Secret Cargo Read online

  SECRET CARGO

  Charles Christian

  Charles Christian’s writing

  “Christian’s strength is the abandon with which he brings together the fantastic and the mundane.”

  Vector

  “Christian delivers the goods economically, effectively and with immense dignity and compassion. In a nutshell: the man can write!”

  Dave Kelso-Mitchell, Paraphilia Magazine

  “Christian’s style is sparse and urgent and makes me, for one, wish he would now tackle a crime novel. Norfolk noir anyone?”

  Trevor Heaton, EDP Weekend supplement

  “Christian’s style is far from hard, drawing the reader in with an easygoing narrative, plenty of dialogue and buckets of wry humour. But what I found most was heart.”

  Wayne Simmons, author

  “What I will say is I love the way Christian writes. It is smooth and elegant without being overly literary. Sometimes it feels as though literary authors can be shoving how clever they are down your throat, but Christian eases you along and makes it very difficult to put the book down.”

  R B Harkess, author

  About the Author

  Charles Christian is a former barrister and Reuters correspondent turned award-winning technology journalist, newsletter publisher, blogger, new media maven, science fiction author, storyteller and keynote speaker.

  His dystopian sci-fi and urban fantasy stories are Gothic tales for the 21st century – with a sense of humour and a topical twist.

  Charles lives in Norfolk with his wife, Jane, three dogs and a horse.

  Secret Cargo

  Published by Urban Fantasist

  ISBN : 978-1-907043-02-4

  © copyright Charles Christian 2013

  The right of Charles Christian to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher/author. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s/author’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  For Jane, who made it all possible – and amazing !

  Contents

  Charles Christian’s writing

  About the Author

  1. That Kind of Woman

  2. Champagne and Origami

  3. Alarms and Retro-Rockets

  4. The Sound of Silence

  5. Open Sesame

  6. Single Malt Whisky and Venison Pies

  7. Boy meets Girl

  8. The Crimson Pirate

  Also by Charles Christian

  Tomorrow’s Ghosts

  Writing Genre Fiction

  Do You Want More SFF & H?

  Before you go Dear Reader

  SECRET CARGO

  Charles Christian

  1. That Kind of Woman

  The moment she walks into the departure lounge I know she’s that kind of woman. The kind of woman who always spells trouble for everyone they meet. You can tell it by the way she moves. She strides into the room with an almost mannish swagger about her. And you can certainly tell it by the way she looks.

  Her long, slim but distinctly well-muscled legs are covered in thick red tights that vanish beneath the hem of her unfashionably short kilt. Clan MacKemzy if I remember my Scottish history correctly although the chances of her being a true descendant of the MacKemzies is slight as the rival Campbell Clan slaughtered every last MacKemzy they could lay their hands on in the aftermath of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s failed 1745 rebellion. I know we now have the science to bring lost species of animals back from extinction thanks to DNA cloning but 1745 was nearly five hundred years ago and there were no DNA banks in the Scottish Highlands in those days.

  Admittedly there are still no DNA banks in the Scottish Highlands these days either but that’s entirely due to all the radioactive waste left over from the Border Wars of the last century. It still amazes my students (I teach 20th and 21st Century Cultural History Studies at the Olympus Mons University on Mars, you may have read my ebookie From Baby Boomers to Generation Mutant 1946 to 2146) that one controversial off-side ruling by a Latvian substitute referee during the closing minutes of a particularly bad-tempered England versus Scotland soccer match could generate such ill will that within six weeks the Westminster and Holyrood governments would be firing nuclear weapons at each other.

  But, I digress, back to that woman. I can still picture the rest of her outfit in my mind’s eye. She is wearing a black, Saint Steve Jobsian turtle-neck sweater. Genuine sheep wool by the look of it, none of your syntho-ruminant fur! A mustard-yellow corduroy blazer. And, sitting atop of her auburn page-boy bobbed hair, she is sporting a bright red bowler hat. It takes me a few minutes to spot the historical references but then I realise it is almost a perfect tribute to Emma Peel in The Avengers meets The Prisoner. The original Patrick McGoohan version obviously, not the later remakes.

  Blank looks? Well, of course unless, you’ve read my ebookie (there’s a revised edition out now) you won’t know those are examples of what were called television programmes back in the Swinging Sixties. That’s the Swinging 1960s, as distinct from the Swinging 2060s when the last Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the last American President, the last King of England, the last Czar of Muscovy and the last Communist Emperor of China were all hanged by the ADS – the Anarcho-Digital-Syndicalists – and left swinging by their stretched necks from the porticoes of their own palaces. Strange days indeed!

  Though now, when I stop to think of it, perhaps her bowler hat is meant as an homage to the Droogs, as depicted by Malcolm McDowall in the cinematic movie adaptation, another long forgotten media format, of the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange. Like the ADS, the Droogs believed in ultra-violence although the latter were rather more natty dressers.

  Never mind the fact the woman has a rather too jutting jawline for my taste, I can tell at a glance she is bad news. Exactly the sort of woman I dislike. And let’s not even mention that apart from her shoes, she is not wearing one scrap of leather.

  Everyone knows it is our Patriotic Duty to be clad in as much leather as possible. Why? And this is a rhetorical question by the way. Because everyone also knows that since it was discovered Global Warming was entirely the result of the huge volumes of methane gas being expelled daily as flatus into the atmosphere by the billions of beef cattle that roamed the planet – and the subsequent slaughter of all those cattle (and also the collateral slaughter of most of the Hindu population on the planet who objected to their sacred beasts being massacred) – the world still has at least a century’s worth of leather hide stockpiled for use in the garment industry.

  Personally I’ve always had a penchant for black leather trousers and suede tassel jackets. As part of my academic studies of the 1960s, I’ve developed a possibly unhealthy interest in the fashion styles of Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and Roger Daltry of The Who. You can see, hear and read about both of them in my ebookie.

  I suppose when it comes to women, I’m a traditionalist. I like women who dress i
n a homely style. Long, above-the-knee leather boots, long leather dresses, long leather great-coats, skin-tight leather trousers, tight, heavily-boned leather bustiers. You know, just the plain normal, everyday outfits women the world over wear when they are going to the shops, washing the dishes or baking a syntho-apple pie. Certainly not ostentatious fabrics like wool and corduroy!

  Now I appreciate our circumstances are special (we are both flying executive class on the Chrysler-Zepp Airstream, the very latest in atomic steam-turbine starships where the water is heated by a nuclear reactor although anachronistically the process of inserting the fuel rods is still known as coaling-up the boilers) and in such situations, passengers are expected to dress accordingly. I’d packed a pair of vintage crocodile-skin (a form of extinct water dragon) cowboy boots but even so, that woman’s outfit is so outrageously poufbunny as to constitute a crime against good taste.

  Once we are aboard the Airstream, worse is to come as I discover my travel capsule is not merely located in the same section of the starship as that woman, but we have been placed so close to each other that it will be impossible to ignore her without seeming rude. My one consolation is that once we leave Earth orbit and are heading out into the farther reaches of the Solar System, all passengers are required to return to their capsules and enter into suspended animation for the remainder of the flight.

  I say my one consolation. Actually I’m also consoled by the fact that despite her attention seeking outfits, the woman seems to be in no hurry to strike up an acquaintance with me either. I know some people might be annoyed at this but I’m secretly relieved.

  2. Champagne and Origami

  As is the tradition on these flights, on the first night of the journey all passengers and the ship’s senior officers assemble on the polished chromium steel observation deck of the forward gondola for a champagne reception. The wine – real wine – flows freely and so it should given the price we passengers have paid for our tickets. Then, once we had been towed out of New York harbour by the pilot tugs and are well out over open water, the ship’s captain (or Star Commodore to give him his full rank) gives the signal for the gas concentrate to be released into the envelope above our heads and we soar upwards into the sky.

  Soon we are heading into the stratosphere, like regular little Baumgartners but our rate of climb continued to increase and within minutes we are flying through the Aurora Borealis and up into the thermosphere, passing the glittering bulk of the International Space Station Museum. Despite my best intentions, I still give an involuntary shudder at the sight of the station.

  “Bad experience there?” I hear a voice ask.

  I turn to see who has spoken to me and discover it is that woman. I pause for a moment wondering what to say but in the event opt to tell her the truth. Well at least part of the truth. “Yes,” I reply, “I once went there on a school trip. Terrible motion sickness. Spent almost the entire trip locked in the heads.” In fact I had spent most of the time in the can but that was because I’d been trapped in there by one of the teachers. A teacher who had his own secret, predatory agenda.

  “Me too,” the woman replies, “a school outing from Hell!” Although by the haunted look that momentarily flashes across her face, I get the feeling she is also recalling some personal Hell she wishes to remain secret.

  Then, after what seems a long awkward silence, she adds “You know this flight in an airship is like something out of that old Terry Gilliam movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. They all laugh in the movie when the Baron describes how he once flew to the Moon in a hot air balloon but here we are ascending into Earth orbit on an airship!”

  By now we are flying up into the exosphere, the last layer before outer space, and the views of the Earth below us are breathtakingly spectacular but my mind is still replaying that last conversation. This woman is not only familiar with a movie that first premiered nearly three hundred years ago but a movie largely remembered for being a flop few people ever went to see at the time.

  “You must think me weird,” the woman continues, “but I’ve always been fascinated by the late 20th and early 21st centuries. To think the people living back then thought their world was falling apart culturally, spiritually, financially, politically and ecologically, when we now recognise it for what it really was, a true Golden Age.”

  “I know,” I reply. “They had such a great imagination, dreaming up devices, concepts and technologies over a hundred years ahead of their time. There again, not all their ideas were quite so laudable.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean some of their earlier attempts to get into space. Do you remember their atomic bomb-powered space ships?”

  “Those nuclear pulse propulsion things? Not personally,” says the woman, with a laugh, “way, way before my time but I’ve seen reruns of the old news reports and I once flew over one of the crash sites.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one where Rio de Janeiro used to be. You know the crater still glows in the dark?”

  We both laugh. Perhaps a little guiltily. Or maybe it’s the champagne. Damn, this is getting awkward, I might end up liking this woman before the journey is done and that would be a disaster.

  “Still,” I add, “at least our captain isn’t sporting an eye patch!”

  The woman pauses for a moment with a look of concentration on her face. “You’re testing me now aren’t you? I’ve got it,” she says. “Angelina Jolie in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.”

  I’m stunned. Has this woman seen every disaster-at-the-box-office movie released during my favourite period of Earth history?

  “That’s another example of the genius of those people and how advanced they were in their thinking. What did they call that style of adventure story?” she asks. Hardly pausing for breath, she immediately answers her own question. “Dieselpunk, Retro-Futurism. And of course they also dreamed up the concept of Steampunk. They thought it was a joke but look at us now, we’re on a steam-powered airship that is taking us to the stars and will shortly be coaling-up the boilers to propel us into faster-than-light drive.”

  As if on cue, at that very moment our ship’s Star Commodore rings the large brass bell on the bridge of the gondola, a sound that is greeted by a rousing cheer from all passengers and crew, and is immediately followed by the piping of bosuns’ whistles being blown around the ship. The Chrysler-Zepp has reached the farthest boundaries of the Earth’s atmosphere and is poised to enter deep space.

  As we watch, we see the gas envelope of the airship gradually deflate and the fabric then reconfigure to open out into a giant sail to harness the stellar winds. Almost simultaneously, we also see the first jets of steam streaming out of the turbines. We are now en route for the stars!

  “I’ve heard about the way the airship envelope converts into a sail but I’ve never seen it before,” she says.

  “They call it tucking, it’s almost like origami,” I reply. Ever the academic I always feel I have to show off my superior knowledge. I hear an odd snorting sound and look around to see the woman is choking back laughter. “What’s so funny?” I ask, genuinely puzzled.

  “You said it’s called tucking,” she replies. “It’s just that for some people tucking means something entirely different.”

  I look at her blankly and shrug my shoulders, I have no idea what she is talking about. We talk some more. We drink some more. We watch the Earth recede into the distance. Then comes the announcement from the bridge asking us to return to our travel capsules and prepare for suspended animation.

  “Time to go,” she says with what looks like the hint of a wistful smile. “My name’s Meredith, by the way.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I reply. “I’m Alexis. See you on the other side.”

  3. Alarms and Retro-Rockets

  When the alarms sound – real, state-of-the-digital-art, electronic sirens this time, not the ersatz decorative brass bells and bosun’s whistles we’d heard on the observation dec
k – our travel capsules automatically revive us from suspended animation. Groggily, I haul myself from my bed, hurriedly pull on some clothes and stare around me. The only other visible occupant in my section of the accommodation compartment is that woman – Meredith. She is dressed but looking confused and frightened.

  “This way,” I shout, “the nearest escape pods are over here!”

  She doesn’t move and seems rooted to the spot in fear. Her reaction is something I’m familiar with. I saw it once before when Titan separatists bombed one of the habitation domes on Ganymede. There is no time for explanation. I run across to her. Grab her arm. Drag her over to an escape pod. I bundle her into it and clamber in after her. Slamming the hatch closed behind me, I ignite the booster rocket. Then with a lurch of acceleration we are free of the Chrysler-Zepp and heading for clear space.

  I peer out through the observation port. I can see the starship in the distance. Her keel is broken and she is on fire. It looks as if one of her turbine boilers has exploded. I look back again, the flames have now caught hold of the stellar sail. The ship is lost.

  Glinting red in the light of the flames, I see other escape pods. Some, like our craft, are falling away from the wrecked starship, spreading out in all directions, dispersing into the empty vastness of space. But others are clustering together in a parking orbit at a safe distance from the burning hulk.

  I feel a nasty sinking sensation in my stomach. They always tell you to familiarise yourself with the evacuation instructions when you travel, so should an emergency occur, you know the quickest and safest way to escape. But, distracted by my concern for Meredith, I neglected to do this. As I look over to her, I can see she still has a confused expression on her face, which I’m guessing is shock so I give her a shot of benzo from the emergency medical kit to tranquillise her. Only now do I read the instructions on the escape pod’s control panel.