Tamsin Beech Ch. 14: Portsmouth

The MON50 - a directional anti-personnel mine developed for the Russian armed forces at the beginning of the twenty first century. Based on the American M18A1 Claymore, each mine contained 700g of RDX explosive capable of firing approximately 540 steel balls or 485 steel rods to a lethal range of 50 metres in a 54° arc.

Usually mounted above ground level on the surface or in trees to give the greatest dispersal of fragments, the mines could be command actuated or by a variety of booby trap switches. Including tripwires.

Kim Yeonmi Gylan had been an inch away from walking into one. An inch away from being blasted to pieces. She'd frozen in place as the almost full moon had peeked out from behind scudding clouds for just an instant, silvery light glinting on the thin line of steel at shin height in front of her. A lucky escape.

"Bujuui han geot," Yeonmi quietly chastised herself for being so stupidly careless and stepped cautiously over the wire. The carrier Baekdusan had been moored in Portsmouth's old naval base for almost a year. Surely in that time, her captain - Soejoe Geomi, would've had all the approach routes guarded and thoroughly booby trapped. She continued south, senses heightened by adrenaline as she picked her way silently through the snow covered rubble of Portsmouth's ferry port.

At the adjacent container terminal, hundreds of steel shipping containers had been tossed together by some past tsunami - split open, their contents long since plundered or spoiled. Creating a jagged alien landscape of twisted metal, like the aftermath of some gargantuan round of Jenga. Beyond, lay the naval base itself. HMS Nelson. There had been a facility in Portsmouth for the best part of nine hundred years, surviving the Napoleonic wars and the devastating nightly raids by Hitler's Luftwaffe. But in the space of merely a few minutes on August 20th 2021, the rogue asteroid Thanatos had transformed many of the moored vessels, workshops, docks and accommodation blocks into gutted ruins - effectively crippling the UK's Royal Navy.

It had taken Yeonmi a further few days to walk from Bath. Wading through icy floodwater and waist deep snow in some areas. Though she didn't expect as much, part of her hoped that Tamsin Beech would have the good sense not to follow. Despite what intimacies they'd shared they were still enemies after all - British and North Korean. Not that being either really stood for much any more. In Yeonmi's opinion, her dead brother Kim Napp Gylan had brought what was left of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to its knees.

Making an alliance with Russia and steaming halfway around the world for the sake of dwindling natural resources and a place to call home. But they hadn't counted on the brave and resourceful likes of Tamsin Beech and her resistance. Their fleet was now gone. Utterly destroyed. A few thousand colonists and the Baekdusan - her birthplace, were all that remained.

And after all their losses, it would be just like the Russians to want to go out in a blaze of glory, she guessed. With thirty four tactical nuclear weapons left at President Volk's disposal, revenge might not be too far from his thoughts. Her brother Napp had been the same. An insufferable bully who'd always been one for flamboyant gestures - forcing Yeonmi to train alongside him with their special forces for instance. The physical, mental and on several occasions sexual abuse she'd endured from him was almost forgiveable given the indispensable knowledge and skills she now had.

But leaving her to deal with the aftermath of his murder, and subsequently giving birth to Vladimir Zakhvatchikov's daughter, was not. She loved Jag-eun Neugdae, her 'little wolf'. But it had been Kim Napp Gylan's idea, not hers - to seduce Zakhvatchikov and be close enough to assassinate him when the time came. But now thanks to Tamsin Beech she'd even been denied the simple pleasure of killing her brother ...

Yeonmi shivered as the night blew icy salt laden wind in from the Solent and the Isle of Wight beyond. Getting back onboard the Baekdusan would be relatively simple. She knew the layout of the ship like the scars on her hands. She knew the standard patrol patterns and where sentries would most likely be posted. But with the slimmest possibility that some of those guards might be Volk's Russian Spetsnaz, she couldn't take anything for granted and just go ambling up to the gangway demanding to see the captain. She was going to have to do it the hard way ...

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: PORTSMOUTH

A few days earlier ...

PART ONE: ALL ROADS LEAD TO POMPEY ...

"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING PHOEBE?" Merida Beech demanded, her breath pluming in the frosty morning air.

To be honest she hadn't been thinking. Phoebe pointedly kept her back turned to her aunt and continued with what she was doing - clearing up the soiled hay from Fort George's goat pen. She had traps and crab pots to check later and couldn't stand around chatting. Who knew how much longer the good weather was going to last?

"Fucking Leonid behind Tamsin's back!" Merida's uncharacteristic foul language made Phoebe wince. Her aunt hardly ever swore, and rarely raised her voice in anger for that matter, "as if it wasn't bad enough that you helped the North Korean woman kidnap our grandson and ..."

Phoebe paused, gripping the rake tightly in her gloved hand, "Yeonmi."

Merida leaned forward over the goat pen's rickety gate, "What?"

"Her name is Yeonmi," Phoebe turned to face Merida, noticing not for the first time just how much she resembled her cousin Tamsin. The same untameable coils of flame red hair, the same blazing blue green eyes. Still beautiful. If it hadn't been for faint crow's feet around her aunt's eyes and one or two grey hairs, her and Tamsin could've almost been mistaken for sisters.

Merida took a breath and exhaled slowly, "It doesn't fucking matter what her name is Phoebe," she spread her hands wide, drawing the attention of a couple of the fort's guards on the rampart nearby, "we've trusted you, Ross and me. We've let you become part of the community we're building. And you've let us down. If your mother wasn't my dearest friend ..." she paused for a moment, "we'd seriously have to reconsider your position here."

What did that mean exactly? Banish her? Kick her out of Fort George to take her chances beyond the walls with the scavengers and crazies? Jessamy would certainly have something to say about that when she got back.

Leonid had been just as much to blame. The Russian had been lonely and half drunk on Finlayson's homemade vodka. And she'd taken advantage of that. But not so drunk that he hadn't known what he was doing - several times over the course of the night as it happened.

"Why?" Phoebe demanded. She guessed now might not be an appropriate time to confess what she'd shared with Tamsin on Kerrera.

"WHY?" Merida repeated, her patience running thin, "why? Because Leonid and Tamsin can do without distractions. They need to know they can trust one another. Tamsin is ... well, who knows where ... trying to track down the Baekdusan. And now we've got Reivers heading this way ..."

Reivers? When her Uncle Ross had burst into Leonid Denisovich's room earlier that morning and found them both in bed together, Phoebe had hastily snatched up her clothes and dressed, not waiting to find out what was so urgent. The mere mention of the savage hordes who controlled Scotland's entire west coast sent a chill up her spine, "Where? How many?"

Merida's demeanour changed noticeably, her fury abating somewhat, "Fort Augustus. Western end of Loch Ness. One of our scouts spotted a raiding party of around a hundred or more."

Phoebe knew vaguely of the tiny village, somewhere between forty or fifty miles away. Once a budding community that had been abandoned when Reivers had taken over the ruins of nearby Fort William, "So if they move up the Great Glen towards Inverness ..."

Merida nodded grimly, "They'll be practically on our doorstep. Ross thinks they might be just a raiding party ... but then again, maybe they're scouts for a larger force. There've been rumours about a new Reiver chieftain and he might be looking to expand his territory. We need someone to head down to the village of Drumnadrochit along their probable route and keep an eye out ... in case they continue this way."

Phoebe immediately spotted the perfect way to atone for her ill advised night of passion with Leonid. Not that she felt she'd done anything wrong, and certainly nothing to apologise for. A few days spent away might give Aunt Merida and Uncle Ross time to cool off. So before she gave herself chance to think things through further, Phoebe opened her mouth and spoke, "I'll go."

But Merida simply shook her head, "No. No you won't Pheebs. We need someone who's properly trained in covert surveillance. Leonid used to be Spetsnaz and has already volunteered."

Phoebe's shoulders slumped, "But ..."

Merida began to turn away, signalling the conversation was over, "No buts. Now please Phoebe ... for your cousin's sake, stay away from Leonid."

. . .

"Leonid?" Tamsin silenced him with a finger to his lips, "I'm a virgin too. It's no big deal. Let's just take it slow and work it out together, yeah? I must say that for a first time you're doing pretty damn well so far."

They kissed, exploring one another with fingers, tongues and mouths, nervously learning each other's likes and dislikes. Oblivious to the falling temperature outside the visitor centre as night fell, Tamsin rolled onto her back, the sleeping bags a tangled mess beneath her. Leonid knelt over her, his cock so hard and erect that it bobbed against his flat muscular belly. A single transparent tear oozed from its tip.

Tamsin looked up at him, panting with eyes ablaze. She'd expected somewhere special for her first time, and this was surely it. A Welsh mountain top in the depths of winter.

"Open your legs?" Leonid asked.

Tamsin longed for him, her whole body quivering with need, but she also felt curiously fearful. Leonid was huge! Supposing he lost control and let his lust override this tender, caring side she'd uncovered? Impatient, he pressed a knee between her thighs and gently parted them. Then sliding down between her legs, he caught her buttocks in his hands and pressed his mouth to the slippery folds of her vulva.

"Oh!" Tamsin gasped out loud, trying to wriggle free from his grasp ...

She felt something smack the side of her head and sat upright, awake and disoriented.

Her favourite dream. Her and Leonid's first time together on the summit of Snowdon. It usually left Tamsin horny and wanting to feel the tall Russian's cock inside her, his arms holding her close. But not today. Leonid and their beautiful baby son Angus were in Scotland, hundreds of miles away. Perhaps when she got home might be a good time to make an honest man of him she mused.

Tamsin clambered stiffly to her feet and stretched, her breath clouding in the freezing night air. Yeonmi's tracks would have undoubtedly been obscured by fresh snow. So it was fortunate she knew roughly where her quarry was headed. The derelict naval base of HMS Collingwood on the outskirts of Fareham had provided her with shelter to catch a few hours sleep, but it was time to get moving again. She irritably kicked the chunk of concrete she'd knocked her head against and pulled on her rucksack. According to the ancient road atlas she'd studied, Portsmouth lay only a few miles away across a wide inlet of mudflats and deep water. She'd have to find a route around.

So she knew where the Baekdusan and its thirty odd nuclear weapons were. Now what? Tamsin had considered different scenarios over the days since leaving Bath. Yeonmi would undoubtedly raise the alarm as soon as she was back onboard, so by the time the resistance were alerted and a force brought all this way, the North Koreans would be long gone. And they'd left Fort George in such a hurry neither she or Leonid had thought to take a shortwave radio. Tamsin couldn't hope to neutralise a vessel of the Baekdusan's size by herself. Which left only a third option ...

Desperate times required desperate measures. She'd stow away onboard and discover just what the Coalition's next move might be.

Tamsin worked the slide on her Grach and thumbed on the safety. If she failed, the fate of the entire country would be at stake. Leonid, Angus, her parents and everyone she knew could all potentially suffer the same fate as the Reekies, and the resistance base at Novaya Nadezhda before them. To be vapourised in nuclear fire.

. . .

The last obstacle wasn't quite as straightforward ...

Moored alongside in the enormous manmade harbour Portsmouth naval base had once called Basin No.3, a dark, flat topped bulk blotted out the overcast night sky over the city. Illuminated only by a couple of floodlights and a string of flickering oil lanterns high above to mark the edge of its sprawling flight deck, the carrier Baekdusan loomed like a sleeping titan.

A vast, menacing slab of a ship - in daylight it would be the dark grey of wet slate, streaked and scarred with rust, patched with steel plate from a variety of sources. At almost a hundred thousand tons, 325 metres in length with a top speed of 31 knots, it had been designed to carry 44 aircraft in its collosal hangar and instill fear into enemies. But now what remained of the DPRK's Mikoyan MiG-29 fighters disintegrated in piles of mouldering scrap below decks, the flight deck itself home only to the Coalition's nuclear arsenal - thirty four Russian built Topol M ICBMs still secured to the missile transporter trucks they'd left North Korea on.

Even at such a late hour, shouts and the sounds of heavy equipment being moved somewhere in the depths of the ship reached Yeonmi's ears as she crouched down in the shadow of a rusty shipping container on the dockside. She'd avoided countless traps, evaded all their patrols. But now, barely twenty five yards away her intended route onboard - the Baekdusan's forward gangway, was blocked by a pair of armed sentries.

One DPRK - a woman dressed in camouflage fatigues, peered out over the dark water towards distant Portchester Castle. The other, one of Volk's black clad Spetsnaz - steadfastly ignored his companion and stood with his back to her. All the better. For once the mutual distrust between North Koreans and Russians worked to her advantage. But it would only take one of them to sound the alarm.

With a flick of the wrist, Yeonmi flung two of her handmade shuriken as she moved forward. Both caught the Spetsnaz in the neck, severing his carotid artery. Before he'd even crumpled to the ground - gurgling his dying breath, Yeonmi had already sprinted across the few yards of open ground.

Yeonmi slammed a fist into the North Korean soldier's throat as she began to turn and raise her Kalashnikov. Then grabbed the back of the woman's head to slam a knee up into her jaw. With a final practiced squeeze she quietly throttled the woman, cutting off the oxygen supply to her brain - before lowering her unconscious form to the oil stained concrete.

"Joesong hae yo," Yeonmi quietly apologised to the North Korean. Then, casting a furtive glance up and down the dock, she began stripping out of her clothes.

. . .

The ex Fisheries Protection patrol boat St.Piran, under the command of Lieutenant Sally Blackthorn cruised silently along the coastline of what had once been Hampshire. As Jessamy Beech stood out on the foredeck in the bitterly cold wind, she tugged her Buff up around her neck and shivered. They were close. On some instinctive level Jessamy could feel it. If she was lucky, her youngest daughter Ada's fate would be known to her at some point over the course of the next few hours. In an ideal world she'd want Ada reunited with her sister Phoebe. But that might prove such an unrealistic goal as to be almost impossible.

Back in Devonport, Lupita Mpenzi had provided ammunition and a detailed map of the Portsmouth area showing the probable location of the aircraft carrier Baekdusan - a vast, manmade harbour at the heart of the naval base. With a string of disused Napoleonic forts to occupy, they'd already assumed the seaward entrance to Portsmouth itself might be closely guarded by the North Koreans. They had therefore planned to put Jessamy ashore somewhere to the west on the edge of the town of Gosport.

"What was it like?"

Jessamy glanced up as young Sally Blackthorn moved up beside her and handed her a mug of tea, "Thanks. What was what like?"

The seventeen year old lieutenant scanned the shoreline through scratched binoculars. An oil tanker had run aground years earlier on the beach at Lee On The Solent, splitting apart and staining the shingle black for miles in both directions. What would once have been a major ecological disaster barely drew a second glance now, "Before. When the first meteorites struck?"

How could she describe to the girl the ten years living as a virtual slave in Tobermory? Starving through the years long winters that followed the first strikes, with Beaconsfield's Preens dealing out brutal punishment whenever they saw fit?

"I ... don't remember much," Jessamy peered off into the blackness, hoping to see lights or some other evidence of a community inland. But there was nothing. The coast of Dorset, the New Forest and even the sprawling city of Southampton had all been in complete darkness, "just snippets really. I was only eight. It was my birthday the day Thanatos fell out of the sky. I was in Cornwall. I ... remember my mother had ... gone missing, a-and my dad was ... frantic with worry. It was chaos."

Sally nodded her understanding. She'd been born in the smouldering ruins of the old world. Had never known TV, the internet, mobile phones, or any of the myriad other ridiculous things people had once placed such value on, "What about before?"

Thinking back further was a painful prospect. Remembering everything the world had lost. The billions of people, the cities, the culture. Jessamy let her breath out slowly in a long sigh. She truly believed that in some ways the world was now a better place, "Before. Before ... there were just too many people in the world. Billions. Squabbling over land, resources, pollution, religion ... you name it, someone would start a fight over it. Or a war. And the people wasted ... everything. A throwaway society. Forests were cut down. Entire species of animals made extinct. The oceans overfished. All the planet had to offer was just being squandered," she turned to face Sally, "if nothing else, Thanatos has given nature time to recover. Civilisation is back to square one and there are far fewer people now. Maybe this time, if we get a chance ... we won't make such a complete fucking mess of things."

Jessamy expected the young lieutenant to argue or question the wisdom in what she'd said. But Sally merely nodded in agreement.

"I've come to realise," Jessamy continued, "that nowadays the most valuable commodity isn't food or a roof over your head. It's not even weapons or fuel or ammunition ..."

"What is it?"

Jessamy clutched the rail in front of her, squeezing her eyes shut as she felt stinging tears gather, "Time."

"Time?"

Jiff Wiseley, her first husband. Hamnavoe, her second. Her daughters Phoebe and Ada. If only they'd had the opportunity to all live normal family lives together, instead of being forcibly separated by circumstances, "My youngest daughter, Ada. She ... might be on that aircraft carrier. Sh-she's not much older than you a-and if she's alive ... she'll have been through more shit than anyone deserves in a lifetime. Because of me. B-because I abandoned her. Because I didn't give her enough of my time."