Timpani the Ostrich Rancher (Flat Earth)

by David Barron

  Despite their long experience with this tropical climate, it was unavoidable that some men would succumb to the heat. They were picked up by their fellows and put with the doctors in the baggage train, an unwieldy combination of the support staff from all the ranches in the area. It snaked behind the advancing army, a diffuse mass of supplies and ammunition guaranteed only by the personal sidearms of the teamsters.

  Blissfully unaware of all this sloppiness was Eugene Dumortier, who was having a wonderful time. The gentlemen and he had decided to take a direct path to Dar-es-Salaam, the premier port on Reichland Africa’s east coast and the warehouse and armory for the region, and seize it by main force. The plan was sound and, best of all, simple. As Jake had put it: “Even this mob can find their way along the coast to Dar-es-Salaam.”

  The Army of Kenya was about three hours outside Tanga, a small coastal town, when one of the gliders returned. This appearance evoked different reactions within the expeditionary force. The men greeted it as a welcome distraction from the tedium, following the leisurely cyclone that was the craft’s descent. The gentlemen, Eugene chief amongst them, watched the craft in anticipation of the report it would bring of the enemy ahead.

  As the glider descended, Eugene saw that it was Jake’s. The commander spurred his horse to ride to the landing site, meeting on the way over the ground crew carrying a replacement rocket booster on a mule-drawn cart. He arrived as Jake was unstrapping the last restraint. Jake looked up, saw Eugene approaching, and jumped down from the glider. The men embraced and, as none of the other gentlemen were around to see (and if a rocket glider pilot can’t trust his ground crew, who can he trust?), they risked a quick public kiss.

  Jake pulled back first. “I have bad news,” he said.

  “Damn.”

  §

  The Germans were fortified in Tanga. It was bad news, the gentlemen all agreed. Night was falling and the rocket gliders were returning from their patrols two by two, so Jake had left Lisa Rutherford in charge and come to the meeting in person. He detailed the search patterns and the favorable coastal winds that had allowed for a very wide-ranging scout mission. He told how the squadron had spotted a mass of troops in the quiet town. A closer inspection had revealed that the troops were creating fortifications.

  “That is: The enemy is creating a hasty wall against our advance while he tries to reinforce Dar-es-Salaam. And Tanga most likely saw us scouting them out, so the hasty wall knows we’re coming,” finished Jake. The gentlemen murmured amongst themselves.

  “There goes surprise,” said Lord Pennington. “But can you make an estimate of how many troops are in Tanga?”

  “Perhaps as many as five hundred,” said Jake. “And in a fortified position.”

  “Then we must attack at once before they finish their fortifications!” said Eugene. “Our advantage must be speed. If we take and hold Dar-es-Salaam, we cut off German Reichland from further supplies and are the masters of this region.”

  “Agreed,” said Jake.

  “We could always wait for the Navy to move up the coast to support us,” began Rhett Jhones, a lawyer who had settled down on the family ranch in Kenya.

  “And lose the initiative?” said Lord Pennington. “Unthinkable!”

  “Yes, we must take Tanga tomorrow and proceed to Dar-es-Salaam,” said Eugene. The other gentlemen murmured agreement. The London Federation had a fine Navy, but it was engaged in other theaters, and lacked a secure port in East Africa. But if they could take Dar-es-Salaam…

  §

  Eugene Dumortier watched from his command tent as it all went wrong. The first wave of three assaulting companies had made it into the perimeter of the Tanga defenses and was opening fire on the outnumbered defenders when the gatling gun opened up on them. Until that moment it had been concealed and the men were taken completely by surprise as bullets sliced the front ranks to ribbons. A second gatling gun opened up from farther down the line of unfinished fortifications and the men wavered, broke, ran back, some falling as they were shot in the back.

  “Damn,” he said and felt it. There went his plan for a quick victory, and with it any chance of keeping this theater of the war from bogging down into a brutal bloody brawl. “Messenger to Lord Pennington, the second wave is to hold. We’ll have to retreat.”

  Jake Bmonc had been thinking, though. “Wait,” he said, stopping the messenger. “What if I can get rid of those gatling guns?”

  “How?”

  “From the air,” said Jake.

  The enormity of the suggestion gave Eugene pause. The rocket gliders were made for scouting, not for direct use in battle. They were equipped with small gatling guns for the rare occasion of air combat, and any use of the gun greatly reduced the flight range of the craft. To attempt to destroy a ground target would require the glider to dive, sacrificing more range. Assuming the craft did not crash outright from a stall or that the pilot was not hit by fire from the ground.

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “It won’t just be me. This is the kind of stunt that will appeal to Lisa. Besides, we need at least two gliders to get both of the gatling guns.”

  “That’s true, but what if you can’t pull up?”

  “It’s the only way. And if the men are charging right in after we take both guns out, we’re sure to be rescued in no time if anything goes wrong.”

  Eugene sighed in annoyance. “Messenger to Lord Pennington:,” he amended. “Regroup and prepare the second and third waves for a final assault.” As the messenger ran off, he looked at Jake. “Well, get in the sky!”

  §

  Lisa Rutherford strapped herself in, ready to take off. The plan was difficult, dangerous, but above all daring. Daring: that’s what Lisa Rutherford lived for, even more than the squadron leader, Jake. Without daring, would she be able to live in Kenya alone, or would she still be trapped in a manor house in a moor writing novels to earn spending money? As she often did during these moments, she reflected on how well-timed her late husband Thaddeus’ death had been. To die so conveniently on an expedition into the desert, with her alone left with his assets in Mombasa and thus able to retain them in her care. Even in liberal Kenya, it had been a struggle to retain her independence, but the gentlemen of Mombasa refused to see her disinherited. After a word from His Majesty the King to Queen Victoria, her husband’s family had been forced to back down.

  She saw the signal from Jake, and cleared her ground crew away. Time was of the essence, and any delay would cost the lives of men in the second wave. She smashed the button and the rocket engine glowed to life, slamming her forward. She struggled to maintain her grip on the flight controls. The take-off was the hardest part, because the pilot had to do everything from a horizontal position or risk being stripped off the fuselage by the acceleration. Her rocket-glider rose into the air, higher and higher, and then she leveled off before the rocket was expended, blasting her way forward toward the town defenses. She would need all her speed to pull out of the mad diving attack.

  The rocket sputtered out, and she looked over to Jake flying next to her. He gave the signal and she released the rocket tube. Now she could sit up and rest herself against the chair back while she adjusted the glider to the wind patterns.

  This was the easy part, and she had years of practice. The moment she had spotted a rocket-glider, she had known that it was the life for her, and she had enough money to pursue the career to its limits. This was her second rocket-glider. The first had been destroyed in a crash after a sandstorm had caught her up. She had walked through the desert for a day and a night before another pilot had spotted her. Her grip tightened on the controls as she remembered the barely controlled landing.

  She felt rather than heard the surge of martial spirit, and she looked down to see the men of the second wave begin their charge. Eugene must have prepared them well if they were this eager to charge within range of the gatling guns again. She hoped—no, she thought, I know—that she would destroy the gun, and s
he prayed that she’d survive the attempt.

  The two rocket-gliders had reached the point of descent, but to the defenders of Tanga they must seem like mere scouts. Not a threat. Lisa saw that Jake had run up the signal flag for attack. She sighted down her gatling gun—obvious now that it had betrayed its position—made a last minute adjustment and then threw her craft into a sharp dive.

  The startled defenders, until then focused on the rushing wave of attacking men, tried to turn their attention to the fliers. But by then it was too late. The dive brought Lisa into range of the gatling gun, and she could see its operators struggling to raise the barrel. She adjusted her angle of attack, then brought her hand up to the trigger of the glider’s gun. She squeezed the trigger and a line of bullets sparked down to impact in a tight circle around the enemy gatling gun. The men dived for cover as the gun tipped over into the sand. It would take a while for the gun to come back into action, and they didn’t have the time.

  But success had affected the glider as well, the recoil of the volley throwing the delicate balance of the craft’s flight out of line. Lisa struggled with the controls, trying to bring the glider under control. A bullet pinged through the glider’s wing, the ground defenders returning fire with rifles. Startled, she banked in reflex away from the bullets, and gasped when she realized what she had done. Then she breathed a sigh of relief when she by chance caught an updraft and soared up and away back toward the Army of Kenya. She looked back over her shoulder, got a good view of the wave of men overrunning the defenders. Then she looked around and realized Jake’s glider was nowhere to be seen.

  §

  Eugene had watched the two gliders dive together and disable the two gatling guns just as the second and third waves had come into range. The men had cheered and charged into the town. Eugene had kept watching through his telescope, and had seen Jake’s glider stall under a heavy barrage and limp out of control out of view down into the town. Now he was running through the streets of the town with the men of his company, searching. Around him the chaos of a successful assault was being brought under control by the gentlemen and their sergeants, and Lord Pennington was dealing with the commander of the German force.

  Eugene didn’t notice the glider wing overhanging the street until his sergeant pointed it out to him. “Let’s go!” he said, and bounded forward into the front door of the two-story structure. His pistol was in his hand, and he whirled when he heard a gasp of surprise. A woman clutched her baby in the corner of the room. He looked for the stairs, and she pointed.

  He heard a gunshot as he made his way up the stairs, and then he heard Jake: “You bastards, I said I surrender!” It was followed by more gunshots and the sound of splintering wood. “That’s what you want then?” continued Jake, and Eugene heard two shots from the man’s service revolver. There was a groan and a German soldier fell down into the stairway, dead.

  Eugene looked back at the squad of men who had followed him to the stairway and they nodded back, ready. He took a breath and charged up the steps and on to the roof. The mangled fuselage of the glider, one of the wings shred to pieces and the other torn off to hang over the side of the roof, was providing cover for Jake. The three remaining German soldiers had decided to charge the pilot, but Eugene aimed and fired, hitting one in the shoulder. The rest of his men boiled out and a single volley cut down the rest.

  Jake looked up over the top of the glider and shrugged. “See? I told you you’d rescue me.” Before Eugene could say anything, they heard the sound of bugling. “That’s the Germans sounding cease firing. Looks like you’ve won.”

  Eugene turned to the sergeant. “See that that woman is not harmed and get her some water and food. And send a messenger to Lord Pennington that Jake Bmonc has been found.” The sergeant saluted and went back downstairs. Eugene turned back to Jake and indicated the destroyed glider. “Looks like you’re grounded for the duration.”

  “Whatever will I do with my time?” asked Jake.

  As the fighting died down, the prisoners were sorted and the tedium of making camp for the night commenced. And in a quiet room in an abandoned house two people celebrated the victory and their survival together.

  §

  If it were possible for Timpani to hate Commissioner Wren Ja more than he already did, he would. But the rose-quartz man only sat and watched from under his wide-brimmed hat as the idiot babbled, wondering to himself how long his patience would last.

  “So, in light of these raids, I will be pulling the police force back to Mombasa. We need to consolidate and secure what we can. Certainly, this will mean losses amongst the ranches, but—”

  Not very long, Timpani discovered. He felt himself rising to his feet and taking off the hat he had worn to the public announcement.

  “Exchuse me, soor,” he shouted, in a voice that asked no permission. “But the Dumortier Ranch’—” the ch was aspirated hard, like water running across rock “—demands support.”

  “And mine the same!” This angry voice that of another foreman, Mr. Petremkin, and it was soon echoed by the rest.

  Wren Ja was overwhelmed, and glared at the rose-quartz man. Timpani could not return the expression, but knew Wren Ja remembered his first day in Mombasa. Hassled by a group of policemen led by a newly appointed lieutenant, the rose-quartz man had defended himself. The broken ribs had healed, but Wren Ja remained an enemy. “Silence,” the man said. “I am the police commissioner. I do not answer to you people.”

  “Eugene Dumortier left me in ch’arge of the defense of his property. You answoor to him, you answoor—” the challenge in the Timpani’s voice was evident “—to me.” The crowd’s murmured agreement turned to shouts of approval. This might be a rose-quartz man, but that was a commissioner. And Timpani wasn’t the only one who’d been hassled by the overbearing appointee.

  “Here, sergeant, remove this…man,” Wren Ja said. The dark-skinned police sergeant eyed the Commissioner in disbelief. “Use a squad if you must.”

  The muscular sergeant motioned to the other policemen and they—

  And then Timpani removed his long duster. “Hold this, Laedt,” the rose-quartz man said to the senior ranch hand who had accompanied him. Timpani’s thin white shirt did not conceal the racing sparks that ran under his polished quartz surface. He rose to his full height and brought a single arm up, balling the rough-hewn hand into a fist. Whoever had sculpted the rose-quartz man had not neglected to include a simulacrum of musculature, but the quartz itself seemed to ripple as it flexed.

  The sergeant turned to the commissioner. “Bugger that,” he said. The other policemen nodded in agreement. Wren Ja was shocked.

  “Let’s have Boss Timpani as temporary acting commissioner for the duration,” said Mr. Petremkin. “Who here agrees?” A chorus of ayes. “Good, now get Ja out of here. If you would, Sergeant?” And to this the sergeant cheerfully complied.

  “I’ll see you hang for this, Timpani!” shouted Wren Ja as he was dragged out of the room.

  Without turning to face the ex-commissioner, Timpani recovered his duster and put his hat back on his head. “You can’t hang a rose-quartz man.”

  §

  Crouching in the savannah scrub near the Dumortier Ranch as midnight passed, Timpani reflected that being in charge might not be such a good idea. If he had guessed wrong and the raiders didn’t attack here tonight, another ranch would bear the brunt. The Germans could do a lot of damage before the main body of defenders could get over there. But no, the best chance they had of defeating the raiders was by setting an ambush. And the Dumortier Ranch is the most tempting target around, he thought with pride.

  He heard a faint rustling as the forward spotters crept back. One of them stopped beside him and whispered: “A small force, about ten men, followed by a large force, about thirty in two groups. Two scouts in front.” Timpani nodded and the man went further back to pass the word along. The night went silent except for the cluckle of sleeping ostriches farther along the savannah, the sil
ence of forty men about to be ambushed by twenty.

  When it happened it happened fast, long waiting interrupted by one of the Germans stumbling over the sergeant. The man was clubbed down. A shout from the sergeant and that side of the line opened fire into the raiders. Timpani lit and threw a flare into the center of the field of fire and it was followed by several more. Timpani was pleased to see that most of the raiders were in the field of fire, and now they were blinded by the sudden flash of light. The apparent leader of the raiders was quick on his feet and started to shout an order, but it was too late.

  A volley from the rest of the ambushers cut him and a quarter of his men down. The Germans got a few pitiful shots in, and a stray bullet whizzed by a safe distance above Timpani’s head. The defender’s second volley was better aimed, and more of the enemy fell. The groans of the wounded began to overcome the noise of reloading, and Timpani stood up and took a step forward. He let the flare light play over his inhuman form for a beat and then raised a hand. “Ceashe fire,” he said. “Throw down your weapons.”

  “Do it,” croaked the fallen officer, and the remaining raiders responded with a pleasing alacrity. A cheer went up amongst the ambushers as they streamed out to secure the defeated foe. Laedt came up to Boss Timpani and patted him on the shoulder, then rushed over to the officer. The rose quartz-man stood still, basking in triumph. He could get used to this.

  §

  Dawn lit up the defeated town of Tanga, the rays of the sun seeking out every inhabitant. But the Army of Kenya was already marching, having left their wounded behind with a token force to guard the prisoners. As Eugene had predicted, they had been able to draw volunteers from amongst the native population, which saw the Kenyan triumph more as a liberation than a defeat. Whether that would last after the war was up to them.