A Shield Against the Darkness

by Todd Downing

  “That’s why he’s the best,” Jack said. “Hopefully he can hit the rack while we’re in transit.”

  “And what about you, Captain?” Doc squinted over the steam from the cup at her lips.

  Jack smiled. “This ain’t my first rodeo, ma’am.” He raised his cup to Doc in a toast and patted the pack of gum in his shirt pocket. “A strong cuppa joe, a stick of Black Jack, and I’m all set for first watch.”

  Another uniformed servant appeared at the dining room doorway with a platter of ham and egg sandwiches. “Pardon me, folks,” the young man said in a reedy voice. “Mr. Edison says they’re opening the hangar now.”

  A moment of electricity shot between Jack and Doc as they regarded each other in silence, then Jack grabbed a couple of sandwiches from the platter, downed his coffee in a single gulp, and turned to Rivets.

  “Come on!” he hailed, causing Rivets to snap awake suddenly, snorting and spilling the coffee from his cup all over the table linen.

  Doc tried not to giggle.

  Jack gave a Douglas Fairbanks laugh and grabbed his duffel strap with his free hand.

  “Goggles on! Chocks away! Huzzah!” he flourished, jamming one of the sandwiches in his mouth and headed for the west entrance.

  # # #

  The sun shone yellow and pink in the morning sky, reflected on the silvery surface of the Daedalus. If she was impressive in the dim light of the hangar, she was doubly so in the open air. Drawn forward by a tractor heavy enough that it wouldn’t want to take off with the 290,000 cubic feet of helium trapped in the airship’s twelve ballonets, she was a sleek chrome bullet, the AEGIS insignia heralding from the aft fin that Crowley and the Silver Star were on notice.

  Jack strode up the gravel path to the hangar and his breath caught in his chest. The oversize thruster nacelles were shiny from still-drying paint, the window panes freshly washed. Every weld, every rivet and bolt and inch of canvas radiated light and promise. He was dumbstruck.

  Doc tapped him on the shoulder. “Cold feet, Captain?” Her smile was radiant.

  “Just the opposite,” Jack said. “I can’t wait to take her up.”

  The two strode the remaining distance to the ship, which the ground crew tied down to cleats which had been corkscrewed into the ground—angling away from the path. Doc disappeared inside the hangar. The tractor exited, and Rivets arrived, guzzling coffee from a Thermos canister, bypassing the cup altogether. He belched, wiping his wet mustache on his sleeve.

  Edison was already up and about, pacing the gravel in front of the Daedalus while ground crew and mechanics made final inspections of their assigned stations. He held a fresh, unlit Havana cigar between his fingers, which he almost dropped when he saw Jack and Doc appear. “Ah! Good morning, Captain!”

  Jack unslung his duffel bag and let it rest on the gravel path. “Morning, Mr. Edison.” With hands on hips, he surveyed the full profile of the Daedalus in the morning light. “Well, boys, what do you say? Is she sky-worthy?”

  Rivets screwed the cap back on the Thermos. “We had to re-mount the port thrust engine, but the pivot-head is working now.”

  Edison approached Jack with a worried, fatherly look. “Now, Captain,” he said. “Remember to check in regularly along your route. Our network of radio operators can carry your signal back to our headquarters.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Edison,” said Jack as he pulled his flight cap and goggles from the duffel bag and began to suit up. “We will. And you need to promise me that you will watch your back down here. The run-in we had with those two agents has made me a tad uneasy.”

  “Never fear, Captain,” Edison replied. “I’m well-protected.”

  “What happened with the… situation… at the airfield?” Jack asked.

  Edison waved the hand with the cigar dismissively. “Oh, you know how these gangsters get when they’re shaking down people for protection money. Poor Mr. Morton refused to pay up. Then the gangsters were confronted by security guards, who inadvertently caught one of the oil barrels on fire, fatally burning the thugs beyond recognition.”

  Jack looked confused. “But Morton Aviation doesn’t have security guards,” he puzzled.

  “It does now,” Edison replied. “I need to protect my investment.”

  Jack laughed silently and shook his head. Edison was an investor in Morton Aviation. For how long, he wondered. It certainly seemed like he’d had his eye on recruiting Jack for some time.

  Duke appeared from the hangar, draped in large-caliber ammunition belts and pulling a cart with some serious firepower in it. “What’s our first destination, Captain?” he asked.

  Jack shrugged into his jacket and closed up the duffel bag. “The Luftpanzer climbed and headed south, last I saw it,” he said. “So south it is. Say, what’s the ammo for?”

  Duke smiled, his pencil mustache becoming a wide V above his lip. “Mr. Edison was kind enough to furnish us with a couple of Hotchkiss machine guns. 11 millimeter incendiary rounds.”

  Jack let out a whistle.

  Rivets grinned. “They make a nice fire on impact, and the Luftpanzer is probably full o’ hydrogen.”

  “Well then,” Jack said, “welcome aboard, Mr. Hotchkiss.”

  “They’ll be linked together at the top turret,” Rivets explained.

  Doc reemerged from the hangar with urgency in her stride. “Jack,” she hailed, “the call just came in from Charlie. He’ll meet us at Fairfield.”

  Edison raised an eyebrow. “Charlie? Who is that?”

  “Charlie Dalton,” Jack explained. “Goes by ‘Deadeye’. We did some damage together back in France. I think he could be of great use to us.”

  Doc nodded. “I can vouch for Dalton, Mr. Edison. He’s top notch.”

  A cool breeze ruffled the lapel of Edison’s pinstriped suit. “Well,” he mused. “It seems this endeavor is to be comprised of everyone Captain McGraw served with in France.” He gave Jack a deferential look. “As it should be.”

  Jack sighed, gaze locked on the Daedalus bridge. “War makes for strange bedfellows, Mr. Edison.”

  Edison laughed aloud. “Ha ha! Noted!” he said, grinning. “Now we see the benefit of gathering a crew which has been forged in the crucible of life and death together.”

  Doc put on a leather flight cap of her own, tucking her deep mahogany curls underneath. “Bonds made in crisis rarely break,” she offered.

  Jack turned his attention to the group. “What say we take us a ride?”

  Edison clapped him on the shoulder. “Yes, yes—away, my defenders of the good. You will have our support on the ground.”

  Jack shook his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Edison,” he replied. “For the opportunity… it’s a noble cause. I hope we’re worthy of it.”

  Doc took Edison’s hand and kissed him on the cheek. “Goodbye, Mr. Edison,” she said softly. “We’ll be in contact.”

  The group began toward the ship, and Edison whispered, “Godspeed.”

  Rivets and Duke went to the rear cargo ramp to unload the twin Hotchkiss guns. Jack and Doc climbed the folding steps in the center of the gondola, entering into the main saloon. The floor was a honeycomb of perforated aluminum deck plates, the interior similarly cold and mechanical. Some lightweight chairs and a table sat to one side, a small galley to the other. To the rear lay the crew quarters, engine room and cargo hold. The bridge lay forward, past the head with a single toilet and sink, stepping up to a ramped locker area, then a ladder up to the main envelope gantry, and topside facilities.

  No wasted space, Jack thought. DiMarco was a practical aviator as well as a scientist, for sure.

  Through another hatchway was what Jack had been looking for. The bridge contained a comms station on the port side, a navigator station to starboard, and center forward, past the emergency hatch in the floor, the pilot’s chair.

  Jack shoved his duffel bag into the locker and ducked into the bridge, heading straight for the helm. The chair was an aluminum skeleton with ample padding and leather
upholstery. The right arm terminated in a dual-axis joystick, the left in a throttle lever. Foot-operated rudder controls sat on a low-slung footrest protruding from the chair. Rising on a thin metal lattice from between the foot pedals was an instrumentation panel with gauges for airspeed, altitude, attitude, incline, heading, and vertical speed, along with a gas meter for each ballonet and meters for each engine thrust pod. A red indicator said power was on standby.

  He climbed into the chair and felt it welcome him. Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, Jack felt the controls at his hands and feet.

  Doc entered the bridge behind him. Her primary duty station was at navigation. “How does she feel?” she asked.

  “Like nothing I’ve ever flown before,” Jack said, and he meant it. Usually dirigible controls were large, bulky ship’s wheels and winches. These were state-of-the-art fighter plane controls.

  Duke entered and took his seat at comms. “All crew are aboard, Captain,” he announced.

  This was it.

  Jack grabbed the radio headset from the hook on the left arm of the chair and put it on. He flicked it on. “Rivets, you back there, pal?”

  “Affirmative, Cap,” came the reply.

  “Power on all electrical systems,” Jack ordered. “Ground crew, secure all exits for takeoff.”

  The workers near the hangar sprang into action. Jack could hear shouting from the men outside as hatches were closed and sealed, and the cargo ramp was shut. Bridge lights came on. Control panel gauges blinked to life.

  “You’ve got full power, Cap,” Rivets announced.

  Doc strapped in, and so did Duke. Jack secured his harness and pulled the pack of Black Jack gum from his pocket, fishing out a piece and folding it into his mouth. Having picked up the gum habit in France to help with often-rapid shifts in air pressure, Jack now associated the taste of licorice with flying.

  “Starting main engines,” he reported. He flipped the four small switches for the forward thrust engines, then the two larger ones. The bridge hummed from the turbofans spinning to life.

  “Engines good, Cap,” Rivets said.

  “All right,” said Jack, ready to face the moment of truth. “Ground crew, cast off.”

  Outside, men released six cables through the tie-down cleats. The Daedalus began to rise into the air.

  Jack leaned the stick in a slow, graceful right turn. He nudged the throttle forward. Engines whirred, the giant thrusters swiveled on their arms, and the Daedalus climbed into the morning sky.

  “Course is south to Kitty Hawk,” Jack announced.

  “Affirmative,” Doc answered. “Course plotted.”

  “Then let’s get going,” Jack said. “We’ve got some sky to cover.”

  The ground crew cheered and waved their caps as Daedalus rose to 2,500 feet, found her southerly heading, and disappeared behind a drifting mass of clouds.

  - Chapter 5 -

  In the chart room on the Luftpanzer, Captain Ecke was finding out firsthand how far Maria Blutig would be pushed before exploding. As a former senior officer in the German Army, he was used to being able to offer questions and even occasional criticism of battle plans and strategy when it meant lives at stake. The Astrum Argentum was clearly not that kind of organization. Maria ran her missions by a code of conduct stricter than any male officer Ecke had dealt with in the military. He knew her surname was an over-the-top affectation to inspire fear and obedience—nobody’s parents named them “Bloody Mary”. But she was still an unknown quantity to Ecke and most of the Luftpanzer personnel. He might have crossed a line. She was livid. Junior flight officers ran from the room or cowered in the nearest dark corner, trying as best they could to be invisible.

  Ecke was no stranger to the tirade of a superior officer, but his refusal to back down only fueled Maria’s rage. Someday, he told himself, it might just be his undoing.

  “Do not lecture me, Captain Ecke! I am the commander of this expedition!” Maria scolded.

  Ecke’s breathing was calm and even, his tone soft. “I do not presume to lecture, meine Führerin. But surely you see the incursion through American airspace was folly. This is no criticism of you, but of Crowley’s strategy overall.”

  “Did you not understand our orders, Captain?” she demanded, eyes wide. “We were trying to locate Edison’s facility. Our intelligence stated that DiMarco’s plans for his engine and his airship made it to Edison after our agents lost Colonel Starr in Brazil. That means while we were sifting through the Daedalus wreckage in the Amazon, Edison was building a new airship!”

  “Understood, meine Führerin,” sighed Ecke. “But we had far greater results with agents on the ground. Were it not for the interruption which called their essence back to Crowley, they would have led us to Edison’s hangar.”

  Maria took a breath and softened, relaxing her posture. She knew that Ecke was not her enemy. But she was also in an impossible position, as Crowley’s eyes and ears in the field. “Apologies, Captain,” she said. “Crowley was adamant regarding the recovery of DiMarco’s plans since they went missing three years ago. But the point is now moot.”

  Ecke raised an eyebrow. “We have new orders?”

  Maria’s eyes narrowed to feline slits. “Yes, Captain,” she said. “Set a course for Pointe Quest, Haiti. Crowley has assigned us to locate an object of power there. And stand by for potential diversion.”

  Ecke snapped his boot heels together. “Jawohl,” he acknowledged, bowing at the waist. He exited the chart room with a long stride, happy to be out of her sphere of influence for a time.

  # # #

  The Deadalus appeared in the cloud-strewn skies above a makeshift airfield just off Lake Mattamuskeet, North Carolina. It was early afternoon, and the compact airship caused a stir among ground personnel and radio operators. The facility itself wasn’t much more than a landing strip, a small hangar, and a private home which was also the terminal, airfield office and radio tower. Jack reasoned they could have found an easier rendezvous than this relative backwater, but keeping a low profile was higher on his list of priorities at the moment.

  This was also Charlie Dalton’s back yard. He’d grown up among the established Cherokee Nation of the Carolinas, some of the earlier indigenous peoples to assimilate into the dominant culture. The raven-haired man peered skyward and leaned against a US Army transport truck near the runway. Dalton had olive skin and discerning brown eyes. He wore Army khakis, with puttees on his lower legs and the blue shield patch of the 120th Infantry Regiment above the sergeant stripes on his arm. But the simple “infantry” designation didn’t tell the whole story. Code talker. Sniper. Thrice-decorated hero of battles in Ypres-Lys and Flanders. When he saw the Daedalus, he flicked his toothpick into the grass and ambled into the house as ground personnel scrambled to meet the ship.

  Jack McGraw angled the nose of the ship toward the ground. “Coming in over Fairfield,” he announced. “What’s the word on the wireless, Duke?”

  The Englishman turned toward him, scribbling notes in pencil as he interpreted the beeps from the wireless on the ground. “Sounds like we’re expected, Captain. Ground crew is standing by.” Then another message came through and he grinned under his pencil mustache. “Charlie Dalton is requesting permission to come aboard.”

  Jack smiled. “Granted!” he exclaimed as the ship lowered toward the ground and the ground crew staked off the lines Rivets released to them. Doc tried to contain her excitement, poorly.

  “It’ll be good to see him again,” she said.

  Jack thumbed the TALK button on his radio headset. “Cutting the engines, Rivets,” he said. “I’m going ashore.”

  He powered down the turbofans and let the ship be lowered and secured to the airstrip, as he shrugged out of his seat harness and headed for the side door in the main saloon.

  Dropping to the dirt of the airfield, Jack scanned the area for his old comrade. Doc hopped down from the gondola and joined Jack in the search.

  “There he is,” she p
ointed.

  Deadeye descended from the house, striding the path to the airfield with purpose. He stopped about ten feet short of Jack and Doc and saluted.

  “Sergeant Charlie Dalton, reporting for duty, Cap’n.”

  Jack saluted back, then closed to shake his hand. “Deadeye! Gee, it’s good to see ya!”

  Doc stifled a giggle. Every time Jack let out an exclamation, it seemed the utterance of a five-year-old boy at Christmas. Nobody did gosh-and-golly like Jack. In fact, she didn’t think she ever heard him curse—not even in France during the war.

  Deadeye grinned back. “Good to see you, Jack. You too, Doc.”

  Doc stepped in to hug him. “Seems like forever since I saw you last,” she said.

  “Bellicourt, September 30th, 1918,” Deadeye winked at her. “You took two bullets and a bunch of shrapnel out of me.”

  “That’s right,” Doc remembered. “I said you shouldn’t have been alive, and you said…”

  “I said I’d boosted my iron intake, and it seemed to be working.”

  The three chuckled at the dark humor that had been a requirement during that terrible time.

  “It’s gonna be good to have you aboard,” Jack said.

  “Glad to be here,” Deadeye nodded. He pointed a thumb at the Army truck parked by the airstrip. “And I brought you a little present.”

  As if on cue, Rivets appeared from the cargo ramp at the stern of the Daedalus, and Duke dropped to the ground behind Doc.

  Deadeye made a show of smelling something rancid. “What? You didn’t tell me these guys were coming along,” he joked. “I’m having second thoughts now…”

  Smiles and handshakes and bear hugs erupted, the past six years catching up in minutes. Then Deadeye led them to the truck, opening the back to reveal a wooden shipping crate. Jack and Duke helped wrestle the crate to the ground, and Deadeye pried the top off with a crowbar. Sitting snugly within the crate was a console with a large, round glass display, surrounded by several dials and switches.