Captains Stupendous

by Rhys Hughes

  ‘I was running low on fuel and needed to lighten my load. Somebody took a shot at me, so I fought back.’

  Scipio asked, ‘What’s your name, young man?’

  The pilot answered with a sneer, ‘Mihaila Adrian. I’m not Bessarabian by birth, but a Romanian from Bucharest. After the First Balkan War last year I became disillusioned with the attitude of the Great Western Powers who attempted to manipulate the peace treaties with the Ottomans to their cynical advantage. I heard about a radical band of separatists who thrived beyond the Dniester — an anarchist group — so I went to join them. To force the European ‘powers’ to take us seriously we had to impress them with a show of strength. It’s the only thing they respect. We hired the services of a freelance military adviser, the best in the business. He designed both the aircraft carrier and the special bomb.’

  ‘What were you doing far out in the Atlantic? Surely the Black Sea is closer to your sphere of influence?’

  ‘The military adviser told us to be more ambitious.’

  ‘What did he recommend to you?’

  Mihaila said, ‘An invasion of the Azores; we intended to colonise and exploit the islands in the name of the Bessarabian Syndicalist Republic! I was perfecting my bombing run when the pirates appeared and ruined our schemes! A great opportunity lost!’

  ‘What is the name of your military adviser?’

  ‘Jukka-Petteri Halme. Do you know him? He alarmed me when I met him, but he’s certainly a strategist of genius! He told me that the screams of dying men are like oxygen to him.’

  I began to say ironically, ‘A pleasant sort of—’

  Scipio interrupted me by snapping his fingers. ‘I knew he would be up to his dirty tricks again!’ He turned to face me. ‘This Jukka is one of the most dangerous and diabolical men who have ever walked the surface of our planet! I locked horns with him 13 years ago, during the Boxer Rebellion in China. He invented a decapitation machine that came within an inch of removing my own head from my shoulders! He wanders across the globe spreading death and destruction. I would welcome the chance to put a permanent stop to his antics!’

  ‘I assume he’s still in Bessarabia?’ I said.

  Mihaila shook his head. ‘He left Tiraspol in a hurry. The last I heard of him was that he had crossed the border into Romania and was working for King Carol’s government. A Second Balkan War has started and there will be plenty of “oxygen” for him.’

  ‘Pwdin blew!’ I cursed.

  Scipio rested his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Lloyd, but I won’t be able to give you a tour of Oporto now. This news changes my immediate plans. I’m going to Romania.’

  I blurted out impulsively, ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Scipio smiled down at Mihaila. ‘We need to borrow your aeroplane. I am sorry we can’t afford to pay for it, but I’ll do my best to ensure that it reaches Bucharest in one piece. You may collect it there, if you wish. So farewell, my idealistic friend!’

  Mihaila grumbled but didn’t attempt to stop us. We used his inflatable dinghy to row ourselves into the middle of the lagoon; it was too much effort to deflate it and store it in the rear of the aircraft, so we allowed it to drift back to shore. I climbed into the passenger seat and Scipio took the controls. He seemed familiar with the principles of powered flight. With a series of coughs the engine shuddered into life and the wooden propeller began turning. Scipio muttered:

  ‘He wasn’t lying; we’re low on fuel.’

  I looked at the gauge. ‘How far do you think we can go?’

  ‘Probably only to Viseu, a village in the hills, but I’m sure we can get petrol there. If not, we’ll have to travel to Romania the old-fashioned way, by mule. I hope that won’t happen!’

  I expressed my appreciation of the joke with a chuckle.

  But he frowned at my reaction.

  Then it occurred to me that if anyone was capable of crossing from the Western extremity of the broad European landmass to the Eastern in such an uncomfortable fashion, and furthermore enjoying the experience as he went, that man was Scipio Faraway!

  The Demonstration

  The generals stood together and waited while the Finnish mercenary took his knife and cut off a thin slice from the small lump of ice. Then he shut the door of the refrigerator and carried the sample to the mouth of a weird device that resembled the musical instrument of an insane demon, a cross between an immense trumpet and a nightmarish lute; the bronze horn was strung with resonating wires in the pattern of the most evil spider’s web it might ever be possible to conceive.

  Adjacent to this peculiar contraption was another almost as strange, an engine of a highly unusual kind. Although it bore some resemblance to an ordinary internal combustion motor with no fewer than a dozen cylinders, it was plain that a wholly original mind had been responsible for modifying major aspects of the basic pattern. The 12 pistons drove a compressor rather than a standard propeller and fed a combustion chamber connected to a sequence of optimally arranged exhaust nozzles. The thermal reactive force thus created would be immense.

  Professor Bogdan Velicu sat on a chair in the corner of the laboratory. He was pale and weak and his white coat was ventilated in many places by thin cuts; he had come under Jukka’s malign scrutiny too many times and his life force was ebbing away.

  Jukka placed the sample in the centre of the web.

  Then his gnarled hands operated switches and levers on a console and he licked his lips as the power hummed.

  ‘What is happening?’ one of the generals asked.

  Jukka replied, ‘This apparatus is a spiritual energy converter and I’ve connected it to a motorjet. I plan to run a static test for you. You’ll soon see what power is at my fingertips!’

  The general grumbled, ‘Spiritual energy? But—’

  ‘It exists!’ cried Jukka. ‘Don’t doubt that for even an instant! Men die and their souls break free of gravity and sorrow. They are blown like chaff by the solar wind off the surface of the planet and into deep space. Spirits are like the vapours of a combusted gas; they obey the Coandă Effect and are attracted to nearby surfaces. Yes, I’ve read his notes. You let a genius slip through your fingers, gentlemen!’

  The generals murmured among themselves.

  One of them said, ‘What does any of this have to do with the fragment of ice vibrating on that artificial web?’

  Jukka adopted a thoughtful pose. ‘For some reason the shard of ice in that refrigerator is suffused with spiritual energy in a highly concentrated form. I don’t know why this should be, but I can make a guess. Perhaps it is all that remains of an iceberg that sank a crowded ship. Many hundreds of people died because of it; their ghosts were released into the aether, but because of the Coandă Effect they were attracted to the nearest contoured surface, namely the iceberg itself!’

  ‘Yes, but as the iceberg melted, the ghosts would be freed one by one and now there should be none left.’

  ‘That’s not how the phenomenon works, gentlemen. After the impact, the ghosts circled the original iceberg at a certain speed, unable to detach themselves from it, but with clearance between each individual. Then the iceberg shrank, but the Coandă Effect remained; the phantoms continued to orbit it, for they had no other choice, but now they were packed closer together. The souls of every man, woman and child who drowned in that collision are doomed to rotate around the shard until the very last crystal of ice turns back to liquid water!’

  The generals blinked in stupefaction. Velicu rocked unsteadily on his chair and whispered. ‘It’s wrong—’

  Jukka threw back his head and laughed. ‘This world is still an enigma, despite the efforts of science! Why should the souls of the dead behave in the same manner as exhaust fumes? Once I knew a witch-woman; I think she would be able to tell us the answer, but she’s not here. She dwelled in a misshapen walrus-tusk cabin on a remote beach on the Gulf of Bothnia, near the island of Hailuoto, and that’s where I met her. I tried to steal her secrets and I killed her famili
ar, a raven with blue eyes, and she vowed to tie my bones in knots with magic!’

  The generals exchanged nervous glances.

  Jukka continued, ‘Ah, those Finnish witches! They are the worst in the world. Into a massive iron cauldron she cast herbs, gizzards, powders and other diabolical ingredients and she bubbled them into a foul brew over a driftwood fire! But I was cleverer than she; I was hiding under the liquid, holding my breath with my lungs fit to burst; and I had a crossbow in my hands, loaded with a barbed bolt! Slowly my flesh boiled but still I waited for the right moment. Then she leaned right over with a ladle and I let her have it in the face! Into her vile skull lodged the bolt and I surfaced like a salted leviathan, overturning the pot and putting the fire out. I was cooked nicely, gentlemen, like a potato!’

  His shoulders undulated with hideous mirth.

  ‘What will happen to the souls that are converted into energy?’ asked one of the generals with a frown.

  ‘Pure energy, gentlemen, pure! There will be nothing left! No sacrifice is greater than to forsake the chance of eternal life for the cause of victory in this war! Fools and cowards may object that these innocent souls didn’t volunteer for the honour, but that is a minor detail. Behold! Witness total conversion of spirit into power…’

  And Jukka flipped a switch on the console.

  The vibrating web began to glow. The speck of ice vanished in a flash of utterly intense colour, but a colour not in any human spectrum. Then a communal scream that soured the blood rose from the mouth of the horn and the generals recoiled in horror, but Jukka laughed scornfully at them and drank with both ears the despairing wails of those who felt their souls being obliterated; souls that should have been immortal, souls that if lost were gone forever. And the energy released was fed into the compressor of the motorjet engine in its frame.

  ‘This is the foulest blasphemy!’ wept Velicu.

  Jukka stepped toward him, his knife glittering. A quick stroke and the penultimate segment of the professor’s heart was dangling between thumb and forefinger of his free hand. Velicu sat back down. Inside he was now a lattice, barely functioning, running on the absolute minimum of organic matter needed to stay alive; another mistake and his entire visceral system would collapse like a deflating jellyfish. Yet he was grateful; his soul was untouched, in one beautiful piece.

  With a roar that muffled even the awful screaming, the tethered engine shot off the desk and smashed right through the wall of the laboratory. A cloud of brick dust settled around them. They peered through the hole and saw the engine scraping itself to pieces on the road, knocking pedestrians down like skittles; soon it was gone.

  Despite his misgivings, one of the generals applauded; then the others joined him. Jukka bowed theatrically.

  ‘Imagine an aeroplane powered by such an engine! And imagine such an aeroplane armed with a gun I have recently perfected that puts one of my old machines to a new use; you will see for yourselves! I will reduce the entire Bulgarian army to pulp!’

  He threw up the segment of Velicu’s heart and caught it on his tongue. Then he smirked and bowed again.

  ‘You wish to receive payment now?’ asked a general.

  Jukka nodded. ‘Yes, why not?’

  The general barked an order and an adjutant entered the room; he held a struggling girl in his arms. He let her go, and with huge eyes she stared wildly at her surroundings. The Finn approached rapidly and ripped her bodice apart with his bare hands, exposing her firm young breasts. To the disgust of the other generals and the disbelief of the assistant, he roughly rubbed his stubbly chin over her nipples. She struggled and cursed, but to no avail. Then Jukka slapped her into silence, picked her up and balanced her on his shoulder. He paused.

  ‘Are there any deep wells near here?’

  The Letter

  Fuel for the plane proved easy to obtain in Viseu, and Scipio was confident we could travel the entire distance through the air. As long as I live, I will never forget that flight! We proceeded in a series of hops from one tricky landing to another. It was necessary to refuel regularly and sometimes the engine needed spare parts; something was always going wrong with it. As we flew, Scipio talked about the numerous advantages of Henri Coandă’s motorjet and expressed his wish our own aeroplane was powered by one, but I guessed he was happy enough.

  Our route took us first to Madrid, then to Barcelona and over the sea to the island of Mallorca, to a landing near the quaint village of Deia, where decades later a novelist by the name of Robert Graves would pen Count Belisarius, one of the finest historical novels ever written. From Mallorca we flew to Alghero in Sardinia; then across the Tyrrhenian Sea to Rome and over the Italian peninsula to the Adriatic, where we weathered a bad storm. By this time we were famished as well as weary, so Scipio decided to land in the Croatian city of Split.

  ‘A chance to buy a newspaper too!’ he said.

  ‘I doubt The Western Mail is available. Though it does pay for special correspondents in various countries.’

  ‘Something local will suit me better…’

  ‘I thought you didn’t trust journalists?’ I replied with a laugh. It was a jest he took without rancour, but I knew his desire for news had a serious purpose behind it. We needed to know how the Second Balkan War was progressing; if Romania was suddenly annihilating the armed forces of its opponent without much resistance, then Jukka-Petteri Halme was almost certainly behind it. I don’t mean to imply that Romania wasn’t capable of winning without his help, but the First Balkan War had been a long, hard slog, as struggles in that corner of Europe always tend to be. Rapid gains in this war would be uncharacteristic and thus a clue as to the presence of the dreadful Finn and his scheming.

  One thing I had noticed at all our landings was the way I was greeted with increasing interest by the people we had dealings with. In Madrid, in the Casa de Campo, I had been virtually ignored; in Barcelona, people did look at me from the corners of their eyes, but only that; in Mallorca I was stared at openly; the same in Sardinia; and by the time we reached Rome I seemed to be an object of enormous appeal; and yet, so far, nothing had happened to make me feel concerned.

  To pass the time, Scipio answered my questions about his life. Then he asked his own questions about mine. He was an extremely cultured man, as I believe I’ve already stressed, and kept me entertained with poems and songs and riddles in a dozen languages.

  Below us was the port of Split …

  We landed in the harbour and moored against a stone jetty. The beauty of Mihaila Adrian’s plane was that it was equally at home in the sky, on sea or on land. A true Vernian machine, it reminded me a little of the vehicle used by the villain Robur in Master of the World. I was smiling to myself at memories of that book as I followed Scipio Faraway up a metal ladder to the top of the jetty. A man was waiting there for us. He handed something to Scipio, who had his back to me.

  Then the stranger walked rapidly away.

  A second later, Scipio turned to me and handed me a crumpled letter. I was astounded to see that it was addressed to me! Narrowing my eyes in quiet amazement, I read it through.

  Dear Lloyd!

  Greetings from your editor! I wonder if you have forgotten me? I hope not. I certainly haven’t forgotten you.

  I’m very disappointed with your attitude and actions. When you failed to return from Hugo Bloat’s residence after your interview with that most august and noble gentleman, I was dreadfully worried that you had suffered a lethal accident. What would The Western Mail do without its finest journalist, I asked myself? I wept for many hours!

  Yes, I don’t mind admitting that I was overwrought with nostalgia and grief at the thought you might be dead. Naturally I made enquiries; I went in person to Mr Bloat’s house. He had no idea what had happened to you, but I found him to be an extremely fascinating person, severely misjudged by his peers and the general populace of Porthcawl.

  In fact, in the following days we became firm friends.

  Indeed, it soon
went further than that.

  When he received a report from a man in his employ, a certain Captain Tom Alaerts, that he had taken aboard a new crew member, and that the name of the sailor in question was identical to yours, he didn’t neglect to pass the information to me! I was grateful to him. In return I confided my suspicion that your motives weren’t pure. Correct me if I’m wrong, Lloyd, but I don’t believe you decided to change your career from journalist to buccaneer; on the contrary, I’m convinced you planned to write a story about your little jaunt as a pirate and do your best to discredit poor Mr Hugo Bloat.

  That was very despicable of you, in my view.

  We still think this is your plan.

  Anyway, Mr Bloat offered to put up a large reward for your safe return and I accepted his superb generosity in this regard; but it seemed to me that the ‘safe’ condition was a little too stringent.

  So I persuaded him to alter it to ‘dead or alive’.

  Many people contacted me in the hope of claiming the reward but they had nothing credible to reveal; they were just desperate for money. Other candidates promised to seek you out and bring you back, but most wanted the reward in advance. Fraudsters! What is the world coming to? There was only one serious applicant; his name is Rolfe and he seems keen to succeed. Of course I gave him my blessing and waved as he set off.

  He’ll probably face stiff competition on the way!

  Not only did I advertise the reward in The Western Mail, you see, but I made sure it was printed in every other newspaper in Europe. Mr Hugo Bloat’s money can achieve wonders. I know you’ll appreciate my thoroughness in this business. I sat back and waited for results.

  Before long, reports reached my desk.