Ashes
With Apologies to
@Meadow for ripping off pretty much the entire nature of the setting from Meet the New Boss
In movies the sleeping renegade always shows how haunted he is when he’s woken up. He’s always startled even by the most gentle prodding. He may call out to the now destroyed remnants of his past life, past comrades, a woman. He may for a moment be emotionally shattered before he puts back on the iron mask. It’s an old idea, and a comforting one. Civilization is built by hard men, but we want to imagine that on some level they haven’t lost their humanity. That the sahib is still a just a man.
In reality though, the hard man with nothing left except his cause, the broken man, the killer, the revenant, the reiver, is not a comforting image. He hasn’t melded with that mask, there aren’t traces behind it. The mask is all that's left of him. And masks sleep soundly, and are always calm when that wake up comes. Masks sleep sound because they have learned to sleep where they can, when they can, and to take what comes with cold detachment.
Flight Sergeant Reggie Pennell, RAF, was a man who when awoken simply reached under his pillow for his revolver and looked around his strange surroundings, and said nothing until he was aware of the current situation. It was how he had survived more than half a decade behind the lines in Actionist Britain. The cost had been that survival wasn’t what drove him anymore, just the job.
The man awakening him had been hardened by the same fire, Police Sergeant Michael Croizer, had a revolver ready in his shoulder holster. The two men had been working together since Crozier had made it out of one of the camps into the hands of the Auxiliary Units. They knew each other so well, knew each other's processes as if they were their own, that all Croizer had to do was put one finger across the front of his shirt to the butt of that revolver, in that holster for Pennell to take his thumb off the hammer of his own, and begin to move it towards the holster that lay on the rubble next to where he had lay.
For a moment the two of them just sat there in silence. Pennell spoke first. His accent was thick and would have made it difficult for him to blend in up North in normal times, but the damage to his jaw and throat he got making it out of Liverpool made that East End accent nothing but a hoarse whisper, and the physical damage just made him one of the millions of thricedamned of the generation. And anyway, after two invasions and two dictatorships, there was no shortage of Displaced Persons.
“Well,” he muttered “were you able to make contact?”
The former Bobby was glum when he nodded. “Yeah. Orders still stand. We’re not on the big job.”
“We could have been good top cover had they gotten us some rifles. Hell we can still get the Nagants ourselves.”
“They don’t want us at the camp. But we do have a different job. A new job.”
The one time pilot perked up at that and Croizer leaned back against what had been part of the roof of this building either before the Armistice or before the first Red Air Force Liberator raids.
“Straight assassination. Like we used to do.” He offered slowly.
“Except this time it’s Red Army not Nazis or The Weasel’s boys.”
“No, not exactly. This time its one of Slim’s lads.”
Pennel furrowed his brow for just a moment, his eyes darting as he quickly ran not the ethics of the order but the changes in situation.
“Just more traitors then.” He said, with just a bit of gloom. Croizer nodded. And that was the end of it, the preparations were underway.
-----
Battalion Commander Jock Curran practically leaped off the Lend Lease Douglas transport plane as he arrived at the airport outside of Scarborough. He knew plenty of officers and men who had served in the Shock Army who hadn’t seen home since 1937, a few Commissars who had gone into exile even earlier than that. In comparison 1941 was a late departure. But exile, even the voluntary one of an Arctic Stowaway rushing to join some damned boyhood crusade in the midst of a genocidal war, was still exile. And Scarborough was still home.
He’d been part of the first of the wave. He’d actually been one of the handful to hear the first radio broadcast of Cripps declaring the formation of the FBG, though that was half by luck. Of course it was luck that had let him, a teenaged dockworker rise up from mere ammunition carrier in the nightmarish hell of Moscow to a BatCom in the Guards Armored Division of the British Shock Army. And it was that luck, and his record that had gotten him not just a prestigious posting in the Reconstruction, but one that brought him back, finally to home.
And there a little bit away from the stairs off the plane were who he was leaping towards. He’d seen his brother plenty of times since Liberation Day, Tom was one of the heroes of the hour, and already out of the service and into the vast Civil Administration working to DeAction, DeCapitalize and Democratize the port city. And next to him, were two thin little things who at least had light in their eyes and hair on their heads, though they showed the physical signs of the deprivation he knew they must have gone though.
“Kim! Lizzy!” He shouted when he was close enough, dropping his small bag he rushed up to the two young women, who had been merely girls when he’d said his tearful goodbyes back in the Summer of 1941. His two baby sisters in tears rushed forward and with his great gangly arms he bear hugged them both.
Their mother was dead, killed in the chaos of the German invasion when the city, like all coastal ports had been pulverized by the Luftwaffe. Their father, he and Tom had learned had followed her in 1944, killed as a hostage on the orders of the Actionist scum. But their four children had all lived.
As Jock held him he began to sob. Words failed him, but they failed his younger sisters too. Even as Tom came over he was misty-eyed. None of them spoke.
Jock held them all close. His war was finally over. It was time to rebuild. His family, his city, and the new country that was for all of them. The fighting was over, and he finally felt at peace.
----
Pennell and Croizer had been told that their target was flying into the city that day and so they’d slipped into a work party at the airport and as they worked to dismantle the rubble of the old Luftwaffe hangers there, they had watched with a keen eye.
Croizer had nodded his head briefly as the reunion was underway near the central terminal. Reggie had indicated silently that he acknowledged it. Their target was the man who was going to organize and command the Assault Guards in the city and Northern Yorkshire. Not just a Communist, not just a stooge to the Soviet Occupation, he was a patsy of the NKVD. And for the good of Free Britain --- the Real Free Britain --- he had to die.
Having done it a thousand times, it had been easy enough for Reggie and Mike to slip out of the work detail and slowly and separately track their target.
Jock Curran and his family had driven off gleefully in a Lend Lease Jeep, but the city was so damaged that it was an easy enough feat to follow them on foot and on bicycle. They had left their guns in a new hiding space before they left, and their papers were all in order. No Quisling Communists or Slavic thugs would have any problem with them.
Eventually the Curran’s arrived at a small rowhouse, near one of the bombed out factories that was in good enough shape and they all went in, all laughs and smiles. This being the North-east it was easy enough for Reggie to find an abandoned house with a line of sight to the rowhouse and the street parked Jeep. Croizer left to retrieve the weapons, and was back in under an hour.
One Mills Bomb.
One Fairbairn Knife
Two Webley Revolvers.
One Pipe Gun with just six rounds of ammunition and an annoying tendency to jam.
“No guards at least.” Offered Michael as they both sat down near the front windows of the abandoned house, on scrounged chairs, their eyes focused on the tattered holes of an old blackout curtain.
“Yeah, no Guards.” For a moment Reggie was willing to leave it at that, but then.
“How long do you think this is all going to go on?” He didn’t turn towards his partner.
The cop sighed and cursed before he answered. “I, uh, I don’t really know. I used to think the Americans but…”
“But they’re too busy now and we’re too far for Island Hopping.”
“They can still come though Spain.”
“We already had to deal with people who liked Franco once, do you really want to do that again?”
“Do you have a better way to beat these Communists?”
“No.”
Neither man turned towards the other. They had a job to do and so they waited and watched.
Occasionally a Red Army or Red British Army truck would pass by. More often it was just people on foot or on bicycles. Decommissioned troops, both those Actionists lucky enough to not be taken on for new National Service, and those other collaborators who pranced around with their gaudy medals and their Russian uniforms, and civilians alike came by, but not stopping. The house across the street contained two of the leading enemies of the British Nation in the city but no one knew, or if they did know, no one cared.
Evening came and Reggie left this time, returned with two tins of soup. The two auxiliaries ate them cold. For them one of the only decent things of this new occupation was that after years of Nazi enforced austerity, it was easier to get food now, something to thank Cripps for. Not that Reggie ever would.
“I think, in the end,” Michael suddenly spoke as he stuck his spoon into the cold tomato soup “that they’ll go too far. Stalin isn’t any different than Hitler was. And has taken a larger empire for himself. It can’t last and it can’t be turned into what they all dream it being. Eventually it’ll fall apart. And when that happens it’ll be us and the French and the Irish that break away first.”
Reggie turned at that to face his partner. “Then why do we keep doing this?”
“Because we have a job to do.”
“But if it doesn’t matter? What does this do to help bring that about?”
Croizer shrugged “Because their monsters and someone has to do something about Monsters. Never Surrender.’Let them speak of us one thousand years hence’.” He offered, quoting the Last Prime Minister.
“I just wish if this were going to keep on going, that we had better monsters.”
“You mean like the Nazis.”
“Yeah.”
Croizer turned away from his partner and grabbed the pipe gun, opening the action and angling it to look down the barrel for dirt, something they’d both checked at least four times already before he spoke again. “Just because they fought the Krauts, doesn’t make them any better. Don’t forget what this is all about. The Camp at Norton is getting hit, and its getting hit first thing in the morning.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“These people,” he gestured towards the blackout curtain and the house across the street from it as he spoke. “These people showed up at Norton and didn’t even shut it down. Just tossed different people in it. Kept our people in it. And added more. They’re as good a band of little patsys for the NKVD as the last crowd were for the bloody SS.”
“I know that. Damn it man, I know that.”
“I’m just making sure you remember.”
And with that the watch resumed.
------
Tom Curran was only the manager of survey operations that were getting Scarborough planned out for its new future, but that was a high enough position that he could have, theoretically, gotten himself and his siblings an estate outside of the city.
But Tom hadn’t been the man to do that sort of thing, and he’d known that Jock wasn’t either. This was more than enough for four siblings to be comfortable for a a year or so, and they’d all grown up with less.
Jock was proud of him for that and said as much over drinks several times in the night.
“You know I might requisition a bloody castle just to piss you off next time!” Was Tom’s response the next time the praise was given. They were both more than a little buzzed at this point, and as a result the two of them and Lizzy had found it hilarious. Kim had gone to bed a while before.
“You know,” Tom offered after another burst of chuckling, “I think I’ve had enough of castles actually. I’d be fine never even visiting a museum of one for the rest of my life.” The smile had lessened a bit across his face as he’d spoken. Jock had nodded in solemn agreement and Liz had become puzzled. She’d come of age under the Lord Protector, when questions weren’t allowed. She was going to enjoy the new era and immediately pounced on it.
“What’s the matter with castles? They seem pretty enough.”
“The SS and the Actionists liked to use a lot of them as prisons further south. Not for Jews, not for POWs, but as Ilags for Civilian Internment, and Concentration Camps. We found a lot of prisoner massacres in them.”
“Oh.” Said the young girl. “Well I wouldn’t want to live in one of those either.”
Tom smiled and leaned over to pat his baby sister’s shoulder. “Don't worry about it Liz, you never will.”
And then Tom looked Jock right in the eye, and kept looking at him even as he took another swig from his drink. “Actually I wanted to talk to you about that.”
Jock raised an eyebrow “Yeah, what can I do about that for you?”
“I was wondering if the Hero of the Soviet Union might be able to have some sway about a Camp inland from here. The NKVD run it and its as bad as that sounds…”
“Oh yeah?”
-----
It was nearly morning twilight when Croizer and Pennell quietly made their way onto the street.Pennell had the revolver, the Commando knife and the grenade, Croizer had the pipe gun. They said nothing as they followed their agreed upon plan. They darted across the empty street, past the jeep and then skipped the front stoop and swung around the side of the house, darting low to avoid the front room with the lights still on, pausing only to track the shadows.
The attack on the prison camp was already underway. The only way to make it work, the only way to get the loyalist prisoners to safety was to sow as much chaos as possible, and one of the best ways to do that was this, to kill the new commander of the collaborationist police in the region before he could even be in a position to act. They only had a limited time until the phone rang, if he had one, or a messenger showed up with the news.
After a moment they were outside one of the back windows, which they were lucky to find wasn’t locked. With quiet precision it was open, and in went Pennell. It was a bedroom with two small beds on either side. One occupied. With cold skill, the young woman’s mouth was covered, and a quick slice meant that nothing would ever pass her vocal cords, or her lungs again.
Croizer said nothing at the sight. It was the cost of war. They’d done it to other collaborationist whores before, not that they’d ever liked it then either, it was just something that happened and would never be talked about again. Communists had done the same thing plenty of times themselves.
Quietly, and slowly they opened the door to the hallway.
Down towards the front of the house the two men, including the target were in passionate agreement about, something.
“We can put pressure on them immediately. They might think that they’re hard bastards but I’ll show them. We can’t let something like that stay in operation. Not in the Commonwealth, not now…”
Croizer took point as they slowly moved towards the front room.The conversation was loud enough that they never heard anything and never stood a chance.
Croizer held up three fingers. Reggie tapped his shoulder in understanding.
The former cop put the fingers down and then lifted three fingers again. Another tap. Now they gripped their weapons, fingers on triggers. Gently Michael rocked his head forward and backwards as a tempo marker.
Three, Two, One.
The pipe gun jammed after two shots. Both revolvers on the other hand, reliably delivered six rounds apiece to their targets. In the movies it would have been clean.