Conrad's Last Campaign (36 page)

He was asleep when I first saw him. His red silk robes were stretched around the bandages on both arms and one of his legs. His head was also bandaged and I knew that he had bruises all over his body.

I was surprised at his youth. I expected a man much older than myself, but he looked like a warrior in the prime of life, powerfully muscled everywhere and handsome enough for other men to hate. I was amazed just to know that he was a real person. I also checked to see that he had only five fingers and five toes on each appendage.

In addition to his own physician and bodyguards, I sat near the door, surrounded by my retainers and three interpreters. We spoke little that day.

The next day, he was alert and full of questions. “Su Song. I have heard your name. You are famous in my lands for a fabulous clock that you built for the Emperor and the books that you wrote. Are you that Su Song?”

“Yes, but the clock is not yet finished. We have spent far too much time on warfare. Your staff tells me you are the famous ‘Conrad, Guardian of the Heavens’. If so, I have read your amazing books. We thought that you were a myth or a college of scholars writing under a single name. I am amazed to meet you.

Every scholar I know would sell his wife and firstborn son to have you explain some of the mysteries in the text."

It was several weeks before we were able to converse freely and even then we occasionally needed an interpreter.

Over dinner one night he said, “I am surprised that a scholar like you could make plans so devious. On one hand you pretend to help the Mongols and behind your back, you destroy them.”

I was amazed at the lack of moral comprehension in my friend, “I pretended nothing. I served my masters well and kept my oath.”

When he looked dubious, I explained. “Unlike your world, we believe following in the Will of Heaven. We have known of
Europe for fifteen hundred years. But every time we send envoys, there is a different Europe. At first it was Greeks and Egyptians. Then it was Roman. Then it was Goth and Vandal. Eventually it became Catholic, Byzantine and Muslim. Each time the rulers changed, you burned down your cities, killed your civil servants, closed your roads, destroyed your aqueducts, fought to the death and started all over.

We do not do that. The same
China that first sent silk to the Egyptians still exists, because it is considered a moral imperative to respect the Will of Heaven. When it is time for a change, you support the new rulers. You continue to collect the taxes and dredge the canals for the new emperor."

“How do you know someone has the ‘Will of Heaven’ on his side?”

“Well. Personally, I find it a convincing argument when someone has a sword pressed to my throat.”

“But eventually you betrayed the Muslims. You turned on your bosses.”

“I did no such thing. When the Mongols were foolish enough to strip the country of troops, it was obvious that they were no longer favored by the Heavens. I simply cooperated with the inevitable.”

When the rest of the army left, Conrad and I traveled to
Beijing in my private rail car. In appreciation for his service, the Emperor granted Conrad the estates of a rich but dead Mongol. He received a large land grant, a palace in the country, a rich townhouse in the center of Beijing and assorted slaves, wives and concubines. It was a rich reward, but it cost the emperor nothing as there was a sudden surplus of Mongol estates on the market.

He remained in
Beijing for several years. He was never able to master more than a few hundred words of Chinese and the only phrases I heard him use were “More wine, bartender”, “You are very beautiful.”, and “Please take your clothes off.”

Still he wandered the streets with his retinue of beautiful interpreters or couched in his sedan chair, visiting bars, restaurants, and music halls. His Chinese was terrible, but he still tried to sing when he had too much wine.

As there were no distilled spirits in China, he started a distillery and became even wealthier selling concoctions he called “Vodka” and “Wiskey”.

For all of
Poland’s scientific genius, polish physicians were unable to treat simple problems like diabetes and infection or provide good birth control. When Conrad realized how advanced our pharmacology was, he began packaging our cures, transporting them on the Trans-Tundra to Europe and made yet another fortune.

Eventually boredom set in again. He tired of his concubines and palaces and complained bitterly that he could neither find nor train a good nude dancer in all of
China.

I think he really missed charging his enemies, sword held high, with a mighty steed beneath him. Some men are not bred for peace time.

Eventually he ordered a luxurious rigidible from Poland. He bragged about it like men brag of their sons. It was pressurized to thirty thousand feet and had luxury suites for him and his concubines. It could carry a staff of fifty crew and marines, and mounted the latest machine guns. It also came with a crew of twenty trained sailors and mechanics recruited from Poland. Years of peacetime had made it easy to recruit men who craved adventure more than home.

At our last dinner, he talked about possible destinations. He spoke of islands in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean, a continent south of India, and destinations in the new world. He was particularly interested in a civilization he called the Maya. He felt that they might be ripe for some “enlightened guidance.”

He promised to return after his journey, but as I watched the ship rise into the eastern sky, I knew that I would never see him again, and I did not.

It was like climbing into a cloud.
SeaSicker
floated less than fifty feet above us when we climbed the gangplank into her belly. The bright white wings stretched out forever on both sides of us and over our shoulders we could see the massive burners in the darkened hot air bay.

We’d all been warned to never call her the
SeaSicker
in front of Captain Lawson, but no one who’d flown in her called her anything else.

We all knew we were volunteering to ride a ship that had had its problems. I was on the beach the day she returned from a test dive running about fifty feet above the waves. Her gas valves all ran through one manifold. When it jammed, she couldn’t restart her gas jets and damn near crashed before they valved more hydrogen into the bags.

We all heard that she ended one flight hanging straight up in the air with her nose to Heaven and her tail to hell, and no way to right her. Speaking of her tail, there was a rumor that the one she carried now was the third one they tried. One almost crashed her. One couldn’t control her, and the current hawk like one was the first that seemed to actually work.

But when she flew right, she was faster than Hermes, and just looking at her took your breath away.

She was also a modern marvel. She was way bigger than a battleship but, for all her size, she only needed twenty common seamen, all warriors, to keep her aloft. Another fifteen officers came along and kept getting in our way. She was so big that every man, including our five squires had a cubbyhole all of his own, and there were common rooms for both enlisted men and officers.

Of course, outside of the pressurized area, you had to kinda walk careful because all that was between you and your God was the catwalk you were on and the canvas below it.

My battle station was outside the pressure, and I would be wearing an oxygen mask and fur lined leather while I did my job. I was a loader for the machine guns. There were eight guns in fixed mounts on each side of the hot air bay. There had been more, but they damn near shook the ship apart when they fired, so we ended up with sixteen total. I carried ammo up and down a narrow catwalk, reloaded the guns, and cleared jams. It was cold, noisy work but I didn’t have to do it often. Mostly, I cooked.

Riding her wasn’t quite as bad as I expected. The engineer would fire up the gas jets and we would start to slide up in the air. The wing forced us forward, picking up speed as we rose. When we were about five miles higher he’d shut down the jets and we’d start to glide down, trading height for speed. If he was in a hurry, he’d open the vents over the hot air bay and drop us fast.

What I hadn’t realized was that when were just cruising easy, the ship had a glide angle of over thirty to one. While we rose or went down five miles, we went forward about hundred and fifty miles, so each cycle was over an hour long.

Of course, when the captain was in a hurry we went up and down like a pogo stick. That’s when
SeaSicker
got her name.

We were on a test flight over the
Black Sea when the captain opened the intercom to tell us we going to war. “This is the captain. We have received an urgent request for help from the Eastern Expeditionary Force. They will be going into combat against a numerically superior force in less than twenty four hours. All areas rig for flank speed. All non-essential personnel stand down…. And hold on.” Rigging for speed involved clearing all the counters, locking all the cupboards, picking up tools and mops and anything else that bounces, roles, vibrates, falls over, falls off, or slips, and then strapping in wherever you were.

Ever watch a fish try to get away. You remember that high speed tail waggle that propelled it through the water? That was us for the next twenty hours. Jam the jets full on. Climb fast. Dump the heat and dive. Jam the jets. Climb fast. Dump… There was a debate among the crew members whether it was better to be in bed or standing. In my mind it was miserable either way.

I delivered coffee and sandwiches to the wheelhouse several times during the trip. There was no question of using standard platters or cups. The sandwiches traveled in cloth sacks slung over my shoulder while the coffee went in closed jars. All of the staff stayed strapped in except Captain Lawson. He relaxed in the captain’s chair behind the helmsman drinking coffee and munching sandwiches, immune to the changing pressures on his body. Even among a crew off old saltwater sailors, he stood out for being totally immune to seasickness. I never saw him in his cabin that trip, so he must have slept in his chair.

The next morning we were over the plains of
Mongolia, following roads, looking for Karakorum. We had a great view of the landscape out of the galley windows. The galley, like everything else, was enclosed inside the pressure vessel but there were clear observation panels in some of the walls. We watched as the captain brought her over a ruined city, still smoldering below. He turned north, northeast and then brought us to flank speed again.

A few minutes later, beat to quarters rang out on the ships bells. I was already halfway to the machine gun platform when the captain made the announcement, “Battle Stations.
Battle Stations. This is not a drill. Our first run will commence in less than fifteen minutes.”

The guns were mounted on the inner side of the heat chamber, so I was standing next to an open area the size of a stadium with nothing between me and the ground but air. My guts refused to trust the safety line I had clamped to a rail behind me and insisted on heaving a little, but I had a great view.

I checked all of the guns on my side, opening the ammo canisters again to verify they were full, making certain they were cocked, needlessly straitening out the ammo belts and checking the safeties. I had done it all before, but I was full of nervous energy. In the distance, I could see Boleslaw wearing his leathers and fur doing the same things on the other side of the bay.

We both stopped when the gas jets came on full force. The roar was deafening and my face burned from the heat as we rose into the sky. My feet felt the deck pressing up on me, and then suddenly the world dropped. The jets died and the huge roof vents opened up to dump the heat. We dropped like the proverbial rock. It took both arms to pull myself close enough to the open bay to see the ground. We sped past hills, then tents, and then armored men, then the guns opened up and ship shuddered almost to a stop. The vents snapped shut and gas jets opened up again as we sped over a battlefield spewing death below.

We went up slower than we went down. It was almost peaceful.

This time, the captain lingered at the top of our arc. He used the maneuvering engines to line us up carefully before we attacked again. This time we were attacking east to west and below us I could see Mounted Infantry being pounded by Mongol guns – until we silenced the Mongol guns.

We made one more pass before we took a break. The captain was waiting for something. We just floated for about an hour. The guns held enough ammo for maybe three strafing runs, so it was time to refill the ammo canisters. That took half of the hour, and I spent the second half of the hour wishing I had gone to the john before the battle started. I tried to figure out if I could get in a position to piss over the rail, but I was afraid that I would be unzipped and pants down when the captain decided to make another run. Eventually nature won the argument. I hope there was a Mongol below.

Then I heard the maneuvering engines running again. The captain lined up carefully and began another high speed run. Damned high speed. I was watching the guns chew up the ground beneath us when I heard a large crash behind me and felt the ship heel over. I could see sky through the canvas about half way down the wing. Something had punched a big hole in our wing.

We were still tilting when the loud speaker came on, “Damage crew to the starboard wing. Hydrogen crews prepare to mount new bags. Move!”

I saw crewmen scrambling down the wing, holding onto a catwalk that was suddenly vertical. In fact, I was standing on the side of the rail and lying back on the catwalk floor. Above me, the other gun tender was hanging over the edge of hot air bay, dangling from his safety belt.

We were still sliding toward the ground. The gas jets fired several times, but we were so keeled over the hot air was escaping out the sides of the bay and not doing much good.

It did slow our fall a little, and the gas boys must have done something. Either they pumped enough gas into our good bags to lift that side a little or they got new bags fitted and filled or something because we came back to almost level.

Boleslaw was left hanging onto the wall of the air chamber – from the outside, feet dangling over death below. I will have to make penance some day for the delay. Fear glued my feet to the catwalk for far too long. It took every bit of courage I had to clamber around that tilted chasm and pull Boleslaw over the edge.

We sat down on the catwalk for several minutes, holding onto our safety lines and waiting for another disaster. The ship continued to rise slowly and finally settled down about ten degrees starboard.

Finally, the speaker barked, “All hands stand down from general quarters except for damage crews.”

We stayed over the battlefield for the rest of the day. I suppose the captain was doing his best to be an observation platform for the men below, but the reality was that we weren’t able to go very far anyway. I want back to preparing tea and sandwiches for the bridge crew and rehearsing the heroic lies I would someday tell my grandkids.

The next day, we were all pressed into service repairing the damaged canvas and shoring up the wing. Much of the work on the envelope had to be done from the outside, standing on the top of a wing that was five thousand feet above the ground. The new canvas had to be glued and sown at the leading edge and then unrolled back over the spars and glued as it went down. The job needed men all around the edges. The curved shape of the wing made footing uncertain, so I was constantly looking for a place to clip my safety belt or a way to work on the canvas with my feet stuck inside the envelope. Like all sailors, I got not one bit of fear of heights, but I was relieved to get back inside when that job was done.

We were level by then, but our airfoil shape was wrecked and the captain was afraid the repaired wing wouldn’t handle the stress of high speed flight.

Fortunately, we did have engines. There were the two rather weak diesel engines near the end each wing. They were only backup engines and normally only used for fine direction control, but if the winds were on our side, they would take us back to Poland.

It took a week, but the captain nursed us back to dock. After the repairs, we were mostly used for diplomatic missions to
China and the new world. White Dragon became vital tool to impress people who didn’t have to ride her. We only fought one more small battle during my service.

And that, my children is the story of your father’s illustrious battle career.