“I let them have some of the cold water.”
“Can I have some?”
“Not while you’re flying,” Sellie said. “Tree.”
The terrain had dipped and there was a tall tree directly ahead of them that had looked like a bush a moment before.
“Yes,” said Harry as she lifted the Pegasus over it in a smooth motion. “I can see perfectly well.”
“So, you and the lieutenant?” said Sellie again.
“You and the two majors?”
Sellie laughed. “Too old.”
“Ditto.”
“Excuse me, Miss Edgbaston,” said Keating as he edged in on the other side of Harry.
The ship really wasn’t built for so many, although they had managed to carry Bakari and his men before, but it had not been for such an extended period.
“Cmdr Laxton is in agreement with your plan—”
“You have a plan?” said Sellie.
“I always have a plan.”
Khuwelsa made a sceptical sound and muttered something about Plan B.
Harry brought the Pegasus up to five hundred feet and throttled back. Giving control to Keating was still uncomfortable but it no longer caused a wrench when he sat in her chair. She locked off the wings and climbed out.
It was odd the way things changed, she no longer worried about the fact people could see her as she stretched her tired muscles. She reached up, placed her hands against the ceiling, and pressed. When she relaxed her pressure, the strain ebbed away. She rolled her shoulders in both directions and stretched the muscles in her neck.
Beneath her feet she could feel the vibrations from the drive increasing and the way the ship tilted down towards the grass. She knew everything that Keating was doing without even looking at him. She may not be in the chair but she was still the Pegasus, and the ship was still Harry.
She glanced at Mrs Hemingway. She had her eyes closed.
Harry knelt beside her. The woman’s eyelids opened.
“Why did you say I was as bad as my mother?” she said quietly.
xxv
“Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“I am resting,” said Harry. “Not being in the chair is resting.”
“It’s not my place to discuss your mother.”
“You’re the one who mentioned her in the first place,” Harry said. “I believe I have a right to know why.”
“No,” said Mrs Hemingway. “You do not.”
Harry moved a little closer, almost threatening. “I can’t imagine you’re keeping it from me to protect my feelings, Mrs Hemingway. So either it was simply a vicious turn of phrase intended to hurt, or it’s a secret you should not have let slip.
“So which is it?”
Their tutor hesitated and then blurted out. “Your mother is a painter.”
Harry blinked. “Is that all?”
“Of the Impressionist movement.”
Harry was fairly sure they had not covered anything of the recent Impressionist movement when Mrs Hemingway had attempted to instill some art appreciation into them. As usual Sellie had lapped it up. Harry did not dislike the pictures but couldn’t see why they had to be classified or, more particularly, why she had to know the difference.
Harry shook her head.
“The Impressionists are libertines and women of loose morals.”
“So you’re saying I have loose morals?”
“I did not say that.”
“Yes, you did,” said Harry. “You said I was as bad as my mother. Clearly the badness you see in her is that she is an Impressionist painter and therefore a woman of loose morals. So you’re saying I must be too.”
For the first time Harry noticed a strain in the woman’s face.
“I didn’t mean it,” she said.
“I think you did,” said Harry. “I am not a lady by your rules. I won’t sit and do needlework or play the piano and sing. I have a metal bird and I’m free to travel where I choose. I dance unchaperoned with soldiers. My sister is black. And I have a mother with loose morals.”
Harry paused for breath. Every word seemed to make Mrs Hemingway shrink.
“I am everything you are not,” she said. “And I will never fit the mould you have created for me.”
Harry felt the tears running down her cheeks and her sight blurred. Mrs Hemingway produced a kerchief and handed it to her. “You can be if you try,” she said.
Harry sniffed. “I’m not crying for me,” she said. “I’m crying for you.”
The older woman looked as if she might break. Harry sighed, wiped her eyes once more and handed back the kerchief. She stood up and looked around the small cabin. The two majors were in the back by the furnace. Lt Cmdr Laxton was standing by the hatch, looking at her with concern.
Sellie was forward by the rail; her deep brown eyes also shone with tears. There was no way she could have heard the quiet conversation above the noises of the Pegasus but she and Harry were sisters, and Sellie knew something important had happened.
Harry gave a slight shake of her head to Sellie’s questioning look.
The cabin seemed smaller as if Harry had grown, as if somehow she had become taller.
Where before Lt Cmdr Laxton was a figure of high authority, she now saw him as someone who could get her what she wanted—when she had determined what, exactly, that was.
Harry took three steps and leaned on the rail beside Sellie. She looked out and down.
They were still over green, but in the distance the horizon had taken on a yellow/brown hue.
The desert was approaching.
“You should rest more,” said Laxton.
“This is enough,” said Harry.
Laxton did not press the point.
For a long time the desert colour remained on the horizon. But then it began to approach, with the appearance of a physical line between green and yellow. And they rushed across it.
The meandering Nile cut a groove in its wide flood plain filled with green, but beyond that winding strip there was nothing but sand and rocks. Through it all the man-made tube ran straight as if God himself had laid out a celestial ruler and drawn a line across the landscape.
“I’ll take the helm,” said Harry. Even she noticed the difference in her tone. It was not the parade ground demand of the military men, but it was a voice that brooked no disagreement.
Harry had no idea where it had come from, but it was part of her now. She glanced at Sellie, who raised an eyebrow and sported a slight smile.
Keating locked off the controls and climbed out of the chair. Harry slipped in and replaced him. In a smooth motion she unlocked the wings, opened the throttle and angled the ship towards the tube.
There were still the pumping stations but no more trees. The land here was intensely flat.
The shadow of the tube, cast by the dying sun stretched out across the landscape. They passed over tiny groups of mud huts that could barely even be called villages. Small fishing boats with triangular sails skittered across the surface of the widening river.
From the edge of the desert to Khartoum was barely one hundred miles. The city came into view half an hour after she had taken her seat. But the sun had already gone down and, true to her promise, Harry had climbed to one thousand feet and reduced speed.
An air-dock came into sight to the south of the city. The dock itself was an intense grouping of lights, while the city beyond was partially electrified and had street lights that burned with a curious constancy.
Harry put the Pegasus into a wide turn around the dock, which carried them over the terminus of the atmospheric tube and the beginning of the old fashioned rails.
Tiny flashes of light caught her eye. “What’s that?” she said pointing down.
She felt rather than saw Keating come to the rail. Something erupted in a ball of fire.
Harry back-winged and brought the ship to a near stand-still in the air. She used her knee to push the throttle up to full power as she kept the ship in the
air.
Sputtering lights created a flashing display as the sound of the explosion rolled over them.
Keating shouted over his shoulder. “Weapons fire at the terminus.”
Harry had to adjust for the change in weight as everyone on the vessel moved to the rail at the front. The nose tilted down, and she had to veer off to gain some speed to stay aloft.
When she brought the ship round again, a line of lights was moving off towards the north.
“They must have taken the train,” shouted Harry. “Plan B!”
xxvi
Harry increased power to the propeller and tilted the nose down.
“What is Plan B, Miss Edgbaston?” It was Laxton, he seemed remarkably calm.
“I have no idea.”
“She just piles in and does her … thing,” said Sellie. “That’s Plan B.”
“And how often does this work?” his voice held an irritating tone of amusement.
Sellie paused and then replied. “Every time, actually.”
“If they haven’t seen us, then we have the element of surprise,” Harry said. “If they have we can’t give them time to get organised.”
“What of the hostages?”
“They won’t hurt them,” said Harry. She tried to think objectively but the idea of her father with that man’s gun on him was upsetting. “They need them for bargaining.”
Laxton said nothing for a few moments.
“Sir?”
“Keating?”
“Up ahead, sir.”
Harry looked forward into the night. The sky was clear and the moon up, turning the desert silver. At least a certain distance, then the horizon became blurred. Without warning the Pegasus dropped away from under them, what little weight they had became nothing. Mrs Hemingway screamed.
“Air pocket!” shouted Harry, not entirely sure who she was trying to calm. The controls were unresponsive but then, as if they had fallen into water, they were pushed down into the deck and wings had something to beat against.
The ground was considerably nearer than it had been.
The railway lines gleamed in the moonlight. The fuzziness on the horizon had not gone away.
“Sandstorm,” said Keating. “Not good.”
“You’re telling me,” said Sellie. “We have to land, Harry, preferably inside something, a cave maybe? Or we go over it.”
“They can last for days,” said Keating.
“Right,” said Harry. “We’re going in.”
She pushed the throttle all the way forward. A side wind buffeted them, and she compensated. Then she headed down to the metal railway lines.
She did not see the men behind her gripping the rail all the more tightly as the ground came up to meet them. She adjusted the wings and the Pegasus swooped into perfect alignment with the parallel lines of metal, less than a dozen feet above it. No one spoke.
The air seemed a little calmer close to the ground, but even here gusts knocked the vessel to one side or the other at random.
Harry focused on the rails, not looking ahead. “How far to the train and the storm?”
“Two minutes for both,” said Keating. “What are you going to do, Harry?”
“You don’t want to know,” she said, failing to notice him switching to her nickname.
“But you boys need to be ready.”
“Shall I open the hatch?” asked Sellie.
“Not yet,” said Harry. “Last moment, all right?”
“I’ll be ready,” Sellie said. “Majors? I’ll need your help.”
The blur on the horizon was growing fast, occupying more of the sky. Smoke from the train’s engine scudded past them. They were going too fast but Harry did not want to slow down. Once they were in the storm they might lose the train, or the sand would bring them down.
“Come on, baby,” Harry muttered.
Then it all happened at once. They were so close to the storm they could see the sand swirling in the moonlight. The train which had been in the distance seem to leap at them.
There was a risk, she knew, it might be that her father or the admiral were in the last carriage that was rushing towards them. But she thought they would try to keep everyone together in a group near the engine.
The hull hissed as grains of sand blasted against it. The final train carriage burst out of the dark at them. Harry killed the propeller’s power, pulled up and back-winged hard. The Pegasus lifted over the carriage as the train’s engine vanished into the swirling storm.
A blast of air ripped through the cabin as the hatch was forced open against the wind.
The end of the train slipped beneath them as all light was blotted out by the sand storm.
Harry flipped off the Faraday. With its full weight, the Pegasus slammed down through the roof of the carriage. The passengers were thrown to the side as the ship lurched. Harry switched the Faraday back on and the air was filled with drifting sand that slowly made its way towards the ground.
A curious feeling of rhythmic movement transferred through the floor and into her body. Harry had never travelled on an old style train before. The regular pattern was not unpleasant. But there was nothing to see; they were in pitch darkness.
“Is everyone all right?” she called. Sounds of assent answered her, including an angry mutter from Mrs Hemingway. There was a flash of light outside and deafening thunder pounded their ears.
A dim glow filled the cabin as Khuwelsa lit one of the oil lamps.
“If we’re lucky they might not have noticed,” said Sellie.
“How could they possibly not?” said Keating.
“Their attention will have been on the storm. Listen to that.” She waved her hand at the roaring and constant sighing of sand. “If they didn’t see us, they would attribute any movement to the storm, and the noise likewise.”
Keating nodded. “No one is shooting at us.”
“Besides,” said Sellie. “Who would land a plane on a train?”
Her comment elicited a smile from everyone except the commander and Mrs Hemingway.
Harry got out of the chair and rummaged in the chest behind it. She pulled out two electric torches. “They only have about half an hour of power,” she said, handing one to Keating.
“We’ll take it from here,” said Laxton.
“You mean you don’t want us to come?”
“More than that, I forbid it. Both you and your sister, Miss Edgbaston.”
“We’re coming,” said Sellie. “That’s our father.”
“And I cannot possibly allow two young ladies to enter such a dangerous situation.”
Harry looked at him, straight in the eye. “You’re joking.”
“If I gave the impression of humour then I must be more careful,” said Laxton.
“You know what we’ve done before?”
“I don’t believe I have read any reports,” he said. “Apart from those sensationalised news items.”
“We brought down four Zeppelins in one fight, and they had an escort of fighters,” said Harry angrily. “In this!” She gestured at the Pegasus. “Not to mention destroying that giant flyer in Lake Victoria, in a thunderstorm.”
“Yes, well,” said Laxton. “This is entirely different. Here we have soldiers with guns.”
The question as to whether they had been seen was answered moments later as the hull echoed to the sound of ricocheting bullets and one of the panes of the wind screen cracked.
xxvii
The military men swung into action without a word. Keating grabbed Harry and Mrs Hemingway by the arm and pulled them to the engineering section, gathering up Sellie on the way.
Laxton and the majors went to the door. While one provided covering fire the other two squirmed their way out into the swirling wind and sand. They went up and over the fuselage. It was difficult to tell what was happening but whoever had been shooting at them ceased to do so.
Whether he had been killed or had retreated was unclear.
Keating stood with
his hands akimbo facing them. “Please do not leave the ship. I appreciate that you have accomplished astonishing feats for a pair of young girls, but it would be a terrible shame to lose you when you have so much to offer in the future.”
“I am not afraid of dying, lieutenant,” said Harry. Sellie gave her a speak for yourself look.
“There are worse things than dying, Miss Edgbaston,” he said. “Living when someone you love is gone, for example. We are not alone in this world; we have people we would miss, and those who would mourn our passing. You cannot ignore them.”
Harry frowned, but nodded.
Keating smiled, then stepped back and saluted them.
“Stay in the ship.”
Then he was gone.
* * *
Hauptman Gerhardt sipped his glass of brandy. It was not a good brandy, just one from the kitchen. He was reasonably content. The whole situation was difficult, but he knew he had made the best of it.
Ever since that morning in Zanzibar when he had caught the girl trying to escape, only to have her ripped from his grasp by the damnable Schwarze. Ever since then he had vowed he would get his revenge on her.
Her deeds after that and the fact she had boasted to the world about them only intensified his resolve. The train was buffeted by the wind as they rattled along the track. It was slow but once they were on board he was more relaxed.
The father and the admiral sat further down the carriage. As it was much easier to jump from one of these trains than the one in the tube, he kept them tied up. He had lost another two men at Khartoum, which was unfortunate. However they had surprised the British by their arrival and were able to take control of this machine.
They had destroyed the telegraph office, so there would be no communicating with Aswan. Though perhaps it would be better to stop short of the town and leave the train. He would think more on that later.
With only six men remaining, he had stationed two with the train drivers and two in the rear carriages, and the others were with him here.
Thunder from the lightning inside the sand storm boomed through the carriage and disturbed his concentration. The oil lights juddered and swung above them as the train shifted and rocked.
Harry gets Her Wings (Iron Pegasus Book 3) Page 10