Against the Eldest Flame (Doc Vandal Adventures Book 1)

by Dave Robinson

  “Need help?” Kehla’s voice was soft in her ear.

  “Ever flown an airship?”

  “No, but I’m a quick study.”

  Vic laughed and gestured towards the other helm seat with its mirrored control board. “Good enough. Sit there and don’t do anything right now.”

  Kehla plumped down in the seat and reached for the controls in front of her. She was a little short for the seat, but her long arms made up for it. “Now what.”

  “See those two covers at the sides of your panel?” Vic pointed out the rocket controls.

  “The ones that look like piano keys?” Kehla peered at the controls, her mouth working as she read the markings.

  “Good. There are six keys under each panel, two banks of three.” Vic made another minute adjustment to the pitch controls. “If the volcano erupts, hit the bottom three keys on each side and hold them down until I tell you to stop.”

  Kehla flipped the covers back and reached for the keys.

  “Not now!” If Vic could have let go of the controls she would have smacked Kehla. “Only if the volcano erupts.”

  “What are they?”

  “Rocket engines.”

  Vic put her attention back to the cliff, inching the massive ship upwards. It was hard to judge the right height when she couldn’t see Doc, but he had to be just about there. She was not going to let him die on that cliff.

  She almost jumped out of her seat when Kehla mumbled something under her breath, and then leaned forward to flip two switches.

  “I said don’t touch anything!” Vic wanted to glare, but didn’t dare look away from the cliff. There was a white flash from a glass disk set at the top of the instrument panel, and then she found herself looking out from a viewpoint on the nose of the airship. Doc’s feet were just in frame.

  “I read German,” Kehla said modestly. “It said nose camera.”

  “Fine, fine,” Vic muttered. “Let me get him.” Now that she could see what she was doing, she smoothly raised the Zeppelin another eight feet and held it in a perfect hover. As the seconds ticked by, the updraft grew, forcing Vic to adjust thrust to compensate. Doc vanished from the screen so she focused on the rock he had used as a foothold. “Come on, Doc, come on.”

  “You can back off now.”

  Vic ignored the voice from behind her, biting her lip as she focused on keeping the Zeppelin in place.

  “Not until I know he’s safely aboard.” The updraft was getting so strong that Vic she had to hold the airship down, rather than up. Lava flowed down in front of the camera, covering the whole cliff. Vic fought back tears. “No!”

  “You can back off now,” Doc repeated. “You got me.”

  Vic whipped her head around and just looked at Doc for a moment before turning back to face the cliff.

  “Took you long enough to get aboard.”

  Vic increased pitch and backed the airship away from the cliff. Now that she didn’t have to focus on close quarters flying she could enjoy the experience, and the big warship wasn’t quite as hard to handle with more room to work.

  “Okay, back to New York.” Vic vectored thrust and headed for the far side of the caldera.

  “What about them?” Kehla pointed out the window at the inhabitants trying to climb away from the city. There were several hundred gorillas, of both sexes, young and old, dressed in everything except for German uniforms. Some were naked, making Vic think they might have had a change of heart.

  Vic frowned, running numbers in her head. They weren’t pretty. “We can’t pick them up, there’s not enough room for that many passengers.” She looked around the cabin, weighing options. “Doc, how much lift do you think we have?”

  His eyes defocused for a moment, and then he went over to the lift console. “I can probably give us a hundred tons or so; maybe more depending on how far back they’ve dialed the lyftrium.”

  “When I tell you to; give me all we’ve got.” Vic then turned to Gus. “This thing’s got to have boarding nets. I want you to take Jevan, Gilly, the Chief, and anyone else you’ve got free and hang them off the side.”

  Gus nodded.

  “Go, go, go.” Vic ordered, getting back into close flying mode while Gus headed up the ship ladder to the main deck.

  “Kehla,” Doc spoke up, “see if you can find a PA system, and let your people know to hang on.”

  “Got it,” she replied.

  Vic focused on her flying, bringing the airship in close to the inner wall of the caldera. Doc had already lightened ship for neutral buoyancy, so she could fine tune her altitude with the engines.

  The hull shuddered as the nets fell away, first one side then the other.

  Kehla found the the speaker controls. “People,” she began, but feedback turned her voice into a squeal. Pulling back from the microphone, she tried again. “Everyone, climb onto the nets and we’ll lift you out.”

  Her words echoed across the caldera. Vic slowed the airship to a complete stop and began lowering it closer to the ground, wanting to spread the nets so the gorillas could climb aboard more easily.

  The gorillas slowly backed away from the airship, gathering into little knots.

  “Come on, you don’t have much time.” Kehla cajoled the survivors, trying to get them onto the nets.

  “You’ve got that right,” Vic muttered. The lava was getting closer, and closer. It had already picked up a lot of speed, and at this rate it would be on them in a matter of minutes.

  “You’ll die if you stay there.” None of the gorillas moved; they just hunkered down where they stood, as if willing to die rather than turn back to the Nazis.

  “Can you get lower still?” Kehla asked. “Maybe if they can see who’s rescuing them they’ll understand.

  Vic nodded. “Sure, but the lower I go the faster we’re going to have to climb out of here.”

  “Good, I’m going to find Gus and go out where they can see we aren’t Nazis.”

  Vic lowered the ship another twenty feet, so she could almost count the blades of grass. Kehla was already gone.

  Moments later, the gorillas started moving closer, and scrambling up the nets. Vic played the propeller pitch controls like a virtuoso pianist, raising the ship just enough to free up more space on the nets. As the ship rose, more and more gorillas climbed onto the nets, hanging beneath both sides of the ship like so much fruit. There were so many that when Vic turned to look at the lava, all she could see were gorillas. One child winked.

  Finally, they were loaded, and she lifted out of the caldera, moments ahead of the lava. ZL-38 hung sluggishly on the controls, loaded to the limit. One side was heavier than the other, so she had to adjust thrust to compensate, but it worked. No sooner had she got them over the rim of the caldera than the whole city vanished as a bubble of magma burst underneath.

  Vic rode the winds away from the disaster, carrying her passengers to safety.

  #

  Doc looked out the window of the control cabin as they prepared to leave for home. If his calculations were right, they had just enough fuel to reach his estate in upstate New York. He wasn’t sure if he would keep the airship, but at least up there he had a big enough hangar to store it.

  Jevan was standing at the head of the surviving gorillas, talking to the Chief. The dinosaur had offered to help the refugees get in contact with his people, and Jevan had taken him up on the offer. He was going to make a fine leader for his people, even if he was a little young.

  Kehla would have made a better one, but she wasn’t staying.

  She was coming to New York with Gus. She had let him out of her sight for long enough she had said, and he needed to live up to his responsibilities. He looked both happy and nervous. For whatever it was worth, the whole thing appeared to have tickled Gilly’s funny bone and he’d passed dozens of notes to Vic since Kehla had made her intentions known.

  Bringing his attention back to the present, Doc looked at Vic, who was giving her best imitation of a child with a new toy. S
he had volunteered to fly the first leg, home and Doc was perfectly willing to let her. Despite her upbringing she belonged in a cockpit, not a drawing room.

  “Did you ever make sense of Schmidt?” Vic asked.

  “I think so,” Doc replied. “In a sense I owe him my life.”

  “What?” Vic shook her head. “He was trying to capture you for that Flame the whole time.”

  “He fought it on the flight over from Pongo City before we first met him; he only succumbed when they killed him. Even at the end, when he was trying to kill me he was also telling me how to destroy the Flame.”

  Vic shrugged. “If you say so, Doc.”

  He shook his head and turned his attention to the other loose ends: Gilly would be fine. It would take a real operation, but Doc could repair his larynx and give him his voice back. As for Doc himself, his wrist no longer hurt, but his time linked to the Flame had raised questions. What was the Flame? Where had it come from and why had it fallen to Earth all those millions of years ago?

  None of it mattered now: those were questions for another day.

  Afterword

  The year is 1937, the place is called Earth. Doc Vandal doesn’t live in our world; he lives in what might be called the world outside our window. It’s a world very much like ours where history went much the same as it did in our historical record but not identically. That’s why New York is known as the Republic State, not the Empire State, Mexico is still an Empire and physics doesn’t work quite the same way.

  Humanity is neither the only sentient race on this planet, nor even the first. There is an alien base on the Moon, and a small civilization of uplifted gorillas in Africa. A species of intelligent dinosaurs, extinct since the end of the Cretaceous have recently reappeared. Only the gorillas are general knowledge, with first contact dating back to the years immediately after the Great War.

  The first gorilla to enter civilization, an individual who soon became known as Augustus Q. Ponchartrain, quickly found himself a position as Doc Vandal’s associate. He was followed by a number of others, all appearing in different parts of Africa throughout the decade following the Great War. Perhaps surprisingly, they did not congregate and spread rapidly throughout the world.

  By the early 1930’s while still exceedingly rare, gorillas had been present in society long enough that even though most people hadn’t seen a talking gorilla, almost everyone knew about them. This changed in 1935, when a German expedition returned to Berlin with the surprising news that they had found the home of these gorillas and signed a treaty. Over the next few years, gorillas became a relatively commonly seen part of the Nazi regime, though some Germans opposed the practice vocally. Interestingly, none of the original expatriates showed any interest in either moving to Germany or connecting with their homeland.

  That same post-war period showed an even greater acceleration in technology than in our own history; partially due to the different physical laws of this world. This is a world where much of pulp technology actually works. Everything from steam to flywheel systems both store and generate more energy than on our Earth. Another difference is the existence of lyftrium.

  Developed by Doc Vandal from alien technology, lyftrium is an artificial aerogel that makes airships both practical and efficient. The key to its effect is that lyftrium is controllably transparent to gravitational energy. By applying different amounts of electric current you can directly manipulate its weight. Apply the right charge and it will even reflect gravity completely; giving it negative weight. Each lift state is stable, you only need the current to change lift states, not to maintain them. The only catch is that as an aerogel it has a very low mass, so while it gives airships more lift, it does not make them that much smaller.

  Originally a closely kept secret, the lyftrium process was stolen by Nazi agents even before Hitler achieved power, and Doc was forced to release it more generally. Although expensive, the process made air freight practical, as well as what can be best described as aerial warships. Surprisingly, lyftrium also led to a greater usage of hydrogen airships. Lyftrium ships were too expensive to serve the world’s market for airship travel so hydrogen craft were used out of necessity.

  Nazi Germany was the first nation to introduce what became known as destroyers, heavily armed airships that allowed for rapid force projection and commerce raiding. Built for use against surface targets, these airships were some eight hundred feet in length, roughly the size of a contemporary battleship. Despite their size, lift concerns limited them to roughly the armament of a destroyer or light cruiser. Most carried five or six guns of up to six-inch caliber mounted in underslung turrets for anti-surface warfare.

  The US and Great Britain swiftly followed, as did France, Italy, and Japan. Russia was rumored to be working on similar craft, but there was no confirmation as of 1937. Many other countries were interested in such designs, but few had the necessary combination both financial and technical resources to produce them. Some, such as the Netherlands, did however produce their own lyftrium freighters.

  Who is Doc Vandal?

  It’s a question that might as well be answered in the negative as the positive. He is not simply Doc Savage. Yes, he shares some literary DNA with Lester Dent’s most famous creation but he also shares literary DNA with both Curtis Newton and Perry Rhodan. He’s an attempt to create a science hero in the flavor of the pulps of the thirties and forties. Like all such characters he’s an exceptional human specimen. He’s also a world-famous inventor.

  Physically and mentally, Doc is superhuman; socially he is not.

  It’s no surprise that his best friend is not human; some might argue Doc isn’t either. Raised on the Moon by an alien AI and recordings of his parents’ brain patterns he had no opportunity to connect with people until he reached Earth as a young adult. He knows how to deal with people, but he has a very limited sense of humor and playfulness. Doc essentially had no childhood.

  While he will kill on occasion, he believes in the sanctity of life and tries to avoid it. Doc is a superb martial artist, and excellent marksman and pilot. As a musician, he’s technically skillful but his playing lacks passion.

  Doc’s best known invention is lyftrium, the miracle aerogel that changed the world. Not only is it his biggest invention, it was also one of his first. Like most of his other inventions, it is less a wholly new creation than a repurposing of extraterrestrial technology for human use. Lyftrium was also a lesson Doc has never forgotten. After the Germans stole the process he turned his genius inwards, keeping most of his new inventions for himself and his team.

  About the Author

  I’m Dave, and I write. I’m also a father, a reader, gamer, a comic fan, and a hockey fan.

  The problem with those terms is that they don’t so much describe as label me; the map is not the territory. Calling me a father says nothing about how my daughter thinks I’m silly. It ignores the essence of the relationship for the convenience of simplicity. It’s the same with my love of books, comics, role-playing games, and hockey; labels miss all the good parts.

  The best way to understand me is to read my works. Writing is like telepathy; it’s a window from one mind to another. The Doc Vandal series is my attempt to recreate what I like to describe as “Yesterday’s Tomorrow.” This is my homage to the pulps, from Doc Savage and the Shadow to Astounding Stories, Planet Stories and so much more. Expect to see giant robots, alien races, lost cities, and world-spanning conspiracies. I call it dieselpulp dialed to eleven, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

  If you want a biography: I was born in the UK, grew up in Canada, and have spent time in the US. I’ve been freelancing for the last decade. As a freelancer, I’ve done everything from blog posts to novels. Before that, and in no particular order, I’ve managed a bookstore, worked in a pawnshop, been the guy you get transferred to when you ask a phone rep for a supervisor, and even cleaned carpets for a living.

  Right now, I’m working on Doc Vandal and the team’s next adventure
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