Author's Note: I've had something of a rethink about who I'd like to see in the film version. You may remember that I suggested Dominic Keating for the character of Dave. I now feel that Julian Barrett (see ) would be better suited for the role.
Frank didn't turn up after two hours, and I took Aurora to find out why. I took John, Trish and Eddie as extra security, along with two of the J-Team as gunners. We considered that Chloe was safer with the others, given John's and my knack for attracting trouble.
"I'm going to land off the coast and break out the inflatable; Aurora's too distinctive to risk setting down at any airfield. Once we're on dry land we'll find some transport and go looking for Frank. Oh, and leave your shoulder arms behind; sidearms only, okay?"
"You sure?" asked Trish. "If he's in trouble..."
I sighed. "Look, we're trying to keep a low profile, and if they link you to Frank then he'll be in even deeper shit than when he got nabbed for drug running back in '04."
"He's right," John agreed. "We'll do everything we can to avoid engaging the enemy on this one. The heavy stuff isn't going to make that too easy. I'd be happier with my G3 along for the ride, but it's sort of noticeable, you know?"
"Oh, well. I'm still going to feel nervous without my MP5."
Mary and I shrugged, and I engaged the afterburners whilst she primed the jump drive.
"Targeting, targeting... locked. Correct five degrees to starboard."
"Five degrees starboard, roger. Jump speed in ten seconds."
"Pre-jump sequence complete, activate when ready."
"Okay, hold tight everybody!" I activated the jump drive. There was the usual blinding flash, and the sensation of the aircraft flying through several layers of cardboard and polystyrene. Me and the old squadron once seriously considered trying this, and were only prevented by A: scarcity of either material at sea and B: the CO threatening us with dishonourable discharges if we endangered HM military equipment in such a reckless fashion. This goes to show just how incredibly boring a naval career can be when there's no wars going on.
"Right, here goes," I said to myself, inflating the Zodiac. "Climb in, folks." We scrambled aboard, and I started up the outboard.
"Okay, see you later. Try and keep out of trouble!" Mary called as we moved away.
"Yeah, you too! Right, hold tight you lot!" I opened the throttle all the way, and sent us jetting off at fifty miles an hour.
"Um, Dave?" John yelled at me as we approached a large swell. I just grinned. "Dave? Dave! DAVE! Ohhh, shi-i-i-i-i-i-t!" We left the surface of the water, flew for a few yards and landed in a trough, whereupon we began climbing another wave.
"You are off your bloody rocker!" John informed me. Everybody else was too petrified to speak.
"Oh, complain if you get killed!" I replied.
"I'll hold you to that!"
We beached the boat on a dramatic but bleak stretch of Welsh coastline, covering it in camouflage netting. "Right, according to the map there's a village with a station three miles to the south. Best start walking."
"Terrific. Did we have to make landfall in the middle of nowhere?" John complained, stripping his pistol and poking a cotton bud down the barrel. "Not that I couldn't do with the exercise, but three miles?"
"Only safe landing spot with decent cover," I replied. "Come on, the sooner we start...."
The sooner we could sit in a decrepit station waiting for a grubby and crowded two-coach Sprinter of roughly the same vintage as me, as it turned out.
Another three hours later, we reached Northampton. From there it was an hour-long trip by taxi. I was entirely unsurprised to see John manhandling a long package into the boot.
"Open that without a VERY good reason and there'll be trouble," I warned, but with little conviction. My attempts to call Frank on my mobile had been met with a 'number unavailable' message every time. It might be a technical fault -it happened often enough back when I worked with him- but it might also be something else altogether.
"A little paranoia can be healthy," Eddie replied. "Come on, let's go."
When we arrived, Watson Air was seemingly deserted, and the door was locked. I peered suspiciously through the glass.
"Hmm. I can't see any sign of a forced entry. John, you and Trish check the hangars. Eddie, come on round the back with me."
We found a window smashed in, and climbed through. The office beyond was riddled with bullet holes, and quite a few bloodstains. "Christ, somebody must've had an M60 or something," Eddie said in astonishment. He drew the shotgun from the scabbard across his back, shrugging off the old trenchcoat he'd been wearing. I drew my Beretta.
"Come on, we'd better check the rest of the building." We did, and it was the same story. I wondered where the bodies were, and if Frank had been one of them. We exited via the front door, and encountered John, who was being sick.
"We found the bodies nailed to the hangar wall," he explained once he'd stopped retching. "Jesus, there goes my image!" It was a weak and rather tasteless joke, but I could see he was trying to disguise how badly rattled he was. "We found this as well." I read the note he handed me: 'Mess with me and mine, and you and yours can expect this kind of thing. Metatron. PS: Most of them were already dead when my associates nailed them up. I'm not a complete bastard.' Oh yeah?I thought to myself, slowly shredding the note. "Let's get out of here. If the cops find us here they'll think WE did it."
"Right. Oh, crap. Look!" A car was pulling up. We hastily tried to conceal our weapons as it rolled up, and the driver got out.
"Hi, Dave. I've just got back; crisis up at the Stanstead office. What's up?"
"See for yourself. In there," John replied unsteadily. "They're all dead."
"WHAT?!"
"Long story. Can we discuss this elsewhere?" I all but bundled him into his car, and we tore off. I rang the mobile number marked 'Al B', a contraction of Aurora's registration and radio callsign, AB 301. It connected to a SIM card that I plumbed into Aurora's communications gear at the same time as the iPod.
"Mary, be ready to take off in a couple of hours. Metarton's people wiped out our transport pilots and everybody in the offices. The hangar's like a bloody slaughterhouse."
"Jesus! Okay, I'll be ready. See you in two hours."
"Dave, what the hell is going on? And who's this Metatron character?"
I wasn't feeling up to explaining, and seriously doubted that Frank would believe it. "If I tell you, you'll think I'm insane."
He sighed. "I've seen your pals open a portal into a parallel universe. Can you top that for weirdness?" I nodded. "Well, try me."
"Okay, then. My buddies and I are trying to prevent God's spin doctor taking over not just this universe but several others, apparently with the assistance of people from one such universe which until very recently was run by the Nazis. I got mixed up in this after I agreed to help Will get to one such universe to see his girlfriend there, some fifteen years ago. How HE got mixed up in this isn't my story to tell. Happy? Good. Now get your bloody foot down!"
We reached the Welsh coast in record time, and clambered aboard the Zodiac. "Hold tight!" We zipped away at Warp Two, and nearly slammed straight into Aurora's hull. "Get aboard, quickly. If the airfield was being watched..."
Gunfire shredded the inflatable just as I got out. "It was!"
There was a general scramble to get in the air. Frank was shoved into a cockpit seat and warned not to touch anything, whilst John stood by one of the turrets. Mary got into the copilot's seat.
"All set!" I opened both throttles and sent Aurora screaming into the sky. Once we were in the air, I flipped the switch to engage combat mode. "Talk to me, people!"
"Six Typhoons, no squawk," Mary replied. "Looks like a patrol. Let's hope they're monitoring the emergency frequency!"
I nodded, adjusting my radio mike accordingly. "Hello any callsign, hello any callsign. This is Alpha Bravo three zero one. Highball, highball, highball. Do you acknowlege, over?"
"Roger, Alpha Bravo. Sorry about that. Just try not to go supersonic overland; my mother might complain, see. Over."
"Ah, thought I recognised the voice, Carrie-Anne," I laughed. Finally tired of riding pillion?"
A new voice cut in. "Alpha Bravo, this is HMS Cunningham. Please land immediately, over."
"Roger, Cunningham, preparing to land." I sighed deeply, switching off the radio. "Great. Think we can land alongside, rather than on the deck?"
"Come ON," Frank chided me. "How many carrier landings have you done over the years? What makes this different?"
"In this thing, one, which came bloody close to disaster," I replied. "And what's different is that I'm in an aircraft bigger and heavier than anything ever to operate from a carrier, including the B-25 Mitchell [Author's Note: this happened once, during the Second World War, and how the Yanks brought it off remains a mystery to me; the Mitchells barely fitted on the deck], and I don't have any arrestor gear. I trust you're still familiar with the overwater ditching proccedures I spent six months drilling into you when you insisted on coming with me to Norway in '98?"
"Yes, and a fat lot of good they'd have done over the Skaggerak in October."
I declined to reply, lining up for an approach I didn't want to make.
"Permission to come alongside instead, over."
"Negative, Alpha Bravo. We're at sea state five. Best of luck, over."
Mary and I exchanged significant looks. "How come nobody's mentioned how you're not KIA any... after all?" she remarked.
"Well, you know MI5," I replied with false nonchalance. "Whatever they say, take it to be the opposite."
Adopting a nose high approach, I aimed to snag the thick cable strung across the carrier's deck, noting the large net erected further along. Let's hope I don't need it, and if I DO need it, let's hope it doesn't break this time!
"Okay, hold tight people. There's about a million ways this can go wrong..."
We hit the deck with a tooth-rattling thud, bounced, and finally caught the arrestor cable. The 'Gear Unsafe' warning light began to flash, as did the hydraulics light. I applied the brakes, and managed -barely- to gain control. I taxied up to the superstructure, out of the way of incoming planes, and began the post-landing checklist. "Okay. Frank, stay here for a minute. I've got a bad feeling about this. The rest of you, grab some guns."
Frank began to object, but quietened when he saw the Nazi uniforms. A Typhoon set down nearby, and I saw that its missiles had the safety tags (much like the pin on a hand grenade, except that you can put them back in) taped in place. Carrie-Anne gave me an apologetic look as she cranked open the canopy. The next plane to land turned out to be occupied by a pilot in Luftwaffe uniform, with twin lightning flashes on his helmet.
"Bastards," I muttered to myself. "We're trapped. There's no way we can take off from this thing; we'd go straight into the drink. And we're outnumbered by about six to one. Christ, we're screwed."
"Dave?" said Frank. "I might have an idea. If we can get off the carrier, we've got the whole Irish sea to take off in. Now, if we can get up enough speed to use ground effect, we can glide down to the water and make a proper takeoff then. Would that work?"
"Maybe, if the gear raised in time and those Typhoons don't nail us. It's worth a shot, at least. Alright, I'll need about three minutes to get ready. Think you can hold them off for that long?"
"Oh, shit. Guys, look!" I followed Mary's gesture, and noted that no fewer than five antitank weapons pointing at us.
I banged my head against the cockpit window. We might just have time to swivel the dorsal turret before the missiles punched holes you could put your head through in the hull and engine nacelle, but we'd never drop the gunners in time. Even if by some miracle Aurora wasn't instantly turned into a fireball, we certainly wouldn't be flying anywhere.
"We're buggered," I concluded morosely.
"Is that worse than being screwed, do you think?" Frank enquired innocently. I sighed. In an uncertain world, it's nice to know that at least some things never change.
"Crap joke, Frank." I wrenched open the hatch, and threw my pistol out, discretely gesturing to John.
"Sensible chap," a man I didn't recognise observed coolly. "So, you're William Parry's stepfather, right? I'd expected you to be a bit, well... more imposing. Chiselled, blonde good looks? A jaw you could split teak with? That sort of thing."
"Just who the hell are you?" I enquired. Come on, just a little closer, you smarmy bastard...
He smiled a tight little smile I felt an overwhelming desire to smash in with a good right cross. "My name isn't important right now. Now then, are there any more guns in there?"
"At least one," John replied, as I stepped aside to give him a good field of fire. Our mysterious new friend smiled the tight little smile again, apparently unfazed by the assault rifle two feet from his face. "Stand your men down and start walking backwards, or I homogenise your brain," John growled. For somebody with Asperger's, he can be a surprisingly good communicator.
"Pull your trigger and they'll pull theirs," he replied reasonably. I simply raised one eyebrow.
John tossed a grenade towards the rocket launcher crew, who'd been watching the exchange with interest. They scattered, and Mary started the engines. I snatched my pistol from the deck, and grabbed a handful of Smiley's shirt, pulling him into a firm arm lock and shoving the gun into his ear.
"I don't believe you ever told me your name," I said conversationally, dragging him into the aircraft.
"Oh? I'm Metatron. Hi." I was thrown backwards by a blow that felt like it came from a sledgehammer. John opened fire, but the rounds passed through him like he was a ghost. "Son of a bitch!"
Metatron leapt a thousand feet into the air, morphing into a great horned, winged... thing. I scrambled aboard Aurora, swearing to myself. How the HELL do I get myself into this kind of crazy shit?I wondered.
"Dave, we gotta get outta here!" Mary yelled at me. I nodded, grabbing the controls and kicking in the afterburners. "This had better work, Frank!"
We screamed across the deck and glided smoothly into the sea, and then got hit by a wave the size of a Wilson Homes 4 bedroom detached house.
"Sorry, forgot it was a bit choppy," Frank said meekly as I tried to restart the flooded engines. I grabbed him by the back of the head and banged his head into the nearest bulkhead.
"Come on, old girl," I whispered, pressing the start button again. "Don't let me down now... Yes!" The engines roared into life. "Thank you, Rolls-Royce Aerospace!" We took off rather awkwardly, and I hastily deployed the turrets and weapon pods.
"Um, Dave, I really don't think this is a good idea!" Mary said in a worried tone.
I sighted Metatron, uttered a short but heartfelt prayer, and launched all four Sidewinders. "Come on, come on... Ha, have some of that you bastard!" He staggered under the missile hits. "The whole bulletproof thing only works when you're under six foot, then," I remarked. "Here we go, everybody. This is the proverbial it!"
"This is all some hugely elaborate acid flashback," Frank said in a rather wobbly voice. "This isn't happening. I'll wake up in a minute, and there'll be cool sheets."
"Oh, just shut up, will you?"
[Author's note: If you have a copy of that tune from the Guinness ads -you know, the one with the surfers- then put it on now]
I turned the plane to face Metatron, and treated him to a two second burst from all four nose guns. He responded by breathing fire at us, scorching the keel. I switched over to rockets and shot off four in his general direction. "Come on, you bastard! That the best you can do?"
His fist slammed into Aurora's wing, sending us into a spin that took me several seconds to recover from. "RIGHT!" Yelling like a maniac, I swung around and sent Aurora hurtling towards him with all weapons firing. "Come on, come on!" I finally broke off with seconds to go before a head-on collision, by which time the rocket pod was empty and the ammunition warning light was illuminated.
"Dave, get us the hell out of here!" John, Mary and just about everybody else yelled at me.
"Amen to that. This isn't over, you bastard..." I snarled. "Jump drive stations, everybody."
The gun crews strapped exited the turrets and strapped themselves into the jumpseats (pardon the pun) I'd installed in case we flew with gunners as well as a cockpit crew. Mary ran the jump drive's warmup sequence whilst I cut in the afterburners and brought Aurora up to Mach 2.3.
"Okay Frank, this can be a bit unsettling the first time around, but don't worry about the flash, the vibration or the feeling that we've flown into a brick wall. They're all normal; it's a rather brute-force technique, but it works."
"This isn't helping, Dave."
I sighed. "We've done this a couple of hundred times without anything ever going wrong enough to scratch the hull. Trust me, okay?" Mary tactfully didn't mention that Aurora became possibly the only aircraft to suck a weathervane into one engine after transiting over a village that hadn't been there in the world we left, not that we need worry about THAT over the sea.
"Okay. But if we crashland someplace miles from anywhere then we eat you first, right?"
Mary gave me the word, and I triggered the focused electromagnetic pulse that prised a fissure open wide enough to fly through, with a blinding flash and a violent sonic boom. Our kinetic energy was absorbed and bled off for reasons we still don't fully understand.
"Wow!" said Frank. "You should have ripped the wings off doing that, whatever it was. Have you had any problems with metal fatigue?" He was now in full planespotter mode.
"Not as many as you'd think. The manganese-titanium alloy we used for the hull is incredibly tough; it's shrugged off a near-miss from a heat-seeker. I swear, I could do an atmospheric re-entry in this baby and keep her in service."
"Nice. So, what are the specs?"
I grinned; sad as it is, I'm always happy to talk about Aurora. "Ten miniguns; four in the nose, two per turret. Six retractable missile hardpoints that can carry just about anything, though they're constrained by the weapon bays, and a rocket pod that drops down from the forward fuselage. Fastest level speed I've ever coaxed out of her is Mach 2.5, and the airframe tolerance is about 9G. We only need two hundred yards for a normal takeoff, and perhaps twice that for a landing; since we could wind up facing just about any terrain we needed good short-field capacity. The radar isn't spectacular in terms of range, but it's three-sixty degree."
"How'd you manage that without a radar dome?"
"It's all in the wing surfaces. We had to innovate a bit on account of all the jump drive gear in the nose. It didn't leave much space for radar or much else besides the guns, and it was touch and go there for a while. The FLIR and low light TV camera had to go on an external mount, and we mounted them coaxially with the targeting optics for the jump drive. One problem down, about ten thousand to go."
"Neat trick, that. So how much of the avionics are off-the-shelf components?"
"About eighty five percent, at a rough estimate. The jump drive, radar and landing gear are custom-built, as well as most of the interior fittings; that was mostly a DIY job." Frank winced. I once destroyed £500-worth of carpet and £80-worth of wallpaper installing bookshelves for him as a favour. Well, how was I meant to know there was a water pipe there?
I tried the landing gear, but the warning light came on again. "Damn. We'll have to set down on water somewhere. Has the inertial navigator reset?"
"No dice. We'll have to look for a landmark and work out where we are. What's the fuel like?"
I checked. "About another four hours in the air. Which world are we in, anyhow?"
"Number seventeen." Lyra's world. We'd established a numerical system before the first test of the jump drive, our own world being number one, and each one we isolated from imagery of the fissures getting a number after that. It actually didn't tell us anything until after we'd visited all forty-odd we catalogued, but once we'd started making regular forays it became invaluable.
We swung inland. I scanned the map and tried to figure out a place we coukd set down and get more fuel. "Kerosene works, more or less. It's hard on the turbine blades, though."
"It'll have to do. Where are you going to find proper jet fuel around here?" Mary pointed out. "It's not gonna mix too good with what's already in the tanks, either."
"Well, it's a bloody long walk to Germany if we don't," I remarked sourly. "While we're about it we'd better look at getting some more ammunition. That IS going to be a bit tough, although thirty calibre's thirty calibre. Right, I'm heading for the Fens. Once we're on the ground then maybe we can arrange some transportation for our various logistic needs, as well as some fuel."
We landed outside the town, and explained what had happened. "Well, I might have a contact," John Faa admitted. "A young man by the name of Justin Coulter crews a transport zepplin out of the London Aerodock. I'll try and get hold of him."
"Coulter?" I said after a long pause. "That's got to be a coincidence!"
Frank didn't turn up after two hours, and I took Aurora to find out why. I took John, Trish and Eddie as extra security, along with two of the J-Team as gunners. We considered that Chloe was safer with the others, given John's and my knack for attracting trouble.
"I'm going to land off the coast and break out the inflatable; Aurora's too distinctive to risk setting down at any airfield. Once we're on dry land we'll find some transport and go looking for Frank. Oh, and leave your shoulder arms behind; sidearms only, okay?"
"You sure?" asked Trish. "If he's in trouble..."
I sighed. "Look, we're trying to keep a low profile, and if they link you to Frank then he'll be in even deeper shit than when he got nabbed for drug running back in '04."
"He's right," John agreed. "We'll do everything we can to avoid engaging the enemy on this one. The heavy stuff isn't going to make that too easy. I'd be happier with my G3 along for the ride, but it's sort of noticeable, you know?"
"Oh, well. I'm still going to feel nervous without my MP5."
Mary and I shrugged, and I engaged the afterburners whilst she primed the jump drive.
"Targeting, targeting... locked. Correct five degrees to starboard."
"Five degrees starboard, roger. Jump speed in ten seconds."
"Pre-jump sequence complete, activate when ready."
"Okay, hold tight everybody!" I activated the jump drive. There was the usual blinding flash, and the sensation of the aircraft flying through several layers of cardboard and polystyrene. Me and the old squadron once seriously considered trying this, and were only prevented by A: scarcity of either material at sea and B: the CO threatening us with dishonourable discharges if we endangered HM military equipment in such a reckless fashion. This goes to show just how incredibly boring a naval career can be when there's no wars going on.
"Right, here goes," I said to myself, inflating the Zodiac. "Climb in, folks." We scrambled aboard, and I started up the outboard.
"Okay, see you later. Try and keep out of trouble!" Mary called as we moved away.
"Yeah, you too! Right, hold tight you lot!" I opened the throttle all the way, and sent us jetting off at fifty miles an hour.
"Um, Dave?" John yelled at me as we approached a large swell. I just grinned. "Dave? Dave! DAVE! Ohhh, shi-i-i-i-i-i-t!" We left the surface of the water, flew for a few yards and landed in a trough, whereupon we began climbing another wave.
"You are off your bloody rocker!" John informed me. Everybody else was too petrified to speak.
"Oh, complain if you get killed!" I replied.
"I'll hold you to that!"
We beached the boat on a dramatic but bleak stretch of Welsh coastline, covering it in camouflage netting. "Right, according to the map there's a village with a station three miles to the south. Best start walking."
"Terrific. Did we have to make landfall in the middle of nowhere?" John complained, stripping his pistol and poking a cotton bud down the barrel. "Not that I couldn't do with the exercise, but three miles?"
"Only safe landing spot with decent cover," I replied. "Come on, the sooner we start...."
The sooner we could sit in a decrepit station waiting for a grubby and crowded two-coach Sprinter of roughly the same vintage as me, as it turned out.
Another three hours later, we reached Northampton. From there it was an hour-long trip by taxi. I was entirely unsurprised to see John manhandling a long package into the boot.
"Open that without a VERY good reason and there'll be trouble," I warned, but with little conviction. My attempts to call Frank on my mobile had been met with a 'number unavailable' message every time. It might be a technical fault -it happened often enough back when I worked with him- but it might also be something else altogether.
"A little paranoia can be healthy," Eddie replied. "Come on, let's go."
When we arrived, Watson Air was seemingly deserted, and the door was locked. I peered suspiciously through the glass.
"Hmm. I can't see any sign of a forced entry. John, you and Trish check the hangars. Eddie, come on round the back with me."
We found a window smashed in, and climbed through. The office beyond was riddled with bullet holes, and quite a few bloodstains. "Christ, somebody must've had an M60 or something," Eddie said in astonishment. He drew the shotgun from the scabbard across his back, shrugging off the old trenchcoat he'd been wearing. I drew my Beretta.
"Come on, we'd better check the rest of the building." We did, and it was the same story. I wondered where the bodies were, and if Frank had been one of them. We exited via the front door, and encountered John, who was being sick.
"We found the bodies nailed to the hangar wall," he explained once he'd stopped retching. "Jesus, there goes my image!" It was a weak and rather tasteless joke, but I could see he was trying to disguise how badly rattled he was. "We found this as well." I read the note he handed me: 'Mess with me and mine, and you and yours can expect this kind of thing. Metatron. PS: Most of them were already dead when my associates nailed them up. I'm not a complete bastard.' Oh yeah?I thought to myself, slowly shredding the note. "Let's get out of here. If the cops find us here they'll think WE did it."
"Right. Oh, crap. Look!" A car was pulling up. We hastily tried to conceal our weapons as it rolled up, and the driver got out.
"Hi, Dave. I've just got back; crisis up at the Stanstead office. What's up?"
"See for yourself. In there," John replied unsteadily. "They're all dead."
"WHAT?!"
"Long story. Can we discuss this elsewhere?" I all but bundled him into his car, and we tore off. I rang the mobile number marked 'Al B', a contraction of Aurora's registration and radio callsign, AB 301. It connected to a SIM card that I plumbed into Aurora's communications gear at the same time as the iPod.
"Mary, be ready to take off in a couple of hours. Metarton's people wiped out our transport pilots and everybody in the offices. The hangar's like a bloody slaughterhouse."
"Jesus! Okay, I'll be ready. See you in two hours."
"Dave, what the hell is going on? And who's this Metatron character?"
I wasn't feeling up to explaining, and seriously doubted that Frank would believe it. "If I tell you, you'll think I'm insane."
He sighed. "I've seen your pals open a portal into a parallel universe. Can you top that for weirdness?" I nodded. "Well, try me."
"Okay, then. My buddies and I are trying to prevent God's spin doctor taking over not just this universe but several others, apparently with the assistance of people from one such universe which until very recently was run by the Nazis. I got mixed up in this after I agreed to help Will get to one such universe to see his girlfriend there, some fifteen years ago. How HE got mixed up in this isn't my story to tell. Happy? Good. Now get your bloody foot down!"
We reached the Welsh coast in record time, and clambered aboard the Zodiac. "Hold tight!" We zipped away at Warp Two, and nearly slammed straight into Aurora's hull. "Get aboard, quickly. If the airfield was being watched..."
Gunfire shredded the inflatable just as I got out. "It was!"
There was a general scramble to get in the air. Frank was shoved into a cockpit seat and warned not to touch anything, whilst John stood by one of the turrets. Mary got into the copilot's seat.
"All set!" I opened both throttles and sent Aurora screaming into the sky. Once we were in the air, I flipped the switch to engage combat mode. "Talk to me, people!"
"Six Typhoons, no squawk," Mary replied. "Looks like a patrol. Let's hope they're monitoring the emergency frequency!"
I nodded, adjusting my radio mike accordingly. "Hello any callsign, hello any callsign. This is Alpha Bravo three zero one. Highball, highball, highball. Do you acknowlege, over?"
"Roger, Alpha Bravo. Sorry about that. Just try not to go supersonic overland; my mother might complain, see. Over."
"Ah, thought I recognised the voice, Carrie-Anne," I laughed. Finally tired of riding pillion?"
A new voice cut in. "Alpha Bravo, this is HMS Cunningham. Please land immediately, over."
"Roger, Cunningham, preparing to land." I sighed deeply, switching off the radio. "Great. Think we can land alongside, rather than on the deck?"
"Come ON," Frank chided me. "How many carrier landings have you done over the years? What makes this different?"
"In this thing, one, which came bloody close to disaster," I replied. "And what's different is that I'm in an aircraft bigger and heavier than anything ever to operate from a carrier, including the B-25 Mitchell [Author's Note: this happened once, during the Second World War, and how the Yanks brought it off remains a mystery to me; the Mitchells barely fitted on the deck], and I don't have any arrestor gear. I trust you're still familiar with the overwater ditching proccedures I spent six months drilling into you when you insisted on coming with me to Norway in '98?"
"Yes, and a fat lot of good they'd have done over the Skaggerak in October."
I declined to reply, lining up for an approach I didn't want to make.
"Permission to come alongside instead, over."
"Negative, Alpha Bravo. We're at sea state five. Best of luck, over."
Mary and I exchanged significant looks. "How come nobody's mentioned how you're not KIA any... after all?" she remarked.
"Well, you know MI5," I replied with false nonchalance. "Whatever they say, take it to be the opposite."
Adopting a nose high approach, I aimed to snag the thick cable strung across the carrier's deck, noting the large net erected further along. Let's hope I don't need it, and if I DO need it, let's hope it doesn't break this time!
"Okay, hold tight people. There's about a million ways this can go wrong..."
We hit the deck with a tooth-rattling thud, bounced, and finally caught the arrestor cable. The 'Gear Unsafe' warning light began to flash, as did the hydraulics light. I applied the brakes, and managed -barely- to gain control. I taxied up to the superstructure, out of the way of incoming planes, and began the post-landing checklist. "Okay. Frank, stay here for a minute. I've got a bad feeling about this. The rest of you, grab some guns."
Frank began to object, but quietened when he saw the Nazi uniforms. A Typhoon set down nearby, and I saw that its missiles had the safety tags (much like the pin on a hand grenade, except that you can put them back in) taped in place. Carrie-Anne gave me an apologetic look as she cranked open the canopy. The next plane to land turned out to be occupied by a pilot in Luftwaffe uniform, with twin lightning flashes on his helmet.
"Bastards," I muttered to myself. "We're trapped. There's no way we can take off from this thing; we'd go straight into the drink. And we're outnumbered by about six to one. Christ, we're screwed."
"Dave?" said Frank. "I might have an idea. If we can get off the carrier, we've got the whole Irish sea to take off in. Now, if we can get up enough speed to use ground effect, we can glide down to the water and make a proper takeoff then. Would that work?"
"Maybe, if the gear raised in time and those Typhoons don't nail us. It's worth a shot, at least. Alright, I'll need about three minutes to get ready. Think you can hold them off for that long?"
"Oh, shit. Guys, look!" I followed Mary's gesture, and noted that no fewer than five antitank weapons pointing at us.
I banged my head against the cockpit window. We might just have time to swivel the dorsal turret before the missiles punched holes you could put your head through in the hull and engine nacelle, but we'd never drop the gunners in time. Even if by some miracle Aurora wasn't instantly turned into a fireball, we certainly wouldn't be flying anywhere.
"We're buggered," I concluded morosely.
"Is that worse than being screwed, do you think?" Frank enquired innocently. I sighed. In an uncertain world, it's nice to know that at least some things never change.
"Crap joke, Frank." I wrenched open the hatch, and threw my pistol out, discretely gesturing to John.
"Sensible chap," a man I didn't recognise observed coolly. "So, you're William Parry's stepfather, right? I'd expected you to be a bit, well... more imposing. Chiselled, blonde good looks? A jaw you could split teak with? That sort of thing."
"Just who the hell are you?" I enquired. Come on, just a little closer, you smarmy bastard...
He smiled a tight little smile I felt an overwhelming desire to smash in with a good right cross. "My name isn't important right now. Now then, are there any more guns in there?"
"At least one," John replied, as I stepped aside to give him a good field of fire. Our mysterious new friend smiled the tight little smile again, apparently unfazed by the assault rifle two feet from his face. "Stand your men down and start walking backwards, or I homogenise your brain," John growled. For somebody with Asperger's, he can be a surprisingly good communicator.
"Pull your trigger and they'll pull theirs," he replied reasonably. I simply raised one eyebrow.
John tossed a grenade towards the rocket launcher crew, who'd been watching the exchange with interest. They scattered, and Mary started the engines. I snatched my pistol from the deck, and grabbed a handful of Smiley's shirt, pulling him into a firm arm lock and shoving the gun into his ear.
"I don't believe you ever told me your name," I said conversationally, dragging him into the aircraft.
"Oh? I'm Metatron. Hi." I was thrown backwards by a blow that felt like it came from a sledgehammer. John opened fire, but the rounds passed through him like he was a ghost. "Son of a bitch!"
Metatron leapt a thousand feet into the air, morphing into a great horned, winged... thing. I scrambled aboard Aurora, swearing to myself. How the HELL do I get myself into this kind of crazy shit?I wondered.
"Dave, we gotta get outta here!" Mary yelled at me. I nodded, grabbing the controls and kicking in the afterburners. "This had better work, Frank!"
We screamed across the deck and glided smoothly into the sea, and then got hit by a wave the size of a Wilson Homes 4 bedroom detached house.
"Sorry, forgot it was a bit choppy," Frank said meekly as I tried to restart the flooded engines. I grabbed him by the back of the head and banged his head into the nearest bulkhead.
"Come on, old girl," I whispered, pressing the start button again. "Don't let me down now... Yes!" The engines roared into life. "Thank you, Rolls-Royce Aerospace!" We took off rather awkwardly, and I hastily deployed the turrets and weapon pods.
"Um, Dave, I really don't think this is a good idea!" Mary said in a worried tone.
I sighted Metatron, uttered a short but heartfelt prayer, and launched all four Sidewinders. "Come on, come on... Ha, have some of that you bastard!" He staggered under the missile hits. "The whole bulletproof thing only works when you're under six foot, then," I remarked. "Here we go, everybody. This is the proverbial it!"
"This is all some hugely elaborate acid flashback," Frank said in a rather wobbly voice. "This isn't happening. I'll wake up in a minute, and there'll be cool sheets."
"Oh, just shut up, will you?"
[Author's note: If you have a copy of that tune from the Guinness ads -you know, the one with the surfers- then put it on now]
I turned the plane to face Metatron, and treated him to a two second burst from all four nose guns. He responded by breathing fire at us, scorching the keel. I switched over to rockets and shot off four in his general direction. "Come on, you bastard! That the best you can do?"
His fist slammed into Aurora's wing, sending us into a spin that took me several seconds to recover from. "RIGHT!" Yelling like a maniac, I swung around and sent Aurora hurtling towards him with all weapons firing. "Come on, come on!" I finally broke off with seconds to go before a head-on collision, by which time the rocket pod was empty and the ammunition warning light was illuminated.
"Dave, get us the hell out of here!" John, Mary and just about everybody else yelled at me.
"Amen to that. This isn't over, you bastard..." I snarled. "Jump drive stations, everybody."
The gun crews strapped exited the turrets and strapped themselves into the jumpseats (pardon the pun) I'd installed in case we flew with gunners as well as a cockpit crew. Mary ran the jump drive's warmup sequence whilst I cut in the afterburners and brought Aurora up to Mach 2.3.
"Okay Frank, this can be a bit unsettling the first time around, but don't worry about the flash, the vibration or the feeling that we've flown into a brick wall. They're all normal; it's a rather brute-force technique, but it works."
"This isn't helping, Dave."
I sighed. "We've done this a couple of hundred times without anything ever going wrong enough to scratch the hull. Trust me, okay?" Mary tactfully didn't mention that Aurora became possibly the only aircraft to suck a weathervane into one engine after transiting over a village that hadn't been there in the world we left, not that we need worry about THAT over the sea.
"Okay. But if we crashland someplace miles from anywhere then we eat you first, right?"
Mary gave me the word, and I triggered the focused electromagnetic pulse that prised a fissure open wide enough to fly through, with a blinding flash and a violent sonic boom. Our kinetic energy was absorbed and bled off for reasons we still don't fully understand.
"Wow!" said Frank. "You should have ripped the wings off doing that, whatever it was. Have you had any problems with metal fatigue?" He was now in full planespotter mode.
"Not as many as you'd think. The manganese-titanium alloy we used for the hull is incredibly tough; it's shrugged off a near-miss from a heat-seeker. I swear, I could do an atmospheric re-entry in this baby and keep her in service."
"Nice. So, what are the specs?"
I grinned; sad as it is, I'm always happy to talk about Aurora. "Ten miniguns; four in the nose, two per turret. Six retractable missile hardpoints that can carry just about anything, though they're constrained by the weapon bays, and a rocket pod that drops down from the forward fuselage. Fastest level speed I've ever coaxed out of her is Mach 2.5, and the airframe tolerance is about 9G. We only need two hundred yards for a normal takeoff, and perhaps twice that for a landing; since we could wind up facing just about any terrain we needed good short-field capacity. The radar isn't spectacular in terms of range, but it's three-sixty degree."
"How'd you manage that without a radar dome?"
"It's all in the wing surfaces. We had to innovate a bit on account of all the jump drive gear in the nose. It didn't leave much space for radar or much else besides the guns, and it was touch and go there for a while. The FLIR and low light TV camera had to go on an external mount, and we mounted them coaxially with the targeting optics for the jump drive. One problem down, about ten thousand to go."
"Neat trick, that. So how much of the avionics are off-the-shelf components?"
"About eighty five percent, at a rough estimate. The jump drive, radar and landing gear are custom-built, as well as most of the interior fittings; that was mostly a DIY job." Frank winced. I once destroyed £500-worth of carpet and £80-worth of wallpaper installing bookshelves for him as a favour. Well, how was I meant to know there was a water pipe there?
I tried the landing gear, but the warning light came on again. "Damn. We'll have to set down on water somewhere. Has the inertial navigator reset?"
"No dice. We'll have to look for a landmark and work out where we are. What's the fuel like?"
I checked. "About another four hours in the air. Which world are we in, anyhow?"
"Number seventeen." Lyra's world. We'd established a numerical system before the first test of the jump drive, our own world being number one, and each one we isolated from imagery of the fissures getting a number after that. It actually didn't tell us anything until after we'd visited all forty-odd we catalogued, but once we'd started making regular forays it became invaluable.
We swung inland. I scanned the map and tried to figure out a place we coukd set down and get more fuel. "Kerosene works, more or less. It's hard on the turbine blades, though."
"It'll have to do. Where are you going to find proper jet fuel around here?" Mary pointed out. "It's not gonna mix too good with what's already in the tanks, either."
"Well, it's a bloody long walk to Germany if we don't," I remarked sourly. "While we're about it we'd better look at getting some more ammunition. That IS going to be a bit tough, although thirty calibre's thirty calibre. Right, I'm heading for the Fens. Once we're on the ground then maybe we can arrange some transportation for our various logistic needs, as well as some fuel."
We landed outside the town, and explained what had happened. "Well, I might have a contact," John Faa admitted. "A young man by the name of Justin Coulter crews a transport zepplin out of the London Aerodock. I'll try and get hold of him."
"Coulter?" I said after a long pause. "That's got to be a coincidence!"