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Floating the Balloon Bombs
Brian S. Wheeler
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2014 by Brian S. Wheeler
Floating the Balloon Bombs
Contents
Chapter 1 – The Gods’ Divine Winds
Chapter 2 – Decay in the Swamp
Chapter 3 – A Forgotten Place
Chapter 4 – A Dervish Standing Behind Giant Machines
Chapter 5 – A Strange Name for a Foreign Thing
Chapter 6 – A Reason to Wear the Uniform
Chapter 7 – A Soldier’s Command
Chapter 8 – Quilting and Restoration
Chapter 9 – Giving Back
Chapter 10 – Dependent on the Wind
Held Spread the Story Across the Flatland
About the Writer
Other Stories at Flatland Fiction
Floating the Balloon Bombs
Chapter 1 – The Gods’ Divine Winds
The colonel smiled at the army mobilized upon the beach. Hundreds of paper balloons floated overhead like giant jellyfish given the magic of flight. Ropes descended from each balloon like tentacles, and the soldiers below pulled at those tendrils while they wrestled against the wind to keep those balloons in formation until the colonel delivered the order to release each balloon to its fortune. The colonel peered through binoculars and did his best to count the iron eggs held by the iron loops tied just below each paper balloon. He knew there would be nothing he might do to influence the course of those weapons floating above the beach. They had done all they could, and they could only hope, and pray, that those balloons would deliver harm to the enemy who waited, unseen, somewhere beyond the ocean’s horizon.
A horn blared from the distant end of the beach to inform the colonel the last of the balloons had lifted with its bombs properly secured. It was all up to the wind, and so the colonel raised a hand to gather the attention of his troops.
Yet the colonel hesitated a moment before dropping his remaining arm, before delivering that signal to release those balloons from their hold. He recognized it as a selfish thought, and he hoped that his generals, his emperor and his gods would forgive him for pausing to simply stare upon the paper balloons he thought beautiful. Did he not deserve such an indulgence? Had not the loss of his strong, right arm earned him a breath of time to simply look upon those paper balloons before they drifted out to sea? Did he not deserve a moment to feel proud of the elegant weapons they had crafted to teach the enemy that even their distant country was not beyond their empire’s reach?
His heart soared to look upon the balloons hovering above the shore. He considered himself blessed to partake in such an elegant plan of attack. In an age dominated by machines of iron and steel, the gods had gifted weapons of paper and string to the colonel’s people. Perhaps those bombs suspended, like a chandelier, from the bottom of each balloon detracted from the beauty, but had the teeth of the shark that had taken his right arm also not been ugly? Those iron bombs, dangling like eggs, made each paper balloon just as deadly as most any of the new world’s armored weapons. Such an elegant plan would surely win the favor of the gods. Such an elegant plan had surely been touched by something divine.
Thus, the colonel harbored no doubt that the wind would not be enough to guide those paper weapons to their distant targets.
The first wave of balloons would rise towards the clouds when the colonel dropped his remaining left arm. Thousands of balloons would drift upon the wind. Hydrogen would lift each of them higher and higher until that paper weapon found those strong winds that would carry it to the enemy’s land. Each balloon’s engineering made the colonel proud. At night, those balloons would cool, and the hydrogen would contract. The balloon would start to descend until an altimeter fired an explosive bolt to drop a sandbag, thus lightening the balloon’s weight so that it once more lifted into the currents of air. Should any balloon rise too high, another altimeter would open a small valve and release hydrogen until that balloon rediscovered its proper altitude. Each balloon would bob up and down, its mechanics insuring its course. Eventually, those balloons would have no more sandbags to drop in order to rise. Yet by that time, those balloons would float above the enemy’s land, and the balloons would release their bombs to maintain their altitude. The enemy would not hear any airplane’s rumble, nor would he spot the silhouette of any battleship approaching his shore. The bombs would be delivered by silent, invisible craft, as if the gods themselves delivered the fury and destruction falling from the sky. Fear and discord would spread like weeds whose seeds were carried by the breeze. The enemy would know, no matter all their steel and all of their iron, that the colonel’s empire fought with a divine power capable of employing delicate paper to surmount the thickest of defenses.
The colonel felt the wind at his back and grinned. How much treasure did the enemy spend in his forging of battleships and aircraft carriers? How many bodies did the enemy sacrifice so that he might bring his tanks and rifles one island closer to the mainland?
The enemy gave so much, and yet those paper balloons, stitched so well together by the thin and nimble fingers of schoolgirls, cost so little. Floating paper would reclaim the war’s momentum.
He lowered in remaining arm, and his soldiers released their grips upon their balloons’ tethers. The army of giant jellyfish leaped into the sky. The colonel watched them dance upon the wind, until those balloons grew small and distant, invisible to the weak power of his sight.
Thousands of such balloons would be launch from his country’s shores. The wind would guide them all. Many would be lost, and many would never float long enough to drift above the adversary’s home. Yet the gods and the divine winds carried them, and the colonel was sure that would be enough to weaken the resolve of his enemy’s
fight.
* * * * *
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