A Shield Against the Darkness

by Todd Downing

  Jack watched in horror as two Sopwiths were blown to pieces as they approached the giant airship, shredded by heavy machine gun fire from gun emplacements amidships. Then his fuselage was dotted with bullet holes and a Fokker D.VII swooped past him. He throttled forward and climbed slightly to get some altitude on the Silver Star plane. “Come here, you dirty rat!”

  Static burst into his ears, and Jack heard Stede’s voice. “Watch your tail, Jack,” he warned. “Two enemy fighters coming in fast!”

  Jack ventured a quick look behind his plane to see two more Silver Star fighters drafting in on him. He banked to the left, but the Sopwith felt slower than he was used to—probably the floats. The enemy fighters easily tracked with him.

  “Stede, I can’t shake ‘em!” He pulled back on the stick in a high corkscrew maneuver, his favorite evasive action. At 4,000 feet, he arched over backwards, feeling the few moments of weightlessness before gravity took hold and pulled him down with the plane. The Revenge motored almost half a mile directly below him. He used the balloon as a visual reference as the plane dove almost vertically. The Silver Star fighters stuck with him, diving in unison.

  Stede was back in Jack’s ears. “When you dive, bank right and roll under the Revenge. Bring them to my guns!”

  Jack aimed for the edge of the Revenge’s gondola, waiting until the last possible moment to bank sideways under the balloon, rolling as he did so. His left float brushed the gondola’s undercarriage as it flipped over with the rolling Sopwith.

  Stede’s Lewis guns barked, and shredded one of the enemy planes’ upper wings clean off. The plane spiraled to the water and splashed down.

  “Great shot, Stede!” Jack shouted.

  He leveled out and throttled back, and the other Silver Star plane shot past him, its pilot anticipating a wholly different position. Jack opened up with the Sopwith’s Lewis gun and picked apart the enemy’s tail rudder and linkages. The fighter skidded sideways, presenting Jack with a larger target. He fired again, and the pilot was ripped into bloody pieces along with the flight controls. One of the Spandau guns popped loose and fell into the spinning propeller, sending pieces of both flying in every direction. The dead pilot immediately began to smoke and bubble, and the D.VII dropped toward the water like a falling anchor.

  Jack throttled forward again and pulled back on the stick, aiming for the top side of the Luftpanzer. If he approached from dead astern, he figured he’d stand a better chance of not getting shot by those machine guns in the middle.

  “Now to see what this zeppelin is made of,” Jack broadcast. “All Brigands, form up on me and we’ll take a run up its backside!” Then he added,”Use incendiaries if you have ‘em!”

  The pirate squadron gathered on Jack’s wings and tail, eleven seaplanes and a powered balloon. The Daedalus brought up the rear at an altitude of 6,000 feet. Even at full speed, the Luftpanzer was no match for the Sopwiths, which could clock 100 miles per hour. It began to climb and run, and Jack prepared to strafe it.

  “First wave, on me!” he shouted, pushing forward on the stick and throttling to full speed.

  But as the pirate planes neared their target, the giant airship began to emit an unearthly glow, and a whistling feedback saturated their headsets. The glow became an ever brighter light, culminating in a blinding flash…

  …then nothing.

  The Luftpanzer was gone.

  Jack tried to blink the tracers from his eyes, sure that some kind of dark magic had been at work here. As the radio chatter erupted with unsettled questions and observations from the other pilots, Jack found himself throttling down and heading back to the harbor. It’s not possible, he thought. It simply couldn’t be.

  # # #

  As the tropical sun set over crystal blue water, Jack tarried for a moment at the ladder from the Daedalus gondola. Stede Bonnet stood on the dock nearby, arms folded across his chest, unsure what to say.

  “I don’t know how they disappeared or where they went,” Jack said, “but we’ll find them.”

  Stede nodded. “I have a town to help rebuild, but we’ll be along in due time.”

  “Thank you, old friend,” Jack said, waving from the ladder.

  Stede called after him. “If your foe can make a zeppelin disappear, you’ll need all the help you can get.”

  - Chapter 8 -

  Captain Ecke paced the bridge deck of the Luftpanzer, incensed at the diversion from their primary mission to bomb a small, tropical village full of innocent people. Especially one which had the protection of a sky pirate squadron. It was damned sloppy. What was Maria’s endgame? Ecke glanced at her exhausted form crumpled on the cold deck plates. He decided to bide his time and play a good little soldier until this mission was finished, then put in an official request for reassignment.

  “Are we away?” he asked the navigator.

  “We have cleared West End, mein Kapitän.”

  Ecke looked at Maria on the floor. He knew he didn’t want to personally be the one to help her up. “What is Maria’s condition?”

  A crewman standing by stared forward under his naval cap. “Ich weiss nicht, Kapitän.”

  Captain Ecke turned to look out the huge panel of forward windows.

  “The cloaking spell must have been an incredible strain on her,” he deduced. “Take her to her stateroom.”

  The crewman clicked his heels together and saluted. “Jawohl, mein Kapitän.”

  As the young man bent to assist Maria, she whirled around, clutching him by the throat.

  “NO!” she growled. “I’ll be fine.”

  As she stood, Ecke could see the price she had paid for the magic to make the ship disappear. Her face was gaunt, almost mummified looking, her once-raven hair now stringy and white.

  He let out an audible gasp. “Maria! Your face! What has happened to you?”

  Maria peered at him through feral slits, a skeletal grin on her thin face. “Why, nothing, mein Kapitän,” she rasped, still gripping the crewman by the throat. The young man began to choke and gag, struggling for breath as she clutched his windpipe with bony talons. “Nothing at all…”

  As Ecke watched, the color drained from the crewman’s cheeks. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his skin collapsed in on itself. He looked like a time-lapse film of a decaying animal, and as his life force ebbed from his body, Maria appeared plump-cheeked and refreshed. Her hair saturated with its previous black color, and her hands—pale though they were—returned to their toned and manicured state.

  “Mein Gott!” Ecke remarked as Maria released her grip and let the crewman slump to the floor, quite dead.

  “In fact,” Maria continued, “I’ve never felt better.”

  Ecke found himself in a moral quandary, disposable as he knew Silver Star soldiers were meant to be. “Maria…” he stammered. “The crewman… you… you killed him.”

  Maria smiled at him and he felt sick. “No, Ecke,” she corrected softly. “I merely drained his youth.”

  As she passed Captain Ecke on her way off the bridge, she added, “It was his advanced age that killed him.”

  # # #

  The Daedalus hovered at anchor, tethered to a lavish sailing yacht just off Basse Tene, on the southern coast of Tortuga. It had taken a full day to track down the Frenchman, even with the network of radio operators at Edison’s command. But he just happened to be on what he called a “working holiday” in Haiti, and was happy to meet with AEGIS’ first airship reconnaissance crew.

  The sun had set an hour ago, and the local bulldog bats were skimming the shallow waters of the bay for fish. A few lights were visible from the island, but the anchorage was far from most nautical traffic. In centuries past, Tortuga was simultaneously a pirate haven and the site of a great Utopian social experiment. Now it was a territory of Haiti, and mostly produced sugar cane and coffee for export.

  The yacht was white with polished teak and brass appointments. She was registered out of Martinique, and her name was Mon Dieu. And anyone w
ho knew the Frenchman might have an idea as to why that was funny.

  Louis Lambeau was in his forties, and had been kicked so often by life that it was really no wonder he was who he was. Orphan, ex-street urchin, ex-convict, ex-Legion, ex-mercenary. Current smuggler and grave robber. Unrepentant capitalist, hedonist and atheist, in that order. Louis worshiped money far more than art, and wine, and beautiful young men. After all, he figured, money could ultimately purchase all three. Money had purchased the yacht. Naming her My God was really the only possible choice.

  Jack and Doc rested on red crushed velvet cushions in the boat’s main saloon. Louis had set out a champagne service with a sterling silver ice bucket and crystal glasses. He was the very picture of cosmopolitan in his white cotton suit, slicked hair and dark pencil mustache. A white Panama hat hung on the coat tree by the entry stairs. As much as Louis loved money, the only jewelry he wore was a small signet ring with the French Foreign Legion flag etched on the face, worn on his right pinky. Jack noticed the ring as Louis poured three glasses of bubbly, handing two to his guests.

  Doc broke the silence first. “Thank you so much for meeting with us, Mr. Lambeau.”

  Louis smiled and winked at her. “Ze pleasure is mine, Madame,” he replied in accented English. He raised his sparkling glass in a toast. “To Colonel Starr,” he offered. “An officer, a gentleman, and my good friend.”

  The three clinked glasses together, Jack offering a solemn, “Hear, hear.”

  Louis turned to sit across from his two visitors. “I was most distressed to hear of his… assassination at ze hands of Monsieur diabolique Crowley.”

  Doc sat forward, the bubbles from the champagne making her nose itch. “I know you were Dirk’s friend, Louis,” she said earnestly. “He always spoke very highly of you. And that is why we called you.”

  Jack knocked back the champagne in one shot, much to his host’s chagrin. “We need your assistance, Mr. Lambeau,” he said. “And your discretion.”

  Louis raised an eyebrow. This could prove interesting, he thought. “But of course, Monsieur,” he said innocently. “Anything in my power.”

  Doc set her glass aside and started with a tentative approach. “We know that in your line of work, you sometimes come across certain… artifacts.”

  Jack leaned back on the crushed velvet settee and frowned. Doc was talking like a flippin’ G-man. There was no reason for delicacy here. He’d heard all about Lambeau’s background and he struck Jack as a no-nonsense guy.

  A smile crept across the right side of Louis’ face, taking his thin mustache for a ride. “I have sometimes trafficked in ze rare and mysterious object, oui.”

  Jack cut to the chase. “We’re looking for a lost Spanish artifact. Early 16th century. The Cross of Cadiz. Have you heard of it?”

  Doc gave Jack a sideways glance, and Louis rubbed his jaw.

  “Zat depends, Capitaine Jack…”

  Doc leaned forward to look at the Frenchman. “We are authorized to wire ten thousand U.S. dollars if you help us secure the artifact.”

  There was an awkward silence, as Louis weighed the offer.

  “Plus expenses,” Doc added.

  Louis smiled broadly. “Ah, Madame, I sink we can do business.”

  # # #

  The tiny outboard engine rattled and sputtered rhythmically, pushing the twenty-foot wooden launch along the Rivière Mapou inland toward the tropical jungles and coffee plantations of central Haiti. Louis handled the tiller, shaded from the relentless sun by his white Panama hat. Doc and Jack had left their flight leathers back on the Daedalus, if only because wearing anything non-porous on one’s head in this heat was a good way to get sunstroke. Rolled shirtsleeves, jodhpurs and boots were the order of the day. Deadeye had kept his trousers, boots and puttees, but had discarded his Army fatigue jacket in favor of a simple cotton shirt which also had the sleeves pushed up. They’d left Rivets and Duke back on the ship to keep an ear on the radio chatter and an eye on the horizon. If the Luftpanzer appeared, they were to retreat to any safe harbor and report back to Edison at once.

  Meanwhile, the small boat puttered up the Mapou, the water dark green and gray with algae, sediment and detritus. Jack cataloged at least a dozen new assaults on his olfactory system, and watched sleek black crocodiles breach the surface to stare at them with knobby eyes. An endless blanket of green vegetation spread out before them, crisscrossed by the shimmering river, its stillness disturbed only by the call of tropical birds and the sputtering outboard motor.

  After two miles of winding river through jungle and plantation, Jack finally spoke.

  “Where is it, exactly?”

  Louis was matter-of-fact. “There is a Vodou bokor who runs a cane plantation out of an old Spanish fort, about six kilometers up river. His name is Oba, and he is said to be served by a hundred zombis. If anyone has knowledge of the Cross of Cadiz, it is Oba.”

  Deadeye was intrigued. “What’s a zombi?” he asked.

  Louis explained as he would the rules of poker. “They say it is someone raised from the dead and bound to ze Vodou bokor.”

  Jack frowned. “Sounds like a raw deal to me,” he muttered.

  “It is,” Doc assured him. “They’re aware every moment. They can feel pain and fear, and can do nothing but obey the bokor who created them.”

  “It is a living hell, Capitaine Jack,” Louis assured him, as he negotiated a bend in the river.

  Jack looked at Doc. “Are we gonna be okay with this Oba fella?”

  “Yes,” Doc assured him. “As long as we’re respectful.”

  “I’m respectful,” Jack insisted.

  Doc smiled at him and blotted a bead of sweat from his nose with her bandanna.

  # # #

  Within the cold, stone walls of the ancient, abandoned Spanish outpost, the Vodou sorcerer Oba sat on a carved chair, golden goblet in hand. Legend put his age somewhere over 300, but in reality he was a descendant of another Oba who plied his mystical trade during the golden age of Caribbean piracy. He wore a top hat from the past century, festooned with animal bones and feathers. A brocade waistcoat and short pantaloons were his only other clothing. His face and body were painted in skeletal designs which contrasted with his dark Caribbean skin. Sipping from his golden chalice—a trophy from an age-old pirate raid—his furrowed brow betrayed troubled thoughts. The zombi slave tending the cook fire on the hearth suddenly turned to glance at the doorway, and Oba knew he wasn’t alone. It became strangely cold in the room; an unnatural cold caused not by a river breeze through the open windows, but by dark magic in the hands of an intruder.

  “You must be the sorcerer, Oba,” Maria Blutig said as she entered the room with two Silver Star commandos, each armed with an MP18 submachine gun. “Just the man I want to talk to.” She held in her hand a four-foot-long staff of lacquered ebony and gold, the relief of a cobra coiled around it, culminating in the serpent’s head at the top, complete with jeweled eyes. “Commandos, flank me and let no one pass.”

  “Jawohl,” they answered. Bolts on guns were ratcheted back and released.

  Oba wasn’t used to visitors in general, and he certainly wasn’t happy about these uniformed, Imperial-looking Germans invading his midday meal.

  “Who dares trespass in Cerro de la Mentira, the home of Oba?” The bokor rose threateningly and stood clutching a wand made of animal bones, the skull of a human infant at the top. “Who risks the wrath of Baron Samedi, Maman Brigitte and all the loa?”

  “RA-HOOR-KHUIT!” Maria chanted, invoking the cobra-headed staff, whose eyes began to glow with unearthly power.

  Oba brandished his wand, spittle flying as he cursed. “Baron Samedi, let your wrath be upon the intruders!”

  Maria stood fast, staff raised in defiance. “BES-NA-MAUT! TA-NECH!”

  Oba’s curse, “Death be upon you!” echoed through the hall. His arm flew out and directed the wand at the trio in his doorway, and a swirling, vaporous fog erupted from the floor in a straight line,
spirit tendrils pulling at the soldiers as they screamed in agony. Maria, shielded by the staff, watched as Oba’s spell began to rend and crush her commandos, compacting them in a series of grotesque pops and cracks.

  Resolved to have her vengeance, Maria surged forward with pure malevolence. The cobra’s eyes emitted a beam of red energy, which caught Oba like prey in a car’s headlights. Every nerve ignited in brutal pain and he sank to his knees, gasping for breath that never came.

  Maria stood over him triumphantly, eyes savage and ecstatic. “To answer your question, Oba,” she purred. “I am your doom.”

  - Chapter 9 -

  Louis steered the small boat to a ramshackle dock at the bottom of a terraced rise and tied up. He would watch for trouble and be able to go for help if needed. Jack and Doc checked their sidearms, and Deadeye loaded his Winchester carbine. Then the three of them stepped onto the dock and made their way to the path which cut upward through a lush, green hillside to the ruins of the Spanish fort.

  The place was known to history as Cerro de la Mentira, or “Deception Hill”, a name whose origins were lost in time long before its ruins had been claimed by the bokors in Oba’s line. Originally a Spanish military garrison and prison, the fort was the staging ground for enforcement of severe Spanish laws in the 16th and 17th centuries, and reprisals against locals who had the nerve to question said laws. Now weather-beaten, with sagging outer walls, the old fort resembled the gnarled hand of an aged man reaching out of the cliff side toward the sky.

  Along the path, the party spotted several groups of people wandering aimlessly within the rows of coffee shrubs, and Jack was filled instantly with a looming dread. Their eyes were white and they stared blankly ahead, unblinking. They wore simple homespun clothes—all ragged and torn from use. Not one head turned to greet the trio as they trod up the path into the shadow of the fort.