Rogue State (audio story)

Rogue State was the first story in the audio anthology Seabird One, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Robert Valentine and featured Angela Bruce as Brigadier Bambera and introduced Alex Jordan as Sergeant Savarin and Liz Sutherland-Lim as Dame Lydia Kingsley.
== Publisher's summary ==
In the war-torn republic of Valge Maja, Brigadier Bambera is hot on the trail of arms-dealing terrorist, Roman Krojač, when she's ordered back to Geneva. Her old sponsor, Dame Lydia Kingsley, offers her a job as the new head of UNIT. Reluctant to accept, she nevertheless teams up with sarcastic UNIT officer Sergeant Jean-Paul Savarin to prevent a monstrous Soviet-era weapon from falling into Krojač’s hands.
== Plot ==
In Vabados City, Bragg tails Roman Krojač to a hotel, keeping in contact with Brigadier Bambera using an earpiece. He overhears Krojač agree to steal aliens from the Federation Council for General Portnoy in return for $20 million, but the meeting is over video call rather than in-person as he expected. Bambera arrives outside and orders Bragg to pull back, but Krojač answers and tells her that he is dead. She rushes into the hotel to catch Krojač and narrowly survives when a bomb detonates.
Bambera is determined to track down Krojač, who she believes will have left Valge Maja, but Control orders her to return to UNIT Central Control in Geneva. She is escorted on her flight by Internal Security officer Sergeant Savarin and, on the journey, sends her resignation by email.
In Geneva, Dame Lydia offers her a job as leader of UNIT-UK, but she declines due to her belief that humans are a bigger threat than aliens. Lydia instead asks her to take over security of a shipment of Soviet-era canisters being transported from Vladivostok to England due to a plot masterminded by Krojač to steal them. Upon hearing his name, Bambera agrees to undertake the mission as her last and flies with Savarin to the MV Dimitri, which she has swept to ensure that only registered crew are aboard.
Bambera insists on being taken to the cargo and is told by Savarin that the crew believe that the containers hold monsters. Fifteen minutes from the Port of London, Krojač and his men board by helicopter and boat and steal the cargo, leaving one container behind. The creature within is riled by the sound of sirens and Bambera is forced to have her men open fire, but it jumps to safety and kills the captain. The ship crashes into the Port of London and the creature is briefly captured by the soldiers waiting there before escaping, forcing Savarin to stun it by hitting it with a vehicle.
Lydia calls Bambera and tells her and Savarin about the creatures (known as Chuchuna), which were captured after killing hikers in 1959 and held by the Network, a Soviet-era organisation which investigated extraterrestrial phenomena who tries to weaponise them, and that Portnoy is believed to be the buyer. The whereabouts of Portnoy are unknown and Krojač removed the tracking devices on the containers, but Bambera managed to place a micro-tracker on Krojač's back during their scuffle. The Metropolitan Police later inform them that Portnoy's car has been located.
After detaining Portnoy, Savarin takes his place and meets Krojač, allowing Bambera to catch him by surprise. Krojač offers her a 50/50 split and, when she refuses, he releases the Chuchuna and flees. Bambera orders her men not to fire at the Chuchuna and tells Savarin to use CO2 to get them to enter hibernation. However, the horn of a ship causes them to run away towards the construction site of the Millennium Dome and kill Krojač. UNIT manages to get the Chuchuna into the dome using megaphones and put them into hibernation. The Chuchuna are retrieved alive.
Bambera decides not to resign, saying that she is not sure what else she is good at, and accepts Lydia's offer on the condition that she has Savarin as her second-in-command.
== Cast ==
* Brigadier Winifred Bambera - Angela Bruce
* Sergeant Jean-Paul Savarin - Alex Jordan
* Dame Lydia Kingsley - Liz Sutherland-Lim
* Roman Krojač - Wilf Scolding
* Eyrie Six - George Watkins
* Control - Simon Ludders
=== Uncredited ===
* Russian Captain / UNIT Corporal / Chuchuna - George Watkins (BFX: Rogue State)
== Worldbuilding ==
* Bragg almost loses Krojač switching trams.
* Bambera knows some French.
* Bambera sends her resignation by email.
* Lydia gives Bambera good coffee and cheap chocolate. She believes that the Swiss overdo the simple things.
* Bamber married Ancelyn, but he has returned to his world because of duty.
* Chunky Gilmore said that Bambera was "the brightest young officer Sandhurst ever spat out".
* UNIT has been trying to bring order since the Eastern Bloc fell, first at the Gulf, then at Azania and Valge Maja.
* Soviet-era canisters are shipped out of Vladivostok to England.
* Krojač also uses the aliases of Szabó, Schneider and Taylor.
* Bambera asks Savarin if he is reading Camu, Balzac or the Marquis de Sade. He says that he is reading The Saint in New York by Leslie Charteris, which was turned into a television series starring Roger Moore.
* Payne, Walker, Strauss and Jones are UNIT soldiers.
* The Network was a Soviet-era organisation analogous to the Torchwood Institute.
* Anatoly Yugorovich Portnoy was a KGB general who became an oligarch.
* Portnoy arrived in England at Heathrow Airport.
* Bambera says that she is no Doctor Dolittle.
* The Millennium Dome is under construction. Bambera describes it as an eyesore.
== Notes ==
* The Chuchuna's backstory was loosely based on the . (BFX: Rogue State)
* Roger Valentine refers to the story as a "early 2020s take on a late 80s guess at what the 90s were going to be like", with deliberate use of late-90s pop culture tropes like former Soviet weaponry being smuggled and mistrust in governments after the Cold War. The show is cited as an influence. (BFX: Rogue State)
== Continuity ==
* The UNIT secretariat were impressed with Bambera's handling of the Carbury Incident the previous year. (TV: Battlefield) This sets the story in 1998, as Battlefield is placed in 1997 by spinoff media.
* Bambera isn't yet commander of UNIT-UK but an officer that goes across the world. She was presented as an officer on international missions and sent to Carbury as an assignment in the PROSE: Battlefield novelisation.
== External links ==
Category:Seabird One audio stories
Category:Stories set in Europe
Category:Stories set in Geneva
Category:Stories set in London
Category:Stories set in 1998