Assassins of the Lost Kingdom (Airship Daedalus Book 1)

by E. J. Blaine

  That changed the situation. The gun could put down suppressive fire to keep them down while the soldiers moved up and around the dam. Not good.

  “Come on,” Jack said. He took Doc’s hand and led her down from the top of the pile of stone. He took the two smoke grenades from the pack and tossed them into the gap at the far end of the dam. That would cover their retreat at least. Then he led the way back toward the waterfall.

  When the canyon grew too narrow to walk, they leaped from boulder to boulder along the stream. Above them, the encroaching masses of ice loomed, and a cold mist chilled their skin. Jack picked out a route that led straight back to the waterfall itself, and realized there was a small space behind it. It was a cleft in the rock just big enough for the two of them. Jack leapt from a boulder and managed to catch the edge of the stone and pull himself up. He braced himself and leaned out to catch Doc’s hand and pull her up alongside him.

  And there they were, encased by stone with a curtain of water in front of them and heavy claws of ice hanging down at its sides. As tombs went, Jack supposed he’d seen worse.

  Doc was still holding his hand, and Jack didn’t want to let go. The war had taught him that the end came for everyone, whether you were ready or not. He’d been ready to die for years. But now things were different. Now there was Ellen, a little girl who would never know what became of her parents. Just when you thought you’d made your peace with the world, something always seemed to come along and throw you off.

  “Ellen,” he whispered.

  Doc squeezed his hand. “She’ll grow up strong. She’ll make us proud.”

  He heard shouting voices. They were close now.

  Jack hefted the pack with its three heavy frag grenades. “We can wait,” he said, “or we can take some of those bastards with us. What do you think?”

  She grinned. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  Then she kissed him, hard and long, clutching him to her. It was a kiss that said all the things they’d never managed to say to each other.

  “Let’s go,” she whispered at last.

  Jack reached into the pack and pulled the pins on all three grenades. He swung the pack around by its straps for momentum and hurled it high into the air. The pack arced up, toward the overhanging mass of rock and ice. He heard someone shout in alarm.

  Then there was a massive roar and a crack that sounded like the earth itself being torn in two. He heard a deep rumble, and then everything was moving. He felt Doc torn away from him as a wall of freezing water hit them with a shock that ripped the breath from him.

  And then there was nothing.

  Chapter 19

  Jack awoke to the sound of dripping water. For a moment he assumed a faucet wasn’t quite closed somewhere. Someone should fix that, he thought, whoever had left it on.

  Then he sat bolt upright. “Dorothy!” he cried. There was no answer.

  Jack was sitting on wet stone worn smooth to the touch. He was cold. He was alone.

  He was alive.

  He took a moment to check himself out and take in his surroundings. He had some bruises and minor abrasions, but somehow he appeared to be unhurt. He’d clearly been wet, but his body and his clothes had nearly dried in the morning sun. He recognized the canyon, but it was different. The stream was gone, he realized suddenly. There was no waterfall, no water tumbling over the stones as it escaped the canyon. There was only a slow drip into a small pool nearby, the sound he had heard.

  The explosion had reshaped the whole end of the canyon. It had blown away ice and rock and ripped away the side of the glacial basin that had fed the stream. The entire body of water must have drained out in moments. He remembered the impact, and the shock of cold water. From the looks of the canyon, it must have carried away everything in its path. It would have scoured the canyon and left behind only scattered pools of standing water and a bare stream bed.

  Jack stood up, amazed to be alive but fearful for Doc. One of his .45s was still snapped into its holster. He found the other some fifty feet down the canyon, still operable. He cleared the chamber and tested the action, then put it back in its holster.

  He began walking slowly down toward the canyon mouth.

  He found lost guns and ammunition bags scattered across the canyon floor. Black uniforms lay soaking wet and stretched across bare bones. Each time he saw another body, Jack felt his heart leap into his throat, thinking it was Doc. But there was no sign of her. Finally he called her name again. “Dorothy! Doc!”

  But no one answered. He was alone here. Had the fury he’d unleashed killed all of the Silver Star soldiers? Or had they simply withdrawn and somehow not found him lying there? Where could Doc be? She wouldn’t have simply left without him, not by choice at least.

  He made his way to the canyon mouth, past more empty black uniforms and scattered rifles. Near the mouth, he found the twisted mount for the heavy machine gun, the gun itself simply missing.

  Jack stopped at the mouth of the canyon and looked out over the grassy slope they’d fled across the day before. The stream channel was now just a dark, muddy slash in the land, running downhill toward the pine forest. The grass had been pressed flat and stained with mud in a fan spreading out from where he stood.

  What the hell was he meant to do now? But he knew the answer before the thought formed. Living or dead, Doc had to be somewhere. He was meant to find her.

  Jack set out down the slope toward the forest. Then there was a quick pneumatic hiss and something stung his neck. Jack’s hand flew to the spot and he felt something foreign there. His hand came away holding a small, feathered dart.

  He drew one of his .45s and whirled in the direction the dart must have come from, but he could already feel his body slipping away from him. The gun wavered in his hand and his legs wobbled. He raised his gun at the dark figure he saw silhouetted against the bright morning. But he couldn’t steady it. Then his knees gave out, and he hit the ground in a heap. He had a glimpse of a man standing over him in a black uniform. Then, once more, the darkness rose up and took him.

  ###

  “Jack! Damn it, Jack, will you wake up?”

  She really was swearing a lot these days, Jack thought. Had she always been like that? He didn’t think so. It seemed to be a pretty recent thing.

  Then he worked out the implication that Doc was alive. She was okay. It followed that they were both alive, since he was hearing her. And then it occurred to him that his mind was just starting to put things together as it came out of unconsciousness. It was getting to be something of a habit.

  “Well, that can’t be good for me,” he murmured.

  “Try to make sense, Jack,” Doc said. Then, “Ow! Son of a bitch!”

  Jack opened his eyes. He was inside, lying on a narrow cot. There was a light directly overhead. He looked away, and there was Doc, lying on a metal table nearby. He was so happy to see her he couldn’t help laughing. She didn’t seem to appreciate it.

  “Really? What is so damn funny?”

  “Did you always curse like this?” he asked, very seriously.

  “Only when it’s appropriate, Jack. It’s been really appropriate these last couple days.”

  “I don’t remember you cursing a lot.”

  “That’s because I used to mind my manners around you.”

  “What? I don’t rate anymore?”

  “At the moment, no, you do not. Maybe if you made yourself useful and tried to get out of those ropes. Because I’m not having a hell of a lot of luck with mine!”

  He was tied down, Jack realized. They’d tied him to the cot by his wrists and ankles. Doc was tied to her table, he noticed, struggling to get free.

  Then it dawned on him. He understood what was going on, and he was seized by the urge to explain it to Doc. If she understood, maybe she’d give him a break.

  “They drugged me!” he announced. “That’s why I’m like this!”

  “I know,” said Doc. “It’s really annoying.”


  There was a sound nearby, a lock opening he thought.

  “Play dead!” Doc hissed as a door opened. A man’s shadow fell across the room.

  “That’s not going to work,” Jack said. “It’s their drug. They know how long I’ll be out.”

  “Quite correct,” said the stranger. “For an adult male, approximately six hours, which has now passed. That is followed by perhaps two hours of disorientation, which is what you are experiencing now. So perhaps we will talk more later. In the meantime, I’m told the experience is not unpleasant. So…enjoy.”

  His accent was German, and the voice suggested an older man. As he crossed the room to Doc’s table, Jack got a look at him and decided he was perhaps sixty, tall and lean, with rapidly graying hair cropped short. He wore a dingy looking white lab coat and a tunic over black uniform pants and boots. He looked over Doc and then Jack with a hungry leer.

  “I am Doctor Mencken,” he said after a moment. Jack thought he’d heard the name before but he couldn’t quite recall. “I am the Science Commander on this expedition, and I am very happy to meet you. Very happy indeed. I am engaged in world changing research here. Positively world changing. Very important work, under what I’m sure you realize are very trying conditions.”

  “We know what you’re doing,” Doc snapped. “You’re making poisons.”

  Mencken stepped over to a utilitarian looking wooden workbench that ran the length of the wall. Jack saw plants growing in pots, a watering can on the floor beside them. The bench itself was strewn with glass vessels, rubber hoses, a tank of some gas. Flasks waited on metal frames. On the wall above them were row after row of glass jars with paper labels marked in thick, black lettering that Jack couldn’t read from where he lay.

  “Toxins are part of my work, yes,” he said. “Through chemistry we manipulate the body, just as through magic we manipulate the spirit, and through both we manipulate the mind, the intersection of the two. With these tools we remake man and man remakes the world. Some minds must be trimmed away, like dead flesh. So certainly, toxins, yes. But there is so much more to be discovered here. So much more!”

  He plucked a glass jar from the workbench and showed it to Doc, then briefly to Jack. “This, for example. It causes a deep sleep of indefinite duration. How long does the subject remain disconnected from external sensory stimuli, able to focus fully on the more subtle stimuli of the mind and spirit?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps forever! But I simply cannot say. There are no test subjects here, and so I have been unable to fully explore its properties.”

  “You’re a madman!” said Doc.

  Mencken chuckled. “You’re hardly the first to say so,” he said. “I was offended once, but I see now how it appears to the unenlightened. Science pushes into unknown realms. From them, it brings back new ideas, often startling ideas. And so does madness, yes, yes. So what is the difference, we may ask. The only criterion I can suggest is a simple one; do these new ideas actually work? I assure you, mine do.”

  “You like having an audience, don’t you?” said Jack.

  Mencken laughed again. “It is true, I admit. From my professorial days.” He turned back to his bench and started to work over a pair of dishes positioned under a light.

  “I used to have a pair of assistants, you know,” he said over his shoulder. “Remarkably stupid, but able to follow simple orders. And good listeners. But that has changed with your little stunt at the glacial falls. Do you know you killed more than a dozen of Captain Ardinger’s soldiers?”

  “And that’s just the two of us,” said Doc. “Wait until our reinforcements come looking for us. If you’re smart you’ll untie us and get us out of here. We’ll put in a good word for you.”

  Mencken ignored her. “Now my assistants are needed elsewhere, and I must do my own chores and talk to myself. So I’m doubly glad to at least have the two of you. How much do you weigh, my dear?”

  “Kiss my ass!” Doc snarled. Then she unleashed a stream of expletives, some of which Jack didn’t even recognize.

  Mencken looked surprised. “You are a rude one, aren’t you?”

  “This is pretty new, actually,” Jack offered helpfully. “She used to be on her best behavior around me, but I don’t rate anymore.”

  “How unfortunate,” Mencken said, but Jack didn’t think he meant it. “Fifty to fifty-five kilograms can’t be too far off,” he said, and turned back to his work.

  As soon as Mencken’s back was turned, Doc resumed worked her wrist back and forth against the ropes that bound her to the table.

  “Now this that I’m working on, this is the most intriguing of all,” Mencken said as he worked. “More than the poisons, or even the sleeping formula, this drug asks fundamental questions about the very nature of self. Of all of them, this is what will win me the Nobel.”

  Mencken turned with a glass flask, and Doc quickly let her wrist go limp. He showed her the clear liquid inside. “Essentially a surgical anesthetic,” he said. “Honestly, you can’t spit in this place without hitting a plant with some kind of sedative property. I’ve isolated several already, but they’re trivial. This, though.”

  He took a hypodermic from the shelf, inserted it into the flask, and drew back the plunger to fill it. “It completely suppresses higher brain function, while leaving simple physical control completely intact. The subject’s personality, their will, is completely removed, but they are able to carry out instructions. Spoken instructions, you understand! Their minds still decode language! But the results are simply accepted by the involuntary mind and acted on automatically, with no consciousness at all.”

  “That’s monstrous!” Doc said, and Jack could hear the fear in her voice now.

  “It’s fascinating! But Captain Ardinger severely limited my tests on his men. Another reason I’m so thrilled to have actual test subjects!” Mencken tapped the hypodermic to clear any air bubbles, then leaned over Doc, who struggled in vain against the ropes.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Jack.

  Mencken looked up and glanced at Jack with a smile. “I don’t think that’s quite correct,” he said. “If you were me, that implies you would think as I think, and I absolutely intend to inject your friend here. So if you were really me, you would do the same in a heartbeat. Yes?”

  Jack considered it and decided that made sense, actually. He’d gotten caught up in the words without quite working out what they really meant. He should keep it simple because the raging part in the back of his mind was insistent on getting his meaning across.

  “I guess so,” Jack said. “I should have said, it’s a very, very bad idea.”

  Now Mencken seemed intrigued. “And why is that?”

  “Because if you hurt her, there’s no power on Earth that will stop me from killing you.”

  There, Jack thought. That was simple and clear. That was a good sentence. He was good at this.

  Dr. Mencken shook his head. “I doubt that, under the circumstances,” he said. “You are just in a particularly…uncomplicated state of mind.”

  “That’s how you know I’m telling the truth,” said Jack.

  Mencken raised an eyebrow, then turned back to Doc with his needle poised.

  Jack heard a noise from the other side of the room. The door opened again and a shaft of afternoon sunlight shot across them. Mencken looked up again in irritation.

  “Stop!” a man’s voice barked. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The newcomer was a short, brawny fireplug of a man in a black uniform and cap. Jack thought it didn’t have quite the look on him the designers had intended. He was flanked by two younger, taller soldiers who stood stone-faced behind him.

  “What I’m doing is called science, Captain,” said Dr. Mencken. “You forget that I am the Science Commander of this expedition.”

  Jack decided this must be the Captain Ardinger that Mencken had spoken of. That was some good deductive reasoning right there. He was definitely
getting better at thinking.

  “Nobody authorized you to interfere with these prisoners!” Ardinger barked.

  “Maria Blutig demands results,” Mencken said, and his voice took on a whining tone. “If she wants results, I must have test subjects.”

  “Well, not these,” said Ardinger. “Not yet, anyway.” He turned to Jack. “Is your name Jack McGraw?” he snapped.

  “Yes!” Jack said, “Yes, it is!” He realized the truth of it just as Captain Ardinger spoke the words, and he found that astonishing. “By the way,” he added, “I’m probably going to kill that man.”

  “I would be…obligated to stop you,” said the Captain. “So, Captain Jack McGraw. And that makes you Dr. Dorothy Starr. Maria Blutig has a particular interest in these two, Mencken. You’re not to do anything until she’s informed of their capture. Then she will decide what is to be done with them. Do you understand me?”

  “Are you in contact with the Luftpanzer, then?” asked Dr. Mencken with a bit of a sneer.

  “We are scheduled to resume communications within the hour.”

  “Then by all means,” said Mencken, “Let us make our report. I’m sure she will be interested to hear of your interference in the important work I’m doing here!”

  Ardinger turned to the two soldiers accompanying him. “You, stay here and guard these two. Any further orders come directly from me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir!” they both shouted.

  “With me, Doctor,” Ardinger said, and he ushered Mencken out the door.

  The two soldiers moved to the closed door and took up positions on either side of it. They stood like statues, glaring across their two prisoners and saying nothing. A few moments passed.

  “Hey, do you guys have any licorice?” Jack asked. It was the damnedest thing. Suddenly he had the strangest craving for licorice.

  Chapter 20

  Somewhere over Kashmir, a dark shadow slid across the mountains. It drove against the fierce winds blowing from the Khyber Pass and made its way steadily southeast. The Luftpanzer was a huge black shape slipping through high clouds. Few on the ground saw the great airship, but those who did instinctively knew it for a dark omen and made warding signs or muttered prayers to the spirits.