Day of the Assassins

by Johnny O'Brien

  “Sorry, sir, I mean, I was with the loading gang, er, and kind of fell asleep…”

  The two men looked at each other, and then guffawed loudly.

  “Someone’s going to cop it for this! Come out of there for a start. What did you say your name was?”

  “Jack Christie.”

  “Well, Christie, we will have to report you; it’s lucky for you that we’re just on exercises. Better get you tidied up. And then, I’m sure we can make use of you.” Jack thought the man looked like a cook. He laughed again, nodding at the sacks around him, “There’s this lot to sort out for a start.”

  And with that, he was marched from the hold and soon found himself seated at a small table outside the galley.

  “You stay there.”

  The cook went off, but the sailor, with the pink face, looked at him sympathetically. “Don’t worry lad… Navy has a fine tradition of young men at sea. Nelson himself. We’ll get a signal home to let them know you’re safe. You look famished – tell you what – one of the boys will get you something…”

  The sailor hurried off but reappeared with a large plate of stew and potatoes.

  After a while the cook reappeared.

  “Your lucky day, my lad! Seems that you have an audience in the chart house. Captain wants to know your story, exactly. Security breach and all that. Jones will take you up. And then…” he pointed back up the corridor, “we’ll get you to work.”

  The sailor led Jack through a maze of metal corridors and up and down a series of ladders.

  “We’ll take a short cut through the Admiral’s lobby,” he said.

  As they moved on, Jack saw two figures ascending a ladder ahead of them. They were dressed in sailor’s garb, but had packs on their backs. Jack’s worst fears had come true – Tony and Gordon had followed him aboard Dreadnought.

  “We’ve been asked by the Bridge to take him from here,” Tony said with authority to the young sailor.

  Jack turned to run, but in an instant, Gordon had his arm in a vicelike grip. “Not so fast, Master Christie. You need to come with us.”

  The sailor looked bemused but shrugged and wheeled round leaving Jack alone to his fate.

  Jack smelled Tony’s stale breath as he whispered sneeringly into his ear, “Any noise, any tricks and you are dead meat. You’ve caused us a lot of trouble.”

  Gordon parroted, “A lot of trouble.”

  “Right then,” Tony said, “we are hoping to have a Taurus signal in the next few hours. But you never can tell. In the meantime, we’ve got to find somewhere to hide on this floating dung-crate until we can return to civilisation.”

  “So we don’t draw any attention,” Gordon added.

  “That’s right, Mr MacFarlane, attention is bad. Tell the boy why attention is bad Mr MacFarlane,” Tony said.

  Gordon looked at Jack sardonically, “Attention is bad, because it can lead to interaction with the ’istorical environment.”

  “And why is interaction bad, Mr MacFarlane?” Tony asked.

  “Because, Mr Smith, interaction can cause stuff to happen.”

  “That’s right Mr MacFarlane. What stuff might that be?”

  “Consequences, Mr Smith, in your space-time continuum.”

  “Continuum, Christie. Do you hear that?”

  “You don’t want to mess around with your continuum,” Gordon said.

  “Or to be more precise, a small change now might have significant repercussions for the future,” Tony added. “And that’s where we come in… we’re here to help VIGIL sort out problems – like this one. Sort of tidy up any unfortunate mess.”

  “Time travelling bin men if you like…” Gordon gave a little shrug.

  Tony gave his colleague a sidelong glance, not sure whether he approved of this particular description of their important role.

  He turned to Jack, “Do you understand, my friend?”

  Jack didn’t. He was very scared, “But… I…”

  Tony interrupted him, “So, to be sure we have no more interaction than we possibly need, we are going to ask you to help us… Mr MacFarlane?”

  Gordon unzipped his rucksack. Jack could see that it was stuffed with all sorts of equipment… not least the carefully packed weapon. Gordon opened a small plastic case. It contained an array of medical equipment and Gordon removed a rather large syringe together with a small bottle of fluid. Carefully, he placed the needle into the top of the bottle and sucked up a small quantity of the liquid.

  Jack suddenly realised what they were going to do.

  “Sleepy time…” Tony said mockingly.

  Jack tried to run, but Gordon grabbed him again.

  “Now, now… let’s all behave, shall we? Mr Smith – may I ask you to restrain the young man while I attend to the business at hand.”

  Gordon momentarily relaxed his grip, expecting Tony to take hold of Jack so that the injection could be administered.

  Jack had his chance. Without thinking, he lashed out with his forearm. It was more out of self-protection than intent to harm. But his arm cracked straight into the bridge of Gordon’s nose. Gordon was more surprised rather than hurt. But then he wobbled – like a large building just after the demolition button has been pressed. To steady himself, he instinctively reached out with his hand. But he only managed to grab a handful of Jack’s blonde hair. It was not sufficient to prevent Gordon from finally losing his balance and with one hand still clutching a shock of Jack’s hair, he tumbled onto the ground, taking Jack with him.

  Jack’s instinct was to escape. He was breathing very hard and he knew that with his weak lungs he might not last long. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Tony leering down at them on the floor, a look of mild amusement on his face, as Gordon struggled to get Jack under control.

  Jack pawed his pocket instinctively for his puffer. His fingers scrabbled desperately as Gordon twisted him this way and that looking for a way to insert the syringe. But then Jack’s fingers encircled something else in his pocket. It wasn’t his inhaler. It was the lance head! In one movement, Jack whisked it from his pocket. It flashed briefly in the dull light as he lashed out and down in a violent stabbing motion. It cut through the air and into the black leather of Gordon’s boot, before slicing through the flesh of his foot. Gordon screamed with pain as blood spurted from his boot. He clutched it with both hands. Jack picked up the syringe that Gordon had dropped. Tony’s look of amusement turned to alarm and he moved forward. But Jack was too quick – he stabbed the syringe into Tony’s thigh and pressed home the plunger. Tony fell to one knee, groping his leg. Then he reeled backwards, his eyes flickering as he tried to fight the anaesthetic.

  Jack stood up shakily, wheezing and coughing in equal measure. He felt a brief moment of triumph as he surveyed his two assailants groaning on the floor… then, he ran. The door from the Admiral’s lobby exited straight onto the starboard upper deck, just below the forecastle. He had to find help or at least a hiding place – but where? He looked around and spotted the squat grey steel outline of a turret positioned a third of the way down the ship’s starboard side. Its giant twin fifty-eight tonne gun barrels loomed only a couple of metres above his head. Between where the twin gun barrels protruded from the turret was a short ladder that lead on to the turret roof for access to the two smaller twelve-pounder guns. Without thinking, Jack vaulted over the angled breakwater and clambered up the ladder. He was only a few metres from the deck, but he kept low to avoid over-balancing on the gently rocking ship.

  Now Jack did something that he would later reflect on as being both inspirational and complete madness. He lowered himself gently from the lip of the turret roof onto the left-side gun barrel. The gun seemed to stretch endlessly towards the bow. He started to shin his way along the top of the gun towards its tapering end.

  In a minute, he was there. He looked down over the end of the barrel. A couple of metres below, the starboard deck yawed as the ship moved through the water. Jack turned round on the gun so his back was
now facing away from the turret and towards the bow. Balancing dangerously, he inserted first one foot and then the other into the barrel and pushed his body carefully into the end of the gun. It was a tight squeeze, but he was small for his age and he just made it. As long he kept his blonde head down, nobody would ever know he was there.

  But he did not have much time to enjoy his new hiding place. Suddenly he felt a slight vibrating sensation around him coupled with a low, grinding sound. Imperceptibly at first, the giant gun barrel in which he was encased, slowly started to move. The massive gun swung its way from its position parallel with the starboard deck out towards the sea. As it moved laterally, it also rose upwards into the air. Below, in the gun turret itself, he began to hear muffled voices and the commotion of men preparing… for what? Jack, whose head had been flush with the end of the barrel, pushed himself up a little and sneaked a look. He was shocked at what he saw. His gun was now pointing well out over the starboard side of the ship and ten metres below all he could see was the grey water of the sea churning to white as Dreadnought drove through it at a mind-spinning twenty knots.

  Emerging from a light mist on the distant horizon, he spotted first one, then two and then three ghostly shapes. They were not ships – they seemed to be stationary – although it was difficult to tell. He remembered what the sailor had said: “exercises”. Were they on some naval drill? The gun rose a little further into the air, and he realised with sickening fear that Dreadnought was about to open fire.

  For some reason, Jack remembered very specifically what Pendelshape had explained about the awesome firepower of Dreadnought. The shell from a twelve-inch naval gun of the sort used by the ship weighed about three hundred and eighty kilograms – combined steel and explosive. When the gun was fired, the shell would leave the muzzle at about two thousand eight hundred kilometres an hour. In a few seconds, Jack was going to get one up his rear end. He started to panic.

  The angle of the gun was nearing its thirteen and a half degrees of maximum elevation. Before he could take any further action, Jack started to lose his grip and, slowly at first, began to slip down the inside of the dark barrel. Bizarrely, the sixty rifling grooves etched on the inside of the gun, designed to spin the shell to achieve greater stability in flight, started to act on him – but in reverse. His whole body twisted, round and round, inside the barrel like he was on some crazy waltzer at the fair. The circle of daylight from the end of the gun rapidly contracted – it was like looking out from the rear of a train after it had entered a tunnel. Then, almost as soon as the uncomfortable ride had started, with a rather painful ‘bang’ he came to rest. There was a mechanical whirring sound and suddenly, as the breach of the massive gun was opened, he tumbled out, landing inside the turret.

  The operators watched and stood like statues, their faces blank with amazement. Realising that he had not been hurt, Jack clambered up and, not knowing what on earth else to say, announced, “Clean up – ready for use – carry on…” marched purposefully to the side entrance of the turret, and left.

  *

  There was no sign of Tony and Gordon. Jack suspected that Tony was sleeping like a baby, given the anaesthetic that he had pumped into him. Presumably Gordon was playing nursemaid, as well as tending to his own wound. Regardless, he needed to try and put as much distance between himself and any potential pursuit, then find somewhere more sensible to hide… and think. He sneaked around another turret towards the stern and the port side of the ship. Tethered to the port side was a vast observation balloon. As he got closer, Jack realised that it didn’t look like the observation balloons he had seen in books – the kind they had used on the Western Front for artillery spotting – ‘kite balloons’. This one looked like a more modern design – it even had its own gas burner. Jack could make out the large passenger basket, which was just touching the aft deck area on a small raised platform, ready for flight. A single cable was holding the balloon precariously to the ship and four crew members manhandled long hooked poles to control the basket, which wobbled in the wind. Jack could make out a man’s head peaking over the side of the basket – the observer. He was agitated, and rushed from one side of the basket to the other, shouting orders at the crew on the deck.

  Jack crept slowly towards the platform. He turned to look back up towards the bow of the ship. Still no sign of any pursuit. What should he do? As he considered his options, he spotted a strange red dot on his white trainer. At first he thought it might be some blood from Gordon’s wound, and he leaned down to wipe it off. Then he noticed it was wobbling around, even with his foot still. Suddenly, it dawned on him what it was. He glanced back along the side of the ship. A stubby black barrel was poking surreptitiously from a porthole attached to what looked like a large zoom lens. Gordon was hidden from view, but using the unique characteristics of the Corner Shot APR, he had Jack nicely in the cross hairs of its laser sight. Jack wasn’t going to hang around to find out what would happen next. There was only one thing for it.

  He raced towards the balloon crew who were still struggling to control the huge gas bag that rocked back and forth in Dreadnought’s draft as she powered through the waves, her twin funnels belching black smoke. Jack heard a muffled ‘crack’. Gordon must have fired! There was a loud ‘twang’. Jack, with a hop, skip and jump that would have made Belstaff, the games teacher, proud, leaped from the deck of Dreadnought and onto the gantry, which secured the balloon’s winding gear. With both hands, he grabbed the rope ladder attached to the side of the balloon basket. He knew that he could not hold on for long. The basket was swirling dizzily just off the deck and it felt much more unsteady than it first appeared. Over the side of the balloon basket the observer’s head appeared. He stared down at Jack with a mixture of amusement and confusion. He was wearing a strange leather skullcap from which wispy shocks of yellow hair escaped and blew around in the breeze. He also wore aviator’s goggles placed over small round spectacles. He looked ridiculous.

  Suddenly, there was a second loud ‘twang’, and a mechanical whirring noise. The basket, with the rope ladder attached, shot upwards. Jack could only just cling on. The bullet from Gordon’s APR had split the mooring cable and the balloon had broken free. There was consternation from the crew. One of them still had his tether pole hooked to the basket and as he clung onto it, he found himself being lifted right off the deck of Dreadnought and out over the sea. He could only hold on for a few seconds until he let go, plunging into the churning wake below. His head bobbed up above the water a few seconds later – but it was already way behind Dreadnought’s stern.

  Jack screamed up to the observer who appeared just above him in the basket, “Please… help!”

  The observer stretched down, leaning out dangerously as he did so, but Jack was still too far down on the rope ladder for the observer to reach him. Paralysed by fear, he was unable to move further up the rope ladder so instead, he wrapped his limbs around its rungs as the balloon powered upwards.

  “One step at a time, young man!” the observer shouted. “Don’t look down!”

  Only with a supreme effort was Jack able to cage his fear sufficiently to take a single unsteady step from one rung to the next, then unclench one hand and slide it up to the rung above.

  “Very good!” the observer shouted encouragingly. “You can do it!”

  Jack gritted his teeth, and repeated the manoeuvre. Finally, the observer was in reach and he grabbed the shoulder straps of Jack’s rucksack.

  “One more step my friend!” he called.

  Jack swallowed hard and pushed up once more. Using this momentum, the man leaned down precariously and, placing a hand under each armpit, gave Jack an almighty heave and he finally slithered into the basket. Jack stood up but had to quickly grab the side of the basket as it swayed in the air.

  “Well done my friend!” the observer said giving him a hearty slap on the back.

  Jack peered down nervously – he couldn’t believe how far up they had already travelled. Maybe fift
y metres, and the wind had already taken them way aft of Dreadnought, which already looked like a toy ship. He could make out the specks of the crew, and all the features of the ship – the guns still pointing starboard in the direction of the targets – and the wide white wake. The unfortunate seaman who had fallen from his tether pole was bobbing around in the water like a champagne cork. He had been thrown a lifebelt – but would have a job to swim to it.

  Jack slumped back down onto the bottom of the basket. He was panting, and reached into his pocket for his puffer. He glanced up at the balloon observer standing over him. He wore a full-length, weather-beaten, brown leather coat with a high collar. His neck was wrapped in a bright red scarf. The leather skullcap was placed on his head at a slight angle. He pushed up his aviator’s goggles onto his forehead and peered curiously at Jack with piercing blue eyes, as if examining some sort of botanical specimen.

  Then, he smiled warmly, thrust out his hand and, in a surprisingly high somewhat accented voice, said, “Professor August Pinckard-Schnell… delighted to meet you.”

  Jack said the first thing that came into his head, “Are we going to die?”

  “Well, we may die or we may not. But one thing is for sure, there is nothing that either of us can do about it,” the professor paused, “so we might as well enjoy the ride.”

  “Great,” Jack said sarcastically.

  “I shouldn’t worry. We will soon be over land and hopefully we will be able to come down safely. Of course, if I am wrong we may plummet like a stone and our bodies will disintegrate as we hit the earth at terminal velocity. Our guts will be spread around Germany or Holland like cow manure…” he paused again, thinking to himself, “or alternatively we may hit woodland, in which case, assuming a good wind, we will be ripped from the basket and dismembered limb from limb as we crash through the canopy…” he shrugged. “Or maybe we will hit a town and be slammed into the side of a tall church just as a family wedding is taking place below. Or…”