Tamsin Beech Ch. 13: Bath

"The Coalition?" Mpenzi flapped a hand, "yeah, but that's all kicking off in the north. We don't have the weapons or trained personnel so we won't get involved unless we absolutely have to. With whoever the crazy bitch is leading the resistance up there, the Coalition have left us pretty much alone."

Jessamy nodded her understanding, "That'd be Tamsin. My niece."

Lupita looked astounded, "No shit. So being a badass runs in your family?"

Jessamy shook her head, "Hopefully not. I don't want my daughters turning into me. Anyway ... if Ada is alive, she's with them. The Coalition. We managed to take out their entire fleet with Soteria ... except for the North Korean flagship - the Baekdusan."

"One itty bitty ship?" Mpenzi scoffed, "hardly a challenge for the great Jess Beech. Since we've not heard anything from Jack Aubrey I'm guessing you solved that particular problem too."

"I did. Long story for another time. Listen, the Baekdusan is their aircraft carrier. With their entire arsenal of nukes on board."

Mpenzi sat back, "Oh."

Jessamy leaned forward, elbows on her knees, "Yeah, oh. They took some damage and did a runner. We're guessing to some predetermined rendezvous in case everything wents tits up. I need to know where, Lupita."

Mpenzi shrugged, "That's easy. Portsmouth naval base. Only place along the south coast with the facilities to take a ship that size."

"Portsmouth," Jessamy breathed, "of course. How could I have been so stupid?"

"You planning to take on the North Koreans alone or is that sweet hunk Hamnavoe with you?"

Jessamy looked her friend in the eye, "Hamnavoe's dead Lupita."

Mpenzi was stunned, "Oh fuck I'm so sorry. Was it the Coalition?"

"Cancer. Or something. We never really knew what it was. But he did his bit. That's what counts."

"Shit Jess," Mpenzi shook her head in disbelief, "look ... we still have the patrol boat. We can get you as far as Portsmouth if that's what you're planning to do. Take any supplies you need, but after that we can't draw any attention to ourselves. We have too many civilians here."

"I understand," Jessamy regarded the woman she'd thought dead for so long. The years had been kind to her. Lupita Mpenzi had kept herself fit and healthy and apart from crow's feet and a few grey hairs sprouting amongst her dreadlocks, she didn't appear to have aged, "so how the fuck did you get here?"

Mpenzi took a deep breath and slowly let it out, "The morning of the day Jack Aubrey wiped out Penzance, one of the fishing boats in Newlyn spotted a boat out in Mount's Bay. Just anchored a couple of miles offshore ... like it was waiting for something. Nothing big, just an old Fisheries Protection vessel. Patrol boat. John, your dad I mean ... drove us down to the harbour and I stupidly volunteered to go take a look."

"You?"

Mpenzi nodded, "Just me and a couple of others, with guns just in case. One of the locals - bouncer from Eleanor's, took us out in his dinghy to see what was what."

"Aubrey's people?" Jessamy asked.

"No, turned out it was one of Devonport's original navy personnel in charge of the boat, "Mpenzi nodded towards the door, "young Sally Blackthorn's father as it happens. We went onboard. He'd guessed what Jack Aubrey might be planning, stole the patrol boat and sailed down to warn us. He wasn't sure how we'd react if he just came ashore so ..."

Jessamy completed the thought, "He waited for you to go to him?"

"Yeah. Then ..."

"Soteria?"

Mpenzi's gaze drifted to the high sash windows, watching the falling snow outside gathering in the corners of each pane, "Yeah. Soteria. It was horrible. It was ... like the sun landed in the bay Jess. A blinding light. Like ... the end of the fucking world. We were on the edge of it, but ... with the waves, Blackthorn's boat almost capsized. We were swept out to sea ... taking on water. If I'd been ashore I'd be dead too ... just like your dad."

Jessamy leaned forward to touch her friend's knee, "You're not to blame Lupita. What next?"

Mpenzi shrugged, "We went south, trying to bail out the patrol boat and keep ourselves afloat. Blackthorn suggested we try for the Channel Islands, so after a few days we ended up on Jersey. It took months to repair the boat, Jess. Months. The locals made us welcome though, as long as we worked to earn our keep."

"So how long were you there for?"

"Altogether? Three years."

Jessamy's eyes widened in surprise.

"The few of us who'd survived continued to work on the boat. Patch the hull, get her as seaworthy as we could. Though to be honest, being paralysed from the waist down I wasn't much help. I spent my time organising spare parts and materials, and trying to improve life for the locals. Their village needed proper defences, organised scavenging expeditions to the mainland and proper food distribution."

Jessamy frowned, "You mean mainland France?"

"Yeah. There's not much left. It's a wasteland ... full of cannibal crazies the islanders call 'les mangeurs'. Probably why the Coalition bypassed it and came all the way to the UK. In fact Sally's dad was killed on one of our salvage trips. Anyway ... when we were all set to leave Jersey, we left the island in a pretty good state. A community of good people."

It sounded to Jessamy much like what trying Ross and Merida were trying to create at Fort George, "Then you came back here?"

Mpenzi nodded, "We came back here. With Aubrey gone, Devonport had gone downhill. Sickness, starvation. After what I'd done on Jersey, Blackthorn's dad suggested I should be in charge. They took a vote. And so ... I've been in the captain's chair ever since. Honorary rank and privileges."

Jessamy smirked, "Should I salute you or something?"

"You can stow that shit right now, Corporal Beech," Mpenzi laughed, "we're doing okay here. We have a hospital, a school, and plenty of food to go around. Speaking of which, little Sally Blackthorn'll be back with refreshments soon. She's my best scout by the way. I wanna hear all about where you've been for the last twelve or thirteen years. Then ... we can start discussing how we can help you ..."

. . .

Tamsin followed Yeonmi warily as they passed through the silent ruins of Bath along Walcot Street. On all sides, sad reminders of how the city must have once looked in its heyday stood crumbling, disintegrating, soot streaked and mildewed. Forty years after Thanatos and the natural disasters that had followed in its wake, nature was taking over. Pulteney Bridge and entire three and four storey Georgian townhouses stood hidden under dense facades of tangled ivy, with the questing roots of mature trees cracking their deep foundations apart.

Several times they encountered scavengers. Either alone or in pairs, pathetic shambling wrecks who'd timidly braved the ruins to hunt rats or loot the abandoned buildings for anything others may have overlooked. Yeonmi raised her handgun in warning on each occasion, causing the ragged figures to beat a hasty retreat. But given half a chance Tamsin would have gladly shared what little they had left.

Everywhere there were reminders of the warlord General Chinnor having passed through. Undecipherable tags daubed in fading red or fluorescent colours on virtually any available section of bare wall. On wrecked cars, buses and even narrow boats that had somehow been thrown out of the canal and over into the streets.

By the time they turned into Cheap Street, once a pedestrian shopping area alongside Bath's magnificent abbey, it was dark and snowing heavily. Tamsin was beginning to regret not drying out her socks properly back in Brimscombe as she realised she could no longer feel her toes, "H-how much farther?"

Yeonmi stopped so suddenly that Tamsin almost walked into her, "We're here."

Past piles of rubble and splintered timber, wide stone steps led between narrow pillars up to three tall, arched doorways. Bullet holes pockmarked the building's chipped Roman style portico.

"What the fuck is this place?" Tamsin asked dubiously, "an old hotel?"

Yeonmi smirked, "Extremely old. But not a hotel."

. . .

"Hello?" Phoebe called softly, "Leonid?"

After several minutes waiting in the draughty top floor corridor of Fort George's barrack block, she was beginning to think she'd misheard the Russian. Had he seriously invited her over for a chat? Or had it been merely wishful thinking on her part?

Phoebe was about to turn away and go back downstairs to her own room when the door in front of her finally squeaked open a few inches.

"Hello?"

"Phoebe!" Leonid exclaimed as if surprised by her appearance, "um ... dobryy vecher."

He looked as if he'd been asleep. Bloodshot eyes, tousled hair and the distinct faint aroma of Finlayson's homemade vodka on his breath.

"Good evenin' tae you too. Y-ye invited me up ... fer a chat?" Phoebe ventured nervously, "if now's a bad time I could always come back another day?"

Leonid opened the door wide, "No. Please, come in. I could do with some company."

Phoebe stepped across the threshold. Tamsin and Leonid's room was pretty much like her own, only slightly bigger. Whitewashed walls streaked with damp, the bare minimum of basic furniture and a few personal belongings. Angus's cot sat empty at the foot of the double bed, "Wh-where's wee Angus?"

Leonid quietly closed the door and sat down heavily in one of the room's two battered armchairs, "Merida and Ross are babysitting. The proud grandparents."

Phoebe detected a slight catch in the Russian's voice. She took the seat opposite him, "Leo? What's wrong?"

Leonid reached down for a half empty bottle beside the chair and poured a couple of fingers into a smeared glass, "Nothing. It's ... just that without Tamsin here I've had time to think."

Phoebe grinned, trying to make light of the situation, "An' drink by the look of it. How can ye stomach that stuff?"

"Oh this? Finlayson's domashnyaya vodka," Leonid pulled a face as he sipped from his glass, "I've had a glass or two and to be honest I fell asleep. Don't be offended but I, uh ... forgot you were coming."

"That's alright. Ye said ye'd had time to think?"

"Da," Leonid nodded, "Angus ... has both parents, who love him more than anything. And grandparents."

"What are ye getting at?"

"He's lucky. My parents both died on the voyage here. I have no other family, so I was already an orphan when the Spetsnaz took me in. Trained me."

Phoebe leaned forward and without thinking placed a reassuring hand on Leonid's arm, "Oh shit. I'd ne'er even thought to ask about yer own family."

"No matter. I barely remember my parents. No, I've been thinking about the Coalition fleet. Wiped out in an instant by Soteria and none of them even saw it coming. When we left Russia there were only about a hundred thousand of us left. Crammed into the aircraft carrier Lenin, cargo ships, cruise ships, tankers. Whatever would carry us. Now all that's left are however many of our colonists have survived."

"Fuck. We've always thought of ye as one of us Leo."

Leonid shook his head, "But I'm not. I'll always be Russian. Russkiy. Postoronniy."

Phoebe took a moment to decide how best to respond, "Do ... do ye blame Tamsin and Jessamy for wha' they did?"

"No. No I don't blame them. Either of them. It was war ... and I made my choice what side I wanted to fight for. I never wanted to invade your country and I was never alone in thinking like that. President Zakhvatchikov asked for everything he got when he nuked Novaya Nadezhda."

"So why are ye gettin' pissed on Finlayson's rotgut?"

"Because ... I miss Tamsin, and I'm ... scared what might happen to her. One of the best things in my life and ... and I might lose her."

Phoebe had never heard the Russian admit to being afraid of anything. Which said a lot about his mental state. She therefore considered it best not to admit to him the afternoon she'd spent with her beautiful cousin in Kerrera's boatyard.

Phoebe sat up straight, "Tell me about her. Tell me about Tamsin."

. . .

"So ... we can take you as far as Gosport," Lupita Mpenzi explained to Jessamy, "put you ashore there. Are you sure you don't want a squad to go in with you? Sally here can lead."

Jessamy sipped hot, unsweetened tea from a chipped mug and glanced dubiously across at Sally Blackthorn. The young lieutenant looked eager, nervous and completely out of her depth, "How old are you Lieutenant Blackthorn?"

The galley at the Devonport officers' mess had provided freshly baked bread, ham, cheese and bowls of spiced pumpkin soup - a welcome change to the dried food Jessamy had been living on. Sally Blackthorn nibbled delicately at the corner of a sandwich, "Uh ... seventeen, Miss Beech."

Jessamy rolled her eyes, "Lupita. No disrespect but I'm not taking children on an assault against seasoned North Korean troops. I'll go in alone."

"Most of my officers are under twenty five," Mpenzi countered irritably, "in case you hadn't realised, all the serving personnel you saw on your last visit are in their sixties or seventies now. We needed new blood."

Jessamy raised an eyebrow, "Fresh meat you mean."

Mpenzi sighed, giving her old friend a withering look, "This isn't the bad old days of Fodders and Preens, Jess. They're not conscripts, they're volunteers. They may be inexperienced but they certainly have the skills."

Jessamy sipped her tea, "All the same ... get me to Gosport and I'll make my own way to the Baekdusan."

Mpenzi slammed her plate of food down on her desk, startling Sally Blackthorn, "YOU'RE FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE! STILL!"

"And you wouldn't have me any other way."

. . .

Tamsin Beech wearily pulled off her clothes and climbed gratefully, blissfully, down into the steaming water of the Great Bath. She had to admit that Yeonmi had chosen a good spot. The city's Roman baths had once attracted thousands of visitors from all over the world and with Bath having been abandoned during the time of General Chinnor had been left pretty much alone for forty years.

Inside, the draughty rooms of the museum levels lay virtually empty, stripped of everything but old animal bones and drifts of dead leaves. Between them, in a rare moment of cooperation, the women had managed to pull an internal door off its hinges to block the entrance out into the street. A feeble defence but it would cut out some of the wind blasting in from outside.

But it hadn't been the bare rooms with their mould and leaking ceilings that had gained Tamsin's instant approval ...

Deeper into the building, through other sets of doors, a colonnade of worn stone pillars ran around a rectangular pool, open to the sky and the elements. Festoons of ivy and thick moss hung down in curtains from the statuary and edges of the roof high above giving the impression of an overgrown ruin from some ancient civilisation lying abandoned in the midst of an impenetrable jungle.

Sulphurous steam rose from the lead lined pool, melting the snow falling from the leaden sky before it touched the water's surface. The hand cut stone blocks around its edges and whatever rubble had tumbled into the baths lay coated with a thick layer of green algae. Yeonmi had wasted no time doffing her rucksack and lighting their one remaining lantern, "If you need to warm up, the best way is to get in the water."

Tamsin had gawped in stunned disbelief. It was much like the Reekies' geothermal pool in Edinburgh Castle. Only this wasn't caused by some great cataclysm. The naturally occurring hot spring had always been here. She'd watched in silence for a moment, feeling a little self conscious as the North Korean had placed her weapons in easy reach, then stripped out of her travel stained clothes and lowered herself naked into the hot pool.

Now Tamsin leaned back and closed her eyes, feeling the heat seep into her extremities even as snow obscured the sky above.

"How did you find this?" Tamsin asked.

"The same way my murdered brother discovered the whereabouts of Novaya Nadezhda. Your jailer - Volk, gathered information on the entire UK when the Russians first landed," beside her, Yeonmi ran clawed fingers through her grimy black hair as she spoke.

It was the first time Tamsin had seen her baby's wet nurse naked. Yeonmi was petite - almost child like in size. But in the flickering light Tamsin could see every inch of her body was toned muscle and taut sinew. She carried not a single ounce of extra fat or a single stretch mark, despite having given birth only months before. Proof of some punishing exercise regimen she guessed.

"Don't drink it," warned Yeonmi, without looking up, "the water I mean. It's not safe. That's why the scavengers don't come in here."

"Since when did you give a fuck?"

Yeonmi tilted her head to one side, "Since you kidnapped my daughter? I find myself in the unfortunate position of having to keep you alive. Babysit you. Or your Russian eumgyeong boyfriend will no doubt assume I shot you myself."

Tamsin immersed herself deeper in the water, rubbing dirt from her skin with grubby fingernails, "You asked for this Yeonmi. You took Angus."

"You beheaded my brother, amkae," Yeonmi snapped back.

"Touche. I'm too fucking tired to argue about this right now. Could we maybe call a truce? Oww ..." Tamsin winced as she rubbed a hand over her breasts under the water. With Angus not around to suckle, they were tender and swollen with milk.

"What's the matter?" Yeonmi demanded, "are you injured?"

"What's this? Concern?"

"Merely a practicality. If you're injured, you'll slow us down."

Tamsin angrily gripped the stone edge of the bath to clamber out, "I'm fine, thankyou. Absolutely fucking fine. Now ... I better get a fire going. Let you wash your hair in peace."

. . .

"When I first met your cousin I was going to shoot her. Execute her."

Phoebe Beech's eyes widened, "Shoot Tamsin? What the hell fer?"

Leonid Denisovich took another sip of Finlayson's homemade vodka and grimaced, "Assassinate to be more precise. She was part of Zakhvatchikov's plan. An arranged marriage to Kim Napp Gylan to cement the alliance."

"So why didn't ye?"

Leonid shrugged, "I ask myself that all the time. And to this day I've no idea. She was a pampered, over privileged eighteen year old who Volk had kept prisoner on Lindisfarne. We had nothing in common. But she had ... something about her. A fire. A resolve. A ... a ferocity. Much like her mother."

"Merida?" Phoebe leaned back in her lumpy armchair and grinned. It no longer seemed to matter how the evening would pan out. She was finding it pleasant enough just having Leonid to herself for once, "and now Tamsin's leader o' the resistance."

Leonid nodded, "And heading off to who knows where with that lying bitch Yeonmi."

Mention of Yeonmi immediately put Phoebe on her guard. Regardless of what Leonid had said, she still considered it her fault that the North Korean had been able to trick them all, "She ... seemed nice."

Leonid huffed, "The DPRK's special forces always recruit the good looking ones. And I suppose it was her duty considering that she might one day assume command," he met her gaze and stared intently into Phoebe's eyes, "believe me, Yeonmi is nothing more than a cold blooded killer."

Phoebe blushed as she looked away, "Why didnae she just take over when Tamsin killed her brother then?"

"The Coalition would have torn itself apart if she'd tried. Russians fighting North Koreans. It's all about control of the Baekdusan's nuclear weapons, nothing more. So I'm guessing she waited, to see how things would develop. But I don't think she counted on Tamsin and your mother getting into one of the Soteria bunkers."

Phoebe nodded. After a few moments, she risked giving Leonid a sideways look, "I have to admit though ... she's a great kisser."

It took a second for her words to register. Leonid slowly raised an eyebrow, "Kisser? What are you talking about? How'd you know?"