Anno Frankenstein

by Jonathan Green

  The corporal continued to stare at him in confusion.

  “You don’t read the High Command communiqués regarding airship losses, do you corporal?” Eichmann went on. The attention of everyone on duty at the top of the tower was now focused on the drifting dirigible.

  “NCC-1701, also known as the Baron von Richthofen, went missing during a routine patrol of the Channel a month ago,” Eichmann said, with a distinct tone of self-satisfaction in his voice. “Along with all of her crew.”

  Eichmann picked up the telephone receiver from its warped wooden box, against the wall of the tower-top, and wound the handle.

  “Eichmann here... See that zeppelin? Well, I want a cyber-eagle escort sent out to bring it in.”

  “So they’re back,” the young telescope operator said, eyes fixed on the approaching airship.

  “Someone is,” Eichmann replied.

  “HOW FAR NOW?” Hercules Quicksilver asked the pilot as he stared out of the glass cockpit at the front of the dirigible’s gondola.

  “Eight miles, sir,” the young woman at the flight controls replied, peering resolutely ahead through her tinted goggles at the lightening landscape below.

  “Dawn’s here. Damn!” Hercules cursed.

  The plan had been to come in over the drop site just before dawn, using the twilight to mask their arrival. Travelling on board a purloined Nazi airship would only get them so far. Up close, chances were that they would soon be found out.

  Hercules adjusted the officer’s jacket he was wearing. It felt strange to be got up like one of the enemy. As an agent of the Crown, he didn’t often find himself in uniform. The stiff jacket, the iron eagle pin and the swastika-emblazoned armband lent him an unmistakeable feeling of efficiency and authority. He wondered if it had the same effect on the German military personnel, and supposed it did.

  The problem was that the wind had been against them as they crossed the Eifel range. Then they had run into a squall that had forced them off course and robbed them of precious minutes.

  He turned his attention from his jackboots and the stiff, grey-coloured cap in his hands to the steadily brightening view beyond the cockpit once more.

  “What’s that?” he asked, leaning forward to get a better look at the jagged shadow looming ahead of them on the horizon.

  “Er, we have incoming, sir,” the pilot suddenly announced, raising her voice over the drone of the aero-engines.

  Hercules peered out of the glass bubble of the cockpit. A flock of black shapes, eight in all, were rising from the still-dark turrets of a crumbling castle, anonymous silhouettes against the salmon pink sky.

  “But they’re only birds,” Hercules said.

  The flapping forms immediately began to move towards them. As the gondola and the flock closed on one another, however, he could see that they were very large birds and even caught the glint of sunlight on their machined parts.

  “With all due respect, sir, they’re not just birds. They’re weaponised cyber-eagles. We’ve been found out.”

  “Damn!” Hercules cursed.

  “Your orders, sir?” the pilot said desperately, hands on the zeppelin’s control levers, body tensed, ready for action.

  Hercules watched as the cyber-eagles continued to close on the airship with a ruthless, unnatural determination. “Evasive action – now!”

  The pilot pulled back on a control lever. The pitch of the port-side engine dropped perceptibly and the airship rolled sideways.

  The approaching birds wheeled and turned in response, matching the manoeuvre.

  The pilot pushed forward on another lever and the nose of the airship dipped sharply towards the indiscernible trees, hills and structures that were just shadows in the gloom below. Hercules grabbed hold of a railing and hung on, bracing his legs.

  With a screeching cry that could be heard even over the scream of the engines, as they were pushed to their utmost limit, the eagles turned again – and struck.

  Folding back their wings, the cyber-eagles dived at the dirigible. And then, as they came within reach of the reinforced aluminium and canvas outer skin, they spread wide their wings again and swung their talons forward. Brass-tipped points as sharp as surgical instruments tore at the thinly-armoured surface of the zeppelin. Steel beaks punctured the sheet metal as the birds’ dreadful claws ripped their way through, like the savage Stymphalian birds of myth.

  Impotent inside the gondola slung beneath the massive gas balloon, there was nothing Hercules could do but hang on for dear life as the cabin began to tilt along its horizontal axis. They were going down.

  There was only one thing for it now.

  Clinging onto whatever handholds he could find, Hercules dragged himself back up through the cabin. Secure in its cradle at the rear of the gondola, the large, coffin-like cryogenic pod rattled and jolted as the pilot jinked the craft left and right to try and control the falling craft.

  The pod hummed, drawing power from a coupling with the airship’s own steam-furnace to ensure its occupant remained on ice. Beneath the ice-frosted glass panel in the front of the capsule Dr Henry Jekyll slept, while all about him was chaos and confusion.

  The pod’s thermostatic controls were sunk into a recess on its hinged edge. As Hercules threw switches, cryogenic gas began to vent through an outlet in the side of the pod, filling the cabin with ethereal vapour.

  “Sir, what do you think you’re doing?” the pilot called back, a look of horror on her porcelain features.

  “You just worry about getting us down in one piece!” Hercules shouted back.

  The airship lurched again, Hercules losing his grip on the slippery, frost-rimed capsule. The angry screeching of their avian attackers rang through the gondola again as the pilot fought to keep control of the zeppelin.

  Exerting himself, Hercules grabbed hold of a frozen length of piping, wincing as the cold burned his palm, and set to work on the pod’s control panel again regardless.

  A regular chime sounded from somewhere inside the pod, and the needles on the ice-rimed dials at the side of the device began to rise.

  “Sir!” the pilot shouted. “Our orders were to deliver the package to the target before defrosting.”

  “And if I don’t defrost the good doctor now, and we crash, he may well die!” Hercules bellowed back over the protestations of the airship’s engines.

  With a pop, the container’s seal was broken and the lid levered upwards, automatic systems opening the front of the steel sarcophagus. There lay the slight form of Dr Henry Jekyll, his naked skin prickled with ice crystals.

  He looked dead. Hercules studied the body critically for a moment. Had he indeed been too hasty? Rather than revive the doctor, had he in fact killed him?

  A wisp of icy-mist suddenly escaped the man’s motionless lips and Hercules saw his chest rise and fall, almost imperceptibly.

  He let out his own pent-up breath in a relieved sigh. Doctor Jekyll was alive! Now Hercules just had to keep him that way.

  The cabin rocked again and this time, for a split second, Hercules’ stomach leapt into his mouth, as if he had gone into free-fall. The portside engine spluttered and suddenly died.

  “We’re going down, sir!” the pilot cried.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Hercules muttered.

  The zeppelin had gone into an uncontrollable spin, the centrifugal force created by the one remaining engine whirling the dirigible around with frightening force.

  Jekyll still lay motionless in the cryogenic pod.

  “We have to bail out while we still can, sir!”

  Abandoning the controls, she ran for the exit hatch, only hesitating to pull on one of the two parachutes that hung beside the cabin door.

  Clipping the pack tight across her chest, the pilot opened the door. Wind howled into the gondola, louder than the scream of the starboard engine.

  Hercules looked from the pilot and the crashing cabin door to Jekyll’s still half-frozen form. He didn’t have time to wait f
or the thaw to finish.

  Reaching into the pod, he tried to move the ice-stiff body but it wouldn’t budge. The doctor’s limbs were locked and there was nothing Hercules could do to manoeuvre the man out of the restraints in which he was secured, other than to break all four of his limbs.

  “Come on, sir! There isn’t time, and the parachute won’t take the weight of two!”

  It might, Hercules thought, but there was no way he could manhandle Jekyll as things stood. It had all been for naught. The zeppelin was going down and all he could do was try to save himself and then, if he managed that, try to come up with an alternative strategy once he was safely on the ground.

  No! That was unacceptable. There had to be another way.

  “Stop!” he shouted after the pilot. “There must be a way we can land this thing!” But it was no good.

  His curses carried away by the wind howling through the cockpit, whipping the nitrogen mist away with it, Hercules scrambled for the door as the pilot disappeared through the hatch, arms and legs splayed, ready to be caught by the wind and pulled clear of the whirling vessel, the parachute ripcord clenched tightly in one hand.

  The airship continued to spin, the note of the whirling engine rising in pitch with every dizzying rotation. Hercules had no idea how high up they were, or how close to the ground; only that every second counted.

  Pulling on the parachute pack, his cold-numbed hands struggling to buckle the harness across his chest, he struggled against the tilting, dizzying flight of the zeppelin, trying to make his way back to the pilot’s position. Surely he could do something to land this thing.

  The craft lurched violently, and suddenly Hercules was no longer in contact with the floor. He tumbled backwards, unable to stop himself, and suddenly there was the exit hatch behind him. As he fell through it, he eyes fell on the cryo-pod in time to see the doctor’s ice-flecked eyelashes flicker open.

  And then he was sailing out of the cabin, screaming in rage as he was forced to leave Jekyll to his fate.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Behind Enemy Lines

  HERCULES SPUN AWAY from the airship, caught by the whirling wind and swept clear of the engine’s propeller. Ground became sky and the sky became the ground again as he somersaulted through the air. The memory of the doctor’s eyes flicking open haunted him, and for a moment he forgot where he was or what was going on. Below, the dark land rushed up to meet him.

  Seizing hold of the dancing ripcord, Hercules gave it a sharp tug.

  The parachute unfurled in a torrent of khaki silk. The wind caught it, and Hercules lost his breath as the harness pulled tight under his arms. He felt as if he were suddenly being yanked upwards.

  Recovering his breath, Hercules grabbed the trailing cords of the chute above him, pulling on them first one way, then the other, directing his descent as best he could.

  He watched as the zeppelin continued to spin away from him towards the ground. Pulling on the lines of the parachute again, he tried his damnedest to steer himself as far away from the falling airship as possible.

  On the horizon he could see the silhouette of the castle ramparts quite clearly now. He was also keen to make landfall as far from the look-out post as possible.

  As soon as the zeppelin was down, the Germans would be all over it and no doubt coming from the direction of the tower. They had obviously been spotted, and the raptors had been launched from there.

  That one thought suddenly had Hercules scouring the sky above him again.

  The eagles were still there. A few had gone down with the zeppelin, clinging on to the last to ensure that their prey didn’t escape them, but the rest of the flock – four huge avians – were occupied with something else entirely.

  They had the young pilot in their claws, and were tossing her ravaged corpse about as if it were nothing more than a piece of meat – which of course it was, now. The shreds of her parachute were knotted around her bloodied carcass and caught in the savage talons of the bird-machines.

  Hercules gasped involuntarily. He couldn’t even remember the poor woman’s name. And now, here she was, sacrificed in the skies over Germany for the war effort, to bring him and his precious cargo behind enemy lines. And all for what?

  If she wasn’t already dead, she very soon would be. Doctor Jekyll was, even now, plummeting to his death aboard the doomed airship. Any minute Hercules would be lost behind enemy lines as well, and without the means to complete his secret mission.

  The zeppelin hit the ground with a scream of twisting metal and the pop of erupting gas-cells. A second later there was a loud crump and the pre-dawn landscape was lit up by an explosion, as sparks from the failing starboard engine ignited the balloon.

  The Baron von Richthofen had come down in a field. Hercules could see a herd of cattle fleeing from the flames, bathed in the flickering light of the conflagration.

  Hercules’ whole body sagged as he continued to drift towards the ground, the wind carrying him further and further south to a point roughly halfway between the crash-site and the look-out post. He felt sick to the pit of his stomach.

  His mind was a-whirl. What was the point in going on? Without the means to complete his mission, what good was he to anyone? All he could hope to do now was somehow find a way back to Blighty, or at least one of her allied territories, and take the punishment meted out for his failure like a man.

  Thankfully, distracted by their prize, the cyber-eagles had failed to spot him and he came down at the edge of a furrowed field. He hastily bundled up his parachute and stuffed it back into its pack, his heart racing as he did so, shooting anxious glances in every direction.

  With the expanse of parachute silk out of sight, he ran for the edge of the field and the welcoming gloom of the small wood that lay beyond its bounds.

  Early morning mist was rising off the clay-clumped ruts of the forgotten corn-stubbled field. Hercules ducked under a low branch and threw himself into cover amidst the dense undergrowth that had been left to grow wild between the coppiced stands of ash and elm.

  The distant crackle of flames carried on the wind from where the requisitioned zeppelin had come down.

  Happy that he hadn’t been seen, Hercules took a moment to consider his options. He was wearing the full dress uniform of a Nazi officer, the insignia marking him out as a colonel, but he had lost his cap during his forced evacuation from the plummeting zeppelin. His German was good, but under intense interrogation areas of weakness would reveal themselves, like as not.

  Doctor Jekyll was lost, as was the pilot; he might as well just forget about them now.

  He was armed with a German Luger and had a knife tucked into his right boot, but other than that he had nothing. Nothing beyond the emergency survival kit – a compass, a garrotte and a tinderbox – provided by the boffins of Department Q and hidden inside the heels of his boots.

  The parachute wasn’t going to be much good to him, he reasoned, so he might as well leave it behind. But he didn’t want to leave any suspicious signs that might lead a Nazi patrol to suspect that anyone had survived the zeppelin crash.

  The knotty root of an oak made the perfect hiding place. He rammed the pack as far as he could into an animal burrow that had been excavated between its roots, and pulled up a few handfuls of nettles and spread them over the hole.

  The only thing he could do now was make his way to the nearest road and from there, work out how he was going to get back to Magna Britannia from behind enemy lines.

  FINDING THE NEAREST road wasn’t a problem, not once he began to hear the steady thrum of engines from a whole convoy of vehicles heading for the crash-site.

  Cautiously, keeping low, Hercules made his way towards the road. As it turned out, it was little more than a dirt track. Nonetheless, vehicles were pouring along it in a steady stream. Hercules ducked down behind the trunk of a fallen beech tree and peered out from beneath its mossy black branches.

  As he watched, a truck rumbled past, heavy tyres bouncing in the wat
er-logged ruts made by the vehicles that had gone ahead of it. German troopers were sat uncomfortably in the back, one or two even hanging onto the sides of the truck, machine guns slung across their chests. It was followed by a squad car, and bringing up the rear, a good hundred yards behind, an open half-track carrying a ranked officer – judging by his uniform at this distance – and his personal driver.

  Back along the road, Hercules could see the dark shape of the look-out post, details beginning to appear in the brickwork around its turrets in the first light of dawn.

  To the east lay the look-out post and a full Nazi platoon, no doubt. To the west lay the wreck of the Richthofen and another platoon’s worth of soldiers, or so Hercules suspected.

  And here, coming up the road towards him, was a way out of all of it.

  Maintaining his crouched position, and following a rainwater ditch on the other side of the fence enclosing the field, Hercules moved from the shelter of the wood – his approach still obscured by the gloom. As the half-track containing the officer and his man drew closer he broke into a hunched run.

  As the vehicle rumbled past, he scrambled out of the ditch and ducked under the fence in time to grab hold of a roll-bar and swing himself up onto the back of the half-track without either of the men noticing.

  Pausing for a moment, he shot a glance further up the road at the retreating truck and jeep, as the two vehicles turned a corner in the road and disappeared beyond the edge of a spur of jutting, mist-clung woodland. Beyond the treetops, thick black smoke climbed high into the misty sky, pouring from the wreckage of the burning zeppelin.

  Glancing behind him he saw nothing but the empty, rutted road. This was the perfect opportunity to get himself out of here with a minimum of fuss.

  Eyes on the two men in the front of the half-track the whole time, Hercules stepped carefully over the uneven tarpaulin covering whatever was in the back of the vehicle. As he closed the distance between him and the two Germans his pulse quickened. One of them could look back at any moment and then it would all be over for him, the element of surprise gone.