The King's War

by Andrew Stanek

  “I thought you said before that the wheel controlled the rudder,” Harry said.

  “I did,” Will answered fiercely. “But Martin told me that the wheel ought to control the ailerons.”

  Harry nodded in understanding.

  “Airplanes go up, right?” he said. “How do you make it go up?”

  “Well, with the throttle, but I can pitch it by pulling back on the wheel. The wheel goes in and out.” Will demonstrated.

  “What else does it need?”

  “It’s done,” Will said. “Propeller. Rudder. Elevators. Tail. Nose. Cockpit. Wheels. Frame. It’s got everything, except it doesn’t have an engine. It needs an engine to power the driveshaft. to make the propeller go. Without that... it won’t fly.” His mind flickered back to the type 4A aircraft engine again, and the soldiers who had wrecked his last attempt at building an airplane in a matter of a few seconds.

  “There are two seats,” Harry observed.

  “Yeah.”

  Neither had said it, but Will knew that an unspoken understanding had passed between them. When the plane was finished, they were both going to fly in it. Will didn’t know why and he didn’t know where, but it had gone without saying.

  “So you just need the engine.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does it have to be a special engine?” Harry asked, as if reading his mind.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”

  Harry said nothing, but turned and left the barn. A few minutes later there was a rumbling outside and Harry pulled the village’s Type 8 tractor into the barn.

  “Why did you bring the tractor?” Will asked.

  “To strip the engine out,” Harry grunted.

  Will stared at it.

  “Would it work?” Harry asked.

  “I don’t know. The type 8 tractor engine... it’s not light. It’s built for high torque and low RPM. But it’s got the power. With the right gearing... Yeah, maybe it could fly the plane. I don’t know. But Harry, what’s the village going to do without the tractor?”

  Harry shrugged. “Nothing. Same as with the tractor. No one’s used it for months. We don’t have the gas rations to run it. And there’s no point in tilling the fields anyway. Not without water.”

  “It’s that bad, huh?”

  “Worse.” Harry chewed on his straw and spit it out. “If anyone asks, say the tractor’s in for maintenance.”

  Will nodded, and then slowly began to strip the engine. The whole process took more than a week, removing the engine and installing it in the aircraft with the new gearbox, then hooking up the clutch and the throttle to the cockpit. But, to Will’s amazement, it worked perfectly. The engine roared to life inside the aircraft and the propeller began to spin zealously, blowing straw all over the barn. Will had a feeling of deja vu, much like he’d had when he brought the original Type 4A aircraft engine back to life.

  He checked the engine block again and again, making sure everything was in working order, the head of every cylinder, every valve, every cam profile, every sparkplug. He looked at every impromptu rivet and weld he’d made along the airframe, every strut and string, every single last aspect, down to the tiniest detail, he double and triple checked until he was sure, really and truly sure that the plane would fly. And he knew it would. He knew in his heart that this time, the plane would fly.

  When he was finally satisfied that every aspect of the aircraft was functional, that it wouldn’t fall apart when it got into the air, he walked down to the canteen. The tobacco-chewing naval officer wasn’t far away, leaning against the back of his truck. He greeted Will with a lazy wave.

  “How you doing, mechanic?” he asked. “Need Tools? Fuel? Spare parts? Army surplus. Cheap.”

  “I’m building my airplane again.”

  “Oh? Yeah, I figured you would be. You spend an awful lot of time out in the fields these days. So, do you need an engine? I told you, I got a friend who works in one of the tractor factories. I could probably send an engine your way for the right price.”

  “No. I’ve already got an engine. But I need some fuel. Is that good enough for you?”

  “How much fuel do you need?”

  “Twenty liters.”

  “Make it fifty and we’re square.”

  “Fine,” he said, after a pause. “Fifty.”

  Will went back to his house, retrieved the money, and returned to pay. The officer accepted the money, counted it, and handed him several heavy gas cans out of the back of the truck.

  “We’re square,” the naval officer said. “You won’t get any trouble from me or anyone else - at least, not while you’re on the ground. That’s a promise. Happy flying, mechanic.”

  Chapter 19

  Finally the plane was ready to fly. Will waited until a clear day, with a strong tailwind blowing down the impromptu runway that they had made in the cracked, parched ground of the farmers’ field. The sun was shining brightly and there wasn’t so much as a hint of a cloud in the sky. Will felt sure that this time nothing would go wrong. He met Harry in the barn.

  “It’s ready to go,” Will said, feeling pride rising in his chest, as he patted the metal airframe. He paused. “I’ve been trying to decide what to name it, but I couldn’t think of anything.” He remembered all the help and support Harry had given him through the construction, letting him use the barn, lifting the airframe, fetching tools and materials, doing everything that needed doing without question or objection.

  “What do you think, Harry?” he asked. “What should we name it?”

  “You name these things?”

  “Sure do. It’s not a tractor, Harry. It’s a plane.”

  “Dreamer,” Harry said at last.

  Will grinned. “Fine then. She’s the Dreamer. Climb aboard.”

  He kicked out the chocks and rolled the plane to the front of the length of level dirt that they’d built. Both of them clambered into the cockpit.

  “As a warning,” Will said, his smile broadening. “I’m not sure I can land this thing once I’ve taken off.”

  Behind him, Harry shrugged.

  Will slid the cockpit shut and flipped the latches. Then, heart pounding, he pressed the starter switch. The engine roared to life.

  “These new type 8s,” Will said happily. “You don’t even have to crank them to get them going. Technology really is amazing, isn’t it?”

  Harry grunted.

  Will shifted gears. The transmission clucked and the propeller began to spin. He let out the throttle. The aircraft began to trundle forward then, suddenly, leapt into the air. Will whooped as the wheels parted company from the ground and the airplane began to fly. The gap from aircraft to ground was just a few meters at first, but quickly escalated to dozens, then maybe hundreds. He had no instrumentation save for a compass and did not know his altitude, but Will knew they were flying, and that was enough. They must have been rapidly picking up speed, as the wind started to rattle through the gaps in the cockpit.

  Will turned the wheel experimentally and the aircraft banked. He flew over the village. Almost no one below looked up to see what he had done, but it didn’t matter. He could see for miles from up here - the town, the village farm, all the barns and houses, the army base, the naval base, the distant ocean with its docked ironclad and a huge navy dreadnought. He could see the mountains, the hill where Nate had built a railroad, even the distant junkyard. Looking out east, over the forest, Will could even see faraway outlines of buildings. Something the scrawny soldier had told Will rang out in his thoughts. “If you were high up and you squinted, maybe with binoculars, you could see some rebel buildings.”

  On whim, Will banked towards the south-east. The forest got larger. He could see something now - something that looked very much like a wall on the far side of the forest. If he concentrated, he could just barely make out vehicles of some sort. Were these the rebel positions that the scrawny soldier had told him about? Will held his course for several minutes and the rebel v
ehicles grew larger than the size of ants. He was almost over the army base now...

  Then suddenly, streaks of yellow light began to light up the air, explosions rocking the cloudless sky. Will realized, with a frantic jolt of his heart, that it was anti-aircraft fire. But the anti-aircraft fire was not coming from the rebel positions. The army batteries below them were shooting.

  “Do they think we’re a rebel plane?” Will asked. But almost as soon as he said this, he knew it wasn’t true - it couldn’t be that the soldiers believed they were a rebel aircraft. They had come from the wrong direction. And with this realization, a strange idea, an impossible idea, drifted through Will’s mind, but at the same time he somehow knew it was correct. The anti-aircraft guns weren’t firing because they thought the Dreamer was a rebel plane. The army was shooting to stop them from leaving.

  Something pinged loudly against the underside of the plane and Will veered sharply away from the base and pulled out the throttle. The engine kicked and the plane jumped forward, quickly scurrying away from the base. The anti-aircraft fired stopped after a minute or so.

  “Are you okay?” Will called back.

  “Yep,” Harry said. “But there’s a hole in the floor.”

  Will turned around as much as he could and looked at the hole that Harry indicated. His stomach churned a little when he saw it. There was a trickle of amber liquid spilling out of the hole.

  “We’re leaking fuel,” he announced. There was no indicator anywhere in the makeshift cockpit that told him how much fuel was left, but he knew that this couldn’t possibly be a good thing.

  “We ought to land,” Harry grunted. Will looked down and out. They were overflying the village again. He could see the dirt runway... and he was fairly certain he could land, but he shook his head.

  “No. I don’t think we can land, Harry. I think they’ll kill us if we land now.”

  Will didn’t know why he said this, but as he said it, his gut lurched and he felt it was true. Though he didn’t understand, he didn’t know why, he knew that if they landed the army would come and shoot them, just as they’d shot Martin. They had to go somewhere else - anywhere else. He turned the wheel and the aircraft banked towards the ocean. They flew over the navy base again, with the dreadnoughts and the ironclads beneath it. Will watched the large ships apprehensively, but none of them burst into anti-aircraft fire as the army base had done. He continued out over the ocean.

  The plane must have been going fast, because after no more than ten minutes or so, the land disappeared behind them. They had travelled much too far to swim back if they crashed into the ocean, and besides, Will had never really learned how to swim. He wasn’t sure Harry had either.

  “I’m sorry about this, Harry,” Will said, turning back in the cockpit. “I think - uh - I think we might die here.”

  Harry did not respond to this. Instead, he jabbed a finger at the horizon. There was a faint outline of a ship. Will turned the plane towards it.

  Minutes passed. The ship became larger and larger. As it came into full view, Will realized that this ship was huge - twelve of the navy’s massive dreadnoughts, of which they were so proud, could have fit into this gigantic vessel. It had a weird jutting tower and a flat top. The deck was covered in dozens of airplanes, but they were like no airplanes that Will had ever seen before. They had no propellers. They were strange and sleek, with slim triangular wings, and large ports on the back that looked like rockets. The planes themselves were huge, perhaps as large as the King’s Air Force’s huge four-engine bombers. There were other ships too, gunmetal gray and bristling with gun turrets, the smallest of which was easily as large as one of the Navy’s dreadnoughts. They were flying the flag of the Black Force.

  Though there were many ships, Will’s eyes remained fixed on the largest one. As he viewed the strange aircraft on the deck, another peculiar idea crossed his mind. The ship was for airplanes to land on. With that in mind, he did the only logical thing. He banked to the side, lined the Dreamer up with the huge ship’s runway, and moved to land.

  As he prepared to do this, he became aware that turrets on the surrounding ships were tracking him. Large chain-gun like anti-aircraft guns turned, apparently ready to shoot him down at any moment. One of the aircraft like those on the ship’s deck appeared suddenly from in front of them and flew over them at such mindbending speed that the Dreamer shook beneath its wake, and Will was momentarily afraid that the little airplane would shake apart. But none of these turrets or aircraft fired. People in orange jumpsuits on the runway ran around clearing boxes. Several of them waved little orange sticks at Will.

  Will had never landed an airplane before, much less on a ship. He brought the Dreamer down to the level of the deck, lined it up as best he could, and cut the throttle to almost nothing. He did not manage to land. The Dreamer crashed into the deck of the ship. One of the wings snapped off and went flying, as did the front wheel of the landing gear. The Dreamer itself spun around and around, hit something (Will didn’t know what) and skidded to a halt. He had not put any seat belts in the cockpit and Will hit his head on the wheel. The glass windshield shattered, scattering glass shards all across his lap. His cheek was cut and he was bleeding.

  “You still okay?” Will called to Harry, behind him.

  “Yep,” Harry called back.

  Will glanced over his shoulder. Harry’s hand was bleeding and he was massaging one of his knees, but he looked alive. Hands shaking, Will unlatched the cockpit and slid it back, then staggered out onto the deck. Harry was not far behind them.

  They were surrounded by a number of heavily armed and armored soldiers, all of whom were pointing rifles - very much unlike the rifles the army had - at them. Will raised his arms high in surrender. While he did not entirely understand what was happening, he knew he had been captured by the Black Force. One of the soldiers forced him roughly to the ground and began to pat him down, then searched his pockets. Another did the same to Harry. They took their residency papers and looked at them.

  “No weapons,” one of the soldiers announced after they had finished doing this. “Heck, no wallets, no cash, no nothing. Just these. What are these? Passports?”

  “Identity papers,” another soldier grunted, looking at them.

  A third man, who was not armed and looked more like a sailor than a soldier, was inspecting their plane.

  “Look at this crazy airplane,” he called. “I don’t even think it has a radio in it. It looks like something out of a museum... or a junkyard.”

  Though Will didn’t appreciate this criticism of his plane, he wasn’t in much of a position to object.

  “Take them,” one of the soldiers said gruffly, and Harry and Will were marched through a nearby door and deeper into the ship.

  Chapter 20

  Though he was apprehensive about being captured by the enemy, Will wished he had about six more eyes. As he passed a window, Will stopped to gape. One of the strange aircraft that littered the deck of the ship was hovering in mid-air, hanging there, as if suspended by a wire. It wobbled slightly, maybe buffeted by the wind, and began to slowly lower itself down onto the ship. The guards roughly hurried him on, but Will turned his head to continue staring at the plane.

  “How is it doing that?” he said, confused and baffled. “It can float in the air? Is it a balloon?”

  No one answered him. Harry and Will were separated, Harry led in one direction and Will in the other, and Will was thrown into a small, nearly empty room. He supposed this must be a prison cell or some sort of isolation chamber. The entire room was gunmetal gray iron or steel, and there were no windows and just the one door. A table and a few chairs sat in the center of the room. Will sat down in one of the chairs on the far side of the table and looked around uncertainly at his surroundings. It was a bit claustrophobic. Minutes ticked by in silence.

  The door slid open and a grey-haired man in a white naval uniform, which for all the difference of decorum between the Royal Navy and the Black
Force was obviously an officer’s uniform, poked his head in through the door.

  “Do you need anything?” he asked tersely. “Food, water, bathroom? We’d better get you medical attention,” he added, eyeing the cuts on Will’s cheek. “They should have treated you on the flight deck.”

  “No, I don’t need anything. These are just scratches. But where’s Harry? And where am I?”

  “You’re on board BNS Superior,” the man answered. “As for your friend, don’t worry about him. He’s fine. Your plane’s a bit of a mess though. I don’t think you’ll be getting it back. They’re putting out the fire now.” He moved to slide the door shut.

  “Wait!” Will cried. “Is this a rebel ship? Are you the Black Force?”

  “Rebels?” the man said with a frown. Clearly he did not understand. “This carrier battlegroup is an element of Blue Task Force.”

  But he was not able to tender any further explanation. He suddenly sprang back from the door and through the gap he had left, Will saw him salute. The door slid open and another man in a navy uniform - though clearly this man was much more important, walked in through the doorway. This newcomer had a pompous looking insignia on his shoulders, and a number of colorful military campaign bars stretched across his chest. He was an older man, balding, and a large number of lines and wrinkles stretched across his face. Two soldiers, or guards, followed him into the room and stood by the doorway.

  Though it ran against Will’s instinct to speak to someone in authority before spoken to, his curiosity got the better of him.

  “Who are you?” Will asked with a sort of timid uncertainty.

  To his great surprise, the man answered him, though his tone was not exactly friendly. It was more of a bark than anything.

  “I’m Captain Adam Barlow, and this is my ship. I was the one who decided not to have the flying tin can you call an airplane shot down at three miles out, since it appeared to be a civilian aircraft in distress. You were the pilot of that plane, correct? Would you care to explain to me who the hell you are and what you’re doing on my aircraft carrier?”