Beneath Ceaseless Skies #123 Read online

  He started to turn in his seat, to signal to Edie, hanging too far back behind his left wing. Some fighter pilot’s sense made him glance up. Gargoyle shapes plummeted towards them from the clouds like stooping hawks. Masaru saw red eyes and shark-toothed grins.

  Instinct took over. He kicked at the rudder pedals and shoved the flying stick forward, banking and diving at once.

  A Changeling flyer shot past, folded bat-wings rippling behind its back. Another whisked by, missing the Avro’s fragile wood-and-canvas wingtip by barely a yard as Masaru kicked the other way. He held the turn, risking a flat spin and putting the biplane into a roll instead.

  Then he was clear and looping around to find Edie. The Changelings were opening their wings like parachutes, some still above, some below, arresting their dives then flapping heavily as they began to maneuver. He spied Edie roaring towards them. The muzzles of her twin Lewis guns flashed. Changelings shuddered under the impact of the bullets. Masaru watched, expecting her to pull up, then cried out in dismay as she flew straight through the middle of the flock.

  “Stupid gaijin....” He turned harder, bringing his own guns around to bear.

  A Changeling dipped its wings and smashed into the side of Edie’s Avro. The impact knocked her into a spin and sent the Changeling tumbling earthward. The rest of the flock charged after her as she fought to regain control of her plane.

  Masaru opened fire, strafing the Changelings. He saw bits of them come apart like splintering wood where the bullets struck. A couple fell with shredded wings. One glanced off the center of Edie’s top wing as she righted herself.

  Edie ducked and put her Avro’s nose down, diving to gain speed and escape. So she had listened to someone, at least, Masaru thought. It was always the first lesson the veteran pilots tried to drum into the new recruits: “If you get into trouble, put your nose down and dive towards friendly lines.” He stood his own plane on its tail and soared over the top of the flock, then came around and aimed himself after her.

  They left the Changelings quickly behind, the creatures’ straight-line wing speed no match for even an old Avro.

  Daylight peeked under the clouds near the western horizon, lighting one side of the biplanes a pale gold. Masaru’s heart was still thumping furiously in uncomfortable discord with the plane’s vibration. Ahead, against the dark clouds of the storm, he could see clearly the mist of fine droplets that trailed from Edie’s top wing, catching the light. The impact of the second Changeling had cracked her main fuel tank.

  He shot her a glare, willing her to turn and see his anger, but she was staring fixedly ahead.

  The protests of his injured hand demanded his attention. He had flown two-handed during the dogfight, not thinking. He pulled back his flying glove to find fresh blood seeping through the bandage. Somehow, he had dropped the omamori.

  He twisted sideways, trying to spot it in the foot-well of the cockpit. Swearing, he held the stick between his calves and groped around blindly on the floor. The plane lurched sideways as he bumped the rudder pedals. Flying like that bloody woman. He couldn’t feel a thing through his gloves. He swore again and thumped the inside of the fuselage.

  Lightning flashed across the storm ahead, illuminating the tall silhouette within. Masaru had no doubt, now, what it was.

  * * *

  “Shinjirarenai,” he heard himself repeat, as they swooped in over the city of Baku. Shinjirarenai, over and over. Unbelievable. He understood, all of a sudden, these Westerners who exclaimed “My God!” when all other words failed them.

  Gigantic stones swirled down out of the clouds, riding on a tornado wind at the center of the city. Each came to rest with mad precision on the tower’s ziggurat base, building the tower ever higher. Tinier objects tumbled among the gently falling stones. Changelings, in their thousands, falling slowly from the clouds.

  Below, in the city, gunfire crackled in a vast, ragged circle around the base of the tower. Buildings and streets exploded from bombs or artillery fire.

  A few stray raindrops pattered against Masaru’s flying goggles. He wiped them clear. His course had brought him close enough to the tornado to see the faces of the Changelings riding the whirlwind down, and see that they were attired as peasants and laborers, soldiers and businessmen. He saw policemen and nurses and even a robed Orthodox priest.

  Close up, strange ripples of light encased the spinning storm, like a film of oil on water—a skin, almost. A barrier.

  Masaru looked up, through the center of the storm. His mouth fell open in simple, stupid awe.

  At the top of the tornado, there was a hole in the clouds and, through it, another tower—a mirror image of the one below. Its peak pointed downward, ever diminishing as its stones detached themselves to join the cyclonic dance. Changelings swarmed across the inverted ziggurat base and flung themselves into the whirlwind. Around it he glimpsed a land of cracked desolation, upside-down in the sky.

  Something peppered the side of the tornado, leaving spots of brightness in its sheen. Lightning crazed outward from the spots. The tornado lost its shape where the lightning ran. Building stones crashed into each other. Changelings plummeted until they passed the unstable section and the whirlwind caught them again and slowed their fall once more.

  Out towards the edge of the city, Masaru spotted the muzzle flashes of heavy artillery. Seconds later, more bright spots flared on the side of the tornado. It wobbled again.

  He swooped down for a closer look, not checking to see whether Edie followed. A howitzer battery was arrayed at the edge of the city’s large airfield. Masaru saw only Red banners as he passed low overheard, saw nothing but red flying anywhere. No sign of Allied blue, nor the Star-and-Stripes or Tricolore of the Americans and French who had dominated the city.

  Where had they gone?

  He caught the flash of a searchlight from the airfield, throwing sparks of light through scattered sheets of rain, and banked instinctively. The expected anti-aircraft fire didn’t come, though. Masaru peered downward once more.

  The searchlight crew were using the light to signal. Land. Fuel. Help. Land....

  He looked up. Edie was circling directly above. His Avro was almost out of fuel. Her situation with one tank holed would be even more desperate.

  Where else would they go, besides? And what might they find if they did?

  Masaru put the nose of his plane down, coming around to land.

  * * *

  The front lines were very close to the airfield. A continuous rattle of small arms fire was punctuated by the crump of explosives. A squad of riflemen jogged towards the biplanes, slipping in the half-frozen mud as they fanned out to surround them.

  Masaru pulled down his scarf and stood up slowly in his cockpit, his hands raised. His vantage gave him an excellent view of the howitzer battery. In front of them was a row of machinegun nests. The barrels of the machineguns were unusually elevated, even more steeply than those of the artillery pieces behind them.

  Masaru saw why a moment later.

  From the rubble of the nearby streets, Changelings launched themselves high into the air on grasshopper legs, over the machinegun nests. The machineguns opened up, shooting all but one of the creatures out of the air. The survivor landed in the middle of a howitzer crew. Masaru saw blood spurt even from a distance. An infantry reserve rushed to intervene. The rest of the gun crews kept to their tasks. Masaru was struck by the discipline of the Bolsheviks, far superior to anything he had seen from their White Russian rivals.

  A rifleman called out, beckoning him down from the plane.

  Masaru’s feet squelched into the mud when he hopped down.. Freezing liquid seeped through the loose stitching at the toe of his right boot.

  “You speak Russian?” the squad leader said with a thickly Turkic accent, while another soldier relieved Masaru of his sidearm.

  “I do,” Masaru confirmed. Carefully, he lowered his hands. “Where is the Allied fleet?”

  “Gone.” The man indicated wi
th a crooked finger that Masaru should walk with him. Others closed in behind, making refusal an undignified alternative.

  About half the soldiers wore some item of military clothing, either scavenged from the Whites and Allies or because the men themselves were deserters. The rest of their garb was civilian. They were all bedraggled, as from a downpour that had ended only minutes before. Their only other commonality was the red Bolshevik star that each man wore, and even this appeared without uniformity on caps, shoulders, and breasts.

  “How long ago?” Masaru asked.

  “Two days.” The man tapped a cigarette out of a crumpled packet and rummaged for matches to light it. Finding none, he left the cigarette in his mouth anyway. It sagged damply. “The French and American garrisons evacuated overland when the Curse fell on the city, yesterday. Fortunately, the Baku Commune was already poised to launch the Revolution and we have stepped forward for the defense of the People.”

  Masaru barely heard the rest of the man’s answer. Two days since the fleet sailed. But that would have had them arrive in Astrakhan before Masaru and Edie had left.

  So where were they?

  Edie’s escorts converged with his and herded her in beside him. Her face was smeared with the spray from her holed fuel tank, with outlines of cleaner skin left by her flying goggles and cap.

  “What you did was reckless,” Masaru said. “The mission always comes first. The dispatches must get through.”

  Her eyebrows shot up in disbelief. “You came back for me, too.”

  With a snort, he looked away.

  After a moment, she asked, “Where’s the fleet?”

  “The fleet sailed two days ago,” he said.

  “Then they should have reached Astrakhan before we left.”

  Masaru nodded. “Where else would they have gone?”

  “Ask him,” Edie said, gesturing at the squad leader.

  Masaru felt his face heat.

  “Turkmenistan,” was the reply. The soldier gestured with his unlit cigarette. “They sailed east, for Krasnovodsk.”

  “Why would they go to Krasnovodsk?”

  “There is a tower there, too.”

  Masaru slowed. Of course there was. The soldier behind him gave him a bump with his rifle butt.

  “Where are you taking us?” Masaru asked.

  “The Comrade General wishes to speak with you.”

  * * *

  The Bolshevik general was a remarkably young Russian wearing round-framed spectacles, with the furrowed brow and pale complexion of an academic. He was hatless, his dark hair plastered across his skull. He stood with a mixed group of equally young Russians and Azeri a distance back from the howitzers, observing the effects of their bombardment. Mist rose from the group’s sodden shoulders in the chill air.

  “If I had twice as many guns, I could bring that tornado down,” the general said, in English and without preamble. “As it is, this,” he gestured at the battery, “is hopeful at best. Planting a sufficient quantity of explosives where the tornado touches down would also work, but our line is under too much pressure to consider such an attempt.”

  He turned to examine first Masaru and then Edie through partly fogged lenses. If he was surprised to see a woman flyer, he did not show it. “Your dispatches, please.”

  Masaru and Edie reluctantly drew the oilskin envelopes from inside their jackets and handed them over. The general flipped open one and briefly scanned the pages inside. With a grunt, he handed both envelopes to one of his aides.

  “So, you have come from Astrakhan.” He took off his spectacles and produced a handkerchief from his pocket. He squinted and waved the kerchief vaguely in the direction of the tower in its spinning storm. “The Astrakhan tower was stopped by the Red Army before it was fully complete. As was the tower at Petrovsk, which you have no doubt seen.” He wiped his glasses and put them back on before smiling primly. “At Astrakhan and Petrovsk we had more artillery.”

  Masaru thought he had seen some of the guns that brought down the tower at Petrovsk, bombarding the White Russian forces on the escarpment above the town.

  The general went on, “However, since then, much of our strength has been drawn away from the Caspian sector by the Imperialist offensives in the Ukraine.” He paused and peered intently, first into Masaru’s eyes, then Edie’s. “I need you to bring the Allied fleet back from Krasnovodsk. We lack the necessary strength here to prevent this tower’s completion, and once it is made, we will not contain the Curse here for long. We have sent messages by fishing vessels, but we do not know if they have succeeded.”

  “The Curse?” Edie asked.

  He flashed another neat little smile. “Rasputin’s Curse,” he said. “That.” He pointed as another wave of leaping Changelings were shot to pieces by the crews in the machinegun nests.

  Masaru said, “Our mission is to bring urgent reinforcements to Astrakhan. The Allied command there suspects that Volgograd has also fallen to the... Curse.”

  “‘The Reds’ Plague’, you meant to say.” The general chuckled. “Interesting, is it not, that each side blames the other?” He pushed his spectacles firmly onto the bridge of his nose, sobering. “Volgograd did fall, yes, but that outbreak was contained. The situation here has become most urgent. This is our war now—Bolshevik or Imperialist, Russian, Turk, American, British, French, Japanese. The Whites have not yet accepted this new reality, but I believe your Allied commanders have begun to do so. I have no aeroplanes. I have no pilots to fly yours. You must bring the Allied fleet back here.”

  Masaru chewed the inside of his lip, almost hypnotized by the rising tower. Invaders from a land in the sky?

  “Masaru?” said Edie.

  “Please understand,” said the general, “I do not have the luxury of patience while you wrestle with your decision.” He turned to his aides and barked an order in Russian. It was relayed and a soldier hustled up, towing a boy of nine or ten by the collar of his jacket. The general pulled out his sidearm and touched the muzzle to the child’s temple.

  Masaru blinked, unable to grasp for a moment what the man intended to do.

  “Agree, or I will shoot this child, and I will continue to shoot children until you do agree.”

  “You can’t!” Edie cried.

  Masaru met the general’s wide-eyed stare. He saw unhappiness behind the man’s fogged spectacles, and desperation. He looked down at the child’s terrified, helpless face. The general must have sent his men to prepare for this when they first spotted the biplanes. Masaru drew himself up to rebuff the threat.

  “Stop!” Edie said. “There’s no need.”

  Masaru’s teeth clicked shut.

  She caught hold of his sleeve. “The Allies can’t afford for Baku to fall, either.”

  He shook his arm free of her. But she was absolutely right. Azerbaijan was the Allies’ lifeline to Persia and the Black Sea. Most Allied reinforcements and materials funneled through here, and Baku’s oil was critical.

  Masaru let his anger go in a long breath. Stiffly, he inclined his head to the general. “We will do it.”

  “Very good,” said the general, holstering his gun with – Masaru saw—evident relief. “One of you will remain here, the other will fly to Krasnovodsk.” He signaled to an aide, instructing the man to have one of the Avros refueled.

  “Her plane has a damaged fuel tank,” said Masaru, in Russian. “It will not reach Krasnovodsk.”

  The general and his aide both nodded, and the aide rushed away.

  Masaru said to Edie, “You will take my plane.”

  She flushed. “I told you, I don’t need you to—” She swore at him as he turned away from her.

  He set his shoulders as a squall of rain and sleet blew across the airfield. The freezing touch of the drops stung his bare cheeks. Another volley from the howitzer battery struck the spinning storm. Masaru watched the purple cracks run across the tornado’s surface. Not enough, he thought. The Changelings would surely break through the Bolsheviks’
perimeter soon.

  They need a bigger explosion....

  The world seemed to slow around him, the noise of the battle dimming in his ears.

  He turned to the Bolshevik general. “Would an aeroplane loaded with explosives be sufficient to collapse the storm?”

  “What?” Edie exclaimed.

  Masaru ignored her.

  The general’s eyes roved over his face. The man nodded slowly. “It could work.” He nodded again, more firmly, and gave a little bark of laughter. “It would work.”

  Masaru’s injured hand throbbed. “Then load the damaged plane with as much explosive as it will carry.”

  Edie gaped at him in frank amazement, her hair hanging in damp ringlets around her face. The general gestured to another aide and repeated the instruction in Russian.

  “You can’t do this.” Edie gripped Masaru by the arm.

  He shook her off again. “One of us has to do it,” he said. “Can you think of another way?” He let her lack of an answer hang between them, before continuing, “It is the only way. If Baku falls to the Changelings, then what?” He pointed skyward. “If that hole stays open, then what?”

  He was surprised to see moisture on her eyelashes. Not rain, he thought. Then she blinked and looked past him, towards the tower, and he wondered if it had been imagination.

  “What will happen to your sister?” she asked.

  The question struck hard. Masaru sought refuge in dignity. “She will understand. It will be an honorable sacrifice. She will be proud.”

  “Like she was of her husband?”

  A vision of his sister, grieving, swam before his mind’s eye. Proud, certainly. And broken-hearted.

  Edie’s eyes were on him again, watching his expression intently. “Can she feed her children with pride?”

  He shouldered roughly past her, meaning to stride away. Unthinking, he lifted his hand to his chest. His steps faltered. For a horrible, panicked instant, he didn’t understand why he couldn’t feel the omamori through his flight overalls. Then he remembered. Still in his cockpit, he hoped.