We landed on a shelf of rock selected by autopilot, got out, planted the flag and cried, “For God, Harry, England and St. George.” Helliwell Axe.
"I would annex the planets if I could." Cecil Rhodes.
Being a series of narratives on space exploration and conquest.
As Lady Devonshire urged the grav bike to a throaty roar, she gave Brolly, her obsequious Welsh butler, a high-spirited swipe with her crop, "Hold on tight!" He was drunk, as usual, and hardly noticed. “Yes, Milady!” And so the sun rose over Phobos and Devonshire's Triumph Spectre lifted into the thin air of the recently terraformed Martian moon.
Fast wasn’t in it, and Brolly held on for dear life whilst the bike sped over rocky Phobian desert, arms tight around the driver's fur-clad waist. Beneath them, the sixteenth Erebus expedition toiled up the slopes of a towering mountain, a jagged remnant of the cataclysmic Jovian War. “Why walk when you can ride,” remarked Devonshire, glancing down at surly Venusian Sherpas. Brolly clenched his teeth against the biting cold. At this rate he’d soon be sober.
Sobriety aside, Phobos is the larger of the Martian moons but only some eleven miles in diameter, so it wasn’t long before the Triumph touched down on the parade square of the Residence. Neatly ranked sepoys stamped to attention and Major Hardman offered a brisk salute.
“Time for breakfast, Major?” enquired Devonshire, already striding to the plasteel dome of the Mess in her burnished Lobb's top boots. “Do keep up, Brolly,” snapped Devonshire as Hardman struggled with the door. In fairness, it wasn't every day that he was fortunate enough to welcome the heroine of Olympus Mons to his particular outpost of Empire.
“Come on, Major, this air lock won’t open itself,” and then they were inside and seated at gleaming mahogany, battle honors hanging overhead like the triumphant standards they were. Nonplussed by regimental glory, Devonshire turned smartly to Hardman, “Major, about this diamond.”
“Diamond, Devo?”
“Yes, diamond. You know the matter exactly, don't play the fool.”
Hardman thought back to desperate scrimmages in the lava tubes of Mars, “We lost a lot of good men.”
“So, all the more reason to get it back.”
“But the Tongs, hardly pacified, eh?”
Yes, the terrorist Tongs of New China had been in a state of Huawei driven holy war since an Anglo-US expedition burned the Celestial Kingdom's vaunted Summer palace to the ground. "Bamboo burns quick," remarked Force Commander, Lord Kitchener VI at the time of the raid, and he wasn't wrong. Rice paper met Rods from God and all the incandescent fury of the British Lion and American Eagle combined. A bad day for the mandarins, indeed.
While Hardman reflected on the fight, he had seen the elephant, data streamed across Devonshire's eyes and she flashed the Major an enchanting smile. He knew that no was not an option. It was then that the bomb exploded. An Orderly, Corporal Tighe, was vapourized instantly, and the room sprayed with a deadly shrapnel of molten Mess silver.
Major Cornelius Hardman stood, the veteran of a thousand psychic and literal wars, brushing invisible lint from his immaculate dress blues. “No disrespect, Ma’am, but did I mention the Tongs were restless?” Lady Devonshire raised a perfect eyebrow of sheer artistry, “Quite. And I intend to have that diamond. Brolly! Coffee. Now.”
Thanks to nano second force deflectors, both Major and Devonshire were unscathed from the blast and proceeded to breakfast in the wreckage of the room, ignoring hustling servitor bots who busily repaired the splintered chaos and slaughter around them.
“I say, Devo, old girl, best meal of the day, what?”
“So they say, Major. I must and shall have that diamond. Would that be marmalade?”
Such is the indomitable spirit of Britannia’s far-flung Empire, an Imperium upon which the sun never sets.
With apologies to everyone who isn't mentioned in this short.
Ad Astra,
