Harry Takes Off: Astounding Stories of Adventure (Iron Pegasus Book 1)

by Steve Turnbull

  With that he squeezed her hand and set off, picking his way through the debris toward the palace soldiers.

  * * *

  He had not told Khuwelsa quite how untimely their arrival was. The anti-British successor was in power and the British government had ordered that he be removed. As the diplomat on the ground, he had attempted to persuade the new sultan to abdicate but to no avail. This left military action as the only option.

  Ostensibly the reason for removing this new occupant of the sultanate was his desire to maintain slavery. And this was even true as far as it went. It was a convenient reason for a slavery-hating nation such as Britain to take action which could be justified to the people and, more importantly, her international allies.

  The real reason was far less altruistic. Germany, though a latecomer to empire building, had already obtained a very strong foothold in Africa, occupying all the land between Lake Victoria and the Indian Ocean, as well as areas on the Atlantic coast.

  Stopping Germany’s attempt to build an empire in Africa was seen as imperative to British interests. Control of Zanzibar was key to the German empire, just as Ceylon was key to Britain’s. Germany’s control of central Africa interfered with Britain’s control of the south and her interests in the north.

  His diplomatic powers were limited and he maintained only a small office here. The gunboats in the bay were quite sufficient to wrest control of the city from the new sultan and to install their own. But the crash landing of his daughters on the palace doorstep introduced a random factor.

  He approached the gate with his hands open and outstretched. The guards were jumpy. He did not want to alarm anyone and, most importantly, he did not want to get shot.

  xiv

  Harry yawned into the pillow that pressed against her right cheek. She reached her arms forward under the pillows and stretched. She groaned as every muscle ached and protested. Why?

  Memories of the final crash landing in Zanzibar.

  Then she realised the pillow against her cheek felt considerably smoother than the ones at home. She skimmed a hand between pillow and sheet. They were silk.

  She opened her eyes but all she could see was pillow. Ignoring the objections from her neck muscles, she raised her head and looked across the undulating terrain of sheets glistening in sunlight that filtered through curtains around the bed.

  A wooden post marked the corner, its surface etched in intricate geometric shapes. She pushed herself up and turned until she was sitting—in the middle of a four-poster bed hung with white folds. The canopy draped in almost-perfect symmetrical pleats.

  She pushed herself to the edge of the bed and peeked through the curtains. The room beyond was reminiscent of the Arab building back in the African town on the mainland. All cool marble and polished tiles in squares and triangles.

  As she slipped from the bed to the floor she discovered she had been clothed in satin nightwear, a baggy top with loose pantaloons.

  She stepped across to the windows. These too had complex lattice screens that let her see out but prevented others from seeing in. She was two floors up. Gardens and grass stretched away from her to a tall fence in the distance. Beyond it were the close-packed buildings of Zanzibar that she had become acquainted with in such a sudden manner. Soldiers patrolled the boundary.

  She must be in the sultan’s palace.

  A sudden fear ran through her. Where was Khuwelsa? She knew she had landed the best she could but accidents could happen. And the German Army … She needed to find her father.

  “Sahiba.”

  Harry turned toward the voice. On the opposite side of the room, directly in front of the door, stood a woman covered in an embroidered flowing Arab dress. She wore a headdress tied with wide cords but her face was not covered. Harry could tell she was older than herself, but only by a few years. Realising she was staring, Harry smiled.

  “How do you do?”

  “I am Basmah bint Barghash,” she said bowing her head slightly. “You are Harriet Edgbaston.”

  She separated the word sounds carefully to ensure she said them correctly.

  “Yes, that’s me. What day is it?”

  “The eighteenth day of Rabi Al Awwal.”

  Harry frowned, and shook her head. “I don’t know what that is.” She looked out at the sun; it was still morning. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “My father, the sultan, gifted you his benevolent hospitality one day ago.”

  “Only one day?” She was both relieved and driven. “What about my sister?”

  It was Basmah bint Barghash’s turn to frown. “Sister?”

  “Khuwelsa.”

  No response.

  “There was another girl with me?”

  “The African? Your servant is unhurt. She is with her machine.”

  Harry felt some of the tension lift but it was at this moment her body chose to point out, noisily, that she had not eaten properly for over a day. She felt faint and sat heavily in the chair by the window. Warm air breezed in through the lattice.

  The woman took a step forward and betrayed the first emotion Harry had seen. “Are you ill, sahiba?”

  “Haven’t had much to eat in the last couple of days. Nothing yesterday.” Then she shook herself and got to her feet. “I’m sure the sultan wouldn’t like me to starve to death.”

  “I will send for food.” She turned to the door.

  “And I want to get dressed. Where are my clothes?”

  “They have been sent to be refreshed.” Basmah paused halfway through the door. “I will send a maid for you.”

  “I don’t need a maid, I just need some clothes.”

  But she was talking to a closed door. Despite her light-headedness she strode over to it and turned the handle. Finding it locked was no great surprise. It seemed to be par for the course on this journey.

  She cast around the room. There was the outline of another door in the wall adjacent to the window. As she drew closer, the handle—which had been moulded to appear as part of the decoration—became obvious.

  This one was not locked and opened into a dressing room. It had no windows but was equipped with electric lights—the sultan must like his modern contraptions. Wardrobes contained Arab-style clothing in a multitude of rich fabrics. Not much would take the wear and tear Harry’s clothing usually suffered.

  Past this was a bathroom beyond her imagining. Steps led up to the rim of a basin of almost volcanic crater proportions. Harry looked longingly at it. A thorough bath was one thing that she really could do with, both for the dirt and for her aching muscles. Above the tub were a multitude of shining brass pipes and two outlets with valves.

  She turned the tap and water began to flow, splashing at first and then thundering. One of the pipes expelled hot water. She would have to have a word with Sellie and see if she thought they might rig something like that back at home.

  Sellie. They would be treating her like a slave. She wouldn’t like that—and who could blame her. Harry hoped she was all right.

  xv

  After their father had negotiated with the soldiers outside the gates, the sultan himself turned up. He was an enthusiast for all the new mechanical devices. An ornithopter was something new to him and he had insisted it be brought inside the grounds—along with Harry and Khuwelsa.

  The look of helplessness on their father’s face almost made Khuwelsa cry, but she knew he wouldn’t want her to betray any emotion.

  While the sultan’s engineers brought up a mobile Faraday crane and steam-truck, her father explained the situation to her. He had told them she was Harry’s servant. He held his face rigid as he said it and she wanted to kiss him to show that she understood. As a servant, he said, she would have more freedom than Harry.

  And it was just as he said.

  Harry was carried away on a stretcher after it had been ascertained that she really had not suffered any major, or even minor, injury. It might have been better if she had, because then their father would hav
e had an excuse to visit her. Instead she was taken up into the palace under armed guard and neither her ‘servant’ nor her father was allowed to go with her.

  Khuwelsa stayed with the Pegasus and discovered the wonders of the sultan’s engineering workshops. There were half a dozen sheds with closed doors; she wasn’t sure what they contained, but there were the marks of large wheels in the grass outside.

  The sultan possessed three small Zeppelin-style airships and a British fixed-wing made by the Brunel company, with its typical rear-mounted propeller. The corps of engineers numbered about ten as far as she could see, mostly young men. They were all Arab by their features but wore uniforms rather than the flowing robes typical of their culture. The overalls were far more practical.

  The arrival of the Pegasus caused quite a stir and the engineers were all over it in moments, which caused Khuwelsa considerable concern.

  “Stop!” she shouted. She pulled up her skirts and climbed onto the truck bed, feeling herself lighten since the Faraday was still switched on. “Stop. This is my ship—my mistress’s ship.”

  There was considerable laughing, though she did not think they could understand her words. An older man walked up to her.

  “Get down, little girl, before you are hurt.”

  “I am the engineer of this ship,” she snarled. “And if my mistress is not here, I say who touches her.”

  He said something in Arabic and the men laughed. “Woman is not engineer, girl.”

  “Is that a challenge, old man?”

  He eyed her for a moment and said something to the men, who backed off. “Come down, little one. Your bird is safe. We see if you are engineer.”

  He held out his hand and she took it as she jumped down, but his reason was not to assist her. Once she was down he ran his fingertips across her palms and felt the calluses formed from hard physical labour—but only around the thumb and first fingers, plus the thicker pad at the lower part of the palm. He nodded his approval.

  He led the way through to the back of the nearest workshop, past some sort of small military flyer with enough room for a pilot, a stoker and someone to man the Maxim mounted on the front. It had a horizontal rotor rising on an axle above the machine and another to drive it forward.

  “Here,” he said, pointing at a big steam turbine unit sitting on a work bench. “You say what is wrong with this.”

  She hesitated. It was not a design she was familiar with; an Italian name plate was riveted to the side. She had only worked with British and French machines. There was a muttering among the men, so she knew she hadn’t made a good impression. Then she stepped forward and examined the range of tools available. She was pleased to see that each screwdriver, ratchet and wrench had its place.

  Then she turned her attention to the machine itself. How hard could it be? She knew how a steam turbine worked; different makes had to be the same under the skin. And if he was asking what was wrong with it, when it was not even hooked up to a boiler and furnace, it should be something easy to spot.

  It was hot in the workshop. The ceiling and walls were made of corrugated metal that seemed to absorb the heat from the sun and radiate it at five times the strength. She unscrewed and stripped off the inspection plates.

  Her hair was falling forwards and getting in the way. Almost absentmindedly she picked up a greasy cloth and wrapped it around her head.

  The steam inlet pipes seemed to be all right, though there was no foolproof way of testing their integrity without running steam through them under pressure. She checked the blades of the turbine and saw that several had been replaced. It was a decent job and striking each blade in turn with a screwdriver gave a consistent tone. She nodded to herself.

  Next she gave her attention to the outlets and once again found nothing. Puzzled, she rechecked everything. Finally she replaced the inspection plates and used a torsion screwdriver to ensure they were tightly sealed.

  She stepped back. “There’s nothing wrong with this. The broken blades have been fixed and the job was done well.”

  The man looked at her without any expression. He then spoke again, apparently translating what she said. This time there was no laughter. Some of them nodded.

  “You are engineer,” he said. “Woman engineer.”

  He passed her a flask of water which she drank gratefully.

  xvi

  The other engineers were so impressed with the Pegasus that they seemed willing to work on it with her. She showed them how each of the flight feathers was connected to the power—each one had its own Faraday grid. There were at least two dozen that had been damaged by the German airplane; a few along the trailing edge had been cooked by the final explosion.

  She was grateful that none of them spoke English because they were unable to ask her about the bullet holes and scoring marks along the hull. She hoped they assumed the damage had been done by their own defensive balloons. It would have been awkward to explain.

  Being so busy, she barely noticed the time passing. In the early evening she heard the call to prayer from a nearby mosque and they all disappeared for a while. From her viewpoint she preferred having to attend church services just on Sunday.

  Only a few of the engineers returned, but one of them brought some food. He didn’t actually give it to her, but left it on a bench. Most of the feathers had been replaced by the time she remembered to eat, and in stopping work she discovered how tired she was.

  There were lights in the workshop but she ran a cable to the Pegasus and used its internal lights. She went out into the open air and breathed deep as it cooled. The lights were on in the palace across the lawn. She wondered what Harry was doing, whether she had woken up or was still sleeping off the past couple of days.

  Father had told her about the deadline and also explained that they had at most two days.

  “You can come with me and be safe,” he had said.

  “And leave Harry?”

  He said nothing.

  “And leave the Pegasus?”

  “Your life is more important than that lump of metal, Sellie.”

  He almost never called her that.

  “I can’t leave Harry.”

  He had reached out to her and drawn her into a warm hug. “I know. I’m scared I’ll lose you both.”

  “Oh, we’ll be okay. I’ll get the ship fixed and we can just fly out of here before the attack.”

  He still held her. She could feel his heart pounding. He did not speak for a long time; when he finally did it was the sound of a British gentleman trying hard to suppress his emotion. “Just make sure the two of you are out of here before it starts.”

  Then he had pulled away and strode off towards the main gate, surrounded by guards.

  And with that memory she returned to the Pegasus, connected the power to the Faraday and curled up in a corner to sleep. With the reduced gravity the metal did not feel quite so hard.

  * * *

  The call to prayer woke her before the sun was up. She clambered out of the Pegasus and stood outside the building. The sky was turning blue in the east; only the brightest stars remained visible.

  Turning her back on the rising sun, she looked up to where the Albert Void Station hung bright in the sky. Unlike the Victoria Station over Ceylon, Albert was purely a naval base. Sometimes a person could see its enormous heliograph winking, transmitting encoded messages around the world and down to the surface. Not today.

  The palace was quiet, apart from the guards marching the perimeter. Khuwelsa wondered if Harry was inside looking out.

  Back inside the workshop she rummaged around for pipes of the same diameter to replace the ruptured ones. Once that was done the only thing missing would be the propeller. The holes could be patched easily enough or just left as they were for the time being, but without a rotor their wounded bird could not fly.

  After another hour the workshop had come alive again with the other engineers, but their earlier interest in her and the Pegasus seemed to have waned. Of co
urse they had their own work to do so there was no reason they should hang around to help.

  Khuwelsa would have liked to have some proper work clothes; the overalls would have suited. But there were no spares to be seen—there was little chance they would be offered—and all she had were the dirty and slightly torn clothes she had been wearing for the last two days.

  “I bet Harry’s dressed in finery,” she muttered to herself as she wrenched the damaged pipe from its mount and commenced hack-sawing through the joint. She found hitting it with a hammer to be quite satisfying.

  She had just finished welding the new pipe in place and was thinking about lighting the furnace to perform a pressure test when a well-dressed factotum had turned up and, in very good English, instructed her to accompany him to see her mistress. She bridled but managed to keep her annoyance under control.

  * * *

  While the water continued to fill the bath, Harry went through to the next room. It was a water closet. Despite having been asleep for so long, and all the flying before that, Harry did not feel the need to utilise the convenience. She suspected this was not a good thing, and made her way back to the bedroom.

  It was a mark of her present weakness that she jumped at the sight of a girl in the bedroom where she had not expected there to be anyone. The maid was carrying a tray of food, the smell of which was delicious.

  The Edgbaston household had a good stock of servants, both native and white, but Harry did not warrant a personal maid. That said, she knew the kind of thing to expect and did not find having someone to help her undress—particularly when she was feeling under the weather—or to wash her back in the bath at all unpleasant. And the decadence of lying in hot water, scented with jasmine, while eating delightful snacks was an experience to which she felt she could easily become accustomed.

  * * *

  Sellie tidied herself as best she could and remembered to remove the greasy cloth she’d tied around her head. Then she followed the factotum across the grass and through a side door into the palace.