Flying the Storm

26.





Enkidu

Fredrick flipped slowly through the pages on the monitor. It certainly looked like Solomon was telling the truth.

In all honesty though, he wasn’t reading the documents thoroughly. He was hoping that there’d be some pictures somewhere, since if he could just see it he told himself he’d have a better chance at understanding it. Words like ‘radiation-hardened circuitry’, ‘specific impulse in atmosphere’ and ‘Medon armour with spall countermeasures’ meant very little to Fredrick. Though he didn’t understand them, the words were still working to convince him that maybe – just maybe – Solomon knew what he was talking about, and that his story was credible.

He quite possibly had been an engineer for the union  , back in the war. Maybe he had indeed worked on a classified project; one that might just prove useful in downsizing the Gilgamesh’s absolute power. But it was hard to tell. It all seemed a bit too good to be true. A little bit far-fetched.

“So you see what it is?” encouraged Solomon, sitting across the table from Fredrick. The bar was fairly quiet in the middle of the afternoon. Solomon didn’t seem too worried about people overhearing their conversation.

“Oh yeah,” Fredrick lied, taking a swig of his beer and doing his best to look academic.

Solomon leaned on the table with his elbows. “The Gilgamesh was only the first. This, my friend,” he said, tapping the monitor with a calloused finger, “this was, and still is, the state of the art. This is a second-generation aerial warship.”

Fredrick looked up from the monitor then. A second Gilgamesh. That didn’t sound like a good idea at all.

Solomon took the monitor from Fredrick. He flipped pages across the screen, looking for something. “Here,” he said, and handed the monitor back to Fredrick.

On the monitor was a picture – a technical drawing. The object was long, roughly rectangular, and would have been almost unidentifiable as a warship if not for the engine nozzles at the stern. The next few pages were different aspects of the ship: from behind, above, at an angle. It had four small engines around a single large nozzle in the centre of the stern. Fredrick wondered what that was for. The Gilgamesh certainly had nothing that huge.

Then he zoomed in on one of the images, at a detail on the hull. It was a gun turret, one of several, faceted for radar-deflection. Assuming the craft was as large as the Gilgamesh, this gun was massive. Its barrel would be almost fifty metres long. That didn’t make sense.

This lead Fredrick to realise that it must actually be much smaller than the Gilgamesh. A tinier, more compact ship. In the corner of the drawing was some text. Some meaningless numbers and a single word. Or, at least, some letters.

“Enkidu,” said Fredrick. “Is that its name?”

Solomon grinned then. “That’s right. You see the theme?”

Fredrick didn’t get it, but he nodded anyway. Enkidu. It suited it.

“And you’re going to what? Build this?” He was still sceptical.

Solomon laughed. “No, it already exists. People say it was the Gilgamesh that bankrupted the union  , but they are wrong. It was this.”

“So where is it? Who has it?” And why hadn’t Fredrick heard about it?

“Nobody has it. It was never launched. As far as I can tell, it was finished two days before the Armistice. Then the money ran out, and you know what happened. Everybody for themselves. It was abandoned in its hangar.”

“Which is where?”

“Now that is the ultimate question,” said Solomon, sitting back. “I’ve been working on that one for a long time.”

Fredrick’s curiosity had been kindled. “I thought you said you worked on this project?”

“I did. Control algorithms, mostly. But that didn’t involve me actually seeing the thing, or even being anywhere near it. I’ve been tracing old communications to and from the build site for years now, following the trail of crumbs. And now I think I know where it is. At least, I’ve narrowed it down to a few dozen square kilometres.”

The beer bottle was empty, but Fredrick took a swig anyway, absorbed. “Where?”

“It’s in the west of Scotland.”

Fredrick snorted. “My gunner won’t be happy about that,” he said, indicating to the barmaid that he’d like another bottle.

Solomon looked at him, his eyes narrowing a millimetre. “Why’s that?”

“Well, he’s from Scotland. As far as I can tell he doesn’t want to go back.” The barmaid brought over another cold bottle, opened it and set it in front of Fredrick. He gave her a few coppers. “Thanks,” he said, winking. She blushed a little, and smiled back.


Solomon turned down the offer of another drink. “If he is just your gunner… will he not follow your orders?”

Fredrick snorted. “It’s not that sort of arrangement. I might fly the Iolaire, but he won’t let me forget it’s half his.”

“You couldn’t convince him to do this?”

Fredrick considered that for a moment. “Well, I probably could, since there’s decent payment on offer. He won’t be keen on going back though, I warn you now. Family problems, I think.”

Fredrick was enjoying the conversation, despite its looming purpose. It was probably the beer.

“I met him in a bar in Esbjerg,” he continued, mostly just because he felt like talking, “where the fishing boat he was crewing had taken shelter from a storm. We got to talking about business, and I told him my plan to buy an aircraft and try my hand at freight-hauling. He decided that was a good idea. He sold his share of the fishing boat when they returned to Scotland, and caught a ship back to Esbjerg. Been working with him ever since.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Solomon took a swig of his own drink. “Well, hopefully this expedition won’t take more than a few days. A week at most. Then he can go where he likes.”

Fredrick nodded. The beer was good. Cold and almost sweet.

He thought about how to convince Aiden. The money would go a long way towards that, without doubt, but whether it’d be enough… To him, it seemed like a fairly slim chance that they’d even find this thing, let alone find it in working order. Then they’d have to figure out how to use it to put an end to the Gilgamesh. Aiden would see these problems. It was a monstrous task carrying a lot of risk. Who was even going to fly the thing, even if they did find it?

If Fredrick was to convince Aiden to join in this, then he’d have to convince himself first. That, ironically, was the only thing he was absolutely sure of.

“As soon as the repairs are finished, I will go back to Armenia to pick him up,” said Fredrick.

If he’s still alive, he thought.

The bastard had to be. Tovmas and his boys ought to have sorted out the last of the marines, surely. Aiden would hopefully be waiting patiently in Ashtarak for the Iolaire to return. He’d be keeping himself amused with the fine woman Fredrick saw him bag at the party.

But somehow that just didn’t fit. Aiden hated sitting on his hands. It’d be just like him to do something stupid, like try to follow the Iolaire.

“Well, I hope you can convince him,” said Solomon. “This really is our best hope.”

It was that, for sure. At least, it was if it was true. But if Solomon was paying them anyway, he supposed it didn’t matter much if it was all a pile of horse shit. Money up front, and he’d let the man do what he liked.

The sum offered was enough for the pair of them to live comfortably for a very long time. Either that, or expand their business a little. Another aircraft, maybe. Or a boat to carry bulk goods. Something like that.

Fredrick looked at the documents on the monitor again. It all looked official, authentic. But how on Earth would he know? He was only a pilot, not an academic.

“So once we have this Enkidu, what then?” he asked.

“Then I will use it to cripple the Gilgamesh.”

“How?”

Solomon took the monitor and chose a page, showing it to Fredrick. It was an extensive list, headed ‘Armament’. Topping the list was an ‘M-Gigajoule-class Lorentz (Rail) Gun’. Two of.

“Those babies will gut the Gilgamesh bow-to-stern. All it would take is a single hit to the reactor or the repulsor, and it’s gone. Each gun can manage three shots a minute, for a short period. That’s six chances a minute to hit a very big target.”

“But the Gilgamesh has rail guns too. I’ve seen them.”

“Not like this it doesn’t. The Gilgamesh’s guns are an order of magnitude smaller. It wasn’t built to deal with an enemy like this. Against dispersed, numerous hostiles armed with missiles and smaller electric weaponry, it absolutely dominates, just like it did against the ATC. But not against this. It won’t even see the Enkidu coming. See that ugly nose? It’s covered in superconducting cells, as close to black-body properties as it is possible to get, at IR wavelengths and longer. It catches radar and laser radiation and fires it from cells on other faces of the hull, reflecting virtually nothing. To the Gilgamesh, it’ll just look like empty sky. Until it gets close.”

Whatever that meant, it sounded impressive. A stealth ship. That was certainly a big advantage.

“And you know how to use it?”

Solomon nodded. “I do. Where the Gilgamesh needs a crew of thousands, the Enkidu carries only twelve. It can be operated by a single person, if necessary. Just about everything is automated. To a certain extent, it can even repair itself.”

“Bloody hell,” uttered Fredrick. It was a serious piece of kit.

If it exists.

“So do you trust me?” asked Solomon.

“Friend, in this business I have learned not to trust anybody. It’s nothing personal. And I certainly don’t trust this Enkidu. Aircraft are supposed to have wings.”

“Ah. Traditionalist? Bernoullist?”

Fredrick shook his head and showed him the top of his tattoo.

Solomon nodded. “Wingwearer. That figures. But aren’t you a bit young?”

He hated that. Every time someone heard he was a wearer, it was always the same. “Well, I’m not an original, if that’s what you mean.”

“Parents?”

“Yeah. Mother. Infantry transport, combat drops, that sort of thing. She taught me to fly. Built me my own simulator when I was eight. I don’t remember ever not wanting to be a pilot.”

“Well, congratulations. Not many people get that chance these days. All the best pilots are vets, and they don’t usually like teaching young people.”

“Understandable.”

Solomon laughed. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

There was shouting on the street outside the bar. Fredrick leaned out of the open window, looking for the source. People were flocking out of shops and bars to the road, watching expectantly to the south.

In the distance, coming towards Fredrick along the road, was a convoy of trucks. A great cloud of black smoke followed it, coughed out by their engines. Wisps of flame licked out from under the bonnet of the lead truck.

As they drew closer, Fredrick could see damage. Bullet holes and shrapnel scars peppered the skin of the trucks, and as they passed him, he could see that some of the cabs were spattered with dried blood. The engines groaned and rattled unhealthily as the convoy pulled to a halt in the great open plaza near the airport. Some good folk were running to them, helping the injured.

Fredrick had left the bar, with Solomon not far behind. He stood on the plaza now, close to the trucks. A man clambered clumsily down from one of the cabs, bleeding from a leg wound. He collapsed against the front wheel arch, slumping to sit on the tarmac. Fredrick looked inside the open cab. There was another body in there, dead from several bullet wounds.

“What happened?” Fredrick asked the injured man.

The man opened his eyes to look at Fredrick. “A bandit raid. Like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“To the south?”

He nodded. “Crossing over from Armenia. They wouldn’t break. Why didn’t they break?” The man sobbed now, tears forming in his eyes. “Why didn’t they break?”


Solomon came forward. “Are these all the vehicles?”

“No,” said the man, rubbing his eyes with filthy hands. “We lost some. They captured the caravan leader.”

“Captured?” asked Fredrick.

“Yes. At least, they weren’t shooting when we left them behind.”

Something, and Fredrick didn’t know what, was nagging him at the back of his mind. An awful feeling of dread. But why? Surely it wouldn’t have been…

“Was there anybody else with the convoy when you left Armenia?” he asked, urgently.

“The leader was carrying a passenger, yes. From Stepanavan. But why does it matter? They have them now. They are lost.” The driver started sobbing again, louder this time. “They are lost,” he mumbled wetly, “they are lost.”