There Ain't Gonna Be No World War Three, Chapter 21

21. Always An Honour, Ma'am

Ant's new uniform itched. It didn't fit him perfectly. He had been assured that it had only belonged to one cadet before him. The name tape sewn into the collar said QUANTRILL. One of the pockets had had a ball of a half-eaten substance in it. Ant hoped it had originally been food.

He was one of a long line of cadets, some of them better dressed than others; he took fierce second-hand pride in the fact that Gondolin's cadets were among the best dressed in the hangar. Behind him was a long line of Gladiators, with equipment placed strategically in front of them to hide battle damage from the news cameras. Directly in front of him was the same podium the President had mounted yesterday to deliver her historic victory speech. Behind the podium was Special Prototype X-1, still covered by a white cloth as if it had been a relic in a church.

All around the chamber, USZ crewmen were standing to attention. Gondolin's crewmen looked smarter than average here too - it might have been an illusion, but they even seemed to be standing taller, heads held proudly high. Lieutenant Singh, by special dispensation, was wearing a jet-black turban; his head was held even higher.

Ant’s uniform was in every respect the same as those of those of the qualified Harridan and Gladiator pilots standing all around him in the hangar, save for a patch at one shoulder with the word CADET, and another on the other side with room for three sets of wings which would indicate numbers of years served in the Gondolin flight academy. The only thing the uniform lacked to make it operational was a helmet. Everyone else in the room but the new cadets had a helmet tucked under their arm. In front of Ant, on the podium, was a table bearing a mass of burnished alloy helmets, each with a new cadet’s call sign stencilled above the visor, looking like a clutch of metal eggs. Ant had never desired anything as much in his whole life.

Beside the table stood a man wearing a black uniform dripping with silver braid. Nobody else in the hangar was wearing anything remotely as magnificent. At his left breast, he wore a massive braid medallion in the shape of a Zodiac wheel. His hair was thinning, his cheeks were hollow, and his lips had been eroded away by age until his mouth was a mere straight line, but his uniform was standing him up under its own power, making him look every centimetre a soldier.

"NORMALLY", said the elderly man into the microphone, "NEW CADETS ARE RECEIVED INTO THE SERVICE BY WHICHEVER ADMIRAL HAPPENS TO GET HIS ARM TWISTED INTO ATTENDING THE CEREMONY." He did not smile; everyone assumed it was a joke and laughed anyway. Ant wondered if he had actually been serious.

"TODAY, HOWEVER", he said, "WE ARE INORDINATELY FORTUNATE IN HAVING SOMEONE RATHER MORE HIGH-RANKING - AND ALMOST CERTAINLY BETTER-LOOKING - HERE TO PRESENT OUR CADETS WITH THEIR FLIGHT HELMETS." He looked to his right. "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I PRESENT TO YOU OUR PRESIDENT, ELIZABETH ORTEGA."

The shining faces of the crewmen, cadets, and cadets' parents, as they raised their hands high in applause for their beloved leader, were nauseating. Ant kept his hands at waist height and fanned them gently against each other to look as if he was clapping along.

Elizabeth Ortega, wearing a completely new frock, clicked up to the microphone and told a hangar full of crewmen, half of whom didn't come from Gondolin, that Gondolin was her favourite place in the whole US Zee. A storm of cameras flashed. People were whistling and punching the air.

"THANK YOU, ADMIRAL SPOONBENDER", said Ortega. "I AM DOUBLY HONOURED TO BE HERE ON THE FIRST DAY OF A NEW GOLDEN AGE OF PEACE FOR OUR GLORIOUS NATION! THANKS TO THESE BOLD YOUNG WOMEN AND MEN, OUR ENEMIES WILL NEVER AGAIN DARE DARKEN OUR SKIES! AND THANKS TO THIS TIP TOP SECRET NEW THINGAMAJIGGER BEHIND ME, SO I'M TOLD, IT'LL BE THEM THAT FEARS THE US ZEE, RATHER THAN THE OTHER WAY ROUND!"

She shook her fist at an invisible Earth. There were even more cheers.

And then, Ant saw Richard Turpin, standing in the Gondolin line next to Lieutenant Singh. Turpin was not applauding President Ortega. Instead, he had his hands firmly in the pockets of his flight jacket. He also appeared to be chewing gum. Next to him, Penelope Farthing, her head in a neck brace, was hissing urgently at him out of the corner of her mouth. Turpin turned to her, beamed, and cupped a hand to his ear, as if to say Speak up, Pen, it's awfully noisy in here, you're breaking up say again ccccccch, despite the fact that Ant could clearly hear, even over the applause, Penelope saying:

"Richard! Take your hands out of your pockets! This is the voice of your commanding officer!"

Eventually, Farthing despaired of Turpin, looked round at Ortega, scowled, shrugged, and jammed her own hands into her pockets. Ant saw Turpin pass her a piece of chewing gum, which she accepted and chewed with her mouth open as she glared up at the president.

"OF COURSE, THIS THING IS FAR TOO SECRET TO BE TRUSTED TO A MERE PRESIDENT, SO I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT IS. BUT NOW I GET TO TAKE THE COVER OFF IT! IT'S GOING TO BE JUST LIKE CHRISTMAS!"

Ortega turned round to the line of cadets in front of her. Her eyes moved along the line. When they hit Cadet G1702, who was standing pointedly apart from Ant, Jochen, and Tamora, her breath quivered in her nostrils in surprise. But she recovered instantly.

"BUT FIRST, GONDOLIN'S NEXT GENERATION OF YOUNG WARRIORS! MY, AREN'T YOU ALL LOOKING WELL TURNED OUT TODAY! SEEMS COMMODORE DRUMMOND'S BEEN SPENDING ALL OUR TAXES ON SMART NEW UNIFORMS!" She moved her eyes back to Cadet G1702, and then onward to Ant. "OF COURSE, THERE DO SEEM TO BE A FEW EXCEPTIONS THAT PROVE THE RULE."

Ant held her gaze, glaring back at her out of his tattered flight jacket. After several seconds of trying to meet his eyes, she smiled as if she had won the contest, tossed her hair, and looked away.

"IT IS MY PLEASURE AND PRIVILEGE TO RECEIVE YOU INTO THE SERVICE. THIS TAKES ME BACK TO WHEN I, TOO, WAS A CADET JUST LIKE YOU, AND SPENT SEVERAL CHALLENGING YEARS ATTACHED TO THE SPECIAL TROPICAL WATER SKI WARFARE TRAINING SQUADRON ON ARCADIA. PLEASE COME FORWARD AND ACCEPT YOUR PATCHES."

The line of cadets shuffled obediently towards Ortega. She turned a dazzling smile on each one; boys and girls alike smiled back bashfully as they accepted their helmets. Ant wondered how the corners of Ortega's mouth didn't ache with the pressure. Maybe she had had surgery.

Jochen marched up, arms swinging, and shook the President’s hand; she handed him a helmet, which he took under his right arm. Then he saluted stiffly, about faced, and stepped back into line. Somehow his face managed to be at the same time totally expressionless and immensely proud. Ant squinted at the call sign on the helmet. On the metal, over the scrubbed-out identity of a previous cadet, were stencilled the words TANTE ILSE.

Finally, it was Ant's turn. "It's such a pleasure to see you again", said Ortega, shaking Ant's hand and handing over his helmet. Across the hangar, he could see his father, still dressed in the shirt he'd come here from Earth in, standing up in his chair, tears in his eyes, applauding furiously. Ant looked his father in the eye and turned the helmet round to face him. Above the visor, the call sign read: EIGHTEEN WHEELER.

"I never forget a face”, said President Ortega pleasantly. “Please remember that."

Ant moved on, wiping the patch on his jacket to rid it of President-stink. He heard cadet G1702 move up into position, two further down the line from him.

"Cleopatra", smiled President Ortega. "My dear, something seems to have happened to your uniform."

The response was frosty silence. Ortega's smile grew wider and whiter, and the applause became thunderous. Ant felt hot, stifled, suffocating in a room the size of a cathedral. He wanted to be back home sitting in a living room full of stacked-up Chinese takeaway cartons in Northampton with his father, drowsily watching When Dinosaurs Attack Earthmoving Equipment Episode 15: T Rex Versus Terex Titan.

Eventually, the President handed over the helmet. Cleo turned it round and held it up, looking at her own father in turn. The helmet read: WELDER’S DAUGHTER. Mrs. Shakespeare, next to her frantically clapping, massively grinning husband, dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

"AND NOW", said the President, taking advantage of Cleo’s applause, "THE MOMENT WE'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR - ARE YOU AS EXCITED AS I AM, GUYS? THREE - TWO - ONE - "

She pulled the ceremonial string attached to the ceremonial drape which had replaced the earlier, shabbier tarpaulin; the nose of the fighter was revealed, while technicians positioned behind it helped clear the cloth from the wings and tail. The rats' teeth of the nose stabbed out towards Ant out of a slab of canopy glass. The Spatchcock Flange, just as it did on a Fantasm, encircled the ship; anhedral wing surfaces rose from either side of the flange, and a dihedral tail dipped down at the rear. Ant knew what dihedral and anhedral meant. He had been reading books on the subject. Above all, the new fighter was big - almost as big as Richard Turpin's Fantasm, and Turpin's ship was a three-man trainer, larger than an ordinary Russian service fighter.

"OH MY", gasped the President, as if transfixed with shock. "OH MY. I AM SO HONOURED." She had hardly glanced at the ship; she had to have known what was stencilled down one side of the cockpit in advance. In slanty space-age high-velocity letters, it still said, of course, ORTEGA.

"I AM OVERWHELMED. OF COURSE I HAD NO IDEA. THIS IS A GESTURE I HAVE TO SAY I DO NOT DESERVE." She bowed her head in humility for not quite long enough for anyone to jump up and say Oh - all right, we'll spray it out and call the ship something else, then, and added: "BUT I CAN SEE YOU WON'T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER, AND I SUPPOSE I SHOULD HUMBLY ACCEPT -"

She stopped in mid-sentence. Something was wrong. There was no applause. There was no whistling. No-one was punching the air.

Next to the ORTEGA on the bow of the fighter, someone had airbrushed a beautiful, gigantic, stylized black rat. It was larger than any rat had a right to be. It had a long, entirely hairless tail. It had small circular rat ears. It had long rat whiskers. Next to the rat, and directly between the rat and the word ORTEGA, was a vivid red arrow, evidently intended to point to something important on the outside of the fighter so that technicians could find it to maintain it. There were even tiny letters above the arrow to tell the technician what the arrow was pointing to. Unfortunately, the letters were so tiny, and the arrow so large, that the arrow looked, purely by coincidence, as if it were pointing from the ORTEGA to the picture of the rat.

Everyone in the hangar held their breath. Many people in the crowd knew what Earth rats looked like, and those that didn't were being rapidly, gleefully informed in whispers by those who did. Everyone had been happy to applaud the President, but this was far and away the most entertaining thing ever. All around the room, eyes were shining. They wanted to see what the President would do next.

She did nothing. The smile had been wiped from her face and replaced by a look of blank horror. She evidently knew what Earth rats looked like too.

Ant began clapping, slowly at first, and then more rapidly to cover his own embarrassment. Slowly, other people began to join in. After only ten seconds or so, it actually began to sound like normal applause. President Ortega's smile reappeared as if it had never left. Her eyes, however, as they found Ant and Cleo in the crowd, sparkled like drillbits.

"THANK YOU SO MUCH!" she said. "THANK YOU SO MUCH! YOU ARE MY FAVOURITE PEOPLE! YOU ARE MY HEROES! HOW CAN I EVER REPAY YOU!"

Waving furiously and blowing kisses, she retreated from the podium, to be swallowed by her own security team, who surrounded her and hustled her away in a flurry of camera flashes.

Up among the senior officers seated to one side of Special Prototype X-1, Ant saw Commodore Drummond and Major Yancy examining their fingernails and the ceiling intently, trying hard to look as if they knew absolutely nothing about the painting of rats on the side of fighters. Among the crewmen standing to attention, he saw Richard Gould and Steven Dawkins. Steven Dawkins looked momentarily down at Ant, winked at him, and stood rigidly to attention again. Sitting in the same group of staff officers as Commodore Drummond, Admiral Spoonbender and a number of other white-haired gentlemen were glaring at Dawkins and Gould.

Ant turned and saw Cleo grinning back at him, despite the fact that she was clearly trying not to.

"Glad to have you back", he said.

She smiled, and bit her lip to stop herself shaking with laughter. "I was never away."

"You so were. You were at the border crossing between the land of Everyone Hates Cleo and the land of Cleo Hates Everyone Back."

She looked around herself - at the Zodiac wheel banners, at the rows of neatly-parked Gladiators, at the legions of Gondoliers wearing what were, essentially, her uniforms, hand-made by Mr. Chan of Jermyn Street.

"I think I'm where I belong now. Maybe for the first time ever, in fact."

"I'm glad you think so", said Ant. He raised a hand and clicked his fingers. Immediately, every Gondolier in the line turned their faces towards Cleo, grinning wickedly.

"Oh no", said Cleo, backing away. "Anthony Stevens, no. My vengeance will be protracted and implacable -"

Ten crewmen converged on Cleo as she shrieked in delight, hoisting her onto their shoulders, higher than any president. There were whistles. There were shouts. In particular, there was a continuous shout of

"CLE - O!

CLE - O!

CLE - O!"

People were punching the air again. And this time, Ant didn't care.

THE END