by J M Bannon
"four hundred and fifty years ago," Ahmed spoke, bowing in disgrace.
“Then I am surprised it hasn’t sundered already,” Azul concluded.
Preston broke his concentration to look over at Rose hoping to get her reaction. That thought dropped from his mind when he saw outside the bridge window a man on the gangway, wearing a leather breathing mask. Their eyes connected through the glass lenses of his mask as the man smashed the window and threw in a canister. It rolled to a stop then popped, releasing a grey- green gas.
* * *
9:00 PM Tarmac outside the Peregrine
Kampfalchemist Ulrik began the attack with the launch of a mortar shell. The shot fell true between the airship and the broader group of guards by the steam carriages. The report signaled to the squads to follow up with hand grenades encircling the group in a fog of grey green paralytic gas. “Kampfalchemist, provide indirect support when you see the tarmac secure, move up to the team,” Caspar ordered as he moved in.
Caspar lowered his gas mask and strode across the field to engage, drawing his saber and long knife. His physical exertion was stressed by his breathing inside the mask and accessing oxygen through the complex filtration system on his back. As he dashed onto the tarmac from the thicket he had been hiding in, his eyes flashed across the battlefield picking up movement. Squad one appearing from the north, squad two moving from the south and he had the east. In the midst of the pincher movement he could see the shadows of men in the billowing gas cloud moving without order or direction then dropping to the ground as the gas took effect.
Upon reaching his troops at the foot of the stair he issued his commands. Squad one began boarding action: troopers deployed a gas-powered grappling hook, its four large prongs sheathed in velveteen to defeat the noise of metal on metal. The soldier dropped to one knee as he was trained using his foot to steady the apparatus then trigger the discharge sending the grappler up onto the gangway of the airship. He set the hook pulling the cable taut and used his body weight to act as an anchor. The rest of the squad went into action. One member began his rope climb another drew his revolver and mounted a stock converting it to a light carbine then dropped to a knee and aimed up to cover the railing.
Casper watched as the first trooper cleared the rail. Per training protocol, he adjusted and secured the hook to assure a safe ascent for the rest of the party, then drawing his pistol and bayonet he watched for approaching combatants. The next two ascended along with the trooper who provided the anchor. Caspar signaled for squad two to advance up the stairway to infiltrate the airship by the main door, he was unsurprised to find the bulkhead locked. “Bring Ulrik up here,” he whispered.
Looking down the stairwell his second squad was lined up, crouching like bizarre identical bugs sealed head to toe in leather and rubberized jackets. Since they always went into combat in a breather, each had a squad and individual number so they could identify each other. The Kampfalchemist scampered up the stairs, “Get this door open!” commanded Casper.
Removing vials from his belted tool box, Ulrik began to quickly mix a cocktail in ajar. Almost by touch, he was capable of preparing the elements in the darkness, discarding the empty vials off the stairs.
Ulrik removed a glass gun shaped device from his waist and screwed the jar into the brass bottom.
Next, he inserted an additional ampule into a slot under the gun, then pumped and cocked the alchemist pistol. Starting a reaction, the jar glowed and bubbled as the ampule gas began to charge by the piston pump. “Step back, this is a metal vitriol and will burn through your suit and limbs in moments,” warned Ulrik.
The groups attention was drawn by the shadowing descent of an object landing in a wet thud on the tarmac. Caspar moved to look over the rail of the stairs and saw a dead Turk contorted on the ground.
He looked up to see one of his men make the signal, then another falling body caught his eye, this time on the far side of the ship. Caspar returned to the locked door and his battle alchemist, “breach the door, our men are in action and ready.”
Ulrik sprayed the door with the liquid producing plumes of smoke. As he moved the instrument down Caspar could see holes melting through the door.
“Ready, Ghosts!” called the Major.
23
Monday the 11th of June 1860
9:05 p.m. The Bridge of the Peregrine
Rose turned as the strange masked man ducked away. From the shattered window her attention shot to a deafening bang and a blinding flash originating from the hallway outside the bridge. As the gas spread across the deck, Rose donned her goggles, flipped the lenses with a deft flick of her index finger. The gas had an arcane element to it; betrayed by the glimmer she could now see through her lens.
The Hermetic body guard on the ground in supplication, picked up the smoking can that lay near his head, and threw the object out of the broken window it came through. As the can dropped outside of the cabin, the guard dropped back to the floor, his eyes rolled up into his sockets with the loss of all muscle control. Paralyzed.
“Lucas, secure the bridge,” barked Captain Falk. Pushing away from the map table to the front of the bridge, she grabbed the bright yellow emergency release lever below the bridge window, throwing it and releasing the ship. Suddenly the ship moved.
The emergency lever released the airship from its mooring locks. “Everyone, I will get us up and away as fast as I can.” She dropped her goggles over her eyes and bound over the controls into the pilot’s chair. Pulling levers, switches and dials. The ship drifted ninety degrees on its axis and ascended quickly, a wild rocky ride up and away.
Speaking Turkish, Ahmed ordered his man who was recovering, and getting up from his knees, to begin the routine for powering his shock glove.
The tilt and yaw of the ship made the book enclosed in a glass bubble slide off the map table. Preston lurched to protect his precious book. Rose tried to grab the globe but the airship rocking threw her off balance and the device slipped away from her towards Preston. He had just enough time to throw a hug around the object and keep it from going into a free fall. Instead he went down onto the floor, breaking the fall of the globe with his body.
Rose steadied herself against the base of the map table, the frantic moves of Captain Falk employed at the controls made the deck of the Peregrine feel like a funhouse attraction. Before she could fight the raiders, she would have to first fight gravity and balance.
Fighting to steady herself and open a summoning channel, Rose unsheathed the Rod of Razeil and calmed her mind to invoke the Enochian words of power.
In her field of vision, Lucas was bringing his long rifle up to aim at a target down the hall. Two consecutive bangs went off and Lucas’s blood spattered from his back across the bridge window.
Onto the bridge stepped another black leather and rubber garbed man. He was covered head to foot and wearing a perverse mask connected to a small tank harnessed on his back. With a cutlass drawn in one hand and a revolver in the other, he moved towards Rose and Lorelei, speaking German.
Rose had no clue what he said. Her head twisted around to the sounds of another of the black clad soldiers crawling into the broken window. The goon was strong and athletic but slowed when his air tank caught on the window frame. He was too close to her and Lorelei who was doing all she could to stay upright as the ship jerked to Falk’s controls.
Rose spun, uttering the word “gladios”. She witnessed the arm of Razeil and the angel’s mighty sword glimmering transparently, superimposed over her own arm, slash through the soldier coming through the window. Wood cracked and splintered, metal warped as the arcane force summoned through the Rod struck the wall and the soldier. The force knocked him back, along with the current tilt of the ship he flew to the guardrail of the gangway flipping upside down and over the railing, falling to his death.
As Rose turned the other way to watch Ahmed stand up and draw a dagger from inside his jacket. He never stood a chance, the soldier was an expert swordsm
an and lunged crossing the floor in a blink, plunging his cutlass into Ahmed’s abdomen. Rose heard the attackers muffled yell of victory from inside his mask as she saw the bloodied blade emerge from the back of Ahmed’s finely tailored jacket.
The attacker raised his pistol and aimed at Rose. She intoned a new call, but it wasn’t needed. The other guard on the ground grabbed the masked man by the leg and released an electric blast from his glove. The man convulsed and dropped both of his weapons before falling to the ground himself.
“Get that bulkhead closed and locked,” yelled Falk.
* * *
9:05 PM Tarmac outside the Peregrine
Ulrik was about a third of the way through cutting a man size hole in the door when the whole stairway shuddered. The ship suddenly lurched sideways and up, causing the rolling stairs to teeter. Caspar’s team steadied themselves staying focused on being ready to rush the ship once the door opened.
Reinhold was concerned the ship moving meant it had detached from its mooring and it was likely his squad was detected. The propellers turned in the cowling. With a deafening roar the port side engine rotated to execute a sharp starboard pivot pushing away from the rolling stairs, pummeling Caspar’s team with the prop wash.
Caspar’s stomach sunk as his equilibrium let him know the blast of air from the port nacelle pushed the stairs past the point of no return. The tipping motion was compounded by the men scrambling to jump off the stairs. A strange feeling overcame him, the patter of raindrops on his suit and mask and it smelled like something burning. The time slowed and it seemed as if it were taking forever for the stairs to fall. His agile body reacted and he prepared for a jump and roll.
Falling, falling.
Focus, you have to save yourself if you're to be of any use to these men.
He did everything to push away from the stairway, purposely diving towards the ground timing his tuck and roll to break the impact; all that gymnasium work paid off. Landing on the hard pack gravel was painful but the reinforced leather dealt with the abrasion, his tumbling body came to a stop and all he could think about was how his face itched.
The Major opened his eyes and focused not through the eye lenses of the mask but at the lens itself and saw the metal corroding and the rubber bubbling.
Oh God Ulrik’s vitriol.
He ripped off the mask, then his jacket, both were blistering and smoking. Caspar got to his knees and unbuckled his harnesses to peel off the jacket before it burned through, but his arms wouldn’t do what his brain was telling them to do. Then his quads gave out and he fell back into the remnants of the paralytic greenish fog his team had peppered the airfield with. Unable to move, he could feel the trace vitriol eating away at his face.
* * *
9:15 p.m. The Bridge of the Peregrine
The Turk was the closest to the open door, but did nothing. Preston then yelled something in Turkish and the guard got up and threw the bulkhead shut spinning the ratchet handle to lock the hatch.
The ship settled and Falk was setting a course to take off away from the aerodrome. Falk called the engine room through a sound tube, “bridge to engine room, Jules are you two all right?”
"Tommy and I are up here stoking the furnace. We locked the access hatch when we heard the shooting, what’s going on down there, Captain?" Jules reported over the sound tube.
Lorelei ran to Preston to help him set down the globe and get up.
"Rose, we need to make sure we have removed every assailant, I would expect they would try to take the engine room given the fight we put up. Jules and Tommy have no weapons," directed the Captain.
“Who are they?” asked Rose.
Lorelei walked over to the dead trooper and pulled off the mask. He was a young blonde man with a goatee. "This is a gas filtering mask. The tank in the back has a series of filters and catalyst to negate the effects of the poison." She unclipped the chest harness and rolled the corpse out of the rig. Lorelei then took off the waist bandoleer that held three cans on each side. "He was armed with Wolfsbanngranate, what was used to paralyze him. It will be hours before his motor skills return; we will need to keep an eye on him, too much exposure can stop the body’s ability to breathe. The others are blitz und donnergranate: thunder and lightning bombs designed to shock and stun an enemy." She suited up in the dead soldier’s equipment handing Preston the pistol. "You want the pistol or the sword?"
“Neither,” answered Preston.
Lorelei checked the chambers of the pistol seeing the one empty. She unfastened the man’s pistol belt and brought it to the map table to inspect the contents; slugs, wadding, paper powder cartridges and primer caps.
Reloading the empty chamber, she remarked, “The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that my father pulled strings to have these gents sent to rescue me. This equipment looks like Prussian military gear.”
"Maybe we should contact him and let him know you are safe?" suggested Preston.
“I want to go back and stop the most important commercial enterprise of the Guild before it unleashes this devil trapped in the stone. The High Elector plans to debut the Crucible at the Alchemical Conference. Oh, and the Guild’s economic future is built around my work to create an endless source of wealth for them and the other Barons. I am not seeing any scenario that doesn’t conclude with me on the run, or locked in a Prussian Prison.”
“Or dead, You may be the most arrogant, short-sighted bitch I have ever met. Do you see that your games are getting people hurt and killed? It may have been lost on you, but not on me, with Lucas there lying dead on the deck of the bridge. I have set a course for Königsberg. Let’s just get you back to Baron Traube,” said the Captain.
"This could all be a terrific mistake we are compounding. If these men were sent to rescue Lorelei, then aren’t we on the same side?" asked Rose.
“Engine room to bridge,” it was Tommy on the voice tube.
“Go ahead,” replied the Captain.
"We have movement in the engine room, Jules and I are sure we have someone in here," Tommy reported.
"If you're in danger, make your way up the smoke column to the observation deck," ordered the Captain.
"Rose, I need you to take the controls, I will go help them." suggested the Captain.
"You let me fly this thing for five minutes and now entrust in me to pilot it while we are under attack?" asked Rose.
"All you need to do is to keep it steady," Falk replied.
"I can fly the ship. I frequently piloted the Esperance," interrupted Lorelei. "Then give me that gear and you take a seat," stated Falk.
Lorelei peeled off the bandoleer of grenades and the pistol belt.
Captain Falk reached for the weapons, “keep the pistol in case you need it, I want the grenades. How do they work?”
"You pull the pin and that starts a timed fuse. I couldn’t guess what that would be," said Lorelei as she adjusted the controls and seat for her small stature.
"I can access the engineering deck but it's a perilous route. I need to climb that ladder the gives access to the envelope.” Falk pointed out the window on the underside of the gas envelope that made up the bulk of the blimp. “I then need to go through the expanse to access the smoke stack column. A set of stairs leads up to the top observation deck and down to the engine room," relayed Reidun.
"Won’t you suffocate in the gas envelope?" asked Preston.
"The blimp isn’t just a big hydrogen balloon. Inside it is a web of cables, catwalks and gasbags, the hydrogen is encased in bags that run like long sausages from nose to tail. In addition, we have the forward and aft ballonets that run top to bottom, we fill and expel with air to adjust the altitude. I won't be climbing inside the hydrogen bags,” explained Falk.
“I’ll join you,” added Rose.
“You're not afraid of heights, are you? The climb to the access door is by cable ladder. From the gangway to the nose of the blimp and we are…” the Captain looked at the control panel, “five hundred and twen
ty feet above sea level.”
24
Monday the 11th of June 1860
9:34 p.m. The Gangway of the Peregrine
The wind blasted Rose and Captain Falk as they braced themselves at the front of the gondola. The Captain was rugged up in her aviator hat and jacket, wearing the soldier’s gas mask instead of goggles. Rose wore her spectral goggles for protection and her long coat.
As the Captain stepped up onto the railing, she reached for the wire and wood ladder that ran along the skin of the airship. Rose helped by steadying her legs. “I am going to swing up, then give me a bit of time to get up there and open that hatch. Falk swung her legs up and hooked her toes under the rungs to help secure herself on the climb.
Rose waited and took the time to invoke a blessing of safe passage for the two women. Once Rose lost sight of Falk as she rounded the nose of the balloon she made her way onto the railing. Perched with both feet on the narrow, flat rail, she would need focused balance to stand up and grab the first rung. A bit of a stretch but she grasped the rung, then maneuvered, facing inward to work the ladder and not look down. As she moved up the rungs her nose began to run from the cold, it always did that since she was a girl in Chester.
Snot nose Rose hanging from a balloon over the Black Sea.
By the fourth step she could get her feet on the lower rungs, a huge relief to take the weight off her strained arms, as well as adjust her hands, filling her gloves with sweat.
As she methodically made her way up the ladder, rounding the curve, she realized there was a long way still to go up to the nose cone of the dirigible. As she looked up Falk looked back at her and gave her a thumbs up. It encouraged her to see Falk’s bravery.
