Wednesday, February 6, 2008

China Crisis

Tacked to a splintered Lee Enfield, jabbed by its bent bayonet into the softwood stern of the floundering junk, the tatty red ensign fluttered like a goldfish in petrol. More water, more sweat, oil and cordite than coral sea now, shipped over the blasted freeboard of the listing merchantman. The barely watertight compartments could not keep it afloat much longer but, ever optimistic in the face of certain mortality, she reasoned her imminent sinking was not necessarily a bad thing. Despite the guillotine fall of evening, the wounded junk’s declining and most unshipshape profile was all that could save her from the Dreadnought’s greedy gunnery. If she could lash herself to a stray batten, and heaven knew there were enough of them littering the cratered waters now, she might still slip to safety on the ever receding shore. Struggling for the first time to catch her breath in the dank tropical fug, Barley ripped the old flag down and, not for the first time, acknowledged the precience of its designer in choosing blood red for its motif as she bandaged her bamboo gashed forearm. Was it for the first time? The idle thought felt familiar but it was so hard to keep track and these days she tended, if only privately, not to bother. Despite the worrying throb behind her still ringing temples, she felt oddly comfortable, the smell of her own blood reminded her of home, wherever that was. She smiled the better to face the pain. Red pleased the dragons which live in the clouds, red flags bring fair weather and women. She tightened her own bounds with her teeth.

Silver birds chirruped in perfect circles around the shattered topmast, their tiny gears tinkling in the gathering gloom. A part of her, the purest part perhaps, longed to save at least one of the sparkling mechanical wonders, at least to test her arrows if she ever made it to the hills. Her broken arm splinted as best she could manage, she watched a dog paddle past, barking maniacally at the smoldering flotsam like dead whales in its path. She reached out an oar in a vain attempt to bat it onboard but it yapped past her whispered entreaties and paddled furiously for the open sea. With only her left hand to work with the first wash of the bow wave snatched the oar from her grasp. She looked up, the Imperial battleship was closing for the kill. She blinked, suddenly tired. Ash from the grumbling volcano still fell like stars, like snow, sizzling into the pumice ruined waters. She glanced at her immaculate pocket watch and noticed her brown eyes had turned silver.

She risked a quick shout for survivors but the scrawny crew, such as it was, were clearly long gone. Fifteen year old boys with pigtails and eyes as dark as hers had been, she struggled to remember how many they'd numbered. O’Brien, the grizzled Irish jade smuggler who’d betrayed her a week before she’d stepped on board, stared back from his position by the mainsail. The garrotte around his neck made his grotesquely swollen tounge stick out at her in an oddly juvenile gesture of defiance. Slipping up behind his slumped and frankly obese body, she deftly slipped the bamboo from the Windsor knot and draped the tie back around her own slim neck. A boy had risked all to smuggle her into the dorms at Eton after all, or maybe Harrow. Anyway, it was a keepsake and one day she'd remember of whom. The giant battleship bore down on her now, searchlights scouring the sullen waters. She waited till one, then two, then three blinding lamps locked on her stricken vessel then tripped the contact mine’s electrical mechanism. Too close to turn its heavy weaponry down on her, the battleship would chose to run her down. Excited shouts in ill schooled mandarin serenaded her descent into the blood warm waters. Machine gun fire ripped the sea about her as she dived with a flick of her tail a full fathom down.


She let out a long breath to clear her ears and had at least reached the shallows when the lone mine exploded. The battleship’s armour belt was scarcely scratched in all honesty but the explosion was impressive enough for the moment, sending the fruit bats fluttering up out of the trees in vast chattering, somehow prehistoric waves. Bats always turn left after leaving their cave, she'd observed, while people instinctively turn right. She was still wondering what that meant when she hit sand, her belly flopping in her improvised crawl, and hauled herself up the wreckage strewn beach.

Hooting alarms and rattling black boots on steel gantries had replaced the intrusive rattle of machine gun fire from the Dreadnought. As if conscious it had been lured far too near the shore in its lust for destruction, the great ship doused its lights even as its mighty machinery lumbered into reverse. The cannons the remnants of the Highlanders had set up on her instructions on the hilltops opened fire as if on this command. The twelve pounders, salvaged from scuttled thirty knot torpedo boats, bounced off the deck armour, raking the unfortunate deck crews with sears of shrapnel. She limped up to the palm tree line, the explosions warming her back even as they wrecked her ears. Increasingly her objections to the current situation were more asthetic than moral, the problem with war was that it was so noisy. Another explosion rocked her, and she stooped almost to profanity, at the best of times she'd never been much of a beach person. The shadows twitched. Two of the boys from the junk were waiting for her, one even bore a still lukewarm cup of black tea. She slipped her blade of shanghai steel back down beside her thigh.

I knew you’d come back for me, the shorter one said. I know, she smiled. In contrast to his rustic chatter, the inflections of her own mandarin were flawless. She caught herself, in the peasant garb she'd no doubt have to adopt it was a weakness, she’d have to work on that. The boys made as if to help her up the ghostly sliver of path to the Highlander’s position. She shrugged them off and led the way, despite her dizzy head. The popguns still enthusiastically, if ineffectually, shelled the wallowing Chinese warship, caught like a warthog in a spider‘s web. The ash flittered down like dead moths. It promised to be a long night.

The lights of Her Majesty’s Electric Frigate Ramillies glittered for a careless moment in the distance. Sub-Lieutenant Pearson would be tugging the canvas from the experimental rail gun whose brass plate bore her name. She quickened her step. This could get messy. The trusty Pearson’s primary attribute was an unabashed relish of the pursuit, rather than any great concern for the finer points of ballistics once the quarry was run to ground. She glanced at the elfin boys and found their youth frightened her more than the Chinese gunnery, then up at the burly, sweating highlanders, stripped to the waist as they fed the guns. A shell pocked turret on the Dreadnought swung heavily in their general direction. They should all find some cover but all there was were the trees. She thought about the dog again. She paused to sip at the dregs of her tea. She hitched up the red duster, her broken arm already healing, and wondered how 'don't dally lads' might sound in a more guttural Mandarin. Time was running out, in her experience anyway.

Just over the horizon a light flashed, even smaller than a star. A shark finned slug smashed hopelessly into the crest of the ancient mountain above them at better than Mach seven. If was hardly Pearson's fault, even if the intent had been there to kill her, if it was hard for her to remember whose side she was on, and even which sides there were, how much more problematic for her companions. The second solid steel projectile sliced clean through a stand of palm trees on the beach they'd just vacated but the third ripped the Chinese man of war just as Barley and the ship's boys reached the Highlander's dug out position. The three chaps manning the guns fired another toy shell into the ruined battleship as a silver bird chirruped in the padded silk pocket of her beautiful suit. She marveled at the vitality of its sapphire blue, electric even in the sepulcultural evening, the precision of its tiny stitching, and that but for her English blood, the fabric was almost dry.

The fruit bats flapped lazily in the swaying trees about her, settling in for the show. A fourth slug ripped through the water by the enraged but impotent Dreadnought, ripping deep into the sea bed and bringing a mini tsunami to the shore. The fifth ripped it open along its five hundred foot length like a tin of bully beef. She stilled Captain Henderson's mini fusilade with a brief touch at his shoulder. By morning all would be quiet here, but for the rumbling volcano, by dawn even the bats would be gone. The Imperial Chinese sailors teemed into the water ahead of even the rats, dodging the bullets of their officers' revolvers as best they could. The Ramilles edged closer, soon a boat would be dispatched. She knew Pearson would usher the boys with her into the officers mess. On a whim she plucked the imperial avian automaton from her pocket and set it free upon the air. Tomorrow the Chinese might be the least of her problems.

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