Читать книгу To See The Light Return - Sophie Galleymore Bird - Страница 13

A cold wind was blowing in off the waters of Plymouth Sound. Clouds were clearing to reveal a new moon coming up in the eastern sky. Will’s mum, a keen believer in astrology, would have seen it as auspicious at the beginning of their mission, and approved. Thinking of her, and his dad and his sisters, Will felt a moment of longing that made his heart clench. It had been months since he had seen or spoken to his family. Alone in the darkness, hoping his part in the events of the night would not be necessary, he felt afraid, scared he’d mess things up and let everyone down, even more scared of what would happen to him if he got caught. He tried to control his breathing, as he had been taught, to calm himself and focus on the present moment. It helped a bit.

Which was when he became aware he was hungry. All he had was a bag of last year’s walnuts and a flask of water to see him through. In the end, there had been so many questions the night before there hadn’t even been time for more than a couple of the home-made biscuits Mrs Mason had brought with her. Which she was now, presumably, eating with the Major while they waited for the boat. The hours between had been a rush of small missions, carrying information and equipment to other teams, with little time for more than a sandwich.

In the truck, before he and the others headed for their boats, the Major had roused his team by reminding them that Spight’s grip was strong, but heavily dependent on three things. Inertia, and his control of goods coming in from outside Devon’s borders accounted for two of them. The destruction of the road and rail bridges at Saltash, the mining of the A30 and A39, checkpoints at all minor roads crossing the borders and control of its ports and harbours, meant that very little came in that he didn’t then disburse through an efficient system of bribes and cronyism. And – which was even more damaging according to the briefing seminars Will had fidgeted through – he controlled the types of goods imported, setting up trade deals with regressive fiefdoms such as the Real USA’s New Jersey, Ohio and Florida, as well as Poland, China and Saudi Arabia; choosing fossil fuels, junk food and substandard electronics built without guarantees or safeguards and thus needing frequent replacing. Crap that fulfilled an immediate want but no actual need.

With global demand for gimmicky rubbish at an historic low – as more socially developed states put the cooling of the planet above individual whims – these retrograde states were totally dependent on each other for trade.

The third thing Spight exploited was energy. With no access to cheap fuel, he had a monopoly on all energy supplies within the county. In the first few years after Devolution, thousands of trees and hedgerows had been cut down by people desperate to heat their homes during savage winters and cook their food year-round. Once he became Mayor, Spight had taken control of public woodlands and set up licensed groups to manage them (taking a share of the licence money), to ensure trees were planted as well as harvested: fast-growing varieties such as willow, hazel and sycamore. He befriended or threatened those with private woods, persuading them to allow similar groups on their land, in exchange for some of his imported goods. Everyone was entitled to a share, but allocations were controlled by patronage and favour, and anyone found with more than their allocation was at risk from a judicial system administering penalties that began with public shunning and escalated rapidly to summary execution.

Their Stage One mission tonight was to attack the first two things propping up Spight’s regime. By intercepting the scheduled delivery, due in from New Jersey, they would hit Spight where he kept his feelings – in his pocket – and show him up as fallible. Once this had been achieved, Stage Two – drawing him out – would follow on naturally. From there, the Major promised them, it was but a short step to Stage Three.

Will’s part in all this was simple. As one of the youngest and least experienced of the team, he was to stay out of harm’s way, and report back to Mal via walkie-talkie from his observation post, in shadows at the water’s edge of the deep-water dock in Plymouth. If anyone came to disrupt the blockade he was to alert first Mal and then the Major, but to stay out of any violence that might ensue. He was secretly relieved by this. He was nervous enough without the fear of being obliged to get into a physical fight. Two years of fight training and six months of active deployment had not obliged him to hurt anyone, and the thought of doing so filled him with nausea.

The usual docking procedure was for incoming vessels to anchor inside the breakwater and wait for daylight, before unloading onto smaller boats that would come inshore to dock. It was unlikely any workers would arrive the night before a scheduled delivery run, but they couldn’t be certain, and so the Major had detailed Will as lookout.

He was hidden from casual observers by a small wooden shack that had survived the developers, back in the day when Plymouth was undergoing its first makeover since the 1960s. At the turn of the millennium, Mrs P had told them in a history lesson – shortly before she was banned from teaching them modern history – there had been an attempt to boost the national economy by building new houses and roads, paid for by the taxpayer and making the owners of construction companies very rich, something she called corporate welfare.

When the global economy crashed in the early 2020s – as the reality of climate change bit and efforts were finally made to cut carbon emissions, as fossil-fuel giants fought back, countries disintegrated, and Devon devolved – everyone who had bought second homes in the city upped and left, along with thousands of university students who had been the source of much of the city’s employment. There were few jobs for those that remained; more people left. Plymouth was a ghost of its former self, with rows of vacant houses and empty high-rise blocks of flats, and a bleak city centre of boarded up and burned out shops.

The docks, halfway through the process of becoming luxury waterside flats when the crash happened, still serviced some smaller cargo ships. The larger vessels were kept out by a harbour slowly filling up with silt. National government used to keep the harbour dredged to accommodate naval aircraft carriers and Trident submarines, but now the Kingdom was no longer United, there was no regional money to pick up the slack and Plymouth’s imports by sea were under threat. Will wondered if Spight had a plan for when the cargo boats could no longer dock.

But that wasn’t an issue tonight. The cargo ship coming at Spight’s behest would be meeting their flotilla, out beyond the breakwater. The Major, Mrs Mason, Tom, Dick and Harriet, and a host of resistance activists from across Devon and Cornwall, were waiting in small boats, using up precious fuel, preparing to turn back the cargo vessel by whatever means necessary. Of course, it could all go horribly wrong. It was a cold night to be rammed and thrown into the sea. In the dark. Chopped up by propellers. Shot at. Drowned. Will shivered and his stomach churned. At least he was no longer hungry.