Magical Mechanications (6 page)

With a final look to the old woman, Scarlett ran for the door and nearly tore it off its hinges. She stuffed the blueprint into one of the bike’s saddlebags and then started up the engine. She cast a quick glance around her, and then she saw the truck slowly working its way towards the cottage. Scarlett mounted the bike and headed back up the hill, back the way she came. With any luck, she would have a five-minute head start on Jerry. If she could keep up the speed, perhaps she could make this lead a ten-minute head start.

One…two…three…four…
Scarlett was trying desperately not to count the seconds or even preoccupy herself with whatever time was slipping away. She was also trying not to continuously look over her shoulder. She had to keep driving forward, keep pushing the cycle as hard as she could. What good would it do if she saw over her shoulder this strange woman that she punched several times, accompanied by a truck full of German soldiers? There would be nothing for her to do but try and hold her lead.

Still, she threw a quick glance behind her. No one else was there.

“Stay on the path, Scarlett,” she whispered out loud, “just stay on the path and you’ll be home before you know it.”

The countryside did not seem to pass her as quickly as it did when she first arrived, but just up ahead were the familiar hills that she had ridden over. She could still see the faint impression left by her bike wheel on the trip in.

“I will not look behind me,” she insisted. “I will not look behind me...”

On cresting another hill, just within sight, Scarlett could see her camouflaged Hornet. If her head start was indeed that ten minutes she speculated, she would need all of it to prep, taxi, and finally get up in the air.

Seventeen…eighteen…nineteen…twenty….

Five

Fuel was steady. Nothing to worry about there.

The electric engine, good for only thirty miles, she had kept offline. She had put the plane into a “Patrol” mode in order to utilize the petrol engine’s ability to charge the battery while still in flight.

Proximity Alarm. The odd device that Tink was told not to take apart until Scarlett got back to base was reading all clear.

It should be a straight shot home from here.

Scarlett had been in the air for nearly an hour. The skies were clear, and below her the outskirts of the German empire were slowly creeping by. The Western Front would be underneath her within minutes which could mean unwelcome company in the air. All she needed to do was make it over the border, then maybe she could start breathing again.

The Proximity Alarm suddenly came to life, screeching madly while a yellow light pulsed. At least it wasn’t the red light. Scarlett could only assume the red light meant things had gone completely pear-shaped. Yellow probably meant things were only inconvenient, but warranted attention.

Her eyes scanned the skies, but there was nothing above her. Underneath, however, she could see the outer edge of a patrol. Scarlett pulled back on the throttle and banked her Hornet a few degrees for a better look. Five LVG’s, the Cross of the German Empire notably visible on the edges of their top wings, kept tight formation roughly three thousand feet below her. They were predators on the hunt for reconnaissance craft. Probably her, considering the sky they preoccupied. This must have meant Scarlett was over the Western Front. This was
her
sky.

Just stay on the mission directives,
Hemsworth’s voice echoed in her head.
Stick to that path and you will be back in France safe and sound.

Get into Germany. Check.

Get the plans from Grandmother. Check, in a manner of speaking.

Get out. Check.

No heroics.

Yes, it was a very simple plan.

And yet there were five LVG’s below her. They were looking for an old, antiquated Bristol Scout, held together by duty, honor, and sheer will.

Scarlett hit the “Acknowledgement” button on the alarm, then flipped the switches on her dash. Around her, she could feel a low thrum of power vibrate through her seat and tight cabin. One by one, the lights of offensive measures and defensive countermeasures switched from yellow to green. Scarlett’s grip on the stick tightened as she sucked in a good amount of the frigid air then breathed out slowly, granting herself a small, heady rush.

Then she thrust the stick to the left, and began a quick descent on the patrol.

The front mounted guns of her Sopwith Hornet roared to life, and Scarlett followed with her eyes the trails of her white-hot tracer bullets as they blazed between her and the LVG’s. She could just make out the enemy pilots frantically trying to see exactly where the hostile gunfire was coming from.

Two of the outer planes immediately broke formation while the lead plane and its right wingman both fell into Scarlett’s sights. Their planes were devoured by fire and smoke as her bullets tore through the fuselage. With two kills in her opening maneuver, Scarlett brought the Hornet around in a wide, banking turn, and become quite lightheaded at the speed she was reaching. On coming out of the turn, she felt as if she had been thrown out of a slingshot, the velocity throwing her back in the seat but the Hornet remaining inconceivably stable.

The LVG in her sights bobbed left and right, trying to evade her bursts of incendiary bullets. Scarlett could have easily matched the tactics, but it would have also consumed more fuel, fuel she would need for both attack and evasion. She kept the Hornet steady, waiting for the LVG to slip back into her line of fire.

The Proximity Alarm screeched as a thought came to her:
I’m stationary up here. I’m a target.

The Hornet twisted into a tight corkscrew just as bullets rained down from above her. Scarlett flipped the craft a fourth time, and then on the fifth roll she climbed up and then banked hard to see the descending LVG swoop past her and then try to pull out of its dive. Following her own turn, Scarlett felt the Hornet gain speed, close the gap between her and the enemy craft, and finally place the offending LVG square in her sights. With that plane out of the fight Scarlett banked hard in the opposite direction, turning to face the remaining two LVG’s that had regrouped behind her. They were closing in fast, but she kept her own flightpath steady. She always did enjoy the gallant challenges Jerry would throw at her. They were curious as to what mettle she was made of, completely unaware this was the pilot they had often tangled with over the Western Front.

Let them guess. Scarlett was enjoying herself presently, feeling very much at home behind the controls of the Sopwith Hornet.

The LVG’s broke off as Scarlett flew between them, the slipstream buffeting at her Hornet as she banked hard, countering their own attempts to get behind her. She could feel every snap of the rigging and flutter of canvas ripped open by bullet holes as her Hornet angrily buzzed across Belgian skies. The remaining LVG’s parted, both of the enemy planes banking into opposite directions. She could easily line up a kill for one of them, but not without the other flanking her. There was always the option of pulling out of the fight, continuing home; but Scarlett wanted to finish what she had started.

Just stay on the mission directives.
Stick to that path and you will be back in France safe and sound.

There was what she should do, and what she wanted to do.

Scarlett had the better machine, and now she needed to know if she had the skill to go with it. Her plane dipped left and then climbed up, its twin machine guns giving angry report to the LVG crossing into her gunsights. Her bullets angrily ripped into the plane’s fuselage, tearing into the cockpit as she climbed. She didn’t know the limits of this experimental, but she knew the climbing rate of the LVG. It was fast, but her Hornet’s top speed might be a touch faster. She just had to stay ahead of her opponent, and at the best moment, get behind him. Tracer fire zipped by her cockpit and sparks flew from the Hornet’s rigging. Old Jerry was not going to let her get away so quickly.

The Hornet, on Scarlett’s biding, now dipped into a dive. Scarlett’s intent would be to drop under her opponent, invert, then climb again. This experimental had shown itself capable of such a maneuver, but it all rested on the LVG not anticipating the tactic.

Scarlett threw her stick to the right, the horizon tumbled to where ground was sky, where up and down, and vice versa. Her plane pitched up, but her opponent was no longer there.

She looked left, then right, and the LVG had countered, banked, inverted, and leveled out to have Scarlett in the perfect kill shot.

The LVG disappeared in a brilliant explosion of fire, smoke, and a storm of tracer bullets from above her. What should have been the plane that plucked her from the skies now plummeted to the earth thousands of feet below her.

For the first time, she saw the Proximity Alarm’s light display turn red. This device was not designed to know friend from foe, just let the pilot know that another plane was far-too-close-for-comfort. So whomever rescued Scarlett from the LVG was getting cozy at ten thousand feet in the air.

Something swooped from above and came so close to her right that their wingtips were nearly touching. Scarlett felt her grip tighten on the Hornet’s stick as the black Fokker tri-wing fighter plane silently few alongside her. The pilot looked over to her and saluted.

Scarlett recognized that dark gaze instantly. It was the same gaze that had held her own in Grandmother’s house. She had punched Maximiliane Adolphina Vogelberg von Wolff
.
She had punched the Big Bad Wolf.

And now, the Big Bad Wolf had just rescued her from certain death?

No,
Scarlett thought as the Ace of Aces gave her a nod before pulling away,
Wolff wanted the kill.
She was not going to let anyone else have it, nor let anyone stand in her way.

The Big Bad Wolf zipped ahead of Scarlett, placing the silent aircraft in front of her gunsights. She was not certain of what this tactic was all about, but neither would she question it. Scarlett pulled the trigger of her twin machine guns but the triplane pitched up almost at a perfect vertical angle, inverted itself, and then leveled out behind her. She banked the Hornet hard to the left, while easing up on the throttle, giving Wolff plenty of time and space to overshoot and get ahead of her.

What Wolff made her plane do should have been impossible, should have torn the plane apart; but the triple-winged plane appeared to spin on its horizontal, as if it were simply skating across a frozen pond, and opened fire as she glided past. Bullets struck something on the Hornet, and on Scarlett’s “Damage Control” dashboard, the tail section lit up.

She had taken damage, but the display could not tell exactly what kind. What Scarlett could take certainty in was any violent maneuvers could result in a rigging failure and a loss of control in her rudder.

No doubt Wolff also knew this.

Time to leave.

Scarlett pulled back on the stick, opening the throttle. She could feel the cold air biting at her skin, the speed of her Sopwith Hornet pushing her back into her seat once more. She had cleared the Proximity Alert, and so far her own escape appeared uninterrupted. Even with a green light from the alarm, Scarlett scanned the skies for any sign of Wolff. The Fokker prototype was nowhere below her nor to any other side.

Then she looked up, and at her six she caught a glimpse of the three-winged silhouette.

Her eyes switched back to the “Damage Control” display. Her usual maneuvers of corkscrews and hard dives would have to be a last resort, if at all.

Plus, she had tricks of her own.

Scarlett thrust the stick to her right, turning the plane on its side as Wolff continued to dive on her, the rain of bullets missing her by a few feet. The Fokker buzzed past and then suspended itself, just as it had with that horizontal spin, and then propelled itself upwards, now closing in from behind.

“Let’s try this option,” Scarlett muttered, flipping the countermeasure switch that read “Flares.”

Just over her cockpit’s windshield, there was a small mirror that allowed for her to see the tail section of her Hornet. The small caliber turret, its barrel no bigger than a hand pistol, rapidly launched bright balls of blue flame. They hurtled towards the Schwarzer Geist, but then exploded mere feet before the propellers.

Scarlett tore her eyes away from the sudden flashes that flared from her rearview mirror, and pulled back hard on the stick, taking her Hornet up and over. Once inverted, she looked up to see the black Fokker pass underneath her. Wolff was bobbing and weaving in some sort of evasion tactic.

Scarlett continued the loop, her attention now on the “Damage Control” panel that showed the lights on the tail section blinking between yellow and red, settling thankfully on yellow once she slipped behind Wolff.

“Fine,” she said through clenched teeth, “let’s end this.”

She pulled the trigger, peppering the plane in front of her with bullets; but only for a few seconds before a new light flickered brightly on her dashboard:
Ammunition Low.

The Fokker tumbled out of sight, but this was not the death spiral all pilots recognized. This was a controlled descent. Scarlett could not run out of ammunition while over the Front. She had to make it to the border, return to French skies. She was so close.