AEGIS Tales 2, page 3
part #8 of Airship Daedalus Series
The hotel corridor I was expecting to be empty was full of phantom halos. They were everywhere. But these specters wandered without apparent purpose, and cleared out of my way as I floated past them. The hallway terminated at a window made of rectangular panes, which I passed through as easily as a draft of air. Knowing I was not in a corporeal body had rid me of any fear of falling or injury, and I sailed gently to the street below, merely focusing my will to make it happen.
A hack drawn by a single horse was pulling away from the curb, and my sudden descent from above sent the poor animal into a panic. Shrieking, it reared and strained at its harness, causing the cabbie to curse and fight with the reins. I gently sailed forward and reached out, making contact with the horse, stroking its neck softly, sending calm intent through my hand. Immediately, the beast settled, and I ascended away as the cabbie came down to check on it. Like a human kite, I sailed over the City of Lights, smelling the myriad scents of food, people, animals, and industry.
I descended into the Jardin des Tuileries, near a slumbering man on a bench. He wore a heavy wool French Army coat, and though his left thigh was tucked under him, I could tell his leg had been amputated below the knee. His aura danced with the same sparks of light that I saw on most living beings, only dimmer and less distinct. I could sense the man’s despair, and his morphine addiction, as easily as smelling fresh bread from the oven. By instinct, I reached out, focusing my will through my arms. A crackle of energy buzzed through both of us as I made contact, pushing the sadness away, purging the horror and helplessness—casting light into the dark. The man’s body began to shake and tremble, and a trickle of foamy bile spewed from the corner of his mouth. After a few brief, uncomfortable moments, he settled into a deep sleep, breathing normally. The aura around his body surged with new radiance. I was confident that whatever challenges that veteran faced in the future, addiction and shell-shock wouldn’t be among them.
My head began to swim, and I knew I’d pushed myself too far in a small amount of time. A few phantom halos in the vicinity began to focus on my location, perhaps sensing weakness. I glanced down at the soldier again, and when I looked up, the phantoms had multiplied. Looking left and right, I could see them springing up from the ground, almost generating out of nowhere before my eyes. Before I knew what was happening, I was surrounded by a horde of faceless phantoms, crowding in from all sides, hungry for the energy I was giving off. For the first time since my apparent death on the cobbled street of Ripont, I felt genuine terror. Terror of my psychic form being torn apart and consumed by these ravenous beings. I realized this fear was keeping my feet anchored to the ground, and that the phantoms must sense fear as weakness. It was weakness that attracted them, much like blood in the water attracts a shark. I had to refocus my will, dig deep within my very soul and produce the strength that would keep the ghosts at bay. One featureless hand reached out and touched my shoulder, and an icy chill struck at my heart. For a moment, I was lost in panic. Oblivion scratched at the door.
But then something remarkable happened.
“Easy, soldier,” said a soft voice from the dark.
Clamping my eyes shut, I recalled the dark, featureless landscape of my bandaged vision. I remembered the relative peace and quiet of the hospital ward, and the gentle, soothing hand of Nurse Brown. A sensation of renewed vigor filled the well of my spirit, and I felt my feet leave the ground. I lifted into the air and soared above Paris with eyes still closed, letting the mental picture of my hotel room guide me back to safety.
I found my body still sleeping peacefully in the hotel room. A simple thought was all it took to reunite my astral form with the corporeal one. For the first time since arriving at the front, I didn’t dream of artillery barrages or gas attacks. Just quiet stillness.
✽✽✽
I awoke feeling better than I ever had, and made the decision to tell Nurse Brown about my experience over breakfast. After her initial shock wore off, I demonstrated the finer points of astral travel and energy manipulation in the hotel lounge. It was then I discovered I could project my astral form to become visible through the same force of will I employed to soar through the sky, heal a veteran’s psychic afflictions, or destroy a phantom intent on evil. Over time, I discovered I could use most of these abilities while still conscious, in my corporeal body. Astonished, Dorothy promised we’d keep in contact after the war. Colonel Starr would likely have some new theories. In the meantime, she and Starr were due to head back to New York, engaged to be married. I jokingly asked what the rush was, fully able to tell from the light emanating from her that she was pregnant.
As expected, the Armistice happened a week and a half later. Like more than a few black American soldiers, I opted to remain in France after being discharged. I began to work with the French government, helping veterans reintegrate to the workforce, helping American military expats like me start a new life “Over There”. After months of growing out a curly beard, I started to shave again. I rented a spacious loft in an old building on Rue Chaudron, across the tracks from the cemetery, where I could paint on days when I wasn’t doing my government work, and which made a nice base of operations for my nighttime activities. I cut up some motorcycle leathers and found a hooded cloak among the offerings at a theater costume sale. Sometimes I went out in my body, and sometimes I left it at home. I got good enough, precise enough, to be able to knock a thief’s astral body out of its corporeal counterpart long enough to allow his victim to get away. When the newspapers began reporting a series of crimes thwarted by a ghostly figure in black, I knew I was on the right path.
Sometime in April 1922, I received a telegram from Colonel Starr, and he came up to the loft to chat. He was working with this consortium of American industrialists, developing a network of adventurers and “gifted” folks like me, to face down a megalomaniac bent on world domination through arcane means. At first, I told him I’d had my fill of tyrants trying to take over the world, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made that I would use the powerful gift given to me—at one hell of a cost—for the greater good of humanity. Starr left a calling card with the name Colonel Stephen Shaw on it, told me I’d be hearing from him. Apparently Shaw was a higher-up at MI-6 in London, and was putting together a group of gifted people irrevocably changed by the war to help keep the delicate peace in Europe.
By the time Shaw caught up to me, it was May. He arrived at the door to my loft in a trench coat, a wrapped bottle of whiskey under one arm, a valise under the other. He was the archetypal suave English gentleman, with pomade in his prematurely white hair and a patch over his left eye. The man didn’t waste time: he had some individual candidates, but needed someone to actually lead the squad the was forming.
“You were awarded a Distinguished Service medal and the Croix de guerre,” Shaw rattled off in his posh English accent. “And you led your squad across a nearly impenetrable swamp, single-handedly taking out a sniper and a three-man machine gun emplacement. Ripont was taken due to your efforts.”
“Just doing what had to be done, Colonel.” I could read from his aura’s hue that his intent was good. “Who else have you got?”
He opened his leather valise and tossed a stack of file folders on my dining table. “A French vampire, an English robot, and a disfigured Gurkha who fights like a demon.”
“Sounds like a motley crew,” I remarked, without a hint of irony.
“Some might think it a bit…weird,” Shaw replied.
I smirked as I flipped open the first folder. “Colonel,” I said, “the moment I stepped off the boat in France, my life’s been nothing but weird.” As I read over the dossiers, I could tell this bunch would need some coaching, some guidance to whip them into shape as an effective force for good. “What are we calling this unit?”
Shaw pulled up a chair and fished a cigarette from the pack in his inside breast pocket. “We’ve been working with The Altered.”
The Altered, I thought. Seems appropriate.
“Colonel, with a name like that, how could The Seer refuse?”
Operation Icarus
by R.L. Pace
August 1926
Felix Fogarty had become something of a celebrity among AEGIS forces since the Shanghai incident. Escaping his nearly deadly encounter with Song Li and the Black Dog alone might have earned him that status given their sinister association with the Astrum Argentum, but managing to simultaneously seize the secret plans and destroy the prototype anti-gravity machine—while burning down a sizable portion of the waterfront—had secured borderline legendary status. And the weeks-long journey to Edison’s workshop in West Orange, New Jersey hadn’t been wasted either.
Comfortably ensconced in a first class cabin aboard the RMS Empress of Asia, Felix had spent the voyage under the watchful eye of bodyguards thoughtfully provided by Joe Frankels, his section chief in China. At six-three with a disheveled shock of coppery hair blending in with the other passengers for the two week crossing carried a low hope of success. Plus, the need for a large table and complete privacy-secrecy even-mandated the extra space and the room service too.
Armed with sheaves of drafting paper, a host of T-squares, triangles, French curves, rulers and writing instruments, he was painstakingly recreating—from his photographic memory—the blueprints he had been sent to collect from the Club Lusitano, which is where the conflagration that sped through a swath of Shanghai began. The pier fire that consumed the yacht club had only burnished his newfound fame.
When the ship docked in Vancouver, British Columbia at the Canadian Pacific Steamship pier and her four steam turbine props had gone still Felix was greeted at the pier with a new phalanx of AEGIS guardians and hustled off for a rendezvous with airship Hephaestus for the final legs. Because it was a repair, recovery and salvage vessel the ship bristled with defensive weapons. Slow, with cramped crew quarters but a huge cargo and maintenance bay, it wasn’t a glamorous ride but it was nearly impregnable when airborne. No one was taking any chances with Felix, his brain or the newly recreated blueprints.
☐
June 1927
“It helps if you think of electrical circuits like plumbing. Wires are the pipes, electricity the water and the various other parts like tubes, resistors, condensers and rectifiers are basically valves that alter where, how, and how much the current flows.” Felix was trying to explain where the vast sums of money being spent on his development project were going. Edison was congenial as host; Henry Ford was off wandering around the rest of the massive shop inspecting things Fogarty was pretty certain he knew little about. It was Harvey Firestone who had been peppering him with questions for the better part of an hour.
“Most expensive toilet we’ve ever plumbed!” Firestone groused, not entirely in jest.
“Well Harvey,” Edison broke in, “Plumbing is already invented. We’re starting almost from scratch here.”
“Do you think Silver Star is going to wait around while you try to invent another light bulb?”
Edison laughed. “Probably not, but if not for Wonder Man here, they would surely be far more dangerous than they already are.”
From across the shop a startled cry rang out as a technician drifted toward the ceiling bathed in an eerie blue glow and an equally startled Henry Ford quickly flipped down the switch he had tentatively activated. The light disappeared and the technician fell five feet to the floor. Chagrined, Ford mumbled an apology and hurried back to the group. The technician was left rubbing his hip, anticipating quite a bruise the following day.
“I see you found our main effort,” Edison said as the auto magnate rejoined the men. “We call it ‘Project Icarus’.”
“I don’t doubt it, but what use is it? Does it just throw stuff in the air?”
“For now, yes, that’s about it. But figuring out what to use it for is what we are doing.” Edison the entrepreneur was getting enthusiastic. “Imagine elevators with the compartment and the brakes as the only moving part! Or trains that glide above the tracks. No more clickety-clack droning in your ears.” He eyed Ford with a mischievous grin, “or automobiles with no engines or wheels.”
“Don’t let Rockefeller hear that. He’ll buy all three of us and put us afloat in the Atlantic.”
“The main problem, gentlemen,” Fogarty interrupted, “is portability. How do we make it small enough to be useful and how do we throttle the lift? It’s not just a rhetorical question, and that is where most of the money is being used.”
“And do you have any progress to report on that front?” Firestone clearly wanted to get down to brass tacks.
“Well, yes and no. Some of the biggest issues with electrical circuits, besides the physical volume they occupy, are power consumption, heat and fragility. Tubes just aren’t very efficient. In a nutshell we have to reduce the size of the plumbing from oil pipeline scale to drinking fountain size. But we have made a few discoveries that may help. If you’ll follow me...”
Suddenly an arc from a high voltage transformer lit up the shop with a brilliant flash. Turning toward the source the Vagabonds were transfixed as a worker apparently tidying up a workbench shorted a circuit with his own body and was held in a rigor tension as the voltage coursed through him. Felix sprinted toward the man, grabbing a wooden hook-pole as he went. He jammed the hook into a massive knife switch eye pulling it open. The worker collapsed to the floor, and before anyone could reach him to render aid he began dissolving into a thick mass of smoke.
Fogarty had seen this before in Shanghai and began shouting commands. “Hit the button, Ed. We’ve been infiltrated!” He raced back to the trio of industrialists, their mouths agape in horror, as a klaxon blared and doors began swinging shut. “C’mon, we have get you to a safe place right now!”
Herding the group toward the far end of the cavern-like facility, Felix could see AEGIS ground forces already pouring onto the grounds and into the building. Hustling his charges along, he grunted with effort to swing open a heavy steel door leading to a set of stairs which descended into a basement. There they were met by four armed security men. “Get these men to the Oar Lock and seal it off. No one but me or Chief Esterhaus releases you. Got that?”
“Yessir, Felix. Do you have an estimate?”
“Complete assessment and interrogation. Could be several hours. No one in or out.”
“Gentlemen,” the guard intoned seriously, “please follow me. Your cooperation is required.”
Firestone began to object but Edison put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. “Let them do their work, Harvey. We’ll be safe.”
Now that his civilian charges had been handed off Fogarty could concentrate on the issue at hand. He pulled the Iver-Johnson Model Three .38 revolver from his jacket pocket, flipped open the cylinder to check his ammo, then closed it with grim resolve. AEGIS troops seemed to have secured the shop so he headed to inspect what remained of the Silver Star agent. He knew it wouldn’t be much, but any clue would help.
“What do you think, Eula? How did we end up with a Silver Star janitor?”
All five feet of Security Chief Eula Esterhaus craned her neck to make eye contact with Fogarty. “Too early to tell. But all daytime staff and personnel are accounted for and under wraps in the mess hall.” She holstered her Colt .45 automatic, standard sidearm issue for officers of AEGIS security. The weapon looked like a cannon in her small hands but Felix knew her aim was deadly as she had demonstrated on the training range many times and, he suspected, in the field as well.
“My agents are collecting overnight staff to bring them in too. Family background checks are already under way to see if we missed anything when we hired new people.” At twenty nine years of age she was blessed with a flawless deep olive skin to go with a tidy bob of chestnut hair and matching eye color. Her trim figure looked ready to handle bad guys of any heft or threat. An early AEGIS hire, Eula Esterhaus had worked undercover in the Mediterranean for the first few years, before taking command of the brand new Security division at headquarters. She was smart, capable and seemed embarrassed that this breach had happened on her watch.
“Don’t let it bother you,” Felix said as he noted nearby agents. “This is a big operation, and so is Astrum Argentum. Crowley has eyes and ears nearly everywhere. Little wonder he managed to put someone inside our home turf.” Fogarty sat in an oak office chair so he could be eye to eye. “Who’s doing interrogation?”
“Don Jackson and Emily Louis. Tag team. What bothers me is I’ve seen dozens of his minions go up in sparkly smoke and we’re still no closer to a method to identify them beforehand. It’s my home turf and it makes me mad.”
“Well, let’s get to work.” Felix was all business but like his Security Chief, this identification problem bothered him too.
☐
“Damn the luck! Damn! Damn! Damn! Stupid mistakes, over and over again! This has got to stop.” Song Li was a lithe Asian tiger on the prowl, and despite her petite physical status, men more than twice her size averted their eyes or cowered fearfully at her seething rage. The debacle in Shanghai hung over her reputation like a sword of Damocles; threatening to slice her head off at the neck if she failed Aleister Crowley again. How the Black Dog had avoided repercussions was beyond her, and the fact he actually got a promotion was particularly galling. Now, from her new headquarters in Paterson, New Jersey—chosen for its proximity to Edison’s workshop—she was again thwarted: this time by just plain bad luck. It had taken months to recruit a suitable candidate and yet more time to finally get him in place. All that work was gone in a literal puff of smoke. Worse, AEGIS was alerted to their own vulnerability and the obvious presence of Astrum Argentum agents. Their security would tighten even more and the pace of the research would quicken.
