by John Lilley
In the last few months of the final conflicts, Louis had been holed up in a couple of attic rooms of the Louvre. There was only one thing on his mind, the preservation of a mysterious national treasure. For over 30 years he’d been exiled from his family. He knew that his son had made it into Britain by using his family’s links with the Dutch reclamation engineers. With his son had gone the first of his notebooks that contained details of the location of the second notebook, which he’d left in one of the walls of the Sacré-Cœur. Philippe had retrieved that second notebook the previous night while they’d been moored just off the Montmartre Island. It had been exactly where Louis had said it would be. Philippe now knew of the sacrifice that Louis had made in getting the notebook into that hiding place. Originally there had been another notebook there, but Louis needed to change its contents in his last few days, forcing him to revisit Montmartre with deadly consequences for himself. His last notes in the second book painted a grim picture of his injuries as he prepared to make his final stand.
In the diving bay at the stern of the Manxman, Philippe slipped on the dry suit and oxygen re-breathing apparatus. The re-breather could keep him sustained under water for several days; he was more likely to die from dehydration before the unit’s batteries ran out. The water inside the Dory’s airlock felt cold as it crept up his suit, but by the time the floor hatch opened he’d begun to get used to it. He could always switch on the suit’s heating if it got too cold, but he thought he would save that until he absolutely needed it. He adjusted his suit’s buoyancy, dropped through the hatch into the sea beneath the Dory-Manxman and switched on the hand-held propulsion unit. After checking the bearings on the scooter’s display with the one on the sleeve of his suit, he twisted the throttle on the scooter and accelerated rapidly away from the Dory-Manxman.
Initially, he headed north until he picked up the old course of the river Seine and then followed the remains of the south bank eastwards towards Louis's old haunt at the Louvre. The rotting stumps of the old riverbank trees were now illuminated by the headlights of his ride. After years of study he knew the layout of the old art gallery like the back of his hand, but just for back-up, he displayed the museum map on his sleeve display. The impressive façades of the nearest Louvre buildings were soon approaching through the gloom. Heading across the museum’s roof to the courtyard behind, he made straight for the distant glass pyramid structure that was once the entrance to the museum. Most of the glass had long since gone, but all of its stainless steel structural members were intact and glinted brightly in the early evening moonlight as he approached. His mind automatically did the salvage calculations on the metal of the structure, quite substantial, what was holding the crews back? Perhaps there were easier pickings, but it was there for the taking. He paused briefly above the apex of the pyramid to get his bearings. The second notebook had been quite explicit: top floor, sixth window from the right of the point where the north-west diagonal from the pyramid pointed towards the building. He couldn’t actually see through the gloom that far so he lined himself up with the pyramid and noted the bearing on the scooter’s compass then opened the throttle and kept to the bearing. A roof and tower slowly came out of the murk towards him. He headed straight towards a window to the left of the tower then counted six windows to the right, adjusted his course and stopped just outside the selected window. The remains of the glass were still in place, and he had some work to do to make a hole big enough to get through. Fortunately, the old leaded-lights yielded easily to his crowbar. Outside there was still some light filtering through from the surface, inside was total blackness, but the brilliant white lights of the scooter illuminated the whole room in fine detail. It was approximately 10 metres square, and its floor was piled with debris, mostly rotting furniture and books. Over in the far corner, he could see the remains of a bed, and his heart jumped a beat to think that Louis had probably slept there all those years ago. Hard to believe now that it was ever above the water and basking in the early morning sunlight from those last few sweltering Parisian summers. The bed gave him the bearings he needed. On the wall opposite the foot of the bed was an alcove and in the alcove, still on its perch exactly where Louis had said it would be was a ghostly white bust of Jean Paul Sartre. Philippe manoeuvred the scooter slowly forward. Then when he was closer, he let it drift free to illuminate the alcove. Carefully he reached out and grabbed the bust in both hands and pulled gently upwards. Disaster, the bust crumbled to pieces in his grip.
‘Merde, merde, merde,’ Philippe shouted through his rebreather mouthpiece. He was now swimming in a milky white cloud of old plaster, all that was left of Sartre. Only the black stone base of the bust remained in the alcove. Philippe slowly lifted the base and turned it over in the light from the scooter. He could see that it was hollow and contained a small grey plastic box.
Not another bloody notebook? he asked himself.
Retrieving the box, Philippe took one last look around the room before heading back out through the window. The surface was calm, and the new moon was bright. He readjusted his buoyancy valve and using the scooter as support removed the cumbersome rebreather helmet so he could examine the box more easily. It was the twin of the box he’d recovered in the walls of the Sacré-Cœur, and he knew exactly how to open it. Inside, as he expected was yet another one of Louis’s notebooks. Philippe slipped off one of his gloves to avoid wetting the paper excessively. The first few pages were blank. He must have skimmed through 30 or more before panicking and flicking through the whole notebook looking for anything.
The old goat, he thought, perhaps he’d led us all on a wild-goose-chase after all?
Then he saw something: almost on the back page, a single column of six numbers, ones and zeros to be exact and beneath the numbers just the letters “LP”.
Why make it so bloody difficult? Philippe cursed, then almost immediately, but of course!
He mentally converted the binary sequences into decimal and entered them as a six-digit grid reference into the scooter’s console. The console confirmed the coordinates and displayed a street map of old Paris with the destination highlighted. Philippe sealed the book back in its box and stashed it in the scooter’s cargo net. He replaced his glove, and the rebreather’s helmet then dived. At full speed, the scooter would have him there in forty minutes. Where he was heading was certainly well off the beaten track in one of the long dead suburbs.
He kept just below the surface, but after twenty minutes hanging inert behind the scooter, he was beginning to feel chilled so switched on the suit’s heaters. The murky waters seemed endless, but eventually, he was only 100 metres from the given grid-reference. Diving down into the darkness the first thing to come into view were two large ornate art-deco cast iron street lamps.
More good scrap, thought Philippe.
A few metres deeper he levelled out and skimmed along the ancient pavements, now all black with a thick layer of silt. The scooter’s display indicated a further 50 metres of travel just as a large shoal of mullet (Mugil Cephalus) enveloped Phillipe. The silver fish seemed to be enjoying their sudden exposure to the man-made light but passed by within seconds. After a further 10 metres, he approached the distinctive entrance to a Metro station. Philippe was not pleased; the subways may well have collapsed and were bound to be full of dangerous debris. Gently he edged the scooter down the steps of the Metro. The ticket hall and cast-iron barriers were still intact with several human skeletons scattered across its floor.
LP? Philippe thought as the scooter indicated 10 metres to go. What the hell could LP mean?
When he reached the exact coordinates, he slowly played the scooter’s headlights along the walls of the ticket hall. The ticket counters were over near the stairs where he’d come in. The counter nearest to his side of the hall looked different, it was wider for a start, and there was a set of double doors next to it. Philippe raised the lights to see what was on the sign above the counter: ‘Bureau des Objets Trouvés’. ‘Objets Trouvés’? �
��Lost Property’ in English, ‘LP’, he thought.
The doors disintegrated under Philippe’s right boot, and when the clouds of sediment subsided, he could see that the small room was stacked high with ancient junk.
Blimey, I’ll be here all night, he thought.
He tied the scooter’s mooring rope to the broken doorframe and began to sift through the mounds of junk. He’d no idea what he was looking for. All he could hope for was a clue that would link an object back to Louis. Despite all his activity, he was getting colder so turned up the suit's heater a further couple of notches. Most of the junk fell apart when he touched it. An ancient parasol in stainless steel, several walking sticks, numerous rusty food tins, some plastic children’s toys, a shopping trolley and several traffic cones, but nothing with a link to old Louis Bertillon. Philippe worked his way systematically along the right-hand wall then along the back wall.
He knew that he would not get the opportunity to come back the following night, so this was his only chance. The Lost Property office was now becoming dark with swirling debris. Even the scooter’s lights were having difficulty penetrating the gathering gloom. It looked fairly innocuous when he first picked it up: a cylinder of grey plastic about one metre in length. He ran his gloved hand along it to clean away the accumulated slime. After the first pass, the slime stuck in some engraved letters “L.B”, and Philippe gasped for breath, this had to be it? Should he stop searching? His mind was racing; look for further clues? He gave the cylinder another wipe with his glove and swam closer to the scooter's lights. Slowly rotating the cylinder, he looked for further markings and found “For Monique” in a smaller font on the lid of the container. The penny dropped: Monique was Louis’s wife. This had to be it? Philippe stowed the cylinder in the scooter’s cargo net and looked at his watch: 90 minutes before the end of his watch, 50 minutes back to the Manxman plus say ten minutes to get out and dry off left him 30 minutes. He felt he couldn’t risk missing any other artefacts from Louis and returned to search the remainder of the room.
The drones were struggling to keep up with the dropship, which in the fading light was now travelling at supersonic speed and at close to 100 metres altitude. Closely coupled to the ship’s command system, Tony no longer had legs and arms but wings and engines. Paul was also connected but only as a passive backup, and all the other simulants were dormant. The drones could not attempt to fire on the dropship because of the likelihood of hitting someone or something below, and they could not realistically get beneath it without hitting something. It was only the damage from the sonic shockwave that allowed the drones to see where the dropship was, its cloaking systems rendered it virtually invisible. Even the heat part of the spectrum was cloaked making their heat-seeking missiles useless. Their strategy needed to change. A fragmentation missile was launched from the leading drone. It easily outpaced the dropship and exploded 200 metres ahead of it, incinerating a grain store beneath, but the dropship had already changed course, decelerated and jumped 1,000 metres skywards. It was now behind the drones and had launched its own high explosive missiles as it accelerated once more. Two were direct hits and completely annihilated their targets, the third scored a partial hit, but the stricken drone exploded as it ploughed into an empty tinder-dry hemp field. The remaining three drones regrouped, once again following the dropship, while to their rear the firestorm from their fallen colleagues lit up the dark sky. Their telemetry told them that at 100 metres height the fragmentation missile had been a disaster and only luck had stopped anyone on the ground from being injured. A detonation above a dorm or reactor would have had more far-reaching consequences. The dropship seemed to be aware of these limitations and was now back at 100 metres altitude and back to supersonic speed. The sonic pressure wave was having a devastating effect on the ground. Every window in its path was shattered, trees were stripped of their foliage and people, bikes or anything else that was not screwed down were tossed around. There was nothing that the drones could do but keep up with the dropship as it headed towards the south coast. They were now also aware of the cargo that the dropship was carrying and the decision had already been taken that it was more important to drive the ship out and hopefully destroy it. The children would be unwelcome casualties, but in matters of national security like this, there was no alternative.
As the invader reached the sea at the Gade Estuary, it was travelling at Mach 2.5 with its shockwave throwing tonnes of sea water skywards. The drones were unperturbed by this display as they had increased altitude and backed off slightly. They were biding their time, once over the Thames islands their companions in the English Channel would take over. All they had to do was drive the dropship into them and try to prevent it from heading skywards.
The chalky cliffs of the Thames islands crumbled as the dropship’s shockwave hit them. Tony and his crew had wanted to head west from the Welsh campsite for a sub rendezvous near Iceland, but the drones had forced a change of plan. They only had fuel for one ascent to the upper atmosphere where the air-rockets would kick in. Once in the outer reaches of the atmosphere, the air-rockets could take the craft around the world, effectively manufacturing its fuel as it went. Nowhere was more than five hours away. Switching on the air-rockets at lower altitude would turn the dropship into a fireball. They needed the thinner atmosphere which that altitude would give them. Tony knew that the drones in pursuit would not risk more rockets while they were over the land. The dropship’s systems had already confirmed further threats offshore. No doubt they would launch missiles as soon as they were clear of approaching islands. Even if he started the space ascent now, the missiles would outstrip him before the air-breathers kicked in. Despite the cloaking, with wide enough launch patterns, one of the missiles would be bound to do enough damage to prevent their escape. There was only one course of action open to him: attack.
The dropship continued to accelerate directly towards the patrol ships and lowered its altitude to thirty feet. The shock-wave cut a groove in the surface of the sea and churned the water into a ball of spray behind. The patrol ships opened fire with their deck guns, but the dropship had already disappeared. Instead, their high-explosive shells took down one of the remaining drones which cartwheeled across the surface and ploughed into the largest patrol ship at supersonic speed. The ships all struggled in the wash from the dropship. Cloaked to most forms of radiation there was only the water-laden shockwave to indicate where it was. Their deck guns fired again, but the dropship was already moving faster than the shells from the guns. With no discernible electromagnetic or organic target, the automated ships’ did not fire their missiles. The two remaining drones continued their pursuit but gained some height to get out of the spray. Now over the archipelago of islands that was the new French coast, the dropship gained some height too, but not enough to avoid a large flock of gulls. Several of the birds were ingested by the craft’s engines. A stream of black smoke now followed the dropship, and its cloaking began to flicker. This was the sign for the drones to launch their remaining missiles. Once more the dropship slammed on the brakes and was instantly behind its pursuers. The missiles tried to turn around but were already moving too fast to catch the dropship, which was now accelerating again on a different bearing. With their missiles used up, the only option left to the drones was to get close enough to the dropship and use their cannons, hoping that the dropship’s sonic defence systems were also damaged. Slowly the drones began to overhaul the now crippled dropship.
Tony had to risk it; let them get close, within the limited operational arc of his rear guns and let them have it, then beat it into space. The main engines were not well after the bird strike, down 30%. The ship’s systems had predicted that they had enough power for the space jump, but only by a 2% margin and only if they did it within the next four minutes. With little conventional fuel left it would make a recovery at the other end of their journey hazardous. The drones were closing. He timed it so that as soon as the drones began to line up for cannon attack, he bega
n a tight right-hand turn then back hard left and fired his rear cannons as the lead drone came in range. As the exploding drone took out its partner the dropship had already begun its climb into space and Tony had relinquished control.
The ship’s skin heated rapidly while internally the refrigeration units prepared the air-breathing rockets for ignition. It now knew that this would be its last trip, everything would be sacrificed to get its precious cargo across to the USA. It pushed its main engines just enough to allow for some landing functions to remain at the other end. If all else failed there were always the chutes, but that would be a rough landing, even in the sea. The air-breather engines were approaching operating temperature. At 15,000 metres with one last push to achieve ignition speed the air-breathers kicked in, and the craft began its series of hypersonic skips along the edge of the denser atmosphere. They were on their way.
On the Dory-Manxman-Darwin there was no warning. The explosion happened 500 metres to the west at 300 metres height. As it flew overhead the shockwave from the dropship shattered the windows on all the ships and the few remaining ones on the recently raised observation deck. Any crew unfortunate to be on deck were tossed around like rag dolls. This was followed by the debris from the exploding drones which whipped across the ships at supersonic speed. One of the main lifting cables on the Manxman was sliced in two, promptly whipping across and through the Dory’s bridge. Most of the drones’ fuel had gone up in the explosion as the dropship’s rear cannons had ripped them apart. However, their engines continued their supersonic flight, slamming into the main lifting spars of the Dory-Manxman.