Horizons of Deceit, Book 1 Page 16

  “What’s your idea?” he asked.

  “Distraction, sir. I could pelt it back to that building there. I’m quick enough on my heels and it’s not all that far. Should be able to make it before they get too many shots off. If we’re lucky it should draw a few of them away.”

  Folkard couldn’t argue with the logic, however risky it sounded. Yet he knew that if he agreed, the agent’s chances of making it out alive were slim to none. He had ordered men to their deaths before, but before he had always known that there was a chance of survival if they kept their wits about them and had fate on their side. This time, however, the chances of this man seeing another dawn were so slim as to be negligible. Embarrassingly so—there was that alien emotion again.

  “I know what you’re thinking, sir. But I’ve seen that monstrosity the Russians have cobbled together and if anyone can bring the bastard down, it’s you. I owe you every chance. Countless lives and the safety of nations depend upon it.”

  Folkard swallowed. The agent’s brave and noble words cut him to the quick—yes, the security of the world was at stake, and innocents would surely suffer if the Russian battleship wasn’t somehow disabled… But he knew. He knew from the moment he set eyes on it that this ship was the key to him returning to the Heart, and to Charlotte. The two were linked in some strange, ethereal manner that he could sense at the back of his mind, a yawning tug that rose to the forefront of all his senses.

  “What’s your name, agent?” he asked quietly.

  “Fleming, Sir. Lieutenant Robert Fleming. Friends call me Bobby.”

  “Well, Bobby,” and Folkard clasped his hand to Lieutenant Fleming’s shoulder. “You’re a braver man than I. Godspeed.”

  “Thank you, sir. Tell ’em I died well.”

  Nothing more needed to be said. The two men locked eyes for a moment, and Folkard nodded. Lieutenant Fleming turned to make his way to the other end of the building when a terrible screech and the clanking of gears filled the air around them. The great roof of the hangar was slowly opening again…

  “They’re trying to get away before we find out too much! Go, man! Go!”

  Fleming nodded and sprinted to the other end of the wall. He paused for a moment, took a breath to ready himself, and ran out into the full sight of the Russian soldiers.

  Their yells intermingled with the deafening roar of machinery, the soldiers began firing as Fleming sprinted away from them, a savage volley of bullets in his wake. Folkard took a quick look back—it seemed as if the brave Lieutenant was going to make it to the next hut! As he disappeared around the corner, eight of the guards took up pursuit—a far better number than Folkard could’ve hoped for. Taking out the remaining four would be difficult, but not impossible. He unholstered his pistol. Time was of the essence.

  Without thinking he whipped round the corner and brought the gun to bear. His first two shots downed the guard closest to him with ease, the next winged the guard standing next to him. The other two Russians were quick to ready their rifles and returned fire, pinning Folkard to the wall as the shots gouged chunks out of the brickwork inches from his face. The shots stopped and Folkard leaned out again—the soldier he had winged was on the ground, his trouser leg soaked in blood, but he had nevertheless managed to prop himself up and was assisting his comrades with the shooting. Unfortunately for him, his inability to move made him an easy target and Folkard put him down with a single shot to the forehead.

  Then came the second volley and Folkard hid again, taking the opportunity to reload. He couldn’t keep this up. Slow as the roof of the hangar was to open, it wouldn’t be long before the airship ascended and his mission—as well as his striving to reconcile with Charlotte—would be for naught.

  He tried to return fire but to do so in that interminable hail of gunfire would be suicide. He gritted his teeth, frustrated. He would not let it end like this! A wild notion overtook him, the madness sparking in his brain, to just run towards the guards, pistol blazing, screaming out his lungs… He took a deep breath, and yelled.

  All six of his bullets were spent in but a second or two, and all went wide. He screamed at the top of his voice, wide eyed and bestial, knowing he would tear the throats from the Russian dogs with his teeth, even if he had to do so with a slug of lead in his gut.

  And yet the Russians were otherwise engaged! One of them suddenly jerked back, the top of his head blown clean off, and almost simultaneously the other was knocked off his feet by two fatal shots to the chest. Still dashing towards the hangar door, Folkard looked across to see Enderby and his two agents running in the exact same direction.

  “Folkard!” he yelled, “Quickly man, go! It’s nearly open!”

  Folkard redoubled his efforts, the muscles in his legs starting to ache. He reached the door and dashed inside, taking in the sight of the ship once more.

  Up close it seemed even more brutal, its stark paint work and sheer scale intimidating and awe-inspiring in equal measure. He noticed on the prow, written in blood red, stencilled Cyrillic, the word Императоръ. Imperator—the Tsar’s self-proclaimed title. Underneath this, wrapped around the claws of a golden depiction of the Russian Imperial Eagle, was the rest of the ship’s name—Александр II. The full title of this monster was revealed.

  Imperator Aleksandr II. The rest of the hangar seemed deserted. A huge pit stood in the floor to accommodate the length of the battleship’s aether propeller governor, the belly of the ship resting on huge struts drilled at its edges. The walls were taken up with various pieces of bulky machinery, steel lockers and tools for maintaining the ship. Much of the upper reaches of the vast room were taken up with the gigantic engines which cranked the roof open, and even now Folkard could hear the deafening thrum of Imperator’s engine cranking up to speed.

  He quickly looked for the easiest way to get aboard. A gangplank still stood on the right-hand side of the vessel—hardly a sensible procedure, but he guessed the Russians were too keen to get Imperator away as quickly as possible—and so Folkard sprinted towards it.

  Enderby appeared at the doorway and quickly took stock of the room. He noticed where the captain was headed and, wishing them luck, instructed his two men to stay by the door and fend off the guards pursuing them. The number of men the British had managed to sneak onto the base was as yet unknown to the Russians, and his men were well-trained when it came to resisting the methods the Russians used to force their prisoners to talk. The Russians would eventually believe the mission had been a total failure—with two captured British agents, and two dead—and any incursion on the Russian battleship would go unnoticed until it was too late.

  Folkard sprinted up the gangway. A Russian guard stood at the top before an open bulkhead door and, taken completely by surprise as Folkard raced towards him, fumbled inexpertly with his rifle. Folkard reached him and instantly knocked the man unconscious with a swift, heavy punch to the jaw.

  “Folkard!”

  The airship began to rise! Folkard turned around to see Enderby flailing with the gangplank. The slight buffeting of the ship had dislodged it and it began to slide away, would leave the scrabbling Enderby stranded…

  “God damn it, man! Help me!”

  He reacted quickly, grabbing the end of the gangplank firmly and resting his weight there to keep it steady. Enderby launched himself up on all fours. He rested his hands on his knees as he got his breath back, the gangplank clattering to the floor as the ship began its ascent.

  “Welcoming committee seen too, I take it?” said Enderby, nodding at the unconscious Russian.

  “Not quite. Help me get his clothes off. We’ll tip him over the side when we’re over open territory.”

  The two men set to work as Imperator drifted upwards into the chilling night sky over Severnaya.

  Chapter Eleven

  Returns and Expeditions

  1.

  ANNABELLE AWOKE FEELING more rested than she had in as long as she could remember. She almost felt absolved, the memori
es of her terrible ordeals she had endured now behind her. A freshness and a newness seemed to invigorate her mind and senses. George dozed peacefully beside her, naked from the waist up and wrapped in a bearskin rug. She smiled to herself—he really did look rather adorable like that, bear on the outside, teddy bear on the inside. Careful so as not to wake him, she slipped from under the covers and took a deep gulp of the warm, clean morning air of Arizona that blew gently through the flap of the tepee.

  She pulled on her blouse and skirts and walked barefoot to greet the day, not even caring that the carved wood and brass-work of her false foot was on full display. It was bright, but not overly hot; the wind across the plains mussing her hair and softly brushing her cheeks. The rest of the camp was already awake, activity in every corner accompanied by laughter and bright, cheerful banter. She spotted Wapi talking with one of the braves that had accompanied them from the train, and waved to get his attention. When he saw her, he smiled, and it seemed for a second that her childhood friend had finally returned. He patted his fellow brave on the shoulder and crossed to greet her.

  “Yohana,” he said, nodding to her reverently.

  “You seem a lot happier this morning.”

  “That is because I may not see the night again, and am enjoying the sun above and the ground below before I become one with them again. Our mission today is a perilous one, Yohana. We may not all be returning.”

  “Oh, come now!” joshed Annabelle. “Remember that time in the mountains? With the rattlesnake nest and that blind donkey? We’ll be fine.” Wapi simply stood and stared, his face once more stony, his eyes impassive.

  “Where is the man?” he asked.

  “Man? You mean George?”

  “Yes. The man.”

  Annabelle had had enough dealings with men over the years to have a highly-tuned and perspicacious female intuition. She knew jealousy when she heard it, and even with Wapi’s striking cheekbones and a physique toned by a life of wilderness living, pouting was never attractive. The little boy, it seemed, was back.

  “Wapi…” she began.

  “No,” he said suddenly, looking down at the floor. “I want you to know, Yohana, that had you not left, there was a day, I hoped…even with everything that occurred…that we…”

  Annabelle’s face twisted into sudden, violent anger. With a totally automatic reaction she pulled her hand back and slapped the Indian viciously across his cheek. His head whipped sideways with the impact.

  “Even from an old friend, I will not be seen as some sort of…object. I am my own person, Wapi, and my experiences—however traumatic—have made me the woman that I am today. I am not the little girl you once knew. I do not need your protection and, what’s more, I certainly don’t need your pity.”

  “Yohana, I… I…”

  “I what, Wapi? What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Wapi could barely speak with the embarrassment and humiliation. He kept his eyes locked firmly on the ground, not even daring to raise them up high enough to glimpse the tips of her toes.

  “We ride in two hours,” he mumbled.

  2.

  BACK ON BRITISH soil, Tally had no time to appreciate his first visit to England as he and Nathaniel rushed to the Admiralty post-haste. A report had to be made, and lines of enquiry followed before the trail of Potsdam and Klopstock ran cold. There was also the crystal shard that still weighed down the pocket of Nathaniel’s borrowed coat to deal with. The professor was keen to see if there had been any news of his friends. If they were facing the same level of danger he and Tally had encountered in Dublin; their safety was not in the least guaranteed. Memories of them all were stark in his mind, clear to see…easy to remember.

  They took the train to Whitehall. Tally gazed around him incessantly with a wide-eyed, almost childish glee. Metropolitan as it was, Dublin was on a far more modest scale than the Empire’s beating heart.

  “Jayze,” he muttered, his face pressed against the window as the train clattered through Mayfair. “Look at it… The buildings! The landscape! And the people! The buggers are everywhere!” Nathaniel turned to him and smiled warmly. “Not so sure on the air, though. Compared to the homeland it’s a bit, well…ripe.”

  As indeed it was. One could hardly blame Tally for his sense of awe and his curiosity towards London. Airships, not an uncommon sight in Ireland, were far more common here. The way buildings had been raised, improved upon—grown almost organically to accommodate the burgeoning population—was a world away of the make-do attitude of his native home. Modern technological wonders were abundant, steam driven contraptions on whose purpose he could only guess, the fashions bedecked with the latest clockwork gadgetry and the rich jewels brought back from the inner planets. And then there was the belt of factories that surrounded the city like an encroaching shadow, their tireless engines steering the course of industry and civilisation, churning out gears, pistons and steel, blackening the sky with the ashen refuse of progress. They threatened from afar, those factories; in a way it was they who controlled, their imposing façades a reminder to London’s people that, in truth the power lay elsewhere, in bodies constructed of stronger stuff than flesh and bone.

  “If only me ma could see me now…” said Tally as they strode up to the Admiralty. “And that gobshite Mister Kelly from St Michael’s, he always said I’d never amount to anything.”

  “A little decorum, Tally, please.”

  “Right y’are.”

  They entered the Adam screen, strode across the courtyard and entered the Admiralty through the main gate beyond. Time being of the essence, Nathaniel had not had the luxury of wiring ahead to inform them of his return. As such, when the powers-that-be were informed of his arrival there was a flurry of activity and, before long, some sneering high-level minion appeared to take him through to debriefing.

  “Just you, Professor,” said the minion in a nasal drone. “Your…friend is no longer required.”

  “Now look here,” started Nathaniel hotly. “This man, who is, as you put it, my friend, has survived an encounter with the very men central to this whole insidious plot. Not only that, he has demonstrated a fortitude and bravery without which I would not be standing here. Even if that were not enough to imbue him with a certain debt of gratitude, the Secret Service Bureau made certain promises to him which I intend to see honoured.”

  “Aye,” said Tally, equally impassioned, “and if sticking with the professor is the best chance I’ve got for getting my hands on the bastard that killed Young Simon, then by the Holy Mother you’d better believe I’m sticking to him like glue on a stamp.”

  The minion sighed dismissively, clearly thinking himself far above an argument. “Very well, Professor, but don’t blame me if your…friend is out on his ear before you can say Jack Robinson. Fair warning.”

  Nathaniel frowned, and he and Tally followed the uppity, overdressed steward to Folkard’s office, nestled in the grandeur of the upper floor of the Ripley Building. He showed them to the door, opening it for them while revelling in his disdain, and strode off without even a farewell. Tally was tempted to punch him in the back of the head. He closed the door behind them as they entered, and watched as Nathaniel slumped heavily into an armchair.

  “So what’s the plan now?” he asked, eyeing up the drinks cabinet.

  “I haven’t the first idea, Tally. Doubtless we’ll be recounting every last detail of our adventure numerous times before numerous committees, who will then hamstring any action by arguing amongst themselves over the next course of action. Folkard should be here. At least he has the weight and mental fortitude to make difficult decisions.”

  “Still, you’ve got your wee bit of crystal there, no? Get the old grey matter onto figuring what that’s all about. Sure, you’ll have the answers in no time, smart feller like yerself.”

  “It’s more than just an explosive, Tally. Something far more dangerous. Far older, far more…powerful. Its potential for destruction alone is clearly limitless.
That the Russians have obtained it is a catastrophe. For the British Empire to exploit it too… I fear that would be apocalyptic.”

  “Still,” said Tally, looking around. “Could be worse, eh? Nice warm digs, fancy surroundings, bet there’s a good kitchen, and oh!” he added nonchalantly. “Is that a bit of a drinks cabinet I spy in the corner? D’ya mind?”

  Nathaniel, too troubled to care, waved his assent. Tally could barely contain his glee.

  “Necking the finest of the Britisher reserves,” he chuckled to himself as he poured. “Now that’s living.”

  3.

  FOLKARD AND ENDERBY had successfully stripped the Russian soldier of his uniform and dumped the body over the side before Imperator had gained too much altitude. Locking the bulkhead door behind them, Folkard quickly began to undress.

  “I take it you’re taking the initiative then, Captain?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, man. This monstrosity is Sovereign in all but a name. I know it like the back of my hand. As well as that, I speak perfect Russian.”

  “You assume I don’t? You also assume I’m not acquainted with the layout of the ship. Knowledge I had, I might mention, before we even started out on our little jaunt to Severnaya. Besides which, any half-informed Russian will know what you look like. No Russian has yet seen my face and lived to tell the tale.”

  “Which is why they’ll pay less heed to the man in uniform, and more to the man dressed as a British spy. Now be a good chap and hand me those pantaloons.”

  Enderby didn’t argue. They found a porthole and stuffed Folkard’s discarded attire outside, where the high winds whipped them away in an instant.

  “Where first?” asked Enderby.

  Folkard looked around. The effect of being on the ship was profoundly disturbing for him—like visiting your childhood home only to find it wracked by decay, twisted beyond the happy memories of youth. Here there was none of the pride and fine craftsmanship that had gone into Sovereign’s construction—though each measurement was the same, each strut identical and each seam aligned, the Russians seemed to have cobbled this together from bits of junk yard waste, without care and at great speed. Where wood and burnished coppers adorned his old ship, here were studded steel plates and the ugly scar-lines of welding. Where Sovereign shone, Imperator brooded, angry and insular and brutally functional.