by Mick Farren
“I saw something…”
“You fainted.”
“Honest, Melchior, I swear. I saw something.”
“You saw the Dark Things, and you fainted.”
Melchior was so insistent that Raphael realized it was time to stop his own insisting. “I did?”
Melchior pushed his face into Raphael’s. “You did. Because if you had done anything other than just faint, I would be compelled to turn you in under a new encyclical from the Ministry of Virtue that demands all underofficers be on the alert for what is now known as ‘heretic sensitivity.’ I am expected to report any man who shows an adverse reaction in the presence of any manner of Otherness. But since you only fainted, no report needs to be filed. Too many faint to make it worth their while mounting an inquiry. Seeing things, on the other hand, might be worthy of investigation, and even you must know something about the Ministry men’s investigative techniques.”
“Yes, Underofficer. I know what they do to get the answers they want.”
“So what happened to you, young Vega?”
“I saw the Dark Things, and I fainted.”
“You owe me one, Vega. So don’t go doing a runner on me, see? And tell your buddy Pascal to keep his big mouth shut.”
“Yes, Underofficer. Thank you, Underofficer.”
Melchior treated Raphael to a final penetrating look and went back to his seat in the corner just behind the partition that divided them from the driver’s cab. It was gradually dawning on Raphael that Melchior was very different from Y’assir, and, in the person of the squat, burly, and heavily scarred Mosul, they might have a squad leader actually willing to keep them alive for as long as he could.
Another hour passed before the traffic jam created by the passing of the Dark Things and the Mothmen was sorted out and the truck was once again on the move. Where the anticipation of the coming of the Dark Things had produced nothing but wild chatter, in their wake no one seemed to want to utter a word. They rode in silence through a wet, dreary, and uncomfortable night in which Raphael could do nothing but hunch forward as dirty water ran down his neck, soaked his greatcoat, and collected on the bed of the truck around his feet. The memory of the strange, approximate vision of how the Dark Things might look in their own world had left him with a hundred questions and as many new fears running round in his head. Try as he might, he could neither come up with any answers nor quell his own panic at new concepts like “heretic sensitivity.” He recoiled from the thought that there was something special or unusual about him that might mark him in the eyes of the Zhaithan. He already had his determination to draw and his art as a potential means to betray himself in a moment of carelessness or showing off. The idea of having heretic sensitivity sounded ten times worse.
Although absolutely nothing could erase the vision of the Dark Things, the sight that presented itself about an hour and a half after they had again started rolling up the Continental Highway was able to push it to the sidelines of his fear. It was a recruit named Raoul, an Hispanian like Raphael, who had first alerted everyone to the apparition in the sky. Raoul was at the end of the line that faced Raphael, suffering the discomfort of sitting next to the tailgate of the open truck, and, only supported by another body on one side, being forced to constantly cling onto something to stop himself from toppling out. He had looked up, his jaw had dropped, and he had pointed in amazement. “Holy shit, will you all look at that!”
For a moment, Raphael thought the Mothmen had come back, but then he saw that Raoul was pointing at something much more substantial. The airship looked enormous, close to a hundred feet long and clearly in trouble. The silent, silver craft was much too close to the ground, and, as it drifted over them, it spun on its long, cigar-shaped axis as though out of control. Melchior was instantly on his feet, clinging to a vertical support in back of the driver’s cab. “The bastard’s coming down!”
Raphael could make out lettering on the side, NU98, and the star of the Norse Union. “It’s Norse.”
Melchior stared up as though he had a personal loathing for aircraft. “The bastards must have sneaked over here to drop a few bombs on us, maybe cut the highway. And it looks like they got screwed up, either by the storm or some of our own ground fire.”
“I thought the Norse Union was neutral.”
“They were, but who the hell knows? Maybe they finally came out on the side of Albany. We’re the last ones to hear stuff like that.”
The airship vanished from sight behind a stand of trees on a low rise. A few seconds later, a terrible, protracted crashing could be heard even through the wind and rain, and a orange gasoline fireball blazed briefly in the air and then continued to burn as a glow beyond the high ground. “That’s it! They’re down!”
Melchior immediately turned and banged on the top of the driver’s cab. “Pull over! Pull over, right now.”
In front and behind, other trucks were doing the same. Melchior turned to his men. “Quite a night for adventure we’re having. Best we wait here and see if they need us to hunt down any survivors.”
CORDELIA
Cordelia had no real memory of the impact. She recalled pieces of the side and the floor vanishing from the gondola before her horrified eyes. She also remembered being upside down and hanging in the safety straps, and, round about the same time, huge pieces of what looked like flapping fabric flying past her. The next thing she recalled was lying on her back, feeling wet and peering into an indistinct darkness with something burning in the distance. Then Phelan’s face was in front of her with blood running from a cut on his forehead just below the hairline.
“Cordelia?”
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
Cordelia failed to understand the concept of okay. “Have we crashed?”
“Yes, we’ve crashed, and we’ve got to get out of here. Can you move?”
“No.”
Cordelia’s strongest memory was how, in the face of death, she had still been her. Her personality had remained as it was, and, in what could still be her last minutes, she could view even total disaster with a certain aloof detachment. She was rather proud of this and just wanted to lay as she was and relish this pride for a while. She definitely did not want to go anywhere.
“Is anything broken?”
“Me. I’m broken.”
He was feeling her arms and legs, and she was tempted to giggle. “Taking liberties, Captain?”
“Nothing’s broken that I can find. I think you’re in shock.”
“I think I have a right to be.”
He waved a blurred hand in front of her face. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Damned if I know and damned if I care.”
“Can you stand?”
“What’s burning?”
“One of the engines.”
“Why is it such a long way away?”
“It became detached when we first started to plough through the trees. We were lucky. That’s the only fire. Try and stand, Cordelia.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Cordelia, try and stand, okay?”
“You’re a bore, Phelan.”
To humor him, she tried to sit up. Pain crashed in on her, and reality right along with it. Nothing might be broken, but she was profoundly battered. Also, she was lying beside a crashed airship, and, if what the navigator had said right before the crash was correct, she was deep in enemy territory. “Oh, good Goddess. This is really fucked up, isn’t it?”
Phelan tried to help her up, but she impatiently waved him away. “Okay, okay, I can manage. I think I enjoyed it more being in shock.”
Cordelia stood for a while, swaying a little, and then she looked around and marveled that not only she, but what appeared to be the entire crew, had made it through apparently unscathed. The airship itself had fared much worse than its crew and passenger. The gondola had remained halfway intact, but pieces of framework and fuselage were scattered for a good hundred yards, through a mess of upr
ooted and broken trees, along a path that led in the exact direction of the flames still roaring from the one burning engine. Cordelia could see how the punishment sustained by the NU98 itself might have saved those flying in it by taking the impact of the crash in easy stages. “Does anyone have a drink?”
The rain was still falling, and Phelan brushed water from his wet hair and beckoned to the wireless operator. “Keats, do you still have that flask?”
“Sure do, Skipper.”
“Bring it over here. The lady needs a drink.”
“I don’t blame her.”
Keats the wireless man handed Cordelia a stainless steel flask with the insignia of the Norse Air Corps engraved on the face. She took a pull on it and let out a sigh as the warmth of Scotch whiskey coursed through her. “I needed that.” She eased a bruised shoulder, aware for the first time of the rain and the fact that she was soaked to the skin. Somehow neither was high on her list of pressing problems. “Do we have some kind of plan?”
Phelan looked unhappy. “I’m afraid our only option is to walk out of here. That’s why we have to get out of this area as fast as we can. The Mosul can hardly have missed seeing us go down, and they could well be on their way here right now.”
The navigator joined Cordelia, Phelan, and Keats. He was carrying a first-aid kit, and also looked unhappy. “We may have less time than we think, Skipper.”
Phelan turned sharply, wanting no more bad news. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know for sure. It was all happening a bit fast. But I think I saw something right before we hit. I think we crossed the Continental Highway just a little bit back.”
“Damn!”
At that moment, the bombardier and one of the gunners emerged from the wreck of the gondola. The bombardier had three holstered pistols slung over each shoulder and was carrying a light carbine. The gunner held another carbine and hefted two heavy rucksacks. “We’ve cleared out everything in the small arms’ locker, Skipper, and we’ve got all of the emergency food and medical supplies.”
Phelan nodded. “Okay, pass out those weapons, and let’s start moving out. Where the hell is Coburn?”
“He’s seeing if there’s any way he can stop the Mosul getting the other engine intact. He’s trying to set fire to it.”
“Tell him to get back here. He’s not going to be able to get it burning if he hasn’t managed it by now, and there’s no way he can blow it up.”
Keats pocketed his flask and hurried off to get the engineer. As the weapons were passed out, Cordelia found herself being ignored. The guns were being given to the men, but nobody had offered her one. “Don’t I get so much as a pistol?”
Phelan hesitated, and that was too much for Cordelia. Her tone sharpened. “Aren’t I, as a lady, supposed to shoot myself rather than be taken alive? How am I supposed to do that if I don’t have at least a pistol?”
Phelan gestured to the bombardier. “Give her a pistol.”
The bombardier held out a belt and holster. “Do you know how to use it, Lieutenant?”
Cordelia’s impatience with men as a breed exploded. “Yes, I know how to use it. I’ve been shooting guns since I was five, damn it.”
She might have elaborated, but at that moment Coburn and Keats came out of the darkness. Phelan nodded. “Okay, let’s get going. We’ll take turns humping the supplies. Seck and Hodding, since you’ve got them already, you can take the first shift. Two hours, and then you pass them on.”
The bombardier and the gunner shouldered the packs. Cordelia buckled the belt with its holstered pistol around her hips. For the first time, she was able to take a head count of the crew, and this caused her to frown. “I thought there were nine of us. How is it I only see seven?”
Phelan avoided her eyes. “Lars and Olaf didn’t make it.”
“They what?”
“They weren’t as lucky as we were. They died on the first impact.”
“Oh, no.”
“It happens.”
Cordelia was genuinely ashamed of herself. “And I’ve been pouting and complaining when two men were dead?”
“You were in shock. You’ve just been through an air crash.”
“That’s no excuse. I’m sorry. Where are they?”
“The bodies are still in the wreck.”
“You’re just going to leave them?”
“We neither have the time nor the implements to bury them.” Phelan turned quickly to the men. “Right, we’re moving out. Single file. Keats, take the point, Coburn, bring up the rear. Cordelia, stay close to me, and everyone look sharp. The Mosul may be uncomfortably close.”
With the orders given, and nothing else to say, the survivors of the wreck of the NU98 walked away from the wreckage and into the dark and the rain of the forest. As the crash site was swallowed up by the darkness, except for the unhappy beacon of the burning engine, Cordelia glanced at Phelan. “And so we move into a new phase of our adventure.”
Phelan smiled despite himself. “I hope you can go on thinking of it like that.”
JESAMINE
Jesamine eased herself out from under the dead weight of Phaall’s arm. He had returned to his quarters so drunk that he had actually passed out during her attempt to give him the sex he’d demanded just minutes earlier. She was faced with a choice. She could either slip away and hope that Phaall did not revive any time soon and start demanding to know where she was, or she could remain and listen to him snore like a pig for maybe the rest of the night. She walked, naked but for the jewelry at her wrists, neck, and ankles, to the other side of the colonel’s quarters, to the chest where he kept his schnapps. The night had been long and hard, and she badly needed a drink, but before opening it, she glanced back to see that Phaall was still sleeping like a large, sweating corpse and not showing any signs of coming to. Her jewelry tinkled as she moved, but that would not be noise enough to wake the colonel. Fully reassured, she opened the chest and removed an already opened bottle. Fortunately, Phaall was not the kind who measured or otherwise recorded the consumption of his alcohol. If some was missing, he would simply assume that he had drunk it himself. Usually, when she stole her master’s booze, she drank it straight from the bottle, but with the colonel out cold, she indulged in the luxury of a glass. An hour before, the man had been pouring liquor over her breasts and licking it off. The use of a glass represented a kind of payback. Using a glass made her at least feel like a whore who was bought and paid for rather than a slave who was merely owned.
“Don’t let him catch you doing that.”
The voice took Jesamine completely by surprise. She knew enough not to cry out, but she did almost drop the bottle. “Reinhardt. Where the fuck did you come from?”
“He’s got orders. I have to wake him.”
Relieved, she sipped her drink. “You won’t wake him now. He’s out cold. Doomsday couldn’t wake him. That’s why I’m stealing his schnapps.”
“I have to wake him. It’s important.”
“What’s important?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Jesamine used her decorated nakedness to full advantage. She only had to undulate a little and she had the manservant’s full attention. “Of course you can. You tell me everything.”
“Not this.”
“‘Not this,’ Reinhardt, ‘not this’? What do you mean, ‘not this’? What’s so important about ‘this’?” She leaned closer so Reinhardt could smell what perfume Phaall had left on her. “Do you like me like this, Reinhardt? You want me to do it to you right here, while our drunken pig of a master snores on?”
Reinhardt backed away. “Don’t talk like that. You could get us both hanged.”
Jesamine followed him, again closing the gap between them. “Suppose I sucked you off while he was right there in the room, Reinhardt? Doesn’t that excite you just one little bit?”
“You’re drunk.”
“Not too drunk.” She giggled and stuck her tongue out at Phaall. “Not as drunk as h
im.”
“Cut it out, Jesamine.”
She instantly stopped acting drunk and self-destructive. “Then tell me what these damned orders are.”
“Okay, okay. An enemy airship crashed, right in occupied territory.”
“Where?”
“Real close. Twenty-five miles down the Continental Highway.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“He’s always wanted one of those engines.”
“That’s what makes it so important.”
“So wake him.”
Reinhardt looked pathetically at Jesamine. “Will you wake him for me?”
“Fuck off. Wake him yourself.”
“He’s liable to get violent. He’ll be beating me before I so much as say a word.”
Jesamine shrugged. “We all have our burdens to bear.”
“Yeah, but you could wake him in a way that wouldn’t set him off.”
“Are you crazy?”
“You couldn’t have survived this long without knowing all the tricks.”
“While I preform the tricks, you watch, no doubt?”
“If you did this for me, I’d owe you big time.”
Jesamine realized that Reinhardt was genuinely afraid of rousing the drunken colonel. “Big time?”
“Big time.”
“You’d better not burn me on this.”
“Just do it, and I’ll get you anything I can.”
With a definite reluctance, Jesamine stretched out beside the still-snoring Phaall. She lay for a minute, aware that Reinhardt was watching, before she rolled over and pressed her body against his back. She started by blowing in his ear and whispering softly. “Wake up, Colonel, baby. There’s a wonderful surprise waiting for you.”
