By the Blood of Heroes (17 page)
He said as much to Wilson.
“Good,” the chief machinist said. “In that case, I’ll load and you fire. I can’t aim worth hell.”
Burke was still trying to figure out where on earth they’d set up a machine-gun emplacement on a ship like this when Wilson dragged him through an unmarked door and into the room that lay beyond.
Much of the space was filled with a metal contraption that looked like a lion’s cage with a reclining barber’s chair in the middle of it. Mounted on a tripod in front of the chair was the Vickers, a belt of shells already loaded, with the bulk of an ammunition case sitting close by. A thick lever, like that seen at a railroad crossing, jutted up from the flooring next to the ammunition case.
Behind the strange-looking contraption against the far wall Burke could see what looked to be two bicycle frames, sans wheels, mounted about ten feet apart from each other. Large chains ran from the frames into the walls on either side of the room. They reminded Burke of the anchor chains on the merchant vessel he’d sailed aboard when being deployed to Europe, all thick links and solid iron. Two midshipmen sat on the seats, their feet on the pedals, and from the sweat staining their shirts it looked as if they’d been pedaling hard for a while.
A groan of pain from one side caught his attention, and he turned to find a medical orderly frantically trying to bandage the chest of a wounded man lying on the floor, the deck around them awash in blood. Another man lay slumped against the nearby bulkhead, a small red hole on the front of his uniform that at first glance didn’t look too bad, but from the way he stared off into space, Burke knew he was already beyond help.
The airship rocked again, shuddering beneath their feet, and the time for sightseeing was over. Wilson pushed him forward, toward the contraption, and guided him into the seat in the center of it, right behind the Vickers. Burke had already sat down before he noticed the blood smeared on the seat beneath him and splashed across the inside surface of the cage nearby. His gut clenched at the sight, but it was too late to back out now; Wilson was already strapping him into place with thick, leather belts.
“What do I need those for?” Burke asked, as he shifted against the tightness of the straps and tried to get comfortable.
“You’ll see,” was all the chief machinist said.
When Burke was properly strapped in, he watched for a moment as Wilson thrust his feet into leather straps next to the chair and set about buckling them down tight over his boots, with extra straps wrapping around his ankles as well, then turned his attention to the gun before him.
It was mounted on a gimbaled tripod that supported its heavy weight while still allowing him to swing it up, down, and to either side with minimal difficulty, even with the lessened dexterity of his clockwork arm.
Now all he needed was something to shoot at.
“Better put these on,” Wilson said and handed him a pair of goggles with thick lenses protruding for the eyepieces. Burke pulled them over his head and was still trying to get them adjusted when Wilson turned to face the far wall where the other men had gathered and shouted, “Ready!”
The men stationed on the bicycles began pedaling at a furious rate. A loud grinding noise filled the room as the exterior wall split in two across the center of its horizontal axis, revealing that the wall was in fact two massive doors. Burke watched in astonishment as the doors moved outward from the hull for a few feet before sliding in opposite directions, one up and one down. The gap beneath them widened as the crew continued pedaling, and Burke got his first glimpse at the gray sky just beyond. As the gap widened, a cold breeze rushed in from outside, filling the room with its hoary caress.
Burke immediately realized why Wilson had asked if he was afraid of heights.
“We’re not going out there, are . . .”
That was as far as he got.
Wilson shouted, “Hang on!” and then hauled back on the lever beside his station.
The locks holding the gun emplacement sprang open and the entire platform shot out through the open door along a rapidly unfolding track to hang suspended thousands of feet above the ground.
TWO MILES HIGH
T
he wind whipped and shrieked at them, trying to tear them from their perch with freezing fingers, and Burke was glad for the straps that held him in place even as he gazed about in amazement. The bulk of the
Victorious
rose behind them, filling the view in that direction with its steely gray hide, but the action was out ahead of them where the sky was filled with aircraft whirling and diving about one another and the massive airship in an intricate dance that made Burke dizzy from trying to watch it all. He was unable to pick out friend from foe; they all looked the same as they dove and spun about one another with seeming abandon. For the first time since he’d entered the war, Burke was thankful that he’d joined the infantry.
He tore his gaze away from the dogfight in front of him and glanced to the side. A bank of deep black thunderclouds loomed a few miles to the east and, despite the flashes of lightning he could see dancing deep within, the
Victorious
seemed to be headed directly toward them, climbing as she went.
The storm was the least of his concern though, as Wilson tapped his shoulder and frantically pointed out ahead of them into the distance.
At first, Burke didn’t understand what the other man was pointing at; there was just too much going on. He reached up with his good hand, trying to clear the light mist that seemed to be gathering on the surface of his goggles, and discovered that the right-hand lens rotated through different settings, each one making the distant objects much clearer. By chance he landed on the proper one and the German biplane that was speeding toward them sprang sharply into view, its machine guns already spitting a hail of lead in their direction!
With his heart in his throat and his pulse beating a mile a minute, Burke grabbed the handles of the Vickers and swung it around at the oncoming aircraft, depressing the firing trigger even before he’d gotten it lined up properly.
A stream of tracers arced out across the sky toward the Albatros even as the German machine-gun fire bounced off the steel cage around the two men, the sound of the bullets lost in the howl of the wind and the hammering cry of the Vickers. The plane grew larger with every passing second, and Burke found himself screaming wordlessly in defiance as it filled his view, bullets flying back and forth between them.
At the last minute the pilot pushed the stick forward and the biplane dove beneath the firing cage to disappear somewhere beneath and behind them.
Burke didn’t have a lot of time to worry about him, however, for another plane rushed into view, this one moving laterally across his field of vision, and he recognized the brilliant red paint job even in the midst of all the sensory overload. He swung the guns to follow it, sending a stream of bullets across the space between them, but the aircraft zigged when he thought it would zag and he never even touched it.
There wasn’t time for regret however, for Wilson was already pointing out another German plane as it came into range and Burke spun the gun mount, trying to line up a shot. That’s how it went for what felt like hours, Burke firing until the gun went dry and then waiting impatiently for Wilson to feed another belt into the firing mechanism before beginning the process all over again. The enemy, of course, was doing their best to kill them in turn, for Burke and his companion stood between them and their prize, the
Victorious
herself. Bullets constantly rattled against the outside of the firing cage, and there were more than a few close calls, including one in which a bullet came close enough to burn a crease down the side of Burke’s cheek with the heat of its passage.
Burke’s first kill was a Fokker D.III that came too close while trying to shake the Sopwith Camel on its tail. He chopped its tail assembly to pieces with a burst from the Vickers, sending the plane spinning earthward with a long spiral of black smoke pouring from the engine. Not long after that, while working in conjunction with one of the escort squadron’s Bristols, he helped send an Albatros with silver-tipped wings to the same fate.
Each time they caused damage to an enemy aircraft, Burke screamed in primal triumph and pumped his clenched fist, high on bloodlust and the need to kill those who had come to deliver the same fate to him. The urgency of the squad’s mission, the danger of the enemy guns, even the precariousness of his position in a simple cage of wire mesh and steel thousands of feet above the ground all brought his senses alive like only the heat of battle could. This was why he joined the war: to feel the pulse of life pour through his veins. He felt ready to take on the world and everything in it, and he found himself wishing it would go on and on, reveling in the excitement and the glory.
The Albatros appeared out of nowhere, its blue-and-gold-striped frame hurtling toward them from out of the morning sun, and Burke spun the Vickers in its direction, trying to line up the shot. The German pilot kept a steady stream of tracers headed in their direction while avoiding Burke’s return fire, turning away only at the last second. As he did so he lobbed something toward them with his free hand.
The world slowed down as Burke watched the object tumble through the air, turning end over end in a manner that he was all too familiar with, for he’d seen it hundreds of times over the years as enemy soldiers rushed toward him across no-man’s-land. Fear rose like a spectre in the night, threatening to overwhelm him, as his brain finally cataloged what his eyes had already recognized.
Grenade!
There was nothing he could do; he was strapped in tighter than a lunatic in a straitjacket. The potato masher would explode long before he managed to even get the first buckle undone, never mind free himself from the harness. Even if he did get free, there was nowhere for him to go. He’d never be able to crawl back along the rails supporting the gun platform to the safety of the airship’s interior without slipping, not with the wind and the movement of the ship.
All this and more passed through his mind in the three seconds it took for the grenade to arc through the air, bounce off the top of the cage, once, twice, and then slip through an opening to disappear amid the wire mesh beneath their feet.
Burke closed his eyes and waited for the end.
A minute passed.
Then two.
Burke began to think he might just live.
“Why are we still here?” Wilson asked, his voice shaking, though whether from fear or relief Burke didn’t know.
Burke’s voice betrayed his own confusion when he answered, “Don’t have a clue. Just be thankful we are.”
The universe apparently didn’t believe him, however, for the faulty grenade chose that moment to live up to the purpose for which it had been designed and exploded in a fury of sound and pressure.
For Burke there was a thunderous boom followed by a brilliant flash of light, and then the explosion enveloped him in its velvet fist.
GUN PLATFORM #3
T
ime passed, though in his vaguely conscious state Burke didn’t know how long. He didn’t care, he just wanted to drift in the peace and silence, to let the world pass him by unhindered and unnoticed.
A voice began shouting at him, dragging him from his rest, but he couldn’t make out what it was saying. He wanted to tell the voice to go away, to leave him alone and to let him go back to sleep, but for some reason he couldn’t get his thoughts together well enough to form the words. That worried him, and the concern he felt was like a kick in the teeth, jarring him toward conscious awareness of where he was and what he was doing.
Which, as it turned out, was hanging by his harness from the remains of the gun platform.
It took everything he had not to scream when he opened his eyes and found himself bobbing there in midair with the earth lain out like a giant patchwork quilt thousands of feet below.
“Burke! Buuurrrkkkke!”
Apparently someone was doing enough screaming for both of them. The voice in his dreams was real, as it turned out. It was Chief Wilson.
Afraid to make any sudden moves, Burke kept his body as still as possible and just moved his head to one side, but he saw nothing in that direction but open sky. Turning back the other way, he found his partner.
Like Burke, the chief machinist was also hanging on by a thread, but in this case that thread happened to be his right foot. Somehow it had gotten caught inside a mess of wire and twisted steel and that was all that was keeping him from falling to his death.
One dip in the wrong direction and it was all over. There was no way Burke would be able to reach him.
Stop worrying about him and save your own ass,
said a voice in the back of his mind, but Burke ignored it. Abandoning an injured man just wasn’t in his nature. He told the dark side of his mind to shut the hell up and focused on figuring a way out of their predicament.
“Don’t move!” Burke shouted, before realizing how stupid the order sounded.
Of course he’s not going to move, you idiot. He’s trapped, hanging upside down.
Burke closed his eyes tightly as he fought to clear his thoughts. He, too, was trapped. His harness held him strapped into the firing chair, but the explosion had tipped the entire gun platform on its side, leaving the chair pointed downward. If he was going to be of any help to Wilson, he was going to have to get out of the chair and get himself onto the remains of the platform, all the while not making any moves that might change the balance of the wreckage.
At the moment he had no idea how he was going to do it.
Come on, Burke. Think!
He glanced around, looking for anything that might support his weight long enough to let him clamber into a more secure position. Half the cage had been torn away by the explosion, revealing wires, cooling conduits, and the guts of the gimbal system that had supported the firing platform. In particular, his attention was drawn to a long piece of rail on which the cage had traveled in and out of the airship’s hull.
If he could reach that . . .
“Help me, Burke!” Wilson screamed, as his foot slipped slightly inside the twisted nest of metal.
I’m trying, you fool!
he wanted to scream in return, but he said nothing, focusing instead on the idea that had just reared its head for a moment in the back of his mind. It was a crazy-ass plan, as plans go, but it was better than staying where they were.
As if to prove his point, a flurry of bullets from a passing German aircraft ricocheted off the wreckage around him. The aircraft swept past, headed for the bulk of the
Victorious
behind them. The gunfire failed to strike either Wilson or himself, but Burke knew they would only be lucky so long.
The wind was causing the cables to swing this way and that, and he waited until one drifted close enough for him to lunge forward and grab hold of it. His motion caused the ruins of the firing platform to creak loudly and dip lower as the metal rail that held it bent with the pressure.
“What are you doing?” Wilson screamed at him, while trying to remain still. “Stop!”
Sorry, man, no can do,
Burke thought.
We’re getting our asses out of here.
With his right hand he pulled on the cable as hard as he could, wanting to be sure it could hold his weight. It seemed fairly solid, but he wouldn’t really know until he put his full weight on it.
“I’m coming to get you!” he shouted and then prepared himself for what he had to do.
“What?” Wilson cried, trying to lift his head high enough that he could see what Burke was doing. “Stay where you are! You’re going to get us killed!”
But Burke was already committed to his plan. If he stopped, they’d hang there until they were either cut down by a bullet from an enemy aircraft or dropped into oblivion when the remains of the gun platform finally broke free. He had no intention of waiting around for either eventuality.
Burke pulled the cable tight and then wrapped the end of it around the outside of his forearm, making sure that it wouldn’t slip through his fingers. When he was ready, he took up the slack on the rope and smashed his mechanical hand into the hook that secured his body harness to the remains of the platform.
For a second he hung there, and then the hook surrendered to the application of a more powerful force and he was suddenly swinging through the air.
The cable held the few feet it took for him to reach his target, a thick metal pipe jutting out of the opposite side of the gun cage. At the apex of his swing, he reached out his mechanical hand and clamped it tight around the pipe, securing him in place. From there it was an easy matter to find footholds for his feet and to transfer his weight to what was left of the cage rather than the cable.
For the moment, he was safe.
Wilson was staring at him, his eyes wide in horror, terrified that Burke’s motions were going to shake his foot free.
From where he now clung to the side of the firing cage, Burke could look down and see Wilson about six feet below him. To rescue him, Burke was going to have to clamber down the side of the cage until he was close enough to grab the other man’s leg and pull him up onto the platform.
There was only one problem. He had no idea if that section of the wreckage would hold both of their weights.
He carefully began to clamber down what was left of the metal shell toward his companion. The frame creaked and groaned beneath his weight, but otherwise seemed to hold.
Burke had managed to get to within a few feet of the other man when he noticed something ominous. The rat’s nest of tangled steel and wire that Wilson’s foot had caught itself upon was tearing away from the main structure. Even as Burke watched he could see it bend, the metal turning white from the strain.
Burke lunged forward, his hand outstretched and hoping for the best.
“Gotcha!” he crowed, as his fingers locked around Wilson’s ankle.
Just as he did, the piece of wreckage that had held Wilson’s foot suddenly broke off and fell away from the rest of the gun cage, disappearing into the abyss, leaving the chief machinist hanging by his heel from Burke’s outstretched arm.
“Pull me up! Pull me up!” Wilson was screaming.
When Burke tried to do just that, he discovered a new problem. He simply didn’t have the strength to pull Wilson up. It was all he could to do keep his fingers locked around the other man’s ankle.
“I can’t!” he yelled back. “You’re going to have to do it yourself! Reach up and grab my arm and then climb up over me. Can you do that?”
The
Victorious
was still moving under her own power as the dogfight raged in the sky around her, planes wheeling about, tracers cutting the sky with sudden bright flashes of color, and Burke suspected that most of what he’d said got lost in the wind and the roar of battle. Wilson must have understood because he began to rock his upper body back and forth like a trapeze artist.
What the hell is he doing?
Burke wondered and found out a moment later when Wilson suddenly arched upward, using his stomach muscles to pull himself forward.
Wilson’s fear worked as a powerful motivator, for he reached all the way up and grabbed Burke’s arm in the first try. Once he had a secure grip, Burke let go of his foot and Wilson was able to climb up over Burke’s body until he too was clinging desperately to the metal shell of the gun cage.
That’s when the platform lurched beneath them.
Both men tried to sink themselves deeper into the metal against which they clung, praying the whole thing didn’t break free, and they were surprised a few moments later when they realized that the platform was moving horizontally back toward the airship’s hull. It could mean only one thing; someone inside the weapon’s bay must have realized they were still alive and had begun to haul them in!
The damaged platform took twice as long to go in as it had to go out. The corpse of the British gunner, one side of his head nothing but a bloody, gaping mess, that greeted them when they stumbled out of the weapons platform and onto the deck of the
Victorious
served as a stark reminder of how perilously close they had come to dying.
Wouldn’t be the first time,
Burke thought as he fought to control the trembling of his adrenaline-fueled limbs while pulling the goggles off his face.
A hand gripped his good arm.
“You all right?” Wilson asked.
Burke nodded, not yet trusting himself to speak.
“Good. Sit tight.” Wilson got up and stumbled over to the talk box on the far wall. He spoke for a few minutes, then returned to Burke’s side.
“The captain’s had no choice but to make a run for the storm, hoping the weather will give us some cover and allow us to leave the enemy fighters behind.”
It sounded like a reasonable plan. “Will it work?”
“See for yourself,” Wilson told him, pointing back out the open bay door behind them.
They watched the firefight continue for several long moments. Just when Burke was convinced there was no way of escaping, airplanes from both sides, friend and foe alike, began turning back as the
Victorious
reached the edge of the storm and slipped inside the clouds. The British escort craft kept their focus on the German fighters, who, in turn, were more than happy to oblige them with the same level of attention. Following the
Victorious
must have looked like a losing proposition.
Burke wasn’t ready to breathe a sigh of relief, however. “So what happens now?” he asked.
Wilson shrugged. “I don’t know. We’ve never flown into a thunderstorm before.”
As the crew began closing the bay doors to keep out the wind and rain, Burke turned and looked hard at Wilson. “And why’s that?”
For a moment, Wilson appeared surprised at the question, and then he burst into laughter. “Bloody hell, mate!” he said. “Did you forget where you are? A lightning storm’s just about the last place we’d want to be!”
That’s when it hit him. They were two miles up, trapped in what was, for all practical purposes, a six-hundred-foot cigar-shaped metal cylinder that was about to double as the world’s largest lightning rod!
We are so fucked.
Seeing the expression on his face, Wilson clapped him heartily on the back. “Don’t worry about it, mate!” he said, with the same maddening enthusiasm he’d shown throughout the rest of the day. “We’re in a giant flammable balloon. If we get hit by lightning, it will all be over so fast you won’t even know it!”
For a man who’d just avoided falling thousands of feet to his death, Wilson was awfully cheery about the fact they might suddenly blow up like a giant bonfire. Unable to foster the same kind of enthusiasm for going out that way himself, Burke suggested that it might be best if he returned to the wardroom to check on his men. Once there, he brought them up to speed on what was happening, though he carefully avoided any mention of giant flammable balloons.
They had enough to worry about as it was.