Magical Mechanications

by Pip Ballantine

  Let them guess. Scarlett was enjoying herself presently, feeling very much at home behind the controls of the Sopwith Hornet.

  The LVG’s broke off as Scarlett flew between them, the slipstream buffeting at her Hornet as she banked hard, countering their own attempts to get behind her. She could feel every snap of the rigging and flutter of canvas ripped open by bullet holes as her Hornet angrily buzzed across Belgian skies. The remaining LVG’s parted, both of the enemy planes banking into opposite directions. She could easily line up a kill for one of them, but not without the other flanking her. There was always the option of pulling out of the fight, continuing home; but Scarlett wanted to finish what she had started.

  Just stay on the mission directives. Stick to that path and you will be back in France safe and sound.

  There was what she should do, and what she wanted to do.

  Scarlett had the better machine, and now she needed to know if she had the skill to go with it. Her plane dipped left and then climbed up, its twin machine guns giving angry report to the LVG crossing into her gunsights. Her bullets angrily ripped into the plane’s fuselage, tearing into the cockpit as she climbed. She didn’t know the limits of this experimental, but she knew the climbing rate of the LVG. It was fast, but her Hornet’s top speed might be a touch faster. She just had to stay ahead of her opponent, and at the best moment, get behind him. Tracer fire zipped by her cockpit and sparks flew from the Hornet’s rigging. Old Jerry was not going to let her get away so quickly.

  The Hornet, on Scarlett’s biding, now dipped into a dive. Scarlett’s intent would be to drop under her opponent, invert, then climb again. This experimental had shown itself capable of such a maneuver, but it all rested on the LVG not anticipating the tactic.

  Scarlett threw her stick to the right, the horizon tumbled to where ground was sky, where up and down, and vice versa. Her plane pitched up, but her opponent was no longer there.

  She looked left, then right, and the LVG had countered, banked, inverted, and leveled out to have Scarlett in the perfect kill shot.

  The LVG disappeared in a brilliant explosion of fire, smoke, and a storm of tracer bullets from above her. What should have been the plane that plucked her from the skies now plummeted to the earth thousands of feet below her.

  For the first time, she saw the Proximity Alarm’s light display turn red. This device was not designed to know friend from foe, just let the pilot know that another plane was far-too-close-for-comfort. So whomever rescued Scarlett from the LVG was getting cozy at ten thousand feet in the air.

  Something swooped from above and came so close to her right that their wingtips were nearly touching. Scarlett felt her grip tighten on the Hornet’s stick as the black Fokker tri-wing fighter plane silently few alongside her. The pilot looked over to her and saluted.

  Scarlett recognized that dark gaze instantly. It was the same gaze that had held her own in Grandmother’s house. She had punched Maximiliane Adolphina Vogelberg von Wolff. She had punched the Big Bad Wolf.

  And now, the Big Bad Wolf had just rescued her from certain death?

  No, Scarlett thought as the Ace of Aces gave her a nod before pulling away, Wolff wanted the kill. She was not going to let anyone else have it, nor let anyone stand in her way.

  The Big Bad Wolf zipped ahead of Scarlett, placing the silent aircraft in front of her gunsights. She was not certain of what this tactic was all about, but neither would she question it. Scarlett pulled the trigger of her twin machine guns but the triplane pitched up almost at a perfect vertical angle, inverted itself, and then leveled out behind her. She banked the Hornet hard to the left, while easing up on the throttle, giving Wolff plenty of time and space to overshoot and get ahead of her.

  What Wolff made her plane do should have been impossible, should have torn the plane apart; but the triple-winged plane appeared to spin on its horizontal, as if it were simply skating across a frozen pond, and opened fire as she glided past. Bullets struck something on the Hornet, and on Scarlett’s “Damage Control” dashboard, the tail section lit up.

  She had taken damage, but the display could not tell exactly what kind. What Scarlett could take certainty in was any violent maneuvers could result in a rigging failure and a loss of control in her rudder.

  No doubt Wolff also knew this.

  Time to leave.

  Scarlett pulled back on the stick, opening the throttle. She could feel the cold air biting at her skin, the speed of her Sopwith Hornet pushing her back into her seat once more. She had cleared the Proximity Alert, and so far her own escape appeared uninterrupted. Even with a green light from the alarm, Scarlett scanned the skies for any sign of Wolff. The Fokker prototype was nowhere below her nor to any other side.

  Then she looked up, and at her six she caught a glimpse of the three-winged silhouette.

  Her eyes switched back to the “Damage Control” display. Her usual maneuvers of corkscrews and hard dives would have to be a last resort, if at all.

  Plus, she had tricks of her own.

  Scarlett thrust the stick to her right, turning the plane on its side as Wolff continued to dive on her, the rain of bullets missing her by a few feet. The Fokker buzzed past and then suspended itself, just as it had with that horizontal spin, and then propelled itself upwards, now closing in from behind.

  “Let’s try this option,” Scarlett muttered, flipping the countermeasure switch that read “Flares.”

  Just over her cockpit’s windshield, there was a small mirror that allowed for her to see the tail section of her Hornet. The small caliber turret, its barrel no bigger than a hand pistol, rapidly launched bright balls of blue flame. They hurtled towards the Schwarzer Geist, but then exploded mere feet before the propellers.

  Scarlett tore her eyes away from the sudden flashes that flared from her rearview mirror, and pulled back hard on the stick, taking her Hornet up and over. Once inverted, she looked up to see the black Fokker pass underneath her. Wolff was bobbing and weaving in some sort of evasion tactic.

  Scarlett continued the loop, her attention now on the “Damage Control” panel that showed the lights on the tail section blinking between yellow and red, settling thankfully on yellow once she slipped behind Wolff.

  “Fine,” she said through clenched teeth, “let’s end this.”

  She pulled the trigger, peppering the plane in front of her with bullets; but only for a few seconds before a new light flickered brightly on her dashboard: Ammunition Low.

  The Fokker tumbled out of sight, but this was not the death spiral all pilots recognized. This was a controlled descent. Scarlett could not run out of ammunition while over the Front. She had to make it to the border, return to French skies. She was so close.

  Then it came to her. She really could be thick at times.

  Tracer fire zipped by her cockpit and between the struts of her Hornet. If she were going to make for her escape, it had to be now.

  Scarlett flipped the Hornet’s motor from “Patrol” to “Combat/Evasion” mode. The engine rumbled to an eerie silence, but her plane launched itself into the horizon, the lightest of touches from Scarlett on the stick sending the plane into wild corkscrews. She was now in full electric mode, and miles ahead of Wolff.

  On her dashboard, the map of the Western Front scrolled by at a consistent, steady pace, far faster than she had ever seen. The speedometer only measured as high as one hundred fifty miles per hour, but the needle inched beyond that before it stopped, unable to go any further.

  The Proximity Alarm screeched. Scarlett looked in her rearview and could see in the distance the outline of the Fokker prototype. The Big Bad Wolf had let her go once, most likely out of a sense of chivalry. They had been mismatched. Now, the rules of combat were at play. Wolff was not intending on repeating the gesture to Scarlett. Not after Grandmother’s house.

  Her gaze jumped back to the map. The French border was far behind her. Rang-du-Fliers was closing in fast.

  So was the Schwarzer Geist.
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  Scarlett pushed forward on the stick, taking her Hornet into a long, slow dive. She would have to try and shake off Wolff, if fuel and luck would have it, somewhere over the English channel. Whatever the cost, she could not afford to reveal her hidden airfield.

  The order suddenly lit up on her dash. This was a new communications system that both Tink and Hemsworth both cooked up, produced, and managed to fix into the dashboard before she left for Germany. With the late afternoon sun now beginning a descent before her and Wolff still within a warning distance, the message painted on its long, slender glass plate seemed to burn insistently.

  Return to Base.

  Someone must have sighted them at the Front, relayed a message back to Rang-du-Fliers. Still, this message was sent? Were they serious?

  Her eyes went to the fuel and battery gauge. The battery was close to dry. The fuel would be enough to get her to base, but only just. If she were to try for Calais, it would mean a death at sea for both of them.

  “You had better be right about this, Adams,” she swore as the Hornet leveled out and headed for home.

  Scarlett flipped the engine mode back to “Patrol” which, in turn, brought the petrol engine back online. The changeover was instantaneous as the Hornet’s fuselage shuddered. Scarlett also lost the incredible response time in her controls. There may be a few miles left on the battery, a sudden kick which she might need once over the airfield.

  The forest underneath her whizzed by and then disappeared, just as the Proximity Alarm went red. Scarlett’s gaze went back to the rearview. Wolff would be within the perfect firing range in seconds.

  The explosion to her left caused her to pull up instinctively, but then she realized the low-ceiling flack was not for her. Around Wolff, shells exploded, dotting the sky with dark patches of black. Scarlett looked down, and beat the side of the Hornet’s fuselage as she cheered madly. On either side of her landing strip were three massive, all-terrain “Lions.” Their back legs were in a crouch position while the front legs were straightened to their full length. With the extra angle, Hemsworth’s tanks could now take aim on the incoming Fokker.

  One shell ripped through two of her right wings, but the airplane continued its pursuit, opening fire on the Hornet.

  This time the bullet cut through the fuselage, and searing pain swept over Scarlett’s shoulder.

  No, Scarlett, she chided herself, that’s an insane thought.

  Insane, but perhaps her best option at present.

  She flipped the Hornet back into “Combat/Evasion” mode, and within seconds the electric motor took control. Scarlett then threw the plane into a wild corkscrew, hoping Wolff would follow. Then on her third loop, Scarlett pulled back on the stick hard while angling flaps as hard as they could go. She felt the Hornet turn in such a way, she could not be certain of her control over the plane. Around her, everything blurred by as if she were on a merry-go-round moving too fast, and what was behind her was in front of her.

  Scarlett pulled trigger, emptying her twin machine guns into the Big Bad Wolf.

  The plane now hurtled at her in a great ball of fire. Scarlett jerked back hard on the stick and her wheels bumped against the top wing of the Fokker.

  The petrol engine gurgled back to life, and for a moment Scarlett fought to keep the Hornet flying as nothing was responding straight away. Yellow and red lights blinked madly across her dashboard. It was impossible in this eternal second of time to tell if she were flying or falling gracefully from the sky, but the pain in her shoulder offered her flashes of alertness.

  The throttle was not cut back. The Hornet was leveling out. The runway was no longer a moving target. This time, Scarlett’s landing only included a bounce five feet high before the plane rolled to a stop.

  Scarlett slumped back into her seat as she stubbornly tried to power down the plane before passing out. “I must be getting better at the landing,” was last thing she remembered hearing herself say before surrendering to the darkness.

  Six

  “So, why are we here again?” asked Hemsworth.

  “Perspective,” Scarlett replied, holding the glass just shy of her lips before saying again, “perspective.”

  Before the tank commander and the pilot, the English channel ebbed and flowed. At least they knew it did. From where they looked over Calais, there were no waves to follow with their eyes. Simply a blue canvas stretching for miles. As it was a particularly clear day, they could see the faint outline of England on the horizon. For King, Country, and the Empire.

  But was it all worth it?

  Now Scarlett completely understood why Tink came up here. Alone with thoughts. A moment’s reflection here, in private.

  Her gaze wandered over to the broad-shouldered soldier, enjoying the afternoon with her atop this particular outlook. “How much longer, you think?”

  “Oh, a few more days, then I should probably contact H.Q. and tell them I will be back on the front with a new pride of Lions.”

  Scarlett laughed. “No, silly, I meant with the war. The Great War. How much longer, you think?”

  Hemsworth ran his fingers through his blonde hair, letting out a long, slow breath. He seemed to hold his breath a lot around her. He really needed to just relax a bit, enjoy life. “It would have been shorter had you not retrieved the plans of the Schwarzer Geist, but it would also have been a different world under the Kaiser.”

  “Makes me wonder then if it was worth it.”

  “Now hold on, Little Red, you can’t look at it that way.”

  Scarlett raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really? And exactly how am I supposed to look at it, Major?”

  He leaned back into the grass, propping himself up on his elbows. “Perhaps that come out wrong.”

  “I invited you up here so I could share this experience with you, as a way to say thank you. Don’t make me regret this.”

  “What I meant was, you are helping to find a balance with the way the world works. One of the reasons why war happens usually comes down to what one side has and the other doesn’t. When you think about it, that explains what’s happening right now.”

  Scarlett chuckled. “You make it sound like the Great War is really a group of spoiled children fighting over the same toy.”

  “Maybe,” he said, finishing off his glass of wine. “I just know if you hadn’t taken the chance, hadn’t risked your life for King and Country, right now the Kaiser would have a weapon in their arsenal we wouldn’t know how to combat.”

  “The Hornet did just fine.”

  “Yes, but the Fokker was different. You saw it up close. Hopefully, we can replicate from those schematics how they solved the range and temperature problem of the engine.”

  “And how does that help the war effort again?”

  “Well…” Hemsworth began, but his thought seemed to falter. Finally, he said, “We were able to stop a dangerous weapon from being potentially exclusive to the enemy.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that in a war, there is no hero and villain, no noble knight and mortal enemy? In our Great War, we see Germany as the enemy out to crush us under their boot heel, while Germany sees us as the overbearing Empire forcing our unwanted policies and restrictions on their way of life which was fine…until we can along and told them ‘No, do it this way.’ Being Irish, I can understand how that feels.”

  Hemsworth went to speak, but again, took a long moment before finally replying, “Is this the perspective you wanted to share with me up here?”

  “Actually, no, I just wanted to share a bottle of fine wine with you and I really can’t do it all by myself at present,” she said, motioning to the one arm in a sling.

  “How is the shoulder healing up?”

  “Should be back up in the skies in no time,” she said cheerily. “That being said, pour me another glass.”

  “I’ll have to get the other basket,” he said, returning to his feet.

  She watched as Hemsworth trotted over to the massive Lion and retrieved from behi
nd the “paw” closest to him another basket with a bottle of wine and two freshly baked loaves of bread.

  “Did I ever thank you for coming to my rescue, Major Hemsworth?” she asked, holding up her glass.

  The cork slipped out with a short, crisp pop. He passed the open bottle under his nose and smiled appreciatively. “Actually, no you didn’t, Captain Quinn,” he said, pouring her glass, “and what with rushing you to a hospital, the promotion, and debriefing, I don’t think we got around to it. But if you want to thank me, try this on for size…” Hemsworth poured himself a new glass, and then held it up into the breeze. “Harry.”

  Scarlett tipped her head to one side. “Sorry?”

  “Harry. Please. Call me Harry.”

  She looked him over from head-to-toe, then shook her head. “No, I prefer Hemsworth. Seems to suit you better. What with those broad shoulders, blond hair, and blue eyes, you don’t look like a Harry.”

  His mouth turned into a slight scowl. “I’m not really enjoying this perspective, Little Red, you know that?”

  Her eyes narrowed on him. “You know I’m not particularly keen on that nickname.”

  “Your choice,” he said with a shrug. “Call me Harry, and we can drop this whole nickname nonsense.”

  Scarlett puckered her lips, took a moment to look out over the Channel, then took a sip of her wine. “Thanks, Hemsworth, for being there. I don’t know if I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Harry took a seat next to her, and gently nudged her. “You were the one who shot down the Big Bad Wolf. You were fine. I just made a promise to you I would offer support. I did, as I said I would, and I would do it again. But as for the thought, think nothing of it,” and he touched his glass with hers, “Little Red.”