AEGIS Tales 2, page 5
part #8 of Airship Daedalus Series
“You mean my team has been doing useless busywork for more than a year?” Edison looked to be working himself into a full lather. “More than a year wasted when valuable research could have been underway? Why wasn’t I kept informed of this?”
“Yes, and no,” Frankels responded. “Yes, it was busywork in West Orange, but no, it doesn’t mean no research was done. Your employees come and go, so we took advantage of that. Your best technicians drifted off and we secretly transferred them to another facility. And as far as not telling you, we didn’t tell anyone who wasn’t directly involved, and only when it was absolutely necessary. None of you are trained operatives and one slip of the tongue could have ruined our entire effort.”
“I see it now,” Harvey Firestone mused. “The dog and pony show for us was a cover story to hide that our money was actually going to this new facility somewhere. And I presume the meeting Wonder Boy was coming to in Akron was a ruse as well.”
“Yes it was. In fact the entire train was an AEGIS operation. No civilians were aboard at all, no baggage or mail; only a select group of men and women in place to execute the plan.”
“So where is this other secret facility?” Edison demanded.
“That’s a good question. I think I’ll let our expert answer that one.” Frankels pointed to an object in the sky with a dozen tiny dots trailing it. Soon every eyeball in the camp was fixed on the collection in the sky.
“It’s an airship!” Firestone exclaimed. “Are those fighter planes?”
The viewer’s expectation of a massive airship with trailing fighters had skewed their sense of size. As it drew nearer it became clear this was a vessel a third shorter than the current Daedalus Class. But the astonishing element was that there was no envelope containing a lighter than air mix to hold it aloft. The objects behind were equally surprising to behold. They were best described as flying motorcycles, but without wheels, each piloted by one person wearing standard issue goggles and helmets.
Whisper quiet, the ship and air squadron deployed landing struts and settled to the ground in the meadow at the edge of the campsite. Air bike pilots stood at parade rest next to their machines and a gantry was deployed from the larger ship.
Into the springtime sun stepped Felix Fogarty and Eula Esterhaus. The two walked over to the members of the Vagabonds.
“Gentlemen,” Felix began, “may I present to you the first Commander of the newly formed AEGIS special forces group Defensores Lucem.”
“The Defenders of the Light. I like it,” Joe interjected. “Nice to see you again, Eula.” She nodded an acknowledgment.
“Thank you.” she responded. “And may I propose to the founders of AEGIS a new award for conspicuous gallantry in the face of the forces of evil, the Order of the Paladin and cite Felix Fogarty and Joe Frankels to become the first recipients.”
“You may, Eula.” Edison said. “We will take your recommendations under advisement.” Turning to Fogarty he enthused, “My God, young man, it is good to see you alive and well! What is this you have brought us?”
“This is the prototype Aeroship Athena. I took Jeffrey Briggs original design and ran with it. No gas envelope, turbofans only for propulsion, fully self-sustaining. It can remain aloft until food and water run out for the crew using the only known operating system utilizing miniature circuitry and Lenzium repulsor technology. Each of the air riders is powered the same way.”
“Fantastic! Tell us all about it. May we take a look?” The captains of industry were like kids with new toys.
“Certainly,” said Felix. “Let me tell you how I met Bill Boeing and what I was doing in Seattle.”
Lili LaRue and the
Twisted Tracks
by Brina Williamson
Though her name was rather diminutive, Lili LaRue was anything but. At six-foot-two, she towered over most of the drivers on the racecourse, aided even more by her confident posture and patent leather pumps.
Striding forward to join the others on the starting line, her blue coveralls hugged her widest curves, as she neatly tucked her glossy, red finger waves beneath her motoring helmet.
Slipping on her gloves, Lili spotted an old friend. Two cars down, the trademark fire engine red of Clyde Bernett’s Mercedes-Benz was unmistakable even before its driver approached in matching red coveralls and motoring helmet, his large goggles masking what his excessively bushy mustache didn’t.
Lili chuckled. “Darling Clyde, always did like showing off.”
It was Clyde who had pulled Lili into the racing circuit years ago, and the sight of his car at the starting line always assured her she was in for a healthy competition. Catching his eye with a wave, Lili saluted her old friend with a wink, to say, “may the best woman win,” but instead of returning her salute in his usual, sportsmanlike way, his gaze flicked past without acknowledgment.
The announcer’s voice sounded over the loudspeaker, calling for the competitors to make ready, and each driver lined up in front of their vehicle, poised and ready to run. Lili slipped on her goggles, glancing repeatedly toward Clyde, still puzzled by his behavior. The starting flag dropped and all raced for their cars.
Vaulting into her silver Bugatti type 35C Grand Prix racer, its engine roaring to life at the turn of a switch, Lili set her motor into gear. In a thunder of revving engines, the cars took off, a cloud of black fumes in their wake.
Gripping the wheel, Lili narrowed her sights down the track as several small speedsters shot out in front, but Lili paid them no mind. With 128 horsepower and superior maneuverability, she’d overtake them in no time.
Soon a speedster veered off the track, its overtaxed engine smoking as it slammed into a ditch and rolled out of sight. The racers sped past the wreck, unfazed by the all-too-common sight.
Dirt kicked up off the tracks, spraying across Lili’s face and shoulders as she raced along, a smile crossing her red lips. It was a sensation only experienced on the racing circuit, and Lili lived for it.
Red flashed by on Lili’s right as Clyde sped out ahead. Lili smiled, watching him move into position to slip past two competitors with one of his daring maneuvers. But, once again, Clyde was not himself, as the opening remained unseized by the normally daring driver. Drifting back, Clyde practically allowed Lili and the others to pass him.
Has something gone wrong with his car? thought Lili, before a deafening screech sounded behind her, punctuated by the roar of an explosion.
Gasps echoed among the observers, but Lili remained on course, incapable of looking back without risking her own life. The cars raced on, rounding the wide track only to spot the cleanup crew fighting the flames of the accident. Who had crashed? Lili searched the cars around her for Clyde’s red Mercedes but could find no reassurance it wasn’t him.
Round and round they went, forced by their sponsors to shred across the road until the final car crossed the finish line. Lili ended the race in third place, but all her thoughts remained on the flaming wreck, and her old friend’s welfare.
Lili ran toward the remains of the once-flaming car, and though she hoped against it, the bright red wreckage confirmed her fears. It had been Clyde in the crash, and the small snippets of conversation among the onlookers only left a pit in Lili’s stomach.
“They couldn’t get him out in time.”
“Burnt to a crisp, the poor sap.”
✽✽✽
Lili looked over the scorched Mercedes, made partly of magnesium alloy, which had further facilitated the blaze.
“Thank you for taking a second look at her, Bill,” said Lili.
“No trouble, Lili. Clyde was my friend too.”
“So, did you find anything?”
Bill sighed. “It’s hard to say…I found possible signs of filing on the steering column that could’ve caused it to snap.”
“Filing?”
“Possibly. But it might also be wear and tear, exacerbated by the crash. And that’s not all I found either…”
Lili struggled to hold back her impatience. “Just tell me, from everything you found, is sabotage a possibility?”
Bill hesitated. “It’s a possibility, yes.”
“Then why didn’t you tell the police as much?”
“Because none of it’s remotely conclusive. I didn’t want to cast needless suspicion on the other drivers, you included.”
“Me? Clyde was my friend, why in the world should the police suspect me?”
“The police always look at anyone with a connection to the victim. You would be their primary suspect, Lili.”
“Well, we can’t just leave it alone! Clyde wasn’t himself all through the race and was far too skilled a driver to lose control of a car he was that familiar with. No, someone killed my friend, and if we can’t trust the police to investigate this without bias, then I will.”
“If you find anything that’s more concrete, or points to who might have had a motive, we can take our findings to the police then.”
Lili shook the mechanic firmly by the hand for his assistance. With Clyde’s dazzling reputation in the circuit, he may have been sabotaged to give another driver an edge, but if this were the case, surely more than one car would have been tampered with. Was Clyde singled out, or had any other cars gotten the same treatment?
Before setting off, Lili requested Bill try to get access to the other cars and search for signs of sabotage while she investigated the other drivers. With the crash already labeled a tragic accident, they would need to gather as much evidence of who had a motive, if they hoped to pique the police’s interest in reopening the investigation.
✽✽✽
The most likely to benefit from dispatching Clyde were the first- and second-place winners, but with only a cursory glance into their backgrounds, Lili found both men to have clear records of being well-established in the circuit as excellent competitors and would hardly risk sabotaging another man’s car for a win they could easily snatch up on their own merit. Neither man had any sign of gambling addictions or outstanding debts; indeed, they both seemed to be infuriatingly upstanding fellows.
Even more infuriating was the news from Bill that he could find no evidence of sabotage on any of the cars he’d been allowed access to. Which meant it might have been Clyde himself, and not the race, which was the target, and the race had only been an easy means of killing him without raising suspicion.
With little to go on, Lili found herself rolling up to Clyde’s house in search of answers. If anyone had a motive to kill him, perhaps some trace could be found in his things. Though, clearly marked letters containing explicit death threats seemed too much to hope for.
Being a woman of unladylike repute, Lili LaRue had fortunately picked up some unladylike skills, automotive expertise being at the top, but also, in this situation specifically, lock picking. With little effort, the back door creaked open, and Lili shook her head at Clyde’s slack security measures. Stepping inside, it felt as though the cluttered rooms were taunting her with the hopelessness of her impending search, and Lili grumbled at Clyde’s sprawling home, wishing he’d embraced even a little minimalism in his life.
Her clicking heels sounded through the lifeless house as she moved from room to room, hardly knowing what she was searching for. A journal, a threatening note, or perhaps a riddle? Around and around she went, peeking behind pillows and shaking out books as she grew increasingly exasperated with the sheer impossibility of her task.
“They make sleuthing look so easy in novels…as though clues just fall from the sky when convenient.”
Stepping into the living room, Lili spotted a stack of letters laying half-covered beneath a mountain of clutter on a corner table. Pushing aside the mess, Lili slipped the envelopes out and began flipping past bills and other mundane correspondence until one marked Neil Bernett, New York caught her attention. It had not been the name, nor the address which had caught Lili’s eye, but rather the handwriting itself, for it strongly resembled the illegible scrawl of someone she had once known well. Someone she had loved.
His name was Daniel Hashimoto, introduced to her through their mutual friend, Clyde Bernett, and from there the romance had blossomed almost instantly…at least, it had after Lili grew impatient waiting for the timid scientist to find the courage to ask her out, and had boldly invited him for a long drive along the Italian coast in her new car.
But about four years ago, in May of 1924, Daniel had vanished without a word, leaving Lili to fear all manner of ghastly possibilities, but never find satisfaction with a single answer. Now she stood, reading a seemingly innocuous letter in his hand, addressed under another name, to her dear friend Clyde, who in all these years hadn’t bothered to mention he’d been in contact with her lost love.
“Oh, Clyde, I could kill you! If you weren’t already dead,” Lili fumed. “Why would you keep this from me? What secret were you two hiding? And is it connected to how you died?”
These questions swirled in her head, and Lili determined to root out the answers. Even if she turned out to be wrong, and the writer wasn’t even Daniel, she had to follow it up and find out for sure. After all, she had an address to go on now. Pocketing the letter, Lili took a final look around the house before exiting out the back door.
Heading for her car, Lili spotted a man crossing the street toward her, and remembered him loitering there before, when she’d pulled up. As he neared, his very appearance gave Lili hesitation. A ragged scar ran down his cheek, and several silver teeth glinted in his growing smile.
“Good evening, Miss,” the stranger said in a thick Boston accent, touching the brim of his black homburg.
“Evening,” Lili said curtly, quickening her pace to pass him as swiftly as possible.
But the stranger stepped abruptly in her path and took hold of her arm. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”
Lili froze. As an independent woman, she had been stopped by such men more than once in her past and had learned the benefits of a solid right hook. Batting her lashes and biting her lip in feigned timidity, Lili clenched her free fist and, without a solitary word, sent the stranger’s head reeling back with an abrupt uppercut to the chin.
His eyes crossed as he fell backward in a dazed stupor and, with this small window of escape, Lili bolted for her car faster than she ever had for any race. Leaping inside, her engine roared to life, and she sped down the road, a cloud of fumes in her wake.
Lying unconscious on the sidewalk, Lili’s would-be attacker’s skin began to sizzle, this vital clue and inexplicable event going unseen by the world around, until his body had fully disintegrated.
✽✽✽
With an overnight bag packed and stowed in the boot of her Mercedes Torpedo Roadster, Lili headed to New York in search of answers. Wind whipped across her face, her cloche hat shielding her perfect finger waves from becoming a tousled mess, not that she would’ve cared in the slightest if they had been. She was enjoying the hours on the road; it was where she was most at home.
The sun flashed and flickered through the trees alongside her, and Lili drank in the atmosphere, but her enjoyment ceased when a distinct black car began drifting into her rear view mirror. More than once, a vehicle crept into view behind her, only to vanish out of sight for a time before returning to follow at a distance for another lengthy stretch of road.
To anyone else, it might have seemed like any old black car, but Lili recognized the make as a Chrysler Imperial, and knew it was the same car each time it reappeared. Someone was tailing her. The road stretched out ahead with no visible turns to utilize, but Lili was patient, keeping close track of the car behind her as she bided her time, cautious not to let on that she’d spotted them.
At last, the moment came to make her move when a clear side road breaking off into a distant town came into view ahead. Slowing near the turn, Lili pulled off to the side of the road, and took a map from her glove box, sticking her nose behind it and giving her pursuers no option but to pass by, or risk showing their hand.
Awaiting the roll of their passing wheels, Lili peeked in her rear view mirror to find that they too had pulled to the side of the road some yards behind her. Gritting her teeth, Lili refolded her map and clutched the wheel of her car. If there was one thing Lili knew how to do well, it was to drive fast, with expert control, and if ever there was a time to utilize her skills, it was now.
With a roll of her shoulders, she shifted into gear and shot from the curb, the idling tail falling swiftly behind as they struggled to catch up. With a tight turn, Lili bolted down the side road as the Chrysler raced to close the rapidly growing distance between them.
Veering down another side street, Lili shifted gears, picking up speed as her tail struggled to round the sharp corner in pursuit. Faster and faster she sped, rounding turn after turn to build the growing gap.
Breaking out onto a two-lane road, an opportunity presented itself to lose her tail completely. Lili waited until the last moment, a skip between two heartbeats, before launching her car into a hard spin across both lanes to tear down a side road going in the opposite direction. With little time to turn, and another car fast approaching, the Chrysler veered off the road in its attempt to follow, plowing into a ditch.
Lili laughed a little as they struggled to recover, tempted to toy with them before losing them completely, but reason won out, and she pushed her car to its limits, turning down every side street she could utilize until her tail was completely out of view. Slipping down another side street, Lili breathed a deep, satisfied sigh. She’d lost them.
✽✽✽
Lili checked and rechecked the address on the envelope, unsure if she had the right place. But it was no mistake, this crumbling brick building was it. This was where she would find answers. She hoped so, at least. Hesitating to approach the front door, Lili thought it best to first look around and perhaps peer inside a window or two, just to be thorough. But the windows presented little peering opportunity, as they were all long overdue for a ruthless cleaning.
