by Jon Jacks
Did Napoleon undergo a ‘character arc’? Did he, towards the end of his life, mumble something along the lines of, ‘Well whaddya know, I was wrong all along’? Did he–
A massive, deafening on-screen explosion shook Jake out of his meandering thoughts.
Damn! I’ve just been wiped out!
He jumped as another, louder explosion made the whole room shake. Another immediately followed, Jake ducking instinctively behind his chair as the apartment’s outside wall disintegrated in a burst of stone, brick, timber and furnishings.
What the?
He whirled around, peering through the rolling clouds of dust, the rain of smaller, lighter particles that still had to fall to the floor.
Where a large window had been, there was now an immense, roughly hewn hole.
And standing in its very centre, studiously observing the room, was the gloriously glowing figure of an amber-skinned dragon.
*
Chapter 18
The dragon’s eyes locked on Jake’s.
He grinned triumphantly.
With a deftly controlled flick of his wings, he swooped across the room towards the cowering Jake – then abruptly jerked backwards in an explosion of orange flame.
Jake spin around again, this time looking back towards the door. At some point it had been blasted off its hinges, and a heavily armoured soldier was now crouching in its frame, the smoking residue of a launched missile still rising from his levelled gun.
It was as if he were back on the island once more, bathed in the glow of the fire that only a moment before had been Mrs Frobisher, shielding Celly from the oncoming soldiers, wrapping himself tightly around her as he begged her not to change, to remain human, pleading to the soldiers not to attack her, that she was injured, that she wasn’t a danger to them.
Rising from his crouch, the soldier loped across the room, followed by another, equally well armed and armoured soldier. As they took up positions by the hole in the outside wall, as if guarding it from any further attack, a third solider entered behind them.
‘It’s me kid,’ the third solider growled confidently. ‘Here to rescue you again!’
*
Jake had held onto Celly as tightly as he could, hoping, bizarrely, that his enwrapping arms would somehow prevent her wings from unfurling, prevent her from transforming.
‘They’ll kill you Celly, they’ll kill you!’ he whispered urgently. ‘There’s too many of them!’
He felt her struggle in his arms. But she wasn’t fighting him, he realised; she was at war with herself, one part instinctively seeking vengeance for the murder of Mrs Frobisher, another listening to Jake’s heartfelt pleading, trying to quickly work out if taking his advice was the more sensible course.
He sensed the easing of her body, the resignation. She remained in her human form. Whether that was because she was worried that he might be harmed if she changed, or because she recognised that Jake was right and knew she stood no chance, he wasn’t sure.
The main thing was, it gave Jake time to plead for her life.
‘We won’t hurt you!’ he screamed nervously at the soldiers edgily, warily surrounding them, their guns constantly aimed at Celly’s head. ‘We surrender!’
‘We know you won’t hurt us, kid,’ a soldier assuredly striding towards them declared with a hash growl. ‘We’re here to rescue you. As for the girl; she’d better come quietly – or else.’
*
Lieutenant Rodgers; the soldier had introduced himself as soon as they had boarded the helicopter that would take Jake off the island.
Celly wasn’t with them. She had been escorted to another helicopter, the guns of the surrounding soldiers still unerringly aimed at her head.
He had never seen her again.
Never heard from her.
The Volances, Lieutenant Rodgers had informed him, had been captured. A boy amongst their party had told them where Jake was being held.
‘You’ve got to come with us!’ Lieutenant Rodgers said now, helping Jake up off the rubble strewn floor. ‘The dragons are out to get you!’
As if to confirm the Lieutenant’s claim, a scream alerted them to a rapidly moving sparkle of gemstones at the hole in the wall as one of the soldiers was snatched at and carried away by a swooping dragon. The other soldier turned, fired.
Jake couldn’t see the resulting explosion, which took place out of his view, but the screams stopped. With a rhythmic booming and the clatter of nearby windows, a military helicopter hurtled past, the bright flash of pursuing dragons closely following it. Sweeping in beneath the chattering rotors, they latched onto its sides, wrenching the gunner and his large machine gun out through the open doors, tearing holes in the metal.
Jake ran for the door, Lieutenant Rodgers just on his heels, the soldier backing away from the holed wall covering their retreat. Jake heard the soldier fire, the boom of an explosion outside the apartment. Then they were outside in the hall, Lieutenant Rodgers directing him towards the stairwell.
‘The lifts are too dangerous; they might cut off the power!’
‘What’s going on?’ Jake demand as they hurtled down the steps, skidding sharply around the tightly angled corners. ‘Why are the dragons after me?’
‘Not sure kid; maybe they intercepted our messages that we were going to pick you up.’
‘Pick me up? What for? I’ve told you everything I know!’
Just after Jake had been lifted off the island, even while he was still on the helicopter, he’d been probed by Lieutenant Rodgers for any information he could give them on the dragons. Jake had been reticent about revealing everything he knew, however, feeling it was a betrayal of Celly. Even so, the interviews and interrogations over the next few days – along with the insistent urging from his parents that he should help the authorities ‘ensure everyone is safe’– had gradually wheedled more and more out of him until he felt there was little more for him to add.
‘Yeah, that’s right; and according to you kid, your girlfriend was going to be no bother at all for us, right?’
‘Celly? What’s wrong with her? What’s happened?’
‘What’s wrong with her? Kid, she’s the one leading this rebellion!’
*
Chapter 19
Jake sunk back, exhausted, into the soft leather of the executive-jet’s plush seat.
Lieutenant Rodgers told him he might as well have a sleep; it was a long trip to China, even travelling at the incredible speeds the jet could reach.
They had been transferred to the jet by the helicopter that, gingerly landing on a large stretch of lawn just outside the apartment block, had picked them up as smaller helicopters whirled around them, defending the area. A number of helicopters had already been brought down, their burning or mangled wreckage jutting out from the buildings they’d crashed into, or littering the streets or rooftops.
‘We’re lucky,’ Lieutenant Rodgers had breathed with relief as they’d hurriedly boarded. ‘It was just a small group sent to get you. They probably weren’t expecting us to move so quickly, or with such force. We surprised them.’
Jake hadn’t seen how many dragons had been involved in the attack. But he did see one final attack on the fleeing helicopters by a lone dragon who, whirling freely amongst them, avoided the guns aimed at him with ease, the bullets instead churning up other helicopters, even the glass fronted offices of nearby tower blocks. He brought down a helicopter with a burst of flame that erupted as a blazing jet from his mouth (so, Celly had lied about that!), only to swoop upwards into the whirring blades of another helicopter that scattered him across the sky like a shower of iridescent gems.
‘You need to tell me what’s going on,’ Jake insisted vehemently, rising from the comforting embrace of the leather seat to prevent himself from succumbing to his shocked weariness.
‘The Drags – the dragons – have broken out of Hong Kong.’
‘Broken out? We’re always being told how incredibly happy they are livin
g there. Besides, I thought they were surrounded by half the Chinese army; just to reassure people they were safe.’ He spat out the last part sarcastically.
‘More like two thirds, plus an international force of more or less equal numbers. The Drags made mincemeat of them.’
‘When?’ Jake was incredulous. ‘I haven’t read anything about this in the papers or seen it on the news!’
‘You think we’re going to promote this? All our efforts are involved in containing it; but it’s going to break soon enough, no doubt about it.’
‘That attack back there around my apartment is hardly going to help.’
‘That regular terrorist attack, you mean? Sure, that will sound terrifying enough; but how do you think they’d take it if they knew Drags were involved?’
‘What, with helicopters strewn all over the place? There’s no way you can keep all that covered up.’
‘Didn’t you just say you didn’t know that half of China’s fallen, along with Korea and most of Japan? If we can cover that up, a little spat in the west end isn’t going to be much of a problem.’
‘Wow!’ Jake couldn’t hide the fact that he was impressed. ‘But you’re holding them back now, right?’
‘You’ve seen them up close kid. These guys are not only like your worst alien nightmare, but they can blend amongst us as the perfect spies. They can use our own weapons against us too, patch into our communications, disable our computers. They’re the perfect enemy, Jake, in the same way you can have a perfect storm.’
‘All that’s long hand for you’re not holding them, right?’
Rodgers nodded.
‘You ask me, it seems we’re licked, kid. That’s why I got permission to bring you in.’
‘Me?’ Jake gave a bitter laugh. ‘What, you want me to wave the white flag for you?’
‘The flag of parley, kid; we need you to talk to your girlfriend.’
*
Chapter 20
Even though it was now night time and dark outside, Jake didn’t need to be told when they had reached the edges of China.
They had been joined just over an hour ago by a fighter jet escort. Jack had heard their arrival and greetings over the radio, seen their bright, blinking lights and the pilots dimly illuminated in their cockpits as they had gracefully swung alongside the passenger jet and taken up their positions. Now they were passing over a darkened landscape that was increasingly lit up now and again with the scarlet flash of an explosion, the blaze of unrecognised buildings, or briefly illuminated over a vast distance as something flared brightly in the sky overhead.
The cauldrons of hell, Jake thought, wondering what suffering was going on down there.
And Celly was responsible for all this? It didn’t seem possible.
It didn’t seem necessary, either. He had watched, on one of the plane’s state-of-the-art monitors, scenes of life in Hong Kong before the revolt. Much of what he saw he had seen before, in films, in documentaries. But he had also been shown the private interviews that had taken place with psychiatrists and doctors tasked with assessing each individual dragon’s mental state before they were allowed into Hong Kong, the dragon seated in a comfortable, ultra-modern high backed chair, the interview panel kind, courteous and considerate.
There were also numerous facts and figures of the supplies that were daily bussed into the city and its environs, trainload after trainload of food, medicines, clothes and whatever other items a modern civilised life demanded. It all took place under the eyes of the Red Cross and UN too, so it seemed odd when it switched to shots of dragons complaining that all this was ‘inadequate’.
‘Inadequate?’ a UN President stormed. ‘Could that be anything to do, I wonder, with their have becoming used to their previous, privileged lives, and their lack of understanding of how must humans would consider their present lives the height of luxury?’
‘How are you going to arrange this meeting?’ Jake asked Rodgers who, making the most of his luxurious surroundings, was lounging back in his seat as he sipped a large whisky.
‘As I said earlier, they’ve patched into our communications and cracked most of our codes; we’ve let them know you’re wanting to meet her.’
‘What if she doesn’t want to meet me? It was over a year ago. Just a teenage fling.’ Jake managed to hide his bitterness.
‘They just tried to snatch you back there, didn’t they? She must still hold a candle for you, kid.’
‘Really? It seemed to me they were more likely out to try and turn me into a candle!’
Rodgers shook his head, took another slow, thoughtful drink of his whisky before saying, ‘If they wanted to kill you, there wouldn’t have been much we could have done to stop it.’
He said it with a sense of admiration for his enemies’ capabilities.
‘I reckon,’ he continued, ‘they thought they were doing you a favour. I reckon your girlfriend was worried we were going to use you as a hostage, a bargaining chip.’
‘A hostage? Why would Celly think that? Why would she care?’
‘Because she knows we’re losing, knows we’re desperate. She knew we were coming after you, but at the time she didn’t know why. Now she does. She’ll–’
One of the fighter pilots screamed a garbled, static-mangled warning across the intercom connection.
‘Incoming bogeys, directly…gorilla…sandwiched–’
The message broke off as abruptly as it had interrupted them.
Jake peered out of the window, scanned the sky.
One of the fighter planes was angling and dropping away, flame licking across its wings, enveloping or emanating from one of its engines. With a lightning-like crack and sunburst of yellow light, it vanished, becoming nothing more than falling, glinting slivers of metal caught in the lights of the fighter that had been rushing to its rescue.
The executive jet rocked and jolted as the force of the explosion hit it side on.
‘How can they bring down a jet?’ Jake yelled fearfully at Rodgers. ‘How can they keep up with it?’
‘They’ve captured weapons off our own troops. They’ve even got a couple of submarines out at sea; armed with nukes too.’
The directions from the pilots coming over on the intercom rapidly went from urgent to panicked.
‘Bogey dope…closing…I can’t see them… down, down, I’m down!…no joy… faded…no joy!’
Rodgers listened intensely, apprehensively.
‘They can’t lock onto their targets. It’s just Drags out there,’ he said. ‘Bet you those missile aren’t hitting anything,’ he added, drawing Jake’s attention to the odd crump of a far off explosion.
‘Tumbleweed…threat…split…Christmas tree!’
With a thunderous ‘whoommphh!’ another fighter was transformed into a whirling ball of flame, vanishing into the darkness as it fell away. There was a sudden burst of light off to the other side of their jet as one of the fighters turned on a number of lights.
In the light, Jake caught the flash, the sparkle, of precious gems, passing at what appeared to be unimaginable speed above and below the fighter. The plane’s engines instantaneously erupted into flame. A few seconds later, it exploded, a rolling fire that ever so briefly swirled in the night sky.
The intercom went dead.
‘Damn! The other fighter boy must be down too!’ Rodgers snarled worriedly, his face creased with fear.
A ridiculously swift blur of glistening gemstones swept past the windows on either side. It was instantly followed by hard, metallic clunks and scraping on the hull and wings as the lozenges of steel netting clashed against the windows.
There was a loud whirring, a clanking, a screaming from one of the engines as it sucked in the netting, churning it around in its own innards until everything was ripped apart. It exploded into flame with a jolting, ear-bursting bang that drowned out the pained screeching of the other wing’s engine as it, too, greedily devoured the netting.
When the second engine bu
rst into flame, it lit the passenger compartment up with a flowing, scarlet glow.
Rodgers turned towards Jake, a surprisingly apologetic look on his face.
‘Sorry kid,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t look like your girlfriend wants to talk after all.’
*
Chapter 21
As the plane began to rapidly lose height, parachutes were handed round, quickly strapped on. As they waited for the plane to reach a level where the pressure would allow the emergency door to be opened safely, they once again heard metallic clunks and tearing against the side of the hull, glimpsed once again flashes of glittering jewels at the widows; but nothing further happened. They all breathed a sigh of relief, waiting for the signal to jettison the door.
At last, the door’s handle was urgently wrenched up, the door kicked out into the black wind hurtling past them. One of Rodgers’ men stepped towards the door – and was instantly propelled out into the darkness with a terrified yell, his parachute ripped to shreds in an instant in a flurry of sharply glistening blades.
A dragon’s hand swung through the door into the cabin, the long talons sickeningly penetrating the next man in the queue. The dying man fell back, the dragon using him as leverage to pull himself more fully into the cabin. In his other hand, the dragon held a powerful machine pistol. The gun barked quickly in succession, Rodgers and two of his other men taking horrendously mutilating hits that sent them flying back across the leather seats.
Rodger’s last remaining man and the cabin crew drew their own guns, firing at the dragon. The bullets mainly struck some form of thick armour the dragon’s body was encased in, but even those that struck skin seemed to have as little effect as if they’d hit a surface crusted with diamonds.
The dragon fired again, while finishing off the nearest man with a deft, deadly slash of his already bloodied talons.
Cowering behind the seat where he’d instinctively thrown himself, a terrified Jake covered his head, waiting for the shot or swipe of a talon that would kill him.