To Slip the Surly Bonds

by Chris Kennedy

  Jack nodded. Pearl squeezed his hand once more and willed him to meet her eyes.

  You want to thank me for saving your life? Do the hard thing, Jack. Be my friend. Be a friend to other men and women who look like me. Show people around you that we’re all just people. Find others who think the way you did and teach them the truth.

  He slowly lifted his head and locked his gaze on to hers. She watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed hard, and then nodded.

  “I promise,” he said out loud. “I give you my word.”

  “Good enough for me,” Pearl said with a smile. She squeezed his fingers once more, then let go.

  “Hey!” Eric Moorefield shouted, standing up in their lifeboat and waving his hands. “I see a ship!”

  Is that your destroyer, Esther? Pearl asked while the other man began shouting and hooting and waving.

  It is! Well, it’s my King’s anyway. May I present the HMS Sabre? They’ve just radioed that they’ve spotted your two lifeboats, Pearl. My radioman is giving them a course to your sister ship now.

  “I think they’ve got us, boys,” Pearl said out loud as the ship turned and began heading steadily toward them. “We’ll be home in time for dinner.”

  * * * * *

  The Crew of One For The Money:

  Pilot: Major Dan Corder

  Co-Pilot: 1Lt Zach White

  Bombardier: Capt Steven T. Smith

  Navigator: Capt Frank Earl

  Flight Engineer/Gunner: Sgt Eric Henson

  Radio: Cpl Peter Gold

  Left Waist: Sgt Scott Kuntzelman

  Right Waist: Cpl Eric Moorefield

  Ball Turret: Pfc Lawrence Koz

  Tail: Pfc Jack Lester

  * * * * *

  Kacey Ezell Bio

  Kacey Ezell is an active duty USAF instructor pilot with 2500+ hours in the UH-1N Huey and Mi-171 helicopters. When not teaching young pilots to beat the air into submission, she writes sci-fi/fantasy/horror/noir/alternate history fiction. Her first novel, Minds of Men, was a Dragon Award Finalist for Best Alternate History. She’s contributed to multiple Baen Books anthologies and has twice been selected for inclusion in the Year’s Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction compilation. In 2018, her story “Family Over Blood” won the Year’s Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction Readers’ Choice Award. In addition to writing for Baen, she has published several novels and short stories with independent publisher Chris Kennedy Publishing. She is married with two daughters. You can find out more and join her mailing list at www.kaceyezell.net.

  # # # # #

  Tail Gunner Joe by William Alan Webb

  A Story of the Time Police

  The first rule of time is simple: Don’t mess with the stream. When you visit the offices of the Time Police, that rule is plastered everywhere you look, so I knew better when I did it. But I did it anyway, and I deserved a worse punishment than what I got.

  * * *

  Sergeant Joe Edwards was a veteran of seventeen missions. He had two ME-109s to his credit, both on the same mission, which was quite a score for a tail gunner. He manned the loneliest position on the plane. To reach his battle station, Edwards crawled down a narrow tunnel to the rear of the Flying Fortress. Being bulked-up in a flight suit, oxygen mask, heavy boots and fur-lined gloves made it slow and sweaty. Once in his seat Edwards never saw where they were going, only where they’d been. If the bomber took fatal damage he was screwed. It wasn’t impossible to get out of the plane, but it was close.

  There was a splendid majesty to it all, even if it was ancient history to me. During my college days, I had been on field trips to other great events in human history, mainly battles, among them Cannae, Agincourt, Hastings, Waterloo, Gettysburg and, of course, the Somme. So are all the moments of greatest human endeavors painted in blood? Not necessarily. During debates of the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., when Constantine convened the Christian bishops to decide what was canonical and what wasn’t, things got pretty heated. I’m still surprised nobody got whacked by a thrown goblet or wine bottle. I guess they were too afraid of Constantine, who wasn’t known for suffering fools.

  I’ve munched figs while strolling through the Agora during the glory days of Athens and watched Plato stare mesmerized as Socrates taught a lesson. I’ve watched Hannibal’s military councils during the Second Punic War. I’ve stood in the court of Frederick the Great where French was the only language and, thanks to my embedded translator, I understood every word. Regardless of the culture or the era, observing human history is an awesome, humbling experience. Watching the 91st Bomb Group drone towards Germany was no exception and, for a moment, the fact that I was committing a Major Crime against Time didn’t register in my mind.

  That was my second big mistake.

  In the time-stream when I was born Holographic Time Projection with Enhanced Sensory Perception was the hottest new technology. In essence, it allowed all your senses to function during a time-trip, although at a reduced level. How well they functioned was dependent on the power supply; more power, more sensory input. This could be done despite your being a hologram projected through time. So now, in 1944, I didn’t only see history unfold, I heard the crackle of the inter-plane radio, smelled the oil of the turret bearings and felt the high-altitude cold. I could taste the second-hand smoke of the last Lucky Strike before takeoff. ESP made history come alive in a palpable way that merely watching couldn’t do. It immersed you in the moment, as you were literally right there in the action.

  Now you know my first mistake.

  You see, it was an historian’s dream but highly illegal. My license didn’t permit ESP, let alone full visibility; they reserved red cards for government types. Before, I had thought such regulations were nothing more than bureaucratic snobbery. You know, jealous civil servants keeping the scholars in the dark to protect their own little fiefdom. Now I know how wrong I was, but now it’s too late.

  The bomb group maintained 28,000 feet that day, crippling the performance of most Luftwaffe fighters that might rise to meet them. By that stage of the war the quality of German aviation fuel was poor, making it hard for the remaining fighters to be effective at high altitude.

  Flak, however, was not affected by height.

  I always envisioned flak as the number one fear of the bomber crews. The German 88-millimeter dual purpose cannon was the deadliest AA gun of its day, with the killing power to rip a B-17 to shreds with one hit. Much to my surprise, most flight crews didn’t sweat the flak too much. You couldn’t do anything about it, so why worry? They hated it, but there were too many other dangers involved in flying ten-hour missions over enemy territory to lose sleep over flak. This was a revelation to me then.

  From his vantage point in the tail turret of the lead plane, Edwards could see the 91st Bomb Group (H) strung out over the North Sea. The B-17s’ vapor trails in the ice blue sky marked the route back to England. The dazzling sun could blind an unwary man as it reflected off the wings of the bare-metal plane. Overhead, the occasional glint of sunlight from a P-51 flashed a comforting light as the “Little Friends” kept the remnants of the Luftwaffe at bay. By the summer of 1944 the Germans had precious few fighters left to attack the bomber streams, but even one ME-109 that got through the P-51s could wreak havoc.

  German fighters had initially tried attacking from the rear in the early phases of the war. They’d found out quickly that was where the defensive firepower of the group was concentrated, so they’d switched to coming in from the nose. Unfortunately, frontal attacks took a degree of skill no longer prevalent with most Luftwaffe pilots, so now those few who survived the escorts had switched back to tail attacks. At least Edwards’ B-17, nicknamed Jumpin’ Jenny, was a G model, with a powered tail turret. Before that, the rear protection was a pair of hand-swiveled fifty-caliber machine guns, clumsy to aim and very heavy. Believe me, it makes a difference.

  World War Two has always been a passion with me. And, as good historians should, I�
�d done quite a lot of research on my subjects, Edwards included. He’d been born in 1922 in Olive Branch, MS, and moved to Memphis when he was six, graduating from Humes High School in 1940. Thanks to his father’s connections, Edwards landed a great job in a tire factory and worked there until Pearl Harbor rocked the nation. Like millions of other young men, he joined the Army to kill either Krauts or Japs. Edwards had thought he wanted to carry a rifle until he ate the chow in boot camp. Then came a call for volunteers; the Army needed tail gunners and since Air Corps food beat the hell out of K-rations and mess hall slop, Edwards joined without a second thought. He excelled at gunnery school and made sergeant in March, 1944. Then came that incredible June day over Bremerhaven, when he shot down two ME-109’s that broke through the fighter cover. In later years, Edwards would have called it the greatest day of his life, if I hadn’t committed a time crime scant months later.

  Both fighters had been painted with the yellow fuselage bands designating them as Russian Front veterans. My later research informed me this was because their Gruppen hadn’t had time to replace them with red Home Defense bands. Edwards killed the first Messerschmitt with a long burst at a high angle of deflection, a tough shot. The other seemed intent on ramming, he’d pressed his attack so close. For one split second that Joe Edwards never would have forgotten, he and the German pilot faced each other over flaming guns. The B-17 staggered as 30-millimeter cannon shells ripped into her tail and vertical stabilizers. Somehow, none hit Edwards and his turret. Then the fighter exploded, and it was over.

  Why am I telling you all of this? Guilt, I suppose. What more should you know? Really, he was just your average middle-of-the-century American. After the war, he would have tried college at Ole Miss, dropped out, married Adele Stephenson in 1948, had three kids, a boy and two girls, made shift foreman at the tire plant in 1954, retired in 1983 and died of kidney failure in 1996. Throughout his life, Adele would have nagged him to quit smoking, he would have developed a passion for Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour, hated television except for Jeopardy, liked early rock ‘n’ roll, especially fellow Mississippian Elvis Presley, and broken his hip at the Grand Opening of the Pyramid in Memphis in 1991 when he slipped off a curb. His great-great-grandson would have been one of the first recipients of the Muscular Dystrophy vaccine in 2036. His son would have played basketball for Memphis State, closing out his career by scoring nine points in a tight victory over UCLA in the 1973 NCAA title game. (Final score: UCLA 71, Memphis State 73.) Joseph Daniel Edwards III would have rotated down to double team UCLA center Bill Walton, stolen the ball several times, and the Bruins would have stopped feeding Walton the ball to their overall detriment. It would have made all the difference and proud papa Edwards would have been in the arena to see it.

  And then I came along.

  * * *

  I wanted to write the definitive history of World War Two, using revelations about the Allied effort that only came to light in the late 21st century. Western histories are replete with acres of books about how brave and noble the war was, which it was but also wasn’t. The average American soldier did his part, it’s true. And on the surface it was a good war fought for the right reasons with more than enough provocation. Only fifty years after the fact did the government admit to things like testing mustard gas on unsuspecting Navy personnel, then denying them medical care when their lungs disintegrated. The truth of the Philadelphia Experiment was too shocking even then for most to believe it. And the revelation of Hitler’s real identity changed everything.

  * * *

  I wanted to tell the full story, the brilliant strategies and incredible heroics as well as the nasty stuff the armed forces would rather have kept quiet. Sometimes humans make mistakes and do terrible things. And if the Allies didn’t execute millions of people for no reason, neither were their hands clean of innocent blood.

  My idea was to use technology to interview the people who actually fought the war and let them write the book. While Russian artillery shells rained on the Führerbunker, did Hitler have any regrets? Did he realize what could have been if he had pulled just one panzer division out of Russia and sent it to Rommel before El Alamein? Did FDR know the Japanese were heading for Pearl Harbor, as revisionists claim? Did Mussolini know how bad his army was before he invaded Greece? Did Churchill really like Montgomery, or did he think him a necessary pain-in-the-ass? Time windows could bring answers to some long sought questions.

  But accomplishing this meant I had to live the war, know its combatants, and see them fight and die. In short, it meant going Interactive, the worst Crime against Time on the books, short of changing history. Another crime which, unfortunately, I also committed.

  The Time Regulatory Commission was cooperative to a point. They issued me a yellow-card, which meant I could watch all I wanted but no visibility, ESP, or Interaction. On penalty of dire consequences, I could most definitely not interfere. Fine, I said. Then I bought two machines. The first was a new HP-2B with optional outboard ESP module, (the TSP issued the actual modules). The second was a black-market, very expensive, you’d-better-not-get-caught-with-this HP-A5-2, with inboard ESP, Visibility, and Interaction modules. When that cash changed hands, I became a criminal. Especially since the cash in question wasn’t government issued (paper currency’s evils were well known by that point) but actually fizzles, the digital currency of the Dark League. Figuring even owning fizzles was a high crime, I splurged for the Scanchecker option. That allowed me to know which frequencies the TRC monitored at any given moment and would vary my signal to avoid detection. A neat feature which cost me almost every last fizzle I had.

  I thought I was being very clever. I left no digital breadcrumbs for my illegal purchases and never said a word to anybody. To cover up the huge power demands of the HP-A5-2, I had my HP-2B repaired four times for excessive power usage. In the end it didn’t matter.

  * * *

  That day’s mission was Peenemunde, the German rocket and jet research center on the coast of the Baltic Sea. The air war over Germany reached a crescendo in 1944 when long-range American escort fighters cut bomber losses way down. Germany’s piston-engine fighter force suffered ruinous losses of pilots and machines and by August 4th, the day in question, Luftwaffe resistance had grown weak. That put every target in Germany in the crosshairs of Norden bomb sights.

  I had dreaded the roar of the B-17’s four big Pratt and Whitney’s, but to my surprise the noise soon became a muted drone. You got used to it much faster than I had anticipated, and the crew no longer noticed it at all. In fact, for the tail gunner, it could be eerily quiet.

  It was bumpy, though. Jumpin’ Jenny’s fuselage vibrated with something called flutter, which modern aircraft no longer have to deal with. Flutter is an oscillation caused by interaction of aerodynamic forces, structural elasticity, and inertial effects. Add in the inherent torque of the engines, and it rattled you like a monitor lizard shaking a rat. If you were one of the crew, you were also thrown around by air-pockets, winds, and flak. After a while it felt like your brain was sloshing around inside your skull.

  Five and a half miles below our feet, the steel blue of the North Sea lightened as we approached the coast of Holland. Edwards knew they would soon be over enemy territory and rechecked his equipment for the thousandth time. I watched him with admiration.

  What motivated this tire worker from Mississippi to travel thousands of miles from home to fight for his country? I wondered. What was the essence of such a man? Nationalism and its first cousin patriotism were largely gone from my time, so I was genuinely curious about Edwards’ motivations.

  Passing the coastline, the copilot’s voice crackled on the intercom, checking stations. Nearing the European coast was the time to be alert. And Edwards was alert, until I butted in.

  “Bombardier, check. Top turret, check…” When his turn came Edwards said the same things he always said, unwilling to break the superstitions that had brought him back from seventeen previous missions.

/>   “Tail gunner check. Permission to test guns?”

  “You’ve already done that, Joe.”

  “But twice is nice, unless I’m payin’ for the ammo.”

  The copilot chuckled into his microphone. “Shoot away, tail gunner.”

  When Edwards squeezed the trigger, I watched the twin fifty-caliber machine guns jolt him with their recoil. He fired ten rounds each with no misfires.

  “Tail gunner to copilot. Both guns A-okay. I need to piss.”

  “Permission denied. No pissin’ except on the Germans.”

  “Roger that.”

  Soldiers’ rituals are universal, part of every army that has ever marched, and the Eighth Air Force was no exception. When Ken Waters came aboard Jumpin’ Jenny as waist gunner, it took three hours at a local pub to review the plane’s do’s and don’ts list.

  “Pilot to crew. Keep it loose, gentlemen. Short bursts only, if we see any 190’s don’t lead ‘em too much. We’re over angels twenty so they can’t juke around much up here.”

  I watched as Edwards nodded, even if no one could see him.

  “Remember your briefings on that jet G2 says the Krauts have. If we see one lead it half again as much as a 109 and remember everything you can about it. Count the guns and the boys at G-2 will buy you the biggest steak in London. If you’re lucky that steak might even be from a cow.”

  Edwards shook his head at the pilot’s joke. They’d heard all that before, including full briefings on the new jet fighter everybody had expected to see by now. Some veterans even thought it was a hoax to keep them sharp. Except I knew it wasn’t. The aircraft was called the ME-262, and if was too late and in too small a number to influence the outcome of the war, it would still kill a lot of B-17s before Hitler finally put a bullet in his brain. An incredible plane, it would be the basis for all western post-war fighter designs. It would make its first appearance on that very day, and the first person to see one would be Sergeant Joe Edwards. He would count the guns, even if nobody believed it had four cannon in the nose. The boys in G-2 would buy him a steak and, as a sign of appreciation, his group commander would even throw in a bottle of Jack Daniels. He would also inflict serious damage that grounded ME-262 flight operations for a month as the krauts tried to figure out what they did wrong. That saved a lot of American lives and was a pivotal moment in the history of aviation. It was the reason I was there.