The True History of the Strange Brigade

by Cassandra Khaw

  Where Hachirō expected shock in Mitsukawa’s eyes there was only a deep, lonely sorrow. The king had known his fate when he stepped down from his throne. He pulled himself along Hachirō’s blade until their faces were almost touching, and gripped Hachirō’s hair.

  “They do not deserve you.”

  He died, and Hachirō laid him gently on the floor.

  A MAN CRIED out.

  Hachirō turned a saw a dozen men and women had entered the room. They stood at its periphery, held back by their shock. They had surely come to the throne room to seek their king’s counsel.

  Now he was dead.

  The man who had cried out charged. Hachirō ran; he might be able to cut three or four of them down, but eventually the mob would smother him. He made for the staircase behind the throne room. There, atop the crow’s nest, he could defend himself.

  He was barely ahead of them as he climbed, taking the steps two or three at a time, stopping from time to time to slash behind himself with his sword. When he reached the apex, he stabbed the closest man to him and slammed the trap door shut. From here he could better see the damage.

  The town was a ruin, monsters the size of houses killing and feasting upon the people. The ship had been further ruined by the monsters’ escaping. A snake as long as a Fubuki lay dead, and a lizard like the one that had been trapped with Hachirō was thrashing across the deck, spears jutting from its shoulders and ribs as it bit and stomped its way through the crew. The Strange Brigade was gone, finally giving in to sense and escaping.

  Hachirō would wait here and defend himself until he was overcome or until the ship collapsed. He had fulfilled his mission. He could die here.

  A shadow loomed over him, perhaps a great spider, and he readied himself, raising his sword and turning to face his foe.

  A rope dangled in from of him.

  “Grab on!” Fairburne called to him from the dirigible.

  After everything, even now, the world would not allow him rest.

  Hachirō took the rope and held tight while the others pulled him up into the cargo hold and away from the Island of Nightmares.

  THEY ASCENDED INTO the clouds, and for the first time in a long time Hachirō did not mistake the moment of peace for the calm of death. Indeed, he was full of life, something he could not remember ever having felt before. The crew went about their duties, content to let him take in the moment by himself.

  A few hours later, Fairburne joined him.

  “We can take you as far as Okinawa. From there you can rejoin your Navy and go about your business. Off the record, a favour to a friend.”

  “That is a kind and generous offer, captain. But there is nothing for me in Japan. My Emperor threw away my life, and the lives of my crew. I was a student of the Nanshinron all my life, and where it should have brought me and my men glory, it only consumed us.”

  “Huh. Well, we’re always hiring. We could use a man with your talents.”

  “It would be an honor to serve with the DA-01.”

  “That settles it, then. There’s a few spare bunks. You’re welcome to take your pick when you’re ready.”

  Fairburne left him.

  Hachirō Shimizu, lieutenant-commander in the Imperial Navy, was dead. He had died days ago, on an island that defied reason. Cast out and forgotten by his country, he’d perished with his ship and with his crew. A new road stretched out ahead for the newest recruit of the Strange Brigade.

  Tessie’s Song

  Joseph Guthrie

  “I SWEAR... IN the whole world this is th’ only place I came back to as regular as my house.” The disdain in Tessie Caldwell’s words as she stared at her glass of bourbon was painfully obvious to everyone within earshot.

  The barkeep serving her—a tall, skinny, bronze-skinned young man wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a black vest, and black trousers—stared transfixed at Tessie, drying the tumbler glass she’d handed back to him a few minutes before.

  “But you know what really annoys me?”

  The barkeep continued to stare at Tessie, his face carefully expressionless. “No,” he replies. “No ma’am, I don’t.”

  “Well let me go ’head and break it down for you, then. I’m annoyed that I’ve done all of these things... things that most men couldn’t even dream of doing, and these same men have the nerve to get in my way.”

  The bartender’s expression gradually shifted from stoic to anxious, but he didn’t interrupt Tessie’s monologue. He continued to listen, while dutifully drying the tumbler.

  “Don’ get me wrong: I knew I’d have to work five times as hard as any man just to get a third of what I’ve already gotten; but if anyone told me all these men were trying to stop me because their yella-bellied asses were scared of what I’m even potentially capable of?” Tessie chuckled, swirling her bourbon around in her glass, then flashed a wry smile at the barkeep. “I would’ve laughed them out of whatever room we were sitting in.”

  The barkeep’s anxiety was palpable now, further underscored by the fact that he was still wiping down the glass he’d been holding since Tessie began her soliloquy.

  THE BARKEEP QUICKLY surveyed the room to see if anyone else was eavesdropping on the conversation. To his left, he saw three other pilots—all white men—who seemed to be preoccupied with whatever they were discussing. Just behind Tessie’s position at the bar, the only other woman in the establishment sat, dressed like one of the engineers—overalls, plaid flannel work shirt, work boots, hair pulled back into a ponytail. Perhaps she was an engineer, but the weird necklace she was wearing threw him off. She hadn’t touched her drink and simply sat near the window staring wistfully outside. The barhand couldn’t be sure if she was in her own world or slyly intercepting Tessie’s speech, though.

  Finally, there was a gentleman seated alone in the furthest right-hand corner of the bar, wearing one of the finest suits he’d ever seen. He was nursing a neat gin and fully invested in the book that he was reading.

  I sure hope none of ’em are listening to this, the barkeep thought as he looked back at Tessie—dressed in her aviator uniform complete with goggles resting slightly above her forehead—who seemed to take his look as a cue to continue her speech.

  “I CAN’T WIN for losin’, I swear. When I’m not doin’ anything, I’ve got men tellin’ me what they want me to do. When I’m doing what I want to do, I’ve got men tryin’ to stop me from doin’ it. It’s ridiculous. Y’all men need to make up your goddamn minds ’cause I have all this work on me. I ain’t come to play.” Without even so much as a pause, Tessie knocked back the whiskey in her glass in one gulp and wiped her lips on her leather jacket.

  “And you know what el—” Tessie finally noticed the fresh horror on the barkeep’s face. “What? You ain’t never seen a woman drink like me before?” she asked.

  “M-ma’am, I—I—I think... I think it... it might be best we get you on yo’ way.”

  Tessie Caldwell’s hackles rose. I know this man ain’t tryin’ to get me out of this bar just because I took a shot of bourbon, she thought.

  She was about to say something to that effect when the barkeep’s grip on the glass he was wiping loosened and it smashed on the hardwood floor. His quavering arm slowly rose.

  Tessie slowly turned around to see three grotesque beings—barely human—staring back at her to her left, hulking over one of the tables.

  The engineer woman and the well-dressed chap had gone, their respective drinks abandoned untouched. Tessie’s look of shock transformed into one of her trademark wry smiles.

  “So y’all must not have liked what I said,” she boomed, managing to command the attention of all three of the terrifying entities.

  One of them, head tilted to the side, began to let out a blood-curdling gurgling noise as the other two turned their heads toward Tessie. The barkeep bolted for the door to the kitchen.

  Tessie laughed to herself, shaking her head. “He runs faster than he pours a drink. Typical.” She a
ddressed the monsters. “See what I mean about men? Can’t live with ’em, can’t kill ’em.”

  The three monsters only gurgled in response. They rose and started taking slow, deliberate steps toward Tessie.

  “Nah, y’all didn’t care for what I was sayin’ earlier. Too bad, I ain’t taking it back!”

  A chilling hum flooded Tessie’s ears just before a powerfully bright light flooded the entire bar. Figuring something was about to go down, Tessie jumped over the bar, putting a bit more space between her and the freakish ghouls. The creatures themselves didn’t get a chance to move; all three of them suddenly burst into flames, their gurgling turning into deafening, perfectly inhuman screams.

  The ghouls flailed about as they burned, destroying every table and chair they could reach. One of them flailed so chaotically it went through a window. The other two dropped to their knees, landing face down before taking their final form: an onyx-coloured pile of ashes.

  The humming in Tessie’s ears faded into nothingness, leaving only the sound of the wind blowing the ashes across the floor. Tessie slowly rose from behind the bar and saw a woman in an engineer’s coverall sitting near the window in a booth directly behind her, furthest away from the bar.

  No longer looking out of the window thoughtfully, she turned her head towards Tessie and said, “Terribly sorry about the commotion. It’s quite hard to enjoy a quiet drink with dark magic and the undead about.”

  “How long were you sittin’ behind me, lady?”

  “Webster. Lady Webster. Pleasure to meet you, Miss Caldwell.”

  Tessie pondered her next question while she took stock of what was left of the bar and who was left within it. Except... there was no one else. Just her; this Lady Webster person; the evidence of the calamity that had just taken place, in the form of broken furniture and smashed glass; and the ashes of what could have been the undead.

  “Your reputation precedes you, Miss Caldwell,” Lady Webster continued, taking a sip of her drink. “I trust you still have a healthy appetite for adventure?”

  Tessie said nothing, confusion stuck to her face like a painting on the wall of a gallery.

  “I know what you’ve seen is unlike anything that you’ve ever seen before, so I don’t begrudge you your feeling... suspicious of my being here,” Lady Webster sipped her drink again. “Listen, Tessie... I’m not here for your autograph. A busy celebrity and pilot like you probably gets requests like that all the time, especially in a place like this.”

  “Nah, I can’t say I’ve ever been asked for my John Hancock by some ghoul in some dive bar on an American airbase in the middle of Nowhere, Panama before. Webster, ain’t it?”

  “Lady Webster,” she corrected.

  “That’s what I said. Webster,” Tessie fired back, undeterred. “Guessin’ you don’t normally dress like this, then. You undercover or somethin’?”

  “This is how I know I’m approaching the right person for this role,” Lady Webster said with a grin. “You truly take no nonsense from anyone, Miss Caldwell. I admire that more than your incredible aviation skills. Yes, I thought it would serve me best to be incognito. I’ll cut straight to the point: I administrate a... unique team of investigators, and we need a reconnaissance pilot. I’ve been monitoring your progress and achievements for years now, and I can think of no-one—”

  “When do I start?” Tessie interjected.

  Lady Webster’s eyebrows rose.

  Tessie’s ironic smile spread across her face as she turned around to the top shelf and inspected what bottles of spirits hadn’t been broken in the earlier commotion. “Look, Webster. You’ve done your homework on me and you obviously know I’m a woman of action. Now, I don’ think it takes a genius to recognise that you still being here without a scratch on you after some gahtdamn... dead-looking things kinda shows you’ve got exactly the kind of action a woman like me wants and needs.”

  Tessie reached for an unlabelled bottle of a brown-coloured spirit, opened the bottle and took a brief whiff of the licquor. Just what I was lookin’ for, she thought as the distinct aroma of cognac fills her nostrils. Conveniently, there was one unbroken glass within Tessie’s reach.

  “So, yeah. I’ll fly for y’all. On one condition.” Tessie poured the cognac in the glass, only filling it about a quarter of the way.

  “What’s that, then?” Lady Webster asked.

  “I ain’t callin’ you ‘Lady Webster,’ miss ma’am. I work with y’all, not for y’all.” Lady Webster reached for her glass and slowly raised it in salute.

  “I think I can live with that,” Lady Webster said, matching her smile.

  TESSIE NEVER HESITATED to jump at adventure when it presented itself. It was part of who she was: adventure first, ask questions later. Anything that smacked of ponderousness or hesitation annoyed Tessie something fierce, and because she was always out chasing the next thrilling undertaking, she never really had the time to sit and wonder why she felt that way. She just never got around to thinking about doing things before doing them.

  This wasn’t to suggest that Tessie was a reckless person. She just knew what she wanted out of life and was increasingly defiant in her resolve to make sure she got every bit of it. Nothing more, nothing less.

  Sitting under the wing of her plane, overlooking the expanse of the Galápagos from the cliff overlooking the Cerro Azul volcano on Isla Isabela, Tessie’s mind should have been as free and clear as the air she breathed, but weirdly, it was anything but. One moment, she was taking in the breathtaking views of the archipelago; the next, she was flashing back to interviews she did for the national papers back in the States during her rise to superstardom. A shake of her own head, a pause, and a deep breath... Tessie was on a coach from Texas to Chicago for the first time, and the mix of emotions surging through her body all those years before were just as vivid and potent as the wind whipping against her frame and the plane at her back as she took in the spectacular visuals from Azul Peak’s summit.

  Tessie closed her eyes and removed her aviator cap and goggles, allowing her naturally curly hair to breathe. Usually, she would feel naked without her cap and goggles on, but every now and again, she found it liberating to remove her gear and just be Tessie rather than Tessie the Adventure Junkie. It was her way of presenting herself. It was her therapy; her meditation.

  Tessie quickly checked the pocket watch that her grandfather gave her before she moved to Chicago. Lady Webster had told Tessie to be ready to extract the team in a few hours, and the cool air was lulling Tessie into a sense of comfort. A quick nap never hurt nobody, Tessie thought, laying back on the warm rock. I ain’t but caught a couple winks in the last few days, so I should be all right to grab a couple more. As Tessie’s mind began to wander yet again, her eyelids became dense. Just a couple of winks, Tessie pondered. Just a couple...

  “YOU GON’ BE a flyin’ sensation one day, young one!” A warm booming voice flooded the darkness, reverberating off of the walls of Tessie’s mind. “That’s right, young one! You gonna take to th’ skies and win you a prize!” The giggles of a young girl mingled with the stentorian voice of a patriarch; a voice that Tessie was all too familiar with.

  “Gramps?” Tessie asked. The darkness offered nothing in the way of a response. It was as if Tessie’s eager inquiry was cast out into an empty well. Frustration building, Tessie asserted herself a bit more, calling out again. “Gramps! Gramps! GRAMPS!”

  Tessie’s calls were met with a firm push to her left shoulder. Stumbling backward, terrified at what was going on, her eyes welled up, tears burning her corneas and blurring her vision. “Gramps, please! Please, Gramps! Talk to me! Please don’t push me aw—” Another shove to the left shoulder caused Tessie to lose her footing and stumble backward.

  The lightlessness was all-encompassing. Tessie could not see a single thing, she couldn’t find the spectre of her grandfather. All she had were her wits and Gramps’ voice. “Don’t forget t’ do your pre-flight checks, young one! Proper preparation!�
�� Tessie couldn’t hold it in any more, but she couldn’t speak, she was overcome with grief.

  A third firm shove to the same shoulder saw Tessie on her back; her head cracking against whatever the floor consists of. “Ya heard what I said, young one? Proper preparation...!”

  “P—pre—preve—” Tessie couldn’t finish the refrain. Her head swimming, her vision riddled with pockets of light; yet she still couldn’t see anything, paradoxically. “Prevents... poor... performance.”

  Gramps chuckled. “That’s my Tessaleff! Aviator extraordinaire, I tell you what!”

  After one last push, Tessie came to, gasping loudly.

  Breathe, Tessie, girl... breathe. She continued reciting this to herself, feeling the rough rock under her face, her sight not completely returned.

  Just as Tessie managed to control her breathing, she realised there was something heavy on her back. Something heavy... and hard. Tessie bit down panic, kept her cool and carried on with her breathing exercise. Breathe, Tessie, girl... just breathe.

  She couldn’t look around but she could see the wing of the plane. She was back where she should be. Azul Peak. Okay... What the heck is on my back? Tessie fought off the urge to panic. Behind her, she could hear queer shuffling sounds, suggesting that something moving around behind her.

  “Nothin’ quite like not knowin’ what you’re up against,” she muttered, barely above a whisper so as to not aggravate... whatever was pinning her down.

  A hissing, crackling noise came from the cockpit of the plane. Both unseen creatures responded with a sharp squawk and the shuffling sounds Tessie could hear behind her now circled anti-clockwise around her. What... the hell... is that?

  Tessie froze as a huge clawed foot came down just yards away from her. The creature nearest the plane slinked down, spine bending like a ball python contorting, and she got the first view of one of the things she’d been spending time with since her impromptu nap. It had a cone-shaped head with an elongated beak, a gaunt body, skin like leather and massive wings complete with hooked talons at the top of each wing. Looks like one of them dinosaurs with the funny name. Tessie’s lungs burned with every breath as the creature poked at the plane with its gigantic beak.