Twining looked them over, wrinkling his nose in disgust once more. ‘Right then, you sorry lot. To complete the test and prove yourselves worthy all you have to do is make a single circuit of this deck. Running, mind you.’
Gwen did some quick calculations - Arturo was five hundred and fifty feet long and seventy feet wide, even if they ran around the very edge of the flight deck that would be less than a quarter of a mile in total, an easy run for even the least fit and oldest of their fitters. She pursed her lips and looked at Twining. ‘What’s the catch?’
A surprised look crossed Twining’s face for an instant, as if he hadn’t been expecting the question from any of them, but he hid it quickly with a wide grin. ‘Well, there might be a few difficulties to surmount along the way...’ He laughed, then raised his voice. ‘Places!’
The sailors spread out around the deck, creating a wide corridor all the way around the outside.
Twining raised an eyebrow at the men and women around him. ‘Well? What are you waiting for?’
The sailors immediately took off towards the stern at a sprint, like frightened rabbits and were closely followed by the three RAC instructors and the fitters, each of them worrying about only themselves. However, the Misfit pilots stayed together as a pack, as a squadron, knowing that they were stronger together when facing the enemy
At first they were just jeered at by the surrounding sailors and Gwen began to wonder if that was the worst that was going to happen to them, whether it was about putting up with humiliation, or providing a spectacle, but then, just as they were settling into their rhythm, the hoses turned on.
Gwen gasped in shock when the ice cold sea water hit her and she faltered, spluttering and gasping for breath, holding her hands up in a futile effort to block it, but after a few seconds the stream moved to Kitty, running beside her and she had a brief respite to look around.
There were multiple streams of water coming from all around them, coming from hoses of all sizes, from ones that were only a couple of inches of thickness which were used for cleaning, up to ones that were almost a foot thick, which needed a dozen sailors to lift and direct.
Gwen saw that the men and women who had run ahead were having a bad time of it. Because they were strung out and running singly, the hoses were able to concentrate on them and they were being battered almost constantly by the water, in fact it seemed that the hoses were deliberately seeking out anybody who was on their own. She laughed in delight when Rudy Drake was knocked off his feet, but she received her comeuppance when the next big hose ahead of them turned towards her and she took the full force of it on her chest. It submerged her as effectively as if she had dived into the ocean and stopped her dead in her tracks.
However, no matter how difficult she was finding it, Scarlet had it worse; as the smallest and lightest of them, she was being knocked around like an airship in a hurricane. Gwen wasn’t the only one to see her difficulty, though, and Abby’s shout of “close formation!” had the Misfits bunching up together around the woman, protecting their most vulnerable member as much as they could, just as they would do in the air.
The streams from several hoses were turned their way and remained on them, trying to split them up, but they stayed together and ran on, taking strength from each other.
As a group, the force of the water was lessened, but there was no way to avoid the cold, though. It began sapping their will and they slowed as they rounded the first corner at the stern of the ship.
It was Mac who first started shouting, mostly roaring incoherently, but occasionally yelling out a recognisable swearword. Bruce laughed and joined in, using colourful antipodean language, which Gwen resolved to learn as soon as she could. One by one the others began calling out as well, each doing what they had to in order to get their blood flowing and clear their heads, just as they would when they were pulling heavy G’s in the air. As they went, they collected their fitters, pulling each struggling man and woman under their wings for protection and drawing them, sometimes forcibly, along with them.
They rounded the next bend and headed back towards the bow along the long corridor between the sailors and the sea.
By this time, they had caught up with the men and women who had sprinted ahead, many of who were already completely exhausted because of the constant persecution of the hoses, but now they saw the example of the Misfits and began to band together. Some of them, including the instructors, joined the massed ranks of the squadron, but most sought out friends and colleagues first, seeking to help them and be helped in turn.
The water didn’t let up, but with everybody moving in groups, progress was much easier, and they covered the length of the deck quickly.
They rounded the bow, going around the massive throne on the lift, with the white figure on it watching them impassively and before they knew what was happening, they found themselves back where they started and blocked by a solid wall of sailors.
The water cut off and the men and women collapsed to the deck, shattered, but they were there for barely a second before they found themselves picked up and wrapped in blankets. They were then lifted by cheering sailors and carried on their shoulders back to the centre of the deck, where they were held aloft while silence fell once more, and all eyes looked to the Lord of the Winter Sea.
The silence dragged on for long seconds as the white-painted man surveyed them solemnly, but then a wide grin spread across his face and he leapt to his feet, spreading his arms wide. ‘Give them my mark and make it known to them that they will be forever welcome in my realm!’
Amid more cheering, the exhausted pilots, fitters and sailors were gently lowered to the ground, handed mugs of steaming tea and led over to where several men and women were sitting on stools, already holding tattoo needles.
Gwen eyed the buzzing machines warily, watching the first of the newly initiated sailors grin happily while she got her mark.
One of the sailors standing by Gwen, a woman in her thirties with heavily muscled arms and oil-saturated pores, saw her hesitation. ‘Don’t worry, miss; passengers only get the symbol drawn on in pen and even us sailors get a choice as to whether we want it permanent-like or not.’
Gwen eyed the symbol on the woman’s arm, it was flanked by a couple of similar marks, perhaps for other notable crossings, but a fair few other tattoos, some far larger, were scattered around what could be seen of her upper body. ‘Do many sailors choose the pen instead of the tattoo?’
The woman chuckled and shook her head. ‘Nope, none.’
‘I want one!’ Scarlet called out, bouncing across the deck enthusiastically to take the place of a newly marked young man.
The assembled crew cheered in delight, but the other Misfits just looked at her in shock and watched her sitting patiently while the old man operating the machine cleaned the needle, expecting at any moment that she would change her mind and leap out of the seat. However, in the end it wasn’t just Scarlet who opted to get the tattoo, but a surprising number of fitters as well and, to the pilots’ continuing surprise, Owen and Wendy too, and they gazed into each other’s eyes and held hands as two grizzled veterans set the black ink into the meat of their upper arms.
Finally, it was done and as one the crew gave three cheers, led by the Captain himself, then began to disperse, some going about the job of swabbing the decks, but most disappearing below to have breakfast or to get ready for duty.
Captain Hewer had already handed his crown and trident off to attendants, who were riding the hydraulic lift down to the hangar with the throne, taking it to wherever they kept it until it was needed for the next time, and he removed his long wig and ran his hand through his hair as he approached the Misfits, who were gathered by the starboard rail.
‘Damn fine showing, Wing Commander, damn fine.’ He reached out and took Abby’s hand and pumped it vigorously. ‘We have a similar ritual for crossing the equator, but that one’s just a bit of a lark, this one’s much more serious and has a purpose to it, you know,
and a lesson.’
Abby smiled wryly. ‘And what might that lesson be? Beyond not to get on a Navy vessel passing through the Arctic Circle unless you like being wet and cold.’
The Captain laughed. ‘That’s part of it, yes - we all need to appreciate how cold the water is here and how little time anyone who ends up in it would survive. However, the main thing that we hope our sailors take away from the exercise is that if they and their friends are going to have a chance at surviving, it’s going to be by working together. And that is a lesson you Misfits have apparently already learnt and learnt well.’ He waved his hand at the sailors who were still hanging around, comparing tattoos, reluctant to leave, much like the Misfits themselves. ‘At the very least it gives them a bond they will share for the rest of their lives.’ He smiled avuncularly at the men and women of his crew as they skylarked in the middle of the deck before turning back to the pilots.
‘Congratulations. All of you.’ He nodded, then marched off towards the stairway, pointedly ignoring the sniggers that arose from behind him as he tripped over his costume. He steadied himself on the rail, then, with all the dignity he could muster, lifted his skirts and clomped down the stairs towards the lower decks.
Gwen watched him go, then pulled back her blanket to reveal the symbol on her arm. She had chosen the temporary option, but she could understand why some people would want to have a reminder of the ordeal that they had just gone through, it had been very memorable and it seemed that the Misfits had been brought even closer together, if that was possible.
She just couldn’t imagine marking her body permanently, though, but maybe that was because she just hadn’t found something that she believed in enough to want to commemorate it that way.
‘It looks good on you. Maybe you should have got it done permanently.’
Gwen looked up to find Kitty standing in front of her. The American had wrapped her blanket around herself like a toga, leaving her arms and hands free. It was very fetching.
Gwen shook her head. ‘No way! I couldn’t...’ Something occurred to her and she looked at her friend’s arm. ‘You didn’t...?’
Kitty laughed. ‘No! Of course not!’ She used a finger to demonstrate the temporary nature of her mark, rubbing away the tail end of the trident. ‘When I get a tattoo, it’ll have to be for a very good reason, not just crossing an imaginary line.’
‘When you get a tattoo?’
Kitty shrugged. ‘You never know where life is going to take you.’
‘Indeed not.’ Gwen gestured pointedly at the mighty metal beast that they were standing on, which was steaming its way through the waters at the top of the world.
They took a moment to look out over the rail and appreciate the view of the dozens of ships that surrounded them. The lumbering cargo ships and the sleek naval hunters that protected them.
‘So...’ started Kitty, hesitantly. ‘You and Lord Drake go back a long way, then.’
Gwen peered up at her, squinting against the biting wind of their passage. ‘Yes. We were friends many years ago.’ She saw the anxiety in her friend’s eyes and reached out to lay a hand over hers on the railing and smiled in reassurance. ‘He’s just that, though, no more. Yes, he and I have a lot of catching up to do, but he’s not going to get between us.’
‘Really? It’s just that you told him the same thing that you told me - that you needed more time.’
Gwen blinked. ‘Did I? When?’
‘A couple of nights ago, after the captain’s dinner party.’
‘Really?’ Gwen frowned, trying to remember, but the night was hazy, and she didn’t recall much after the whist game. She had a vague impression of being alone with Rudy at some point, but not much more than that.
She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I can barely even remember speaking to him, but I suppose I must have meant that I wasn’t ready to tell him about my feelings for you and my decision to move on from Richard.’
‘Oh, OK, that makes sense. I suppose.’ Kitty’s expression lightened slightly, but she still seemed doubtful.
Gwen gazed up into Kitty’s eyes. She briefly wondered if she could get away with giving her a kiss to reassure her, but then frowned when she became aware of a clicking noise coming from close by. She turned her head to see Freddy Featherstonehaugh standing only a few yards away, writing furiously in his notebook, while Mr Jones, who had apparently finally released his death grip on a toilet bowl, scuttled around, taking photographs. Gwen released Kitty’s hand and put all thoughts of kissing out of her mind, not quite ready to be caught so intimately on film. She gave the woman a last smile, then went and called Abby’s attention to the two men.
Abby blinked and raised her voice to be heard over the conversations going on around them. ‘Mr Featherstonehaugh!’
The journalist looked up, startled at hearing his name, then smiled and wander over to join the pilots, who were all scowling at him in his warm and dry condition.
‘Wing Commander,’ he inclined his head to her in greeting, then gazed around at the other pilots. ‘Ladies, Gentlemen. It seems that congratulations are in order.’
‘Thank you, but how is it that you escaped the clutches of the Lord of the Winter Sea?’
He laughed. ‘I didn’t, I fell foul of him several years ago, as did Mr Jones. We did a piece together for Imperial Geographic Magazine on the whaling industry around the North Pole and had the pleasure of going through a similar ceremony to today’s, although we didn’t do nearly so well as you did.’
‘Does that mean you have a tattoo?’ Chastity asked coyly, stepping forward and stroking his arm where the mark would be if he had one.
The Misfits shared looks, rolling their eyes at her shameless flirting, but Featherstonehaugh just raised an eyebrow and smiled at her. ‘Maybe one day I’ll show you them.’
‘Them?’ She asked in surprise, but the journalist had already wandered off, chuckling.
Chapter 12
A storm settled in over the next few days, with gale-force winds driving towering waves against the ships of the convoy. The smaller ships tossed and plunged, but the Arturo remained as steady as a rock in the face of this demonstration of the Lord of the Winter Sea’s power, something which Mr Jones especially appreciated.
Work continued on Dreadnought, but the holes in the bulkheads of the hangar now remained tightly closed to block the worst of the weather. The winds still found gaps, though, and chilled the air in the metal space in a way that made teeth chatter and gloves a necessity, simply to avoid damage when touching anything metal.
Drake and the other instructors had volunteered to help with Dreadnought and he somehow managed to arrange to work on whatever task Gwen had been assigned to and they used the time to catch each other up on what had happened in their lives in the decade or so since they had lost contact with each other. They didn’t have much in the way of privacy, but that was fine with Gwen; it meant that the conversation couldn’t turn to personal and also that Kitty wouldn’t have any reason to be jealous or hurt.
After Drake had been sent to boarding school, they had exchanged a few letters, but they had quickly drifted apart, as children were wont to do, and they had dried up as they had both moved on to new and more exciting things.
From Eton, Drake had gone to Cambridge University, where he had read “Mechanics in Literature”. He had joined the University Air Squadron, just like Richard had, which meant that when the war broke out, he was already in the RAC and had been in one of the first squadrons sent to France. Then, after that debacle, he had been posted to Scotland to train new pilots, but he had caught the first waves of bombers to come over.
He laughed and spoke widely about his stint in Scotland, regaling her with anecdote after anecdote, obviously seeing it as quite a happy time, when bombers were escorted only by lumbering MU10s and RAC casualties were virtually nil, but he barely talked about France except to say that it was best left forgotten.
Gwen in turn filled him in on her journeys around
the world with her parents for conferences, describing the wonderful things she had seen. She told him about her aircraft, her studies and her ideas. One evening, after screwing her courage up all day, she even managed to tell him about Richard without too many tears.
The storm soon blew itself out, but it left behind heavy clouds that hid whatever daylight there was to be had so far north. The metal of the passageways and aircraft no longer burned to the touch, but it was still cold enough to require extra blankets on their beds and the addition of layers of thermal underwear beneath their work clothes.
They were now four days past Iceland and that put them firmly into enemy controlled waters. That didn’t mean that there was more chance of attack, though; nobody was expecting them to be there and the Prussians had better things to do than send resources into the far north, away from the battlefronts.
Everybody was on edge, waiting for an attack that seemed like it was never coming and when the klaxon did finally bray, the Misfits were unsure for a second what was going on, thinking that perhaps it heralded another joke at their expense, but when the navy personnel in the hangar began rushing round in organised chaos, grabbing flotation jackets and metal helmets, they dropped their tools, abandoned the repairs on Dreadnought and ran for their stations. While Scarlet and the pilots of A flight rushed to change into their flightsuits and the fitters readied their aircraft, the rest of the pilots joined the damage control teams they’d been assigned to. Their job would be to stay in the hangar, standing ready to try to prevent the destruction of the precious aircraft if the carrier was hit and fire broke out.
Gwen was first back, followed closely by Scarlet and they both paused at the unmistakable sound of an airscrew at full power passing directly over their heads, going rapidly towards the bow, immediately followed by another.
Gwen grinned. ‘Has to be something up there if they launched the Martinets. Wonder if we’ll get to have a crack at it?’
The Russian Resistance Page 18