Warbirds of Mars: Stories of the Fight! Page 24

  “Fräulein Doyle, what a pleasant surprise,” the Nazi in an officer’s uniform stated darkly. Despite his obvious heritage, perfect English dripped from his tongue.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the same pleasure,” she answered, her finger caressing the trigger ready to fire.

  He smirked. “No, I do not believe you would have. I am not one of my Fuhrer’s more publicized confidants.”

  “The Fuhrer?” Lady Doyle whistled. “Now there’s a word I haven’t heard in quite some time. So, who are you that your absentee leader chose to keep you hidden?”

  “General Trost. I am in charge of the Nazi party’s more…unusual interests.”

  “And why aren’t you kissing up to the new leaders of your party? Or are aliens landing in the middle of one your rallies not unusual enough for your interests?”

  Trost glanced around the cavern, the same sickly smirk glued to his mouth. “It is a little too crowded down here, don’t you think, Fräulein? What do you say to having this little talk above ground?”

  He took a step nearer to them, and Jerry pulled down the hammer of his pistol. There was a flash of a spark in the darkness. Instantly, the second Nazi officer shot at the pilot, just barely winging his arm.

  Jerry let out a gruff cry and dropped everything in his hands. The electric light rolled across the ground and hit Trost’s well polished boot. Lifting the torch and shining it back into Lady Doyle’s face, he calmly said, “Let us try this again. You and your friend are coming with us.”

  Her hand tightened against the butt of her pistol and she tried to think of an out. One gun against at least two with a wounded man in tow. Jerry’s arm was not severe, but it was still a hindrance. She had no exit beyond the hole behind the German soldiers and no hope of rescue from the paranoid monks above ground. Reluctantly, she placed her gun back into the holster.

  “Tsk tsk, hand it over, please,” Trost commanded, while his officer adjusted his aim so his next bullet would pass through her forehead.

  She handed the weapon over while answering, “Very well. But only if you are careful with it. That is my favorite gun.”

  Lady Doyle and Jerry were pushed between the two Nazis while the doctor trailed behind. They ascended from of the cavern one at a time. Smoke thickened the air. The Nazi plane had landed close to the monastery, blocking the view of what was on fire. At first, Lady Doyle wondered if they had set the religious building ablaze with the monks still inside. Then, they rounded the corner and she saw the source.

  “My plane!” Jerry wailed, the sight of the flames momentarily making him forget his agony. The unnamed German officer punched him hard in the gut for his protest, causing Jerry to crumple, but not collapse.

  The lady wrinkled her nose at the smell of petrol and sparking metal. “I don’t think I like playing with you, General Trost. You break all of my toys.”

  The man squared his shoulders, no longer in the mood for banter. “I will gladly stop, when you give me that skull.”

  “What, this?” she asked innocently. “I got this in a tourist shop in Vienna.” She turned it upside down so the hollow inside of the skull faced the Nazi. “See, you can keep sauerkraut in it and put it on the table at Halloween. I thought it would be good for a laugh.”

  “You do not even comprehend what you are holding, do you?” Trost snapped. “That is the skull of Lazarus!”

  She rolled her eyes, yet humored him with a simple, “What?”

  Before he answered, Trost jerked his head and two more Nazis appeared from within the aircraft. They pushed Jerry and his boss into the plane, strapping them into a pair of seats. Jerry winced each time they touched him, but Lady Doyle held fast to the skull in her hands. When one of the Nazis ran his hand along her waist after fastening her belt, her foot flew up into his shin. The man swore at her in German, raising his hand to strike.

  Trost barked at the man to forget it and start the engine. Red and orange lit up the windshield momentarily as a loud bang shook them. Jerry’s plane had exploded outside. The crackling of the fire lost out to the noise of the spinning propellers. As the Nazi plane took off, the general sat across from Lady Doyle with a gleam in his eye. Dr. Delacroix stayed a few seats away, the light reflecting off of his lenses like two silver dollars.

  With a dramatic wave of his hand, Trost began his explanation. “When Jesus Christ was told of the death of his friend, Lazarus, he arrived at the man’s village four days later. He told the mourners to move aside the stone sealing Lazarus’s tomb. And the Lord called into the cave, commanding Lazarus to come out. And then Lazarus rose from the dead and was revered amongst the followers of—”

  Lady Doyle raised her head defiantly, cutting off the Nazi with a gruff sigh. “You know, despite what the rest of world believes, the Church of England does teach children Bible stories. We don’t just sit around discussing what color the king’s knickers are.” With a tilt of her head, she ended her rant with the obvious question. “Why would any of this be important now? Old Biblical bones were a business hundreds of years ago. Not much a market for it nowadays…I’ve checked.”

  “Yes, but that is no ordinary skull, now is it?”

  She moved the skull into her lap and tilted it upward. “It does look a bit like a sideshow fellow I saw at the circus once—”

  Suddenly, Dr. Delacroix scrambled from his seat, steadying himself against the wall of the plane. “That is proof that they have been here before. Long before. It is proof that they may have had a hand in our religion, our culture. That skull could tear apart the fabric of society.” His bloodshot eyes met hers for an agonizing moment. In them, she saw the wild look of a madman. The archeologist stuffed his fingers between his teeth and mumbled like a shamed child, “The world will end.”

  “Oh, he is charming,” she said. “You should rent him out as party entertainment. You must love that Hitler left you with such an important mission as babysitting a madman.”

  The words created an instant reaction in Trost. A vein pulsed against his hairline and his fists clenched, crushing his leather gloves. “We are doing this for the Fuhrer!”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, your beloved Fuhrer is gone, probably dead or trapped on a farm in Japan. I doubt you hold much hope of him coming back into power.”

  She saw the butt of the gun rise over her head and heard Jerry shout a protest. The force of the weapon came down upon her with a low thud. There was a brief, sharp pain, then blackness.

  Her eyelids flashed against artificial lighting, willing themselves to open and jolting her brain back to reality. Lady Doyle’s wrists had been tied to a chair, her legs were left free and were positioned neatly with one ankle crossing the other. In a chair beside her, Jerry slumped unconscious with his chin against his chest, dried blood clumped in his hair.

  The blur around her evened until she realized they were being held in a windowless warehouse. Nothing on the walls or on the crates stacked in corners betrayed their whereabouts. General Trost and his men had left the space at the center of the room clear, save for an elephant-sized mass hidden under a tarp. A movie camera was set on a stand facing the covered object, but with no person to operate it standing at the ready. Two of the unnamed soldiers from the plane held two men between them with black bags over their heads. Dr. Delacroix also stood nearby, continually wringing his hands and muttering to himself. The madman had obviously been left to his own devices, not threatening enough to be bothered with, yet kept in alive in case they needed him for anything else.

  The bags were removed from the two additions to the group. The first, Lady Doyle instantly recognized, as the missing filmmaker Gerulf Blau. Other than obvious malnourishment and a few bruises decorating his wrists, he was none the worse for wear. The second stranger took her a moment to analyze, as though her eyes were adjusting to another light change. Henry Crooks, her childhood friend, bowed his head in shame. She could see lacerations upon the back of his neck and the places where torture left many scars.

/>   She was not a woman loyal to country. She did not consider herself a noble human being. In fact, the human race hardly fell under the term ‘noble’ in her mind, so why should she think herself any different. The world could burn tomorrow and she would probably let it, as long as there was a profit involved. Yet, as Lady Doyle watched one of her oldest friends, a man who had never taken from her, hurt her, or betrayed her, standing so broken, she felt her own reserve break.

  “What have you been doing to them?” she shouted over the internal din of her own rage.

  Trost marched himself to the mysterious mass at the center of the room. “Doing to them? Why, my dear lady, they have been our honored guests, helping us to fulfill the Fuhrer’s orders.” Trost pulled down the tarp. The heavy fabric rustled and scrapped across the contents it hid. Crooks winced momentarily at the subtle noise. Blau swayed a little to avoid the tarp touching him.

  The machine beneath was an unholy mix of Martian and human technology. The various parts had obviously been swiped from here or there. The most prominent piece, a scuffed and intimidating reworking of a cannon, jutted from the front of the device.

  “This,” Trost said tapping the cannon, “is a prototype of a new medical technology the Martians are testing. Several of my men lost their lives or worse stealing this before it reached the farms in Japan. We needed it for our grand plan. The cannon is an essential part for a machine powered by the element the Martians brought with them. Mr. Crooks here created it, based upon an experimental design found amongst old Martian records.”

  Lady Doyle pulled at the ropes binding her, her arms loosing blood flow. “Experimental prototypes atop equally experimental blueprints someone probably found in a Martian rubbish bin. Brilliant. What’s it do?”

  Trost started to lecture as he took the Lazarus skull from a crate behind him. “There are rumors, Martian folk tales, if you will, that their ancestors had restorative abilities. It was a handy little trait where if they were seriously injured, maybe even near death, their bodies could repair themselves if given rest.”

  He climbed up the machine, setting the skull into a groove directly behind the alien cannon. Wires and scraps of copper were hooked to the many crevices of the skull, and Trost leaned back to inspect his handy work. His eyes sought Lady Doyle once again, and his tale continued. “Now, imagine if you will, a group of humans hundreds of years ago who see this disgusting creature come down from the sky. They attack it and leave it for dead. However, days later, the creature wakes back up as if resurrected by magic.”

  “And over the next few hundred years, stories merge, the church panics, and everyone worries that the creature who rose from the dead and the Lazarus of Christianity are one in the same.” She nodded her head, her hair hanging limply over her bruised face. Wearily, she added, “Very well. I’ll bite. What good is a dead Martian skull, even if that Martian did once rise from the grave? If you’re planning on shocking the world with it, I think the world is a bit pre-occupied to care.”

  “The skull will not shock the world. What the skull will provide us will turn this planet into chaos and return all attention back to the order and safety of the Nazi party.” Trost’s lips curved, forcing his eyes to squint a little. Where normally the lines of a lifetime of happiness would form at the corners of a person’s eyes, Trost’s face took on a sinister glare. “There is energy left over on the skull. If the legends are true, this is the same energy the ancient aliens used to repair their bodies beyond death.”

  He waved a hand at the cannon at the front of his machine. “Using that energy, the alien element, and the new hybrid technology they were developing, we will control the Martians.”

  “Control them?”

  “Of course. There are multiple possibilities for overtaking our three-fingered guests with this machine. We could always barter for their lives, bring them back from fatal injuries and convince them to leave in exchange for the machine. Or my personal favorite: Herr Crooks has been so kind as to also modify the machine to affect the alien brain.” Trost slapped his hand against his knee and laughed like a giddy child. “We can put them under our control. Our own army of half-dead Martians just waiting to restore power where it belongs.”

  Lady Doyle rolled her shoulder uncomfortably and scoffed. “You really are a wizard, aren’t you? Next you’ll be telling us that you’re going to resurrect Sarah Bernhardt using the stench from Hitler’s socks.”

  “It does not matter what you believe, Fräulein. We will complete the Fuhrer’s orders and place the world back in his hands.”

  “How will you gain all this support for Hitler with him missing? Sure, you’ll have an army of Martians under your control, but what makes you think that will cause the world to hand power back to your precious Third Reich?”

  “Because, it is not simply about building an army, it is about a show of strength. Herr Glau will film the whole thing for us. The world will see the power the Third Reich has gained, and we will soon have the Martians working for us.”

  He pointed at one of his soldiers and barked in German. The Nazi pushed Glau toward the camera and commanded he start rolling. The film clicked within the metal chamber, and the plan was set in motion. The director focused on the lens before him, the gun pointed at his side forcing him to be a total professional.

  Crooks, on the other hand, stayed motionless, studying his bound wrists hanging limply in front of him. He had betrayed his country for the sake of his own life, building such a device. Betrayal would forever haunt the soul of a man like him until it slowly broke him down. Some part of Lady Doyle felt relief that his mind had not gone as Dr. Delacroix’s had. The archeologist curled up behind the machine and shook like a dog scared of thunder. Yet, she could tell that Henry Crooks, British engineer and soldier, would never be the same.

  “Bring in the other prisoner,” the Nazi officer commanded.

  The soldiers vanished to the back of the warehouse. Returning within seconds, they dragged an unconscious Martian by the arms across the icy floor and dropped it. The creature laid perfectly still between her chair and the machine. Lady Doyle would have felt certain it was dead, save for the slight tremble of the broad chest.

  Trost pressed a button and pulled a lever near his leg. He then stood up, towering atop his machine with his chin pointing at the ceiling. The metal under him started to hum and he declared, “For the Fatherland!” His soldiers returned the sentiment with their one handed salute.

  At first, the sight was most impressive. The different cogs and springs worked in perfect harmony. Tiny sparks of light fed from the wires upon the skull and traveled down to the end of the cannon. Trost beamed, then aimed the cannon down upon the dying Martian beneath him. The energy built up at the end of the device, warming the warehouse and leaving a tingle in the air. Something faltered and sputtered. The sound of a wire coming loose was heralded by the sight of the faint energy traveling back up the cannon and toward the man in the driver’s seat.

  As the light engulfed Trost, who stared in wonder before the terror struck him, Crooks tossed his head up and cut his bindings on a corner of the machine. He stuck the Nazi closest to him and shouted at the cowering Dr. Delacroix.

  “We need to get out of here,” he insisted. The archeologist gaped at the machine and started to laugh. He was too far gone to realize anyone was talking to him.

  A scream of wild alarm escaped Trost, as his men all ran to the machine. They did not touch the glowing metal, instead aiming their pistols up at their own commander, seemingly to shoot the light off of him. Not a one fired, still the room echoed with bangs and pops. The machine rocked back and forth, flinging Trost like a rodeo cowboy. His anguish doubled in volume and steam rose from the bowels of the contraption beneath him. His hands clawed desperately at his throat and chest. He cut deep gashes into his throat with his nails, attempting to open an airway. The Nazi’s body seized, then collapsed. His screams echoed for several seconds after he died.

  As the machine rattle
d, pieces projected into the air and bounced off the walls. Crooks, after one last failed attempt to catch Dr. Delacroix’s attention, scooped up a jagged shard of metal and ran to Lady Doyle’s chair. One of the Nazi soldiers ran at him. Despite the torture he’d endured and the weight he had lost, Henry knocked the young soldier down with two punches directly to the jaw. The Nazi skidded across the floor, disoriented enough to give Crooks the time he needed.

  He used the metal to slice the ropes around her wrists, then rounded to the front of her chair. Crooks gave her a pitying stare. “I heard about Howard. I’m sorry, Eva.”

  “Believe me, it’s not that big a loss,” she mumbled to herself.

  “What was that?”

  She rolled her eyes and twisted her wrists to dispose of the ropes. “Henry, this is not really the time or place for widow condolences. Now, be a dear and untie Jerry. There’s a lad.”

  It did not take long to rouse Jerry. “We have to get out of here. Lucky for me Trost’s men were not very good at watching me work. I rigged that machine to blow sky high!” Crooks confessed as he pulled the pilot to his feet. “Come on, old boy.”

  The pilot nodded his head and walked as best he could using the engineer as a crutch.

  Two of the Nazi soldiers jumped in front of them, pistols poised steadily as if the chaos of the machine did not exist. Lady Doyle held up her hands, trying to determine whether she could kick the gun out of one man’s hand before his comrade decided to shoot any of them. She noticed Blau coming along the side of the warehouse, the weighty camera nearly slipping from his hands. At first, she thought he would head to the exit with his footage, unseen by the soldiers and leaving them to die. Instead, he managed to rush behind one of the Nazis, heaving the metal casing against the young man’s head. The camera broke open as its victim collapsed.

  Lady Doyle took the moment to kick the second man’s hand. The heel of her shoe sliced against his flesh, succeeding in startling more than wounding. His gun fell to the ground, and she scrambled for it. Her finger found the trigger on instinct, and she shot down the second Nazi. The two lay sprawled in a puddle of blood and tangled film.