by Jim Beard
Movement drew his eyes back to the group in front of him. The woman had stepped forward and past the man.
“You cannot be here,” she said in a honeyed voice, yet with no accompanying smile.
“We are Federal agents,” Cabot said, holding up his badge with one hand, his pistol never wavering from the group. “This is all very peculiar.”
Valiantine’s head swam and the scene before him lurched suddenly. He resisted an urge to reach up and touch the dried blood on his forehead, to wipe it away and rearrange himself. What a fright I must look, he thought to himself. Stay awake, Michael!
He took a step toward the woman, his pistol pointed at her midsection. She was very handsome, her appealing figure straining at her coveralls in an almost obscene manner. Valiantine, maddened by the unbidden observation, shoved it aside and raised his pistol higher.
“You are under arrest, all of you,” he told the group, squeezing the grip of his weapon until it bit into his hand. “We must determine the purpose of this operation.”
“On what charge?” the woman asked.
Behind her, one of the men moved to the wall closest to Valiantine and reached out to grasp at a large flywheel set there.
Someone discharged a pistol. There was a flash and the explosive sound and the man was flung backward, blood fountaining from his shoulder.
Valiantine saw a small puff of smoke arise from his weapon and realized it was he who had fired.
All at once, the woman was on him, clawing at his coat, wrestling with him for the pistol.
The room spun like a carousel. Someone grabbed him from behind. An arm tightened around his throat as he pulled at it, trying to release the pressure on his windpipe. He thought he heard Cabot grunt in either exertion or pain.
The haze seemed to thicken, to fill the room and choke him. Or was it the arm around his neck that was choking the breath from him? He couldn’t tell. He felt the pistol taken from him and the woman’s eyes upon him, staring at his face, frowning slightly as darkness veiled her from him.
He heard words: “We are compromised.” And then nothing.
Valiantine sat up. Looking around he saw he was alone, lying on the mountainside as if he’d simply been tired and taken a nap.
Daylight. He guessed it to be late morning, by the position of the sun in the sky.
Leaping up, Valiantine caught himself from falling back down. He touched his head and his scalp and found quite a bit of dried blood. And Cabot. He’d lost his partner, too.
Why had he not been taken prisoner, he wondered, or killed outright for that matter? Unless there was some reason that he, and he hoped Cabot, were not to be held or murdered by those in the tower?
He began to run from the spot where he lay, but forced himself to stop and focus his thoughts. He’d been robbed of time, precious time, and he groaned inwardly at all that may have transpired since their encounter at the tower.
The tower. It appeared in his brain like a thunderbolt from Zeus. Looking around, Valiantine observed the landscape, trying to determine where exactly on Massanutten he was, and if he could find his way back to the tower. After a moment, he felt fairly certain he knew the way. His memory was good for landmarks, a trait that served him well in his duties as a covert agent for the United States Army.
Cabot. Where the hell was he, though?
Sickened at being overwhelmed by outside forces once again and by losing time, the lieutenant stalked off, his eyes searching for the path up the mountain.
Making his way through a copse of trees, he heard voices somewhere ahead of him. Nearing their source, he crept up on the spot to see several figures menacing a lone man.
Agent Cabot was down on one knee, his back to a large rock. Before him, some twenty feet away, stood a group of twelve men. They appeared to be uniformed soldiers, at first glance, but it all felt very, very wrong to Valiantine.
The men wore no insignia of any kind, though their uniforms vaguely resembled those of the United States Army. They were made from a strange, black cloth that, again, resembled one of the types the agents had uncovered on their last mission. Some of the men wore caps, while others went bareheaded; in all, Valiantine thought them very sloppy.
He also believed them to be an opposing faction, another piece to the confounding puzzle of the airships.
The lieutenant could hear Cabot speaking, saying that he’d just fallen asleep, that he meant no harm to the men. A few of the soldiers grinned, looking at each other with somewhat bored expressions. Thankfully, thought Valiantine, none of them had drawn their weapons on his partner. Not yet.
He stepped from between two trees and into the open. The soldiers wheeled around to look at him. The lieutenant saw hands reaching for pistols and rifles, but again, they seemed to restrain themselves.
“Gentlemen, my friend and I,” he said, indicating Cabot, “have no quarrel with you. In fact, we have something I trust you want.”
“Is this wise?”
Valiantine glanced over at his partner, but kept walking.
“I am angry, Cabot,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “I am angry at being manipulated throughout this investigation. I would think you’d be angry, too.”
They walked shoulder to shoulder over the path to the tower, passing the spot where they’d encountered the man-creature and Valiantine had been wounded. His scalp prickled at the thought.
“I am,” Cabot replied, “but it may be foolhardy to set these... men loose on that tower. We have no idea what—”
“Exactly,” Valiantine interjected. “We have no idea of any of this, Cabot, save that these soldiers or whatever they are seem to be in opposition to those people in the tower. I intend to set a flame to the tinderbox and see what comes of it. Then, perhaps, we will have some idea of what we have been involved with all this time.”
The lieutenant’s plan was a simple one: lead the group to the tower and allow them to do the agents’ work for them. He’d played one faction against another in the past, in his missions to other countries, and if one thing remained constant throughout such action it was that he always got results.
He almost ached to see the results of his present plan.
If Cabot disagreed, he held his counsel. Valiantine assumed the man’s silence to be his agreement, so they trudged ahead, leading the small troop of strange figures onward toward their goal.
“See here,” he said, indicating broken limbs in a tangle of foliage. “Here is where we crashed through to get away from that thing that attacked us. We are on the right track.”
Though it was noon or very nearly so, the sunlight had waned and the air had grown hazy. Both agents recognized the signs.
“The vapor,” Cabot said, glancing over his shoulder at the soldiers walking in loose formation behind them. “That damnable gas. It has many purposes, apparently.”
Valiantine nodded, kept walking. “Yes, but what is its source? That stone from the heavens, in Carnavon’s shed... it seemed to produce the vapor, but it was destroyed. Destroyed by the airship. Why would they do that, if the meteorite...?”
“There!” one of the soldiers shouted, and Valiantine looked up to see the tower before them. Or what could be seen of it through the heavy fog that gripped it like a giant fist.
The dense cloud all but obscured the structure, completely blanketing its crown and the metal dome there. Below, the base of the tower could still be seen, but just barely. Above, where the dome should be, the two agents heard a creaking sound, like wood rubbing against wood, and voices, faint but evident.
“Dammit! It’s here, Cabot! It’s here!”
No sooner had the words left Valiantine’s lips than came the distinct sound of a pistol being cocked at the back of his head.
“While we appreciate your service to us, sir,” the soldier said, pressing the weapon against his skull, “we have our orders. You will take it like men, won’t you?”
The lieutenant did not try to turn around, but watched as the res
t of the troop, ten soldiers, deployed themselves around the entrance to the tower. Inside, he seethed.
“We’ve come a long way,” Valiantine told his would-be executioner. “We’ve been presented with a mystery, like none other I’ve ever known. Surely you will allow us to know—”
“No,” the soldier said. “No, I’m afraid not. We’re on a timetable here; yours is done. You’ve reached the end of it, sir.”
He brought his heavy hiking boot down upon the soldier’s own boot, a sickening crunching sound his reward for the force with which he delivered it. The man screamed and Valiantine swung around to drive a fist into his face.
Cabot had smashed his own executioner’s kneecap. Just as effective, thought the lieutenant.
He looked up to see that the other soldiers had moved on and already entered the tower, presumably continuing their mission while Valiantine and Cabot were being dealt with by their fellows.
“Cabot!” he said, looking up at the obscured dome far above them. There lay all their answers, but it might have been an ocean’s length away for all the good it did them at the moment.
“Where to?” his partner asked, having dispatched his assailant.
Valiantine’s mouth tightened into a straight line across his weary, blood-streaked face.
“Up. We go up.”
Inside, a small battle was being waged.
The two agents made their way through the door, wary of the fight before them. The vapor had almost completely covered the room, but they could hear the sounds of life and death struggles echoing from wall to wall.
A gunshot sounded; someone screamed. Valiantine turned to Cabot to urge him to keep his head down, but the Treasury man had left his side and was making his way around the room, hugging the wall. The Army man was about to demand to know what he was doing, but he suddenly realized what Cabot was up to.
“Godspeed, and be safe,” he whispered. Looking around, he found the base of the staircase up to the tower and made for it.
Out of the fog stumbled the woman, she of the sultry voice and cold eyes. One sleeve of her garment had been torn away, her arm slashed to ribbons. She appeared to look at Valiantine, but he saw that she had been shot in the temple, her movements merely some autonomic function. Her lifeless form slumped to ground in front of him.
Leaping over the body, he alighted on the first step of the stairs and began to climb.
The sounds of the battle below him grew louder; he had no idea who was winning, nor did he care. He felt cold inside, yet there was a fire in his legs, driving him upward.
Something made him glance to the floor of the room and at that moment, the mist parted and he saw Cabot standing in the corner of the room that was strewn with straw. There, on the straw, lay a large, dark figure, chained to the wall.
Valiantine paused to watch as Cabot pointed a pistol at the prone figure and delivered a bullet into its brain.
He continued upward.
The fog, the mist, the vapor... Whatever the devilish element was, it clung to him, an almost tangible thing that threatened to lift him up and dash him down the stairs. He resisted the thoughts that came to him, that it was a living entity, one that could stop him if it so desired.
More than halfway up the tower, or what he assumed to be halfway, Valiantine heard voices above him. He looked up into the mist to see a face hanging there, staring down at him with simmering fury.
The bandit, Awanai.
The lieutenant reached for his pistol, forgetting that he had lost it somehow. Instead, he gripped the railing of the staircase and prepared to propel himself upward.
“Damn you!” he screeched at the Oriental face. “What is this all about? Tell me! Dammit, tell me!”
The round muzzle of a pistol poked out through the vapors below the reddening face, like a third eye. Valiantine tensed, ready to take the bullet if he had to.
A voice called out from above Awanai, splitting the tension right down the middle.
“Come! We are going!”
Distracted, Awanai turned to look for the speaker.
Valiantine shot up the stairs like a cannonball and leapt at the bandit. In a split second, he was on the man, pummeling him with his fists, over and over again, hurling obscenities at him.
Awanai yelped in surprise and in pain. The pistol tumbled from his grip and fell over the railing to disappear into the mist. Valiantine got his hands around the bandit’s throat and stared down into the man’s rapidly bruising face.
“Valiantine!”
Cabot’s shout from somewhere below sliced through his intensity, his overwhelming drive to choke the life from the bandit. Awanai seized the opportunity and drove a gloved fist into the lieutenant’s stomach.
Valiantine fell back, his head hitting the railing and his body crashing down onto the stairs. He rolled, bouncing down the steps like a barrel loosened from a cart.
Down the stairs he tumbled, separated from his wits and hurling into the misty void.
The next thing Valiantine knew, he was being half-dragged, half-carried from the tower. There was shouting all around him, or so it seemed. Cabot’s labored breathing sounded like a locomotive to which he’d strayed too close.
“No,” he whispered. “Up. We must go up.”
“Right now,” Cabot answered, “we’re getting away from that tower, Valiantine.”
An explosion rocked the area, the very ground on which they stood. The lieutenant looked up from Cabot’s grasp on him to see fire belching from the tower’s doorway. Off to one side several figures ran from the scene and into the trees.
He pushed his partner away from him and stood silently, watching as the tower crumpled at its base, then fell in upon itself. The metal dome at its apex made a deafening, resounding crash as it came down upon the smoking, burning rubble of the ruined structure.
A shout pulled his attention off to the treeline. There, a soldier came jogging toward them, pointing a rifle at the two agents. Cabot raised his pistol and downed the man with a single shot to the head. Two figures ran out and scooped up their fallen comrade and carried him back into trees.
Valiantine did not wait to see if there were more challenges from the soldiers. Skirting the wreckage of the tower, he stalked off, Cabot shouting after him.
“You’re not in your right mind,” his partner told him as he caught up to him. “You’re hurt. Most likely you’re delirious...”
“Shut up,” he told the Treasury man. “They’re getting away.”
“The soldiers? No, Valiantine; I believe they’re already beyond us.”
He spat on the ground at the mention of the troop of mystery men. “No, God damn them, not them. The airship, Cabot. The God damned airship.”
Surprisingly, Cabot linked his arm with his, lending him his speed. Together, they raced around the wreckage of the tower and up the mountain.
Somewhere near the top of Massanutten, they came upon a clearing. The air there was clear of mist, the sky blue and peaceful.
Both men scanned the skies. Valiantine’s heart pounded in his chest, drowning out his thoughts. He had only one desire; actual thoughts were unnecessary.
The skies were serene, but empty.
They stood there for several minutes, until Valiantine could stand no more and found a small grouping of rocks upon which to rest. Cabot stood at his side, looking over the lieutenant’s head at the pleasing green of the trees around them.
Valiantine glanced up at his partner, who appeared as a silhouette against the sun. He was just about to speak to the man when something seemed to eject itself from Cabot’s head and float across the sky.
“There!” he said, pointing.
Cabot twisted around to see what Valiantine was seeing.
A large, dark shape moved through the sky, slowly, but picking up speed. Valiantine reached out to Cabot to help him to his feet, to better view the object.
It was like looking up at the hull of a large sailing vessel, though neither man could determine
its exact size nor how far away from them it was in the sky. The lieutenant shaded his eyes from the sun to try and discern more detail, but the object began to move even faster and turned away from them to obscure its length.
“It’s immense,” Cabot said.
Valiantine nodded in agreement, tears clouding his eyes, though a wry smile flitted across his face.
“It’s Helios’ chariot, Cabot. It’s Icarus, but he’s flying too close to the sun...”
The Treasury man eased his partner back down onto the rock, allowing Valiantine his babbling, his chaotic, troubled thoughts.
“Right then; where to now?”
Valiantine’s question hung in the air between them as they sauntered down the main street of Luray and past the telegraph office. The door to the establishment opened as they passed and a young boy exited, looking all around.
“’Scuse me, sir,” the boy said. “Are you...” He looked down at the envelope in his hand. “... ‘Lieutenant Michael Valentine’?”
Valiantine stared at Cabot, ignoring the usual mispronunciation of his name and wondering over the amazing event of someone knowing where he was at the moment.
The telegram produced an answer, one that chilled him.
“‘Stay where you are. Wellington,’” he read off the telegram.
“Good Lord!” Cabot said. “How?”
Both men felt suddenly very exposed and made their way off the street and onto the porch of a nearby tavern. Across the way, a train had pulled into the station and its passengers began to disembark.
“I’m afraid I’m at a loss for words, Cabot. This is impossible.”
The Treasury man grinned slightly, though darkly. “The impossible is what we traffic in these days, Valiantine. I don’t know why I’m even surprised at all.”
“This should surprise you, then,” his partner said, nodding in the direction of the train station. Cabot looked across the street to behold three men who had just stepped down from the train.
“Wellington... !” Valiantine said.
