Two dozen men and women now filled the corridor through the centre of the building. Leaning against the walls, crouching in the corners, or sitting on the floor.
Logan slumped down in the first gap he found, gasping, and stretching his ribs with every breath until his lungs were as full as they could go. Even then, there didn’t seem to be enough air to stop his heart pounding.
The hiss of dozens of men and women sucking in the thin air all around him filled the bunker, over the muffled noise of the sirens outside.
The last man in pulled the door closed. Red lights glowed around the frame.
“How long does this last?” Logan said, between gasps.
The man shrugged, then slumped down in the corner by the door. “Might be five minutes, might be five hours. Can’t really tell until it stops.”
“Does this happen often?”
“Once or twice a week lately. The sun’s been pretty active the last few months. Welcome to New Strasbourg.”
CHAPTER 2
Logan was fifteen the day the toffs came for his sister. It was a warm, sunny Saturday in September as the summer approached its end, and the cool green seawater of the English Channel lapped against the wooden hull of Jason’s father’s small dinghy as the two boys floated in it a couple of kilometres offshore.
The wood creaked beneath them, and the sail fluttered above them in the wind, tapping against the mast. Seawater from a wave slapping against the side of the hull splashed over Logan’s face where he sat at the rear of the boat, and he wiped it away. The sharp taste of sea salt filled his mouth, and he spat it over the side.
“Look at that,” Jason yelled from the bow, then stood and pointed to starboard, away from the narrow green line of the English coast.
A grey, boxy blob, long and low, was sailing slowly from horizon to horizon, further out to sea.
One of the Royal Navy ships that patrolled the English Channel, keeping watch for anyone trying to approach the coast of England from France, just fifty kilometres across the water. Not that anyone had in years, at least not so far as he’d heard about it.
Many of the world’s nations had treaties, agreements that they would never fight each other again on Earth, because past wars had been so destructive that no-one could risk another. And, besides, the resources in the off-world colonies were much more valuable to fight over. Earth was the place humans came from. Space was where they were going.
The Navy starships patrolled the wormholes and colonies in space, but their sea-going ships on Earth were there just in case nations couldn’t stick to the treaties. Should the French or the Reich decide to break the treaty and launch a sneak attack on England, the Navy would be their first line of defence.
Logan shaded his eyes from the sun with his hand as he stared out across the water. That blob must be a hundred metres long. Maybe a little more.
A destroyer, most likely.
He grabbed the long rod of the dinghy’s tiller beside him. The rough wood scraped against his palm as he pulled it gently toward him, turning the rudder in the water behind the boat. The dinghy slowly turned out to sea, twisting against the waves, and bobbing up and down as it slid over them.
Jason’s father was the only person Logan knew who had a boat, and the man sometimes let them borrow it to sail along the coast. Jason’s father was an engineer at the ammunition factory, one of the last remaining employers in Hastings.
Jason said his dad was on-call there night and day to keep the robots running, churning out bullets, missiles and shells for the Royal Marines and Royal Navy, and spent many nights at work, fixing their problems.
That put him far enough up the town’s hierarchy to afford a few perks. Like a terraced house instead of an apartment.
And the boat.
Of course, the toffs who ran the town got yachts and powerboats, and enough of them to fill most of the town’s new plasteel marina, down on the seafront by the old wooden pier that had been there since long before their parents were born. But those toffs would barely give Logan’s family a second glance if they somehow ended up in the same room together.
His family lived on UBI, the Universal Basic Income, and that barely paid for a small apartment to live in. His parents had tried to find jobs now and again to supplement their income, but with so much work now automated, there were hundreds of people fighting over every remaining opening.
They’d applied to move off-world, to one of England’s few colonies, but the competition there was even worse. They wanted people with experience in farming, mining, robotics and medicine, not those who’d barely found any kind of work since leaving school.
The only times he or his family would meet the toffs were when they were being punished for doing something wrong, or at the town party at the end of the summer, where the town toffs would turn up to show their faces, smile enough to make people think they cared, then disappear as soon as they could.
But the parties had music, dancing, games and contests, and better food than Logan ate the rest of the year. Real food, like the toffs could afford to eat every day, not cheap ration packs from the food vats that his parents brought home for Logan and his brother and sisters.
Everyone looked forward to the party through the summer, particularly the kids. It was the one day when they could stuff themselves with real meat, vegetables and cake until they could stuff in no more, then talk about how good it had been all through the cold, damp winter. A week had passed since that year’s party, but Logan could still feel the taste of real food in his mouth, instead of the sickly artificial goo of the ration packs.
“Don’t get too close,” Jason said.
Logan looked up. The destroyer had more than doubled in size as they approached, and it came closer with every second as the dinghy bounced at an angle over the waves toward it.
“I know what I’m doing.”
He knew better than to get close enough to a navy ship to be shot at. The fun was getting as close as you could before that happened. The navy crew would have spotted the dinghy long ago, scanned them, and figured out that they weren’t much of a threat. But, eventually, they’d react.
How close could he get before then?
“Come on,” Jason said. His voice quivered as though he was trying to sound less scared than he really was. “Turn back. Dad’ll be pissed off if you get his boat blown up. And I don’t want to have to swim home from here. It’ll take all day.”
Logan kept going. His heart beat faster, and a smile spread across his face.
Playing chicken with the navy ships was just about the most exciting time of his life. It sure beat sitting behind a desk at school, listening to the teacher drone on about things he couldn’t care less about, staring out the windows, and wishing he was somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
A drone hummed through the air about ten metres above them, the thin fuselage floating through the sky at barely more than walking speed, suspended beneath fat wings ten metres across, and pulled forwards by a lazily spinning propeller on the nose. The dark eyes of its cameras stared down at them.
Logan smiled, and gave it a thumbs-up.
The ship came closer still as the dinghy sailed on.
From that distance the destroyer looked like a squat black pyramid, squashed down and stretched out from bow to stern. Nothing interrupted the smooth surface except the rectangular hatches for missile launchers, and half a dozen turrets maybe two metres across. The long, thin barrels of rapid-fire gauss-cannon protruded from them, ready to shred anything hostile that came within range.
He’d read about these ships in the news once. One of the advertising features, recruiting boys for the Royal Navy. As he read the stories they printed of heroic battles, and long cruises around the Atlantic, he’d thought about joining up when he was old enough.