Liberator

by Richard Harland

  ‘Hurry! I have a plan.’

  Hand over hand, he went down as fast as he could.

  ‘Back to the fighting?’ he asked.

  Riff didn’t reply, and didn’t need to. Everything else had failed. There was nothing to do but return to their original goal.

  Attack the command tower, he thought. Oh well, I never expected to survive anyway.

  Riff explained her plan. ‘We’ll ride on that to the tower.’ She jerked a thumb toward the trolley outside the shelter. ‘Drive right through their troops.’

  No one understood. ‘How? Who does the driving?’

  ‘We’ll make their driver take us.’

  ‘So . . .’ Dunga knitted her brows. ‘We go out in the open now?’

  ‘No point trying to stay secret.’

  ‘The tower will be heavily guarded,’ said Jarvey doubtfully.

  Riff grinned. ‘Yes, but we don’t need to fight our way into it. We can blow it up.’

  They looked at her in blank astonishment. Col was the first to grasp the idea.

  ‘The ammunition,’ he said. ‘The balls of light.’

  ‘Right. We saw what happened when they hit Liberator. We’ve got two big flasks full of them. If we crash the trolley into the bottom of the tower . . .’

  ‘They’ll explode on impact?’

  ‘Why else are the flasks bedded in straw? I reckon they’ll go up with a boom.’

  ‘And of course we’ll have plenty of time to jump off first,’ said Cree.

  The others gaped at her, then realised she was being ironic. Their chances of making it through alive were infinitesimal. They weren’t even likely to reach the tower before being shot down.

  ‘So why are we waiting?’ Dunga asked, and spun on her heel.

  They hurried to act before fear could unnerve them. Leaving the three men tied up on the ground, they slipped out through the flap of the shelter. Dunga went first, with Col right behind her.

  The driver was still on the footplate of the traction engine. A pock-faced, middle-aged man not wearing military uniform, he perched on a small, high seat, half-dozing, awaiting orders.

  His orders came from a source he didn’t expect. Dunga prodded him under the ear with the tip of her rifle, Col held his sword against the man’s throat.

  ‘Drive!’ said Dunga through gritted teeth.

  The driver gurgled and went pop-eyed. He didn’t speak Dunga’s language, but he understood her meaning, especially when Col mimed a show of turning the steering wheel.

  While Riff, Cree and Jarvey piled into the trolley behind, the driver twisted a handle, lowered a lever and pressed down on a pedal. The engine started forward with a hiss of steam and a smooth back-and-forth motion of sliding rods and shafts.

  There was room for only one person to ride with the driver on the footplate, and Col’s sword was handier at close quarters than Dunga’s rifle. Dunga dropped back and jumped up to join the rest of the team in the trolley. She kept her rifle trained on the back of the driver’s skull, while Col continued to menace him with the sword.

  Once they passed beyond the tube and shelter they were exposed on both sides. The command tower looked bigger than ever, less than two hundred yards away. But two hundred yards was an eternity given the odds against them.

  Col pointed to the tower, but the driver shook his head. Perhaps he had guessed the nature of their plan; at any rate, he refused to co-operate further. Not bothering to argue, Col seized the steering wheel and worked it with one hand himself. It was a huge circle of iron three feet in diameter. With the sword still at his throat, the driver cursed but didn’t fight to regain control.

  The engine veered to the left and the trolley followed. Col lined up on the tower as if aiming a gun. There were units of troops in the way, but he didn’t try to navigate around them.

  They scattered with shouts and cries. They had seen him now – and also the rest of the team. Dunga, Riff, Jarvey and Cree stood facing out from the flasks, fully visible.

  Soldiers raised rifles, officers shouted orders. Col tried to duck lower as the first shots rang out. One bullet ricocheted from the steering wheel, another struck Col’s sword and almost wrenched it from his hand. Miraculously, Col himself wasn’t hit.

  With a sound like a cough, the driver jerked back, then toppled forward onto the wheel. Col tried to pull him off, but couldn’t make him move. His head weighed down on the upper part of the wheel, his chest on the hub, while his left arm had become somehow trapped in the spokes.

  Dead, Col realised. He couldn’t see the wound, but he could see blood dripping onto the footplate. The man must have died instantly, shot from the other side.

  It made no difference to the progress of the traction engine. The driver’s foot still weighed down on the pedal, while his slumped body locked the steering wheel in position.

  More shots, more shouting. The Filthies on the trolley behind were screaming at him.

  ‘Col! Up here! With us!’

  Suddenly, hands gripped him under the armpits and he found himself hoisted from the footplate and over the wire netting.

  It didn’t make sense to Col. ‘Why?’

  They hauled him back over the straw until he was leaning against one of the flasks. The cold of the glass pierced through to his bones.

  ‘They can’t shoot you here,’ Riff told him.

  ‘Of course they . . .’ Col began, then tailed off.

  The shooting had stopped. He looked out and saw hundreds of raised rifles, yet not one soldier pulled his trigger.

  ‘They were only aiming at you,’ said Riff. ‘They can’t aim at us here because they might hit the flasks.’

  Col nodded slowly as understanding dawned. ‘And set off an explosion.’

  Riff grinned. ‘Neat, huh?’

  Her eyes were alive with wild energy, desperate and jubilant at the same time. It was an unexpected stroke of luck . . . along with their luck over the dead driver, keeping them right on course for the tower.

  How long would it last? When would the officers have second thoughts? At present, they were arguing furiously among themselves. Col felt like making faces and putting out his tongue at them. Instead, he turned to see what was happening to Liberator.

  The smokescreen was starting to thin, enough to reveal thousands of troops marching across no-man’s-land. Red, blue, grey and green uniforms were all taking part in the final assault. The front lines had probably reached the juggernaut already . . .

  A flurry of shouted orders brought him back to their own situation. The trolley had covered half the distance to the tower, but the officers had finally worked out a way to act. On their orders, a mass of soldiers dropped their rifles and ran forward.

  Riff fired her pistol and Dunga her rifle. They stopped a few, but the rest flowed around the trolley in a great wave. They didn’t try to attack the team, but grabbed hold of any projecting part of the chassis – and leaned back.

  The wheels of the traction engine started to skid. Dunga and Riff kept shooting, Col swung his sword. The soldiers soon learned to jump away from the flashing blade. But he could only threaten a few at a time, and there were far too many of them. The weight of a hundred soldiers pulling backwards brought engine and trolley to a dead stop.

  ‘I’m out of bullets!’ Dunga yelled suddenly.

  ‘Me too!’ cried Riff. ‘Do what you can!’

  Dunga and Riff used the butts of their weapons, Cree and Jarvey used their bare hands. Col stooped over the netting and slashed with his sword. He was in a kind of trance, dancing from place to place, keeping his mind open everywhere at once, as Riff had taught him.

  Another flurry of orders rang out, and a new wave of soldiers ran up. These ones retained their rifles, but they didn’t risk shooting with them. Instead, they wielded
them like clubs as Dunga was doing. While the soldiers of the first wave crouched lower over the chassis, the newcomers swung out above their heads. Now Col and the Filthies had to deal with rifle butts before they could even approach the hands that held back the trolley.

  There was a sudden cry as Jarvey took a terrible blow. He collapsed into the straw with blood spurting from the side of his head.

  For one moment, Col’s attention was diverted and he came out of his fighting trance. In that same moment, he failed to dodge the swing of a rifle butt that crashed down on his sword-hand.

  The sword fell from his numbed fingers, bounced on the wire netting and fell to the ground outside the trolley.

  Disarmed! He stepped back in shock, temporarily helpless. In that moment, his eyes swept over the whole battlefield, near and far.

  Liberator was doomed. Eight ladders rose out above the thinning smokescreen, reaching up to the lower tiers of the juggernaut’s superstructure. Climbing troops were already almost at the top, tiny in the distance. They carried protective shields of some kind, and the defenders appeared powerless to stop them.

  It was all coming to an end. Megaphone voices continued to blare out a steady stream of orders to the assault forces. The trolley was immobilised eighty yards away from the tower, and several soldiers had leaped up onto the wire netting. Only a miracle could save the revolution now.

  Zwackk!

  Something came whistling through the air and arrowed into the ground twenty paces away. It quivered where it stuck, bright and shiny with many prongs.

  Col gaped. The ropes attached to it went all the way back up to the uppermost terrace below Liberator’s funnels. It was one of the grappling hooks.

  More and more grappling hooks came shooting down. A dozen, two dozen, three dozen, all within a hundred-yard radius.

  The soldiers on the wire netting dropped off, the soldiers all around stopped fighting. One man had been impaled by a hook and pinned to the ground, but his comrades were too stunned to notice his screams of agony. The generals must have seen what was happening because the megaphone voices fell suddenly silent.

  Riff, Cree and Dunga whooped and cheered, but Col couldn’t adjust. The hooks had been intended for an assault on the Romanov. What was happening now?

  ‘Look! Look!’ Riff pointed. ‘It’s the project! They’ve done it!’

  She was pointing towards the uppermost terrace. On each pair of ropes was a sling, and someone sitting in the sling. Even as he watched, the figures kicked off and started the long ride down.

  The project . . . He remembered Septimus talking about a project, something to do with magnets. It had all happened while he was looking after Sephaltina.

  The slings passed into the murk of the smokescreen and emerged again on the other side. The figures in the slings grew larger and larger, accelerating under their own momentum. Now Col could see that the weapons they cradled in their arms were much bulkier and heavier than ordinary rifles.

  He understood the nature of the weapons when one of the rope-riders began firing at the troops below.

  Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat- tat-tat!

  Flash after flash burst from the barrel. Only a Maxim gun could fire a non-stop stream of bullets like that.

  ‘That’s the project!’ he exclaimed. ‘Maxim guns!’

  ‘Maxim guns,’ Riff agreed. ‘But that’s not the project. Look closer!’

  Dozens of figures came swooping down like great birds out of the sky. The troops nearby didn’t wait for their arrival, but broke and fled. By the time the first rope-rider hit the ground, a wide clearing had opened up all around.

  There was a blur of speed and a tremendous thump. Col didn’t see the rope-rider bend at the knees to absorb the impact, he only saw as she straightened up, stepped out of the sling, and swung her gun menacingly in all directions.

  She was a solidly built Filthy, with hair tied back in a bun and a face that Col didn’t recognise. The most remarkable thing about her was her clothing – a loose grey Menial uniform.

  Col turned to Riff. ‘Why is she wearing Menial clothes?’

  Riff laughed out loud. ‘Because she’s a Menial, of course!’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘That was the project.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To turn Menials back into Filthies.’

  Col stared and stared again. The woman with the Maxim gun didn’t shuffle like a Menial or hunch her shoulders like a Menial. Her eyes were bright and clear, her movements swift and light. But the hair tied back in a bun . . . that was as much in the style of a Menial as the pajama uniform.

  He could hardly believe it – yet he had to believe it. Septimus and the Professor had found books explaining how to turn Filthies into Menials, he remembered. They must have worked out how to perform the operation the other way round. Though where magnets came into it . . .

  Meanwhile, more and more rope-riders continued to land, all wearing pajama uniforms, all armed with Maxim guns. They fired a few short bursts of gunfire.

  Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat- tat-tat!

  The Imperialist troops scurried off as fast as their legs could carry them. They understood the lethal effects of a non-stop stream of bullets.

  Cree bent down to examine the injured Jarvey. Dunga turned to Riff with a puzzled frown.

  ‘Why are they landing here?’

  ‘Same plan as us, maybe.’

  ‘What, take out the command tower?’

  ‘Let’s go find out.’

  They jumped down from the trolley and hurried across to the first rope-rider.

  Col looked up towards Liberator’s superstructure and saw new slings being attached, new rope-riders preparing to slide down the same pairs of ropes. Lower down, he saw defenders leaning out from portholes, lassoing the ladders and trying to pull them off balance. The tide had turned, the siege was faltering everywhere!

  The first rope-rider accompanied Riff and Dunga back to the traction engine. The driver’s body lay now half on and half off the footplate; the soldiers must have dislodged him from the steering wheel, and presumably the foot-pedal too.

  Riff called up to Col. ‘Can you drive this thing?’

  ‘What, back to our plan? We blow up the tower?’

  ‘Yes, but now we have help. Can you drive it?’

  Col rehearsed in his mind the steps he’d seen the driver employ: turn the handle, lower the lever, press down on the pedal. It wasn’t complicated. ‘I think so.’

  The rope-rider gestured with her Maxim gun. ‘Let’s do it.’

  She sounded so much like any other Filthy, it was hard to believe she’d only recently regained her power of speech. Col hardly knew how to address her.

  ‘Right,’ he said, and put off thinking about it till another time. He turned to Cree. ‘What about Jarvey? Can we move him?’

  Cree looked up from the injured Filthy. ‘Yes. He’s conscious. The blood looks worse than it is.’

  So Col and Cree lifted Jarvey over the wire netting, while Riff and Dunga stood below to receive him. He gave a lopsided grin as they lowered him to the ground.

  ‘Are we winning?’ he asked.

  ‘Good as won,’ Riff told him.

  The dead driver also lay on the ground, dragged clear of the engine by the rope-rider. Col stepped up to the footplate and took his place on the driver’s seat.

  He located the handle and gave it a turn. The engine let out a great swoosh of steam.

  When he lowered the lever, the footplate rocked under his feet.

  He pressed down on the pedal – just a little at first, then more and more. Suddenly the rods and shafts came to life, and the whole engine trundled forward.

  Riff came running alon
gside. ‘I’ll keep you company,’ she said, and sprang up on the footplate next to him.

  Col applied all his weight to the pedal, but the engine had already reached its sluggish top speed.

  ‘Do we jump off before the crash?’ he asked. ‘It’ll be an almighty explosion.’

  ‘No crash,’ said Riff. ‘Change of plan. Now we can use the Maxim guns.’ She gestured towards the rope-riders, who had formed a loose half-circle and were advancing behind them. ‘They’ll set off the explosion by shooting the flasks. I’ve arranged it all with Vassa.’

  Vassa must be the first rope-rider, Col realised. No longer an anonymous Menial but a Filthy with a name! The world really was changing!

  The tower straddled the end of the walkway, rising to a height of fifty feet. Its lower part was an open frame of eight metal legs, draped with the banners of France, Russia, Austria and Turkey. Its upper part was a solid octagonal box with shuttered windows on every side. Glinting brass telescopes stuck out through the shutters, but it was impossible to see the faces behind them. Higher up, huge silver cones were mounted on the roof like the mouths of trumpets.

  Col and Riff were thirty yards away when the telescopes swivelled towards them. Twenty yards away, and the trumpets spoke in megaphone voices. The generals inside the tower had realised their danger.

  Col swung the steering wheel to guide the trolley alongside the frame of metal legs. He could see steps spiralling up to the octagonal box above. He took his foot from the pedal and brought the traction engine to a halt.

  The megaphone voices were going frantic – no longer deep and authoritative, but shrill and frightened. It sounded as though the generals were squabbling for control of the microphone. Though the words were incomprehensible, they were doubtless commanding their troops to remove the trolley at all costs.

  Riff jumped down from the footplate, and Col was right behind her. Now the megaphone voices were pleading for help. But the rope-riders had the area covered, and there were no soldiers or officers nearby. No one was foolish enough to invite a hail of bullets from the Maxim guns.

  Col and Riff raced for safety. Fifty yards away, the rope-riders stood with their guns raised, aiming at the two glass flasks. Col and Riff dived flat to the ground as the guns spat fire.