The Warlord of the Air (22 page)

“It is part of what Europe owes us,” he pointed out. “And soon we shall be able to claim the rest of the debt. Do you know how they first began the ruin of China, Mr. Bastable? It was the English, mainly, but also the Americans. They grew opium in India—vast fields of it—and secretly shipped it into China, where, officially, it was banned. This created such inflation (for those who smuggled it in were paid in Chinese silver) that the whole economy was ruined. When the Chinese government objected to this, the foreigners sent in armies to teach the Chinese a lesson for their arrogance in complaining. Those armies found a country in economic ruin and huge sections of the population smoking opium. Naturally, the only thing which could have brought this about was an innate decadence, a moral inferiority...” Shaw laughed. “The opium clippers were specially designed for the China trade, to run swiftly from India with their cargoes, and often they carried Bibles as well as opium, for the missionaries would insist that if they, who could speak pidgin Chinese, were to translate for the smugglers, they must be allowed to distribute Bibles as well. After that, there was no looking back. And Europeans think Chinese hatred of them unreasonable!”

Shaw would become serious at times like these and would say to me: “Foreign devils? You think ‘devils’ is a strong enough word, Mr. Bastable?”

Now his ambitions extended to the taking back of the whole of China:

“And soon the great grey factories of Shanghai will be ours. The laboratories and schools and museums of Peking will be ours. The trading and manufacturing centres of Canton will be ours. The rich rice fields—all will be ours!” His eyes gleamed. “China will be united. The foreigners will be driven out and all will be equal. We shall set an example to the world.”

“If you are successful,” I said quietly, “let the world also see that you are human. People are impressed by kindness as well as by factories and military strength.”

Shaw gave me a peculiar stare.

T
here were now some fifteen airships tied up to the mooring masts on the field beyond Dawn City and there were nearly a hundred
Fei-chi
in the hangars. The whole valley was defended with artillery and infantry and could withstand an attack from any quarter when it came; and we knew it would come.

We? I don’t know how I had come to identify myself with bandits and revolutionists—and yet there was no mistaking the fact that I had. I refused to join them, but I hoped that they might win. Win against the ships of my own nation which would come against them and which, doubtless, would be destroyed by them. How I had changed in the past couple of weeks! I could contemplate, without horror, the bloody deaths of British servicemen. Comrades.

But I had to face the fact that the people of Dawn City were my comrades now—even though I would not commit myself to their cause. I did not want Dawn City and all it represented to be destroyed. I wanted General O.T. Shaw—the Warlord of the Air— to drive the foreigners from his nation and make it strong again.

I waited in trepidation for the ‘enemy’—my countrymen— to come.

I
was lying in my bed asleep when the news came through on the
tien-ying
(“electric shadow”) machine. The milky-blue oval became General Shaw’s face. He looked grim and he looked excited.

“They are on their way, Mr. Bastable. I thought you might like to be awake for the show.”

“Who...?” I murmured blearily. “What...?”

“The air fleets—American, British, Russian, Japanese and some French, I believe—they are coming to the Valley of the Morning—coming to punish John Chinaman...”

I saw his head move and he spoke more rapidly.

“I must go now. Shall we see you at the ringside—the main headquarters buildings?”

“I’ll be there.” As the picture faded I sprang out of bed and washed and dressed then hurried through the quiet streets of Dawn City until I reached the circular tower which was the city’s chief administrative building. There was, of course, furious activity. A wireless telephone message had been received from the British flagship
Victoria Imperatrix
saying that if the
Loch Etive
hostages were freed Shaw might send out with them his people’s women and children, who would not be harmed. Shaw replied bluntly. The hostages were already being taken to the far end of the valley, where they would be released. The people of Dawn City would fight together and, if necessary, die together. The
Victoria Imperatrix
offered the information that there were a hundred airships on their way to Dawn City and that therefore Dawn City could not possibly hope to last more than an hour against such a fleet. Shaw replied that he felt Dawn City might last a little longer and he looked forward to the arrival of the battle-fleet. In the meantime, he said, he had recently received the interesting news that two Japanese flying gunboats had devastated a village which had received help from Shaw. The British, doubtless, would be making similar reprisals? At this, H.M.A.S.
Victoria Imperatrix
cut off communication with Dawn City. Shaw smiled bleakly.

He saw me standing in the room. “Hello, Bastable. By God! The Japanese have got a lot to answer for where China’s concerned. I’d like to... What’s this?” An assistant handed him a sheet of paper. “Good. Good. Project NFB is proceeding apace.” “Where is Captain Korzeniowski?” I saw Count Rudolf and Una Persson on the other side of the room talking to one of Shaw’s cotton-clad ‘majors’, but I could not see Mrs. Persson’s father.

“Korzeniowski is back in command of
The Rover
,” said Shaw, pointing towards the airpark plainly visible from this tower. I saw tiny figures running back and forth as their ships prepared to take the air. So far there was no sign of the
Fei-chi
flying machines. “And look,” added Shaw, “here comes the battle-fleet.”

I thought at first that I saw a massive bank of black cloud moving over the horizon of the hills and blotting out the pale sunshine. With the cloud came a great thrumming sound, like many deep-voiced gongs being beaten rapidly in unison. The sound grew louder as the cloud began to fill the whole sky, casting a dark and ominous shadow over the Valley of the Morning.

It was the allied air fleet of five nations.

Each ship was a thousand feet long. Each had a hull as strong as steel. Each bristled with artillery and great grenades which could be dropped upon their enemies. Each ship moved implacably through the sky, keeping pace with its mighty fellows. Each was dedicated to exacting fierce vengeance upon the upstarts who had sought to question the power of those it served. A shoal of monstrous flying sharks, confident that they controlled the skies and, from the skies, the land.

Ships of Japan, with the Imperial crimson sun emblazoned on their white and gleaming hulls.

Ships of Russia, with great black double-headed eagles glaring from hulls of deepest scarlet, claws spread as if to strike.

Ships of France, on which the tricolour flag spread on backgrounds of blue was a piece of blatant hypocrisy; a sham of republicanism and an affront to the ideals of the French Revolution.

Ships of America, bearing the Stars and Stripes, no longer the banner of Liberty.

Ships of Britain.

Ships with cannon and bombs and crews who, in their pride, thought it was to be a simple matter to raze Dawn City and what it stood for.

Shark-ships, rapacious and cruel and arrogant, their booming engines like triumphant anticipatory laughter.

Could we withstand them, even for an instant? I doubted it.

Now our ground defenses had opened up. Shells sped into the sky and exploded around the ships of the mighty air fleet, but on they came, through the smoke and flame, careless and haughty, closer and closer to Dawn City itself. And now our tiny fleet began to rise from the airpark to meet the invaders—fifteen modified merchantmen against a hundred specially designed men-o’-war. They had the advantage of the recoilless guns and could ‘stand’ in the air and shoot much longer and more accurately than the larger vessels, but there were few weak points on those flying ironclads and most of the explosive shells at worst only blackened the paint of the hulls or cracked the windows in the gondolas.

There was a bellow and fire sprouted from the leading British airship, H.M.A.S.
Edwardus Rex,
as its guns answered ours. I saw the hull of one of our ships crumple and the whole vessel plunge towards the rocky ground of the foothills, little figures leaping overboard in the hope of somehow escaping the worst of the impact. Black smoke curled everywhere over the scene. There came an explosion and a blaze of flame as the ship struck the ground and its engines blew up, the fuel oil igniting instantly.

Shaw was staring grimly through the window, controlling the formation of his ships through a wireless telephone. How hard it had been to make an impact on the enemy fleet—and how easily they had destroyed our ship!

Boom! Boom!

Again the great guns roared. Again an adapted merchantman buckled in the air and sank to the earth.

Only now did I wish that I had accepted a commission on one of the ships. Only now did I feel the urge to join the fight, to retaliate, as much as anything, out of a spirit of fair play.

Boom!

It was
The Rover
, spiraling down with two engines on fire and its hull buckling in half as the helium rushed into the atmosphere. I watched tensely as it fell, praying there would be enough gas left in the hull to let the ship come down relatively lightly. But that was a hundred tons of metal and plastic and guns and men falling through the sky. I closed my eyes and winced as I thought I felt the tremor of its impact with the ground.

I was in no doubt of Korzeniowski’s fate.

But then, as if inspired by the old captain’s heroic death, the
Shan-tien
(the
Loch Etive)
offered a broadside to the Japanese flagship, the
Yokomoto,
and must have struck right through to her ammunition store for she exploded in a thousand fiery fragments and there was scarcely a recognizable scrap of her left when the explosion had died.

Now we saw two more ships go down—an American and a French—and we cheered. We all cheered save for Una Persson who was looking bleakly out at the spot where
The Rover
had disappeared. Von Bek was in animated conversation with the major and did not seem to notice his mistress’s grief. I went over to her and touched her shoulder.

“Perhaps he is only wounded,” I said.

She smiled at me through her tears and shook her head. “He is dead,” she said. “He died bravely, didn’t he?”

“As he lived,” I said.

She seemed puzzled. “I thought you hated him.”

“I thought I did. But I loved him.”

She pulled herself together at this and nodded, putting out a slender hand and letting the tips of the fingers rest for a moment on my sleeve. “Thank you, Mr. Bastable. I hope my father has not died for nothing.”

“We are giving a good account of ourselves,” I said.

But I saw that we had at most five ships left from the original fifteen and there were still nearly ninety allied battleships in the sky.

Shaw looked up, listening carefully. “Infantry and motorized cavalry attacking the valley on all sides,” he said. “Our men are standing firm.” He listened a little longer. “I don’t think we’ve much to fear from that quarter at the moment.”

The invading ships had not yet reached Dawn City. They had been forced to defend themselves against our first aerial attack and, now that our gunners were getting their range from the ground, one or two more were hit.

“Time to send up the
Fei-chi,
I think.” Shaw telephoned the order. “The Great Powers think they have won! Now we shall show them our real strength!” He telephoned the soldiers defending the building housing Project NFB and reminded them that on no account should a ship be allowed to attack the place. The mysterious project was evidently of paramount importance in his strategy.

I could not see the hangars where the “hornets” were stored and my first glimpse of the winged and whirling little flying machines was when they climbed through the black smoke and began to spray the hulls of the flying ironclads with explosive bullets, attacking from above and diving down on their opponents who, doubtless, were still hardly aware of what was happening.

The
Victoria Imperatrix
went down.
The Theodore Roosevelt
went down. The
Alexandre Nevsky
went down. The
Tashiyawa
went down. The
Emperor Napoleon
and the
Pyat
went down. One after another they fell from the air, circling slowly or breaking up rapidly, but falling; without a doubt they were falling. And it did not seem that a single delicate
Fei-chi,
flown by only two men—an aviator and a gunner—had been hit. The guns of the foreign ships were simply not designed to hit such tiny targets. They roared and belched their huge shells in all directions, but they were baffled, like clumsy sea-cows attacked by sharp-toothed piranha fish, they simply did not know how to defend themselves. The Valley of the Morning was littered with their wreckage. A thousand fires burned in the hills, showing where the proud aerial ironclads had met their end. Half the allied fleet had been destroyed and five of our airships (including the
Shan-tien)
were now coming in to moor, leaving the fighting to the
Fei-chi
. Evidently the shock of facing the tiny heavier-than-air machines was too much for the attackers. They had seen their finest ships blown from the skies in a matter of minutes. Slowly the cumbersome men-o’-war turned and began to retreat. Not a single bomb had fallen on Dawn City.