two as a leading basic. Say an average of one brush every two patrols, twenty-five head prevented per brush, which was probably being kind to his guilt… Almost two thousand head. No, almost two thousand people. No again, it made double that, since most sea-borne surplus were young adults in their most fecund years who would have issued more children had they survived. Strangely, the number calmed him. It was too big to relate to. A single head of surplus with a face and a voice would have been a greater number.

But not every brush involved prevention. For appearances’ sake they would take aboard small loads of surplus and store them in a forward hold. These would be lagered in Oban and exported by ship—Lawrence believed the surplus got released in Glasgow, although that was just hearsay amongst the barge crews. Thinking about these saved loads did not ease his guilt, on the contrary, he was pinioned by disbelief that he could have exhibited such cynicism and not even given it a second thought.

Was he guilty or not? Or was he just afraid of what others would think? How much guilt can a person hold? Can you feel guilty for the murder of thousands of people, not one of whom you can remember? Preventions happened at a distance, never close enough to make out individuals. It was just a mass, a jostle, that vanished behind sheets of spray and afterwards was gone. It was not Lawrence personally who did it. He worked within a greater system for which these actions were normal operating procedure. Again and again across a decade of service, that system had told him he was doing the right thing.

This whole bloody business was exhausting him. It was as if the vitality of his brain was being sucked down a straw. This kind of pre-occupation could kill a man who had such immediate priorities as getting out of this asylum before dusk. He had to get control of his own mind and think the practical matters of survival, or he would not survive. He knew of no way out of this place but the way by which he had arrived. It was not a route he planned to retrace.

He came onto Brent Cross market after striding through the workers’ districts with a mean expression. It deterred any attempts to baulk his progress. He noticed immediately how crowded the market was. What alarmed him was the large number of glory troopers milling about or standing in big groups—some large enough to be whole companies. He found a discreet copse of birch trees from where he could gather details. It was some time before he appreciated not one ultra wagon was on the market place, nor were there any ultramarines on foot. Glory troops and working people—some in servants’ uniforms as footmen or butlers—intermingled, sustaining a roar of discussion. It was difficult to accept this was a typical Saturday afternoon. Glory troops normally never appeared on the commons in uniform. Something strange had occurred, somewhere. Lawrence began to scout around, passing close to groups, picking up scraps of chatter. Something had happened in Bloomsbury, the district of his parents’ house. It involved the National Party and Bloomsbury College, which was just five minutes’ walk from the family home. Ambitious servants and craftspeople took night classes there. He had once done a chambermaid with accounting aspirations in that general vicinity.

Outrage united the market place into one society of friends. The news did not surprise Lawrence, in fact, what baffled him was the astonishment of everyone around him. A force of glory troops from the Euston depot of General Wardian had attacked the National Party offices in Bloomsbury College. They had killed scores. Rings of listeners heard witnesses who told of whole streets strewn with the dead like so many twigs after a gale. No one knew where President Vasco Banner was. Some said the glories had killed him. Others that he was in the notorious Basement of Euston depot. Lawrence presently learned that Vasco Banner was the president of the National Party, the man who had drawn it from the back rooms of zealots to public existence here in Brent Cross.

This murderous action had backfired. Once news went around Euston depot, thousands of the troops marched straight out in protest. Others threw away their uniforms for civilian clothes, fearful that anyone in glory uniform would be SOS: Slaughtered On Sight. This mass exodus had finished up pooled here on Brent Cross market place (and probably on other asylum market places).

Dusk passed into night. The market became a swirling foment of torchlit speeches, chants and bloodthirsty rants. Lawrence felt safe deep in this dark sea of people. His bow marked him as a rodent hunter without further explanation. The square eventually settled in the early hours, thousands sleeping out on the open gravel huddled under tarpaulins. Lawrence snatched dozes under a line of abandoned wagons with a huddle of others.

The next morning, black-suited officials of the National Party were out in force, gradually setting to order, stretching out cordons guarded by hard-faced ex-glory troopers. They started checking passports. A large marquee tent was erected where glory deserters were issued armbands bearing the flag of the Republic of the New Nation, a tricolour of deep blue, yellow and dark green. Mills in the asylum were churning out mountains of these armbands. The new troops stood in hundred-blocks and swore allegiance to the Provisional Cabinet of the Republic of the New Nation, thereby becoming the National Army. The National Party was being reinstituted under a new president called Theodore Farkas, formerly a passed-over team lieutenant of General Wardian. Presumably he was one of the angry, passed-over officers