I do not doubt, dear reader, that you had been musing as to when precisely aid from the Crown would arrive, given Ernest’s activation of Level One Messaging.
There had never been any question, of course, as to our location. Every mechanical servant of the Crown dating back to the first Series One has been geotraceable by every other mechanical servant of the Crown, and so my whereabouts had been known with considerable precision since the first moment Ernest and I became guests of the anarcholibertarians; this is, of course, what you and I expect as the natural course of things. So long as such a servant is in our presence, we of the Peerage can take comfort in the knowledge that we are never lost to the supports and sustenance of our Society; in this rare time of crisis, I can witness to you that such interconnection was as present and effective as we have been taught since we were children.
Yet as the Collapse taught us, interconnection has a terrible cost. It is both a paradox and an absolute imperative that human beings must remain at an intentional remove from one another if we are to thrive together. Unlike our mechanised brethren, we of flesh and blood simply cannot tolerate an endless flow of information and social exchange; like the unfortunate rodents in Calhoun’s notorious mouse utopias, such an unrelenting torrent of hypersociality leads to frenzy, madness, and the disintegration of our essential God-given sociability. This was, of all of the factors leading to the Collapse, perhaps the most insidious and unexpected; I would, as always, direct any reader that might feel insufficiently familiar with the impact of such media on the fall of the former global order to read The Most Rev. Chatterham’s classic and definitive monograph on the subject.
As members of the Peerage, we commonly understand that sanity is best maintained through our intricate dance of manners and formality. All of us know the means by which this is best effectuated: Messages are sent physically, either handwritten or conveyed verbally by servants; information is processed slowly and with intent, through physical media such as this very issue of the Post in your hands, or through personable conversations at various soirees, salons, and meetings. Does this prioritise rapidity and volume? No. Of course it does not; rapidity and volume have never been measures of quality, and in our short span of days, it is quality that is of greatest value.
Such is the refined pace of life for you and I, and we are grateful for it. It is not a luxury, but a fundamental necessity of higher civilization; it permits us to retain our essential personhood and our integrity; without it, we are of no value to Her Majesty or the Crown, indeed, we would be of no value to one another, or even ourselves.
Yet we of the Peerage are not the only servants of the Crown, and we acknowledge that there are times that our fellow servants must avail themselves of their unique abilities and the full capacities of their construction.
I had never in my years (few though they admittedly may be) experienced an emergent eventuality in which Level One Messaging was required; indeed, I would not have hoped to ever find myself in such a trying circumstance. In opening himself to nonlocal processing, Ernest was of course taking full advantage of his quantum processor, which allows immediate and complete transfer of information and awareness without any mediating system of transmission. The particulars of this have always been beyond my ken, despite Stewart’s best efforts to explain the queer functionality of subatomic data transfer and management. Suffice it to say that, given the engagement of this protocol, all of the Ministries of the Peerage were fully aware of our predicament, and indeed had prestaged resources to support my diplomatic efforts should any need arise.
The need had arisen, and the Finch had come.
Observing the sleek form of the cutter as it swept silent down towards us, I felt both joy and trepidation. Joy, in that I knew that help was at hand; trepidation, in that the sight of a descending airship now stirred in my heart a terrible reminiscence, fear that just as Father had been taken from me, so too now might I lose my intended.
The Finch, being a research cutter, was swifter by far than airships of the line, even fleeter of wing than fast frigates such as the Dagger and Weasel. I was later to learn that Stewart and crew had been standing off at a near remove, such that they could be at our side in a mere quarter of an hour; given the rapidity at which our situation deteriorated, I am to this day grateful that it was no further.
The Finch moved downwards with grace, but also with stern purpose, and whilst it lacked the missile batteries, railguns, and other weaponry of combat vessels, it was far from helpless; though it was primarily intended for research, I knew it to possess within itself an small arsenal of the very most advanced and experimental armaments, yet fully tested by the Royal Society.
As if to affirm that knowledge, there came a tremendous crack of thunder, as from a protuberance beneath the prow of the Finch leapt a great bolt of shimmering, dancing lightning; it smote the tank squarely, and instantly all of those sheltering around it collapsed as one to the ground, the very breath driven from their frames and their hearts stilled by the impossible voltages carried in that forked, brilliant blow.
The tank itself continued forward haltingly, being grounded as it was; the turret seemed frozen, as the energies of the bolt must have short circuited the motors upon which it relied. Those Caddiganites who had survived the strike scattered and fell back to cover, pressing back towards the yawning opening they had so rudely created in the outer wall; they realised, for it was obvious to all, that the tables had again turned, and that they were now very likely outmatched.
To punctuate this new reality, there was a second clap of thunder, a moment of blinding brilliance, and the tank was stilled and smoking; the scent of storm-singed air and an unsettlingly pork-like odour filled my nostrils.
Even so, two score of the Caddiganites stubbornly remained, and they continued to fire upon us from distributed cover near and around the southern wall; their numbers were still sufficient to pose a threat, like a wild dog cornered and without easy egress, they were not to be trifled with or confronted without due caution.
With Diego and his band of anarchists now fighting fiercely and making progress against the incursion at the gate, I began to consider how those of us who were gathered might best push out this rabble of barbarous ruffians: we were numerically overmatched on the ground, which spoke against a direct assault; we had the use of one remaining armoured truck, the others having been crippled or rendered unusable by the tank, which limited our advantage; and despite the Finch giving us a decided advantage in firepower, it was unclear if it would be able to engage effectively against those who remained without critically damaging the settlement. That, and I was unclear who, if anyone, was providing orders and discipline to the dozen or so anarchists who were engaging with me on our southern front; they were unquestionably brave, to the point of foolhardiness, but they seemed not to have any coordination amongst themselves beyond shouts and rallying cries.
Command and control are not, after all, concepts particularly amenable to the anarchist temperament.
I was on the very verge of engaging Ernest’s insights into this tactical quandary when events took yet another, entirely unexpected turn.
Chapter Thirty: An Unacceptable Risk
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