Web of Fire Bind-up

by Steve Voake

  There was a light bump as the horsefly touched down, then a blue flash from a CRB reflected in the cockpit canopy and Sam heard the troop commander shout, ‘Go, go, go!’ as the first team descended on ropes from the belly of the fly and hit the tarmac running. There was shouting, the crackle of automatic weapons and then night turned to day as a flare ignited in the dark sky, floating down on a tiny parachute and illuminating the whole scene in a bright and eerie light.

  Sam caught a glimpse of the four-man commando team as they ran towards one of the missile batteries, stopping occasionally to fire sporadic bursts from their machine guns before zigzagging their way across the tarmac towards the target.

  ‘They’ve seen us!’ shouted the commander behind him as the light from the flare cast strange shadows across the cockpit. ‘We’ve got to hit the other targets immediately!’

  Sam pulled back on the throttle and once again the horsefly lifted up into the air. He knew there were three more missile batteries spread out around the airfield and, now that they had lost the element of surprise, speed was of the essence.

  He was nearing the second when, from the corner of his eye, he saw one of Odoursin’s soldiers sink down onto one knee, hoist a long metal tube onto his shoulder and aim it straight at them.

  Recognising it from his training as a hand-held anti-insect missile which would home in on their wing vibrations, he banked violently left and, as Skipper shouted ‘Missile!’, hit the decoy button, which sent twenty miniature horseflies the size of footballs shrieking off in all directions behind them.

  For a moment, everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

  Sam watched the missile scorch out of the tube and streak across the airfield towards them, but just as he thought it must surely hit them it suddenly changed direction and began to pursue one of the decoys across the airfield instead. There was a loud explosion as it found its target and then erupted into an orange fireball which lit up the night sky before crashing down into the main control tower and setting it alight.

  ‘Go, go, go!’ shouted the troop commander as they touched down again, and the second team disappeared through the hatch.

  ‘Two more left,’ said Skipper. ‘We can do this,’ she added urgently, as much to herself as to Sam. ‘Come on! We can do this!’

  They had dropped the third team of commandos off and were heading low across the field towards the last missile battery when there was another ear-splitting explosion and Sam watched in horror as the right wing of the horsefly disintegrated in a sheet of fire.

  ‘We’ve been hit!’ he shouted, and immediately felt the searing heat of the flames as they began to burn and crackle around his seat.

  The horsefly listed sharply to the left and Sam saw to his dismay that they were flying fast and out of control straight for the doors of the larvae factory.

  ‘Brace, brace, brace!’ shouted Skipper.

  Sam just had time to throw his arms up in front of his face before the world erupted into a deafening fury of flame and fire and they smashed through the factory doors, splintering them into a thousand pieces.

  As the fly skidded to a halt between two large tanks, Sam released the buckle of his harness and frantically scrabbled in his breast pocket for the CRB. He had banged his head on the instrument panel during the initial impact and the metallic taste of blood flooded his mouth and nose.

  ‘You won’t need that,’ said Skipper as he pulled the CRB from his pocket.

  Sam noticed as she gestured towards the back of the fly that her clothes had been scorched by the flames and her face was blackened and bruised.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked her.

  ‘Oh, never better!’ She winced, pulling him from his seat. ‘But I don’t think we’d better hang around.’

  Turning his head, Sam saw that the entire back section of the fly had been torn off and was now lying about fifty metres away next to the wrecked, smoking doors of the factory. Incredibly, the last members of the commando troop were already jumping out of it, guns blazing.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Hekken stood alone at the shattered window of the smoke-filled control tower, his face white with anger. For a few seconds he was unable to believe what he was seeing. Below him, three out of the four anti-aircraft batteries had been blown up and reduced to useless, twisted metal. Flames leapt from a hole where the doors of the larvae factory used to be and from all around the airfield he could hear the rattle of small-arms fire being exchanged. Why the hell hadn’t Intelligence seen this coming?

  It was chaos, a mess, and someone would pay for these mistakes, he would make sure of that. He had come too far and worked too hard for everything to be ruined now. As for those animals out there who were trying to destroy the fruits of his labours; he would have his revenge on them too.

  But that would come later. Now was the time for urgent action.

  Angrily, he pulled the radio handset from the desk and pressed the transmit button. ‘Attention, all aircrew. This is General Hekken speaking. We are under attack. I say again, we are under attack. All units proceed to aircraft for immediate take-off. Repeat, all units proceed to aircraft for immediate take-off!’

  As the sirens began to wail, Hekken replaced the handset and watched the steady streams of aircrew run from their barracks to the waiting mosquitoes.

  So they had used the horsefly to slip past the air-defence systems and destroy the missile batteries. Very clever, he would grant them that. And the only reason he could see for them wanting to destroy the missile batteries would be that they were planning a major offensive against the airbase.

  But they hadn’t reckoned on his secret weapon, his pride and joy.

  Several years ago, when the threat of western air raids had been strong, Hekken had insisted on the building of a ring of nerve-gas batteries, despite resistance from certain members of the Council. It had never been used and some people had argued that it was a waste of money and manpower. But Hekken had always argued its importance as their first line of defence against attack from the air. Now he would be proved right once again. No more aircraft would get through. If they were foolish enough to try a major assault from the air, then they would fall from the sky in their hundreds!

  Quickly picking up the handset again, he flicked the channel frequency and pressed transmit.

  ‘All units, come in, all units. This is General Hekken. Air attack is imminent. I repeat, air attack is imminent. This is not a drill. Prepare for immediate action, over.’

  Hekken released the transmit button and waited for one of the battery commanders to reply.

  But when the only sound was the crackle of static, the only reply a constant white noise hissing from the air-waves, Hekken realised with a sickening feeling that the last of his defences had been breached.

  They were on their way and there was nothing he could do to stop them.

  Ripping the handset from its socket with a frustrated cry, he threw it across the room, where it smashed into pieces against the far wall. Then he ran through the smoke, down the twisting stairs and out into the cool night air, where the first mosquitoes were already taking off.

  ‘Where are the wasps?’ shouted Skipper in desperation as she heard the unmistakable whine of mosquito wings starting up. ‘They should be here by now!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sam, breathing hard as they ran out through the burning factory doors. ‘But if they don’t get here soon it will be too late. We have to do something!’

  ‘Over there!’ said Skipper, pointing towards a group of aircrew who were wheeling some portable steps over to a line of mosquitoes. Sam could see the bloated, dark red abdomens of the insects hanging heavily above the tarmac and knew they must be fully loaded with virus-filled blood.

  Skipper unclipped a drill bomb from her belt and held it up in the darkness for Sam to see.

  ‘Remember these?’ she said.

  Sam nodded.

  ‘Then you’ll remember what a big bang they make. I
’m going to create a diversion, so keep your head down until you hear the blast. As soon as it blows, run like the clappers up those steps and don’t stop until you’re in that mosquito. I’ll be with you as soon as I can, OK?’

  With that she was off and running.

  Sam gingerly edged as near to the steps as he dared, then lowered himself to the ground and buried his head in his hands. At the same moment there was a tremendous, deafening roar as the drill bomb exploded and ripped one of the mosquitoes apart. Sam felt the hot blast-wave race over his head and heard pieces of the mosquito splatter onto the tarmac, bursting like a thousand water balloons.

  Instantly he was on his feet, barging the stunned air-crew aside and racing up the steps with all the speed he could muster, his arms and legs pumping like pistons. Gasping with exertion, he activated the CRB and, as it flashed blue, he jumped through the hole and landed in the co-pilot’s seat.

  It was hard to say who was the more surprised, Sam or the pilot, who was finishing his pre-flight checks. But before either of them could react, Skipper had leant in from above and used her CRB to create another large hole in the pilot’s side of the mosquito.

  ‘Nothing personal,’ she said, then put her feet on his shoulders and shoved him through the hole. There was a brief cry of surprise, followed by a dull thud on the tarmac below.

  Skipper slid down into the now empty seat and peered out of the hole. ‘Byee!’ she called as the man struggled to his feet. ‘We’ll send you a postcard.’ She sealed the hole again and proceeded to activate the mosquito’s wings.

  ‘There’s just no pleasing some people,’ said Sam, ducking behind the instrument panel as the man began firing wildly at them with a pistol. Then the ground was falling away behind them and they followed a string of mosquitoes up into the strange and milky twilight which lay hidden beyond the clouds.

  Thirty-three

  It was like trying to fly through custard. The clouds had turned a thick, dirty yellow and the mosquito’s wings were labouring at full throttle, paddling slowly through the dense atmosphere.

  Skipper must have seen the look of concern on Sam’s face because she said reassuringly, ‘Don’t worry. It’s always like this.’

  Sam’s brow furrowed still further. ‘What is?’ he asked, confused.

  ‘The crossover,’ said Skipper. ‘From our world to yours. Remember what I told you about the gaps in the fabric between our worlds?’

  ‘Yes, sort of,’ replied Sam uncertainly.

  ‘Well we’re flying through one now,’ she explained. ‘We should come out the other side in a minute.’

  ‘How are we going to stop them when we get there?’ asked Sam, catching a brief glimpse of a mosquito up ahead before it disappeared into the cloud again.

  ‘Good question,’ said Skipper, pulling back hard on the throttle in an effort to squeeze more power from it. ‘I’ve no idea what’s happened to the wasps. Hopefully there should be a bit of a reception party for the mosquitoes when they break through, but they should have been destroyed on the ground. Here, take the controls for a minute.’

  Skipper swapped places with Sam and then climbed through a gap in the seats towards the rear section of the mosquito.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Sam, struggling to hold the lumbering insect on a steady course through the dense yellow fog.

  ‘I’m going to ditch all the blood from the tanks,’ said Skipper. ‘That way we can fly faster than the fully loaded mosquitoes and make sure that at least this one can’t be used to infect anyone.’

  Sam peered ahead through the screen, but couldn’t see a thing. He felt vulnerable, as though he was hurtling down a road into thick fog, unable to see the traffic ahead.

  Suddenly the mosquito lurched forwards and upwards so rapidly that Sam’s stomach seemed to be left behind; the throttle raced and he saw the air-speed indicator rise at an alarming rate.

  ‘Skipper!’ he yelled at the top of his voice. ‘What are you doing back there?’

  Skipper stuck her head between the seats. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’ve ditched the blood tanks, so you can ease off the throttle a bit now.’

  Sam closed the throttle slightly and the whine from the mosquito’s wings became less frantic.

  At that moment, the yellow cloud began to merge and spin in front of them, forming itself into a tunnel with walls which spiralled and narrowed towards a tiny black hole in the distance. It reminded Sam of bathwater disappearing down a plughole and up ahead he could clearly see the line of mosquitoes, flying steadily towards the dark point at the end of the tunnel.

  ‘This is it,’ said Skipper, sliding back into her seat and buckling up. ‘As soon as we get through to the other side, I’ll turn this thing on.’

  She produced a small flat disc with a circle of coloured lights on it and placed it on her knees.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Sam.

  ‘It’s an identification beacon,’ replied Skipper. ‘It sends out a signal which lets our forces know that we’re on the same side. After what happened when we flew home in the horsefly, I took the precaution of borrowing one from the stores before we left. I thought the –’

  Skipper was interrupted by a peculiar low rumbling sound that seemed to be coming from somewhere behind them. The conversation stopped and they both listened intently. The noise quickly grew in strength and intensity until it sounded like a thousand powerful motorbikes screaming up behind them at full throttle.

  Sam glanced up at his rear-view display screen and saw to his horror the deadly black and yellow painted faces of wasps approaching at an incredible speed.

  ‘Turn it on, Skipper!’ he screamed in panic. ‘For God’s sake, turn it on now!’

  Skipper quickly pressed the centre of the disc and the circle of coloured lights sparkled into life with a series of musical bleeps. Sam held his breath as a wasp bore down on them, its face filling the screen before it vanished once more, veering off at the last second and scorching past them with a deafening roar. Moments later, twenty or thirty more wasps came streaking past them at such velocity that Sam had to wrestle with the controls to stop the mosquito being swept away in the backwash from their wings.

  ‘Woohoo! Oh yeah! Ride ’em, cowboy!’ cried Skipper as they gyrated and bucked through the turbulent air. She waved a hand around her head in a circle, as if twirling an invisible lassoo. ‘C’mon, pardner. Let’s go git ’em!’

  Sam gave her a look. ‘I worry about you,’ he said.

  The walls of cloud blurred around them as the mosquito gathered speed; seconds later they were sucked through the darkness and into the bright moonlight of a warm August night.

  They were above an oval pond surrounded by a lawn. An enormous Victorian building stood at one end and the rest of the grounds were bordered by flowerbeds and a high wall which ran around the outside.

  ‘Watch out!’ shouted Skipper as a wasp suddenly shot past the cockpit in pursuit of a blood-laden mosquito. Sam turned hard in time to see another wasp ram a mosquito in front of them, bursting it open like a ripe tomato. A third wasp flew right up to the cockpit, hovered briefly as if to check them out, and then peeled off at speed across the pond on the tail of another mosquito. There was a loud roar as three more wasps criss-crossed in front of them and Sam automatically put a hand up to shield his face.

  ‘This is crazy,’ he yelled. ‘We’ll get killed if we stay here.’

  He banked the mosquito hard to the left and then flew low across the lawn to a dark flowerbed, where he slotted the wings into reverse and landed neatly on a large green hosta leaf.

  ‘What now?’ said Sam. His heart was thudding in his chest and he was breathing heavily.

  ‘Look,’ said Skipper.

  As he looked out from the shadows of the flowerbed, Sam saw the wasps make several high-speed passes over the lawn. They flew back and forth in a line formation and on each pass more wasps joined them, so that soon they resembled a huge black and yellow sheet stretching from one side of the
grounds to another.

  ‘Oh, wow!’ said Skipper, nodding her head approvingly. ‘They’re doing a full-sweep manoeuvre. I’ve read about it, but I’ve never actually seen it done. This is brilliant!’

  It certainly looked impressive, reminding Sam of some carefully choreographed dance. ‘What’s it for?’ he asked.

  ‘To make sure nothing escapes. They’re using it to hunt down the last of the mosquitoes.’

  Sam looked at Skipper nervously and pointed to the small disc on Skipper’s lap. ‘Are you sure that thing’s still on?’

  Skipper held it up so that Sam could see the coloured lights flashing. ‘Relax.’

  ‘Yeah, well I hope you brought some spare batteries. How come we never did this sweep thing in training then?’

  ‘Too risky. Textbooks say it should only be used in the direst emergency.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, for a start, it’s abnormal insect behaviour, which could draw the attention of humans. And secondly, there’s very little room for pilot error. You can lose a lot of aircraft if it goes wrong.’

  ‘What do you think they’re doing now?’ asked Sam.

  The wasps had gathered into a churning black and yellow ball above the centre of the lawn. After a few moments they shot upwards at high speed, gaining height rapidly before bursting outwards like a firework across the night sky.

  Skipper looked puzzled. ‘I don’t understand it. They’ve only completed a couple of sweeps. They can’t possibly be sure at this stage.’

  There was an eerie silence, followed by a low hum like the sound of a distant generator.

  ‘Can you hear that?’ said Skipper.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam, puzzled. ‘What is it?’

  Skipper shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. But I think we’re about to find out.’

  The hum grew louder and louder. It seemed to be coming from the far end of the garden.

  Sam and Skipper looked at each other in amazement and then turned to look at the wall just as a glittering mass of dragonflies crested the top and poured over it like a shining waterfall. They flowed across the lawn in a solid wave, their powerful jaws snapping, crunching and destroying the last of the mosquitoes.