A Shield Against the Darkness Read online

  Airship Daedalus

  A Shield Against

  the Darkness

  By Todd Downing

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN: 978-0-9981989-4-1

  Copyright © 2017 Todd Downing & Deep7 Press

  All Rights Reserved Worldwide

  Edited by Dan Heinrich & Andrea Edelman

  Cover art & design by Todd Downing

  Based on the Airship Daedalus / AEGIS Tales setting and characters by Todd Downing and published in various media by Deep7 Press. Airship Daedalus™ and AEGIS Tales™ are trademarks of Deep7 Press.

  WWW.AIRSHIPDAEDALUS.COM

  Deep7 Press is a subsidiary of Despot Media, LLC

  1214 Woods Rd SE Port Orchard, WA 98366 USA

  WWW.DEEP7.COM

  To the kid inside all of us,

  who never stops searching for adventure.

  - Foreword -

  I ask the reader to bear in mind two things before proceeding.

  Firstly, this novel is a prequel to E.J. Blaine’s Assassins of the Lost Kingdom. Some might wonder why Assassins wasn’t released after this volume, and the answer is simple. When I created the Airship Daedalus property (which has become known as the “AEGISverse”), I didn’t think I’d actually be doing the long-form novel writing myself. My entire career has been spent in narrative and interactive design—and no small amount of screenwriting—so I assumed I would be producing the radio episodes, comics and tabletop game products, and hiring out the novels to other authors. Besides, the basic elements of this story already existed in the comics and radio episodes, so it wasn’t clear that this book would even need to exist…until the muse said otherwise. Which actually brings me full circle, as I began my writing career in narrative fiction. With Darkness, I realized that because a novel can convey far more detail and nuance than a comic book or radio drama, it might be both fun and worthwhile. This presented an excellent opportunity to tackle a story I already knew intimately, and fill in some of the blanks at the same time.

  Secondly, the events of this book do not take place in our historical timeline. The AEGISverse is predicated on an alternate history, with a few major differences. Aside from the existence of functional magic, lost worlds where dinosaurs roam, and practical weird science, the world powers presented (especially the United States) are a generally more benign version of themselves. Extended military enforcement of emancipation during the post-Civil War era led to the absence of a Jim Crow south, and earlier treaties with the indigenous peoples were actually adhered to by the US government, leading to fewer conflicts, more cultural assimilation, and greater mutual respect. I do not pretend the world is without prejudice or evil—this setting is very much a pulp homage and relies on dire conflict and high stakes. But I’ve removed some of the more toxic institutional ills, the historical persons presented are the best (or worst) versions of themselves, and the setting as presented is a more inclusive sandbox.

  If you have already read Assassins, this book tells the story of how the Daedalus crew was assembled, and their first action-packed adventure together (and it contains a lot of material not in the original comics and radio episodes). If you haven’t read Assassins, I highly recommend doing so when you’re done with this volume. If you’re a comic book reader, consider this book an issue #0.

  Todd Downing

  Summer 2017

  - Chapter 1 -

  New Jersey, April, 1925

  Jack McGraw snapped his chewing gum and leaned left on the control stick, feeling the wind roll up under the belly of the plane as it banked into the clouds. His six-foot-four, well-muscled body barely fit in the cockpit of the Curtiss P-1 Hawk. Its frame rattled slightly with the sudden lift from an updraft, and Jack’s stomach did a somersault as the air current let go and he suddenly dropped twenty feet. The plane was an Army surplus model from 1923, recently fitted with a brand new 500-horsepower V-1400 engine, which purred with each roll, skid and dive. Jack smiled under a pair of Resistal aviator goggles which hid piercing blue eyes. His square jaw—bristling with two days’ beard—endlessly worked the Black Jack gum in his mouth. His boss, Jim Morton, had acquired a half dozen of these Army castoffs, which he hoped to turn into a working fleet for regional postal service. Jack hauled back on the stick and the Curtiss nosed high into the clouds above. He loved its quick response and control, even as the advancing storm winds manhandled its frame.

  1925 was going to be a good year for Morton Aviation.

  As he leveled out above a cushion of low clouds, Jack spied something in his periphery. Turning to glance down the line of his right shoulder, he saw another plane, then two.

  Hello, he thought, banking into a turn to close the distance. Two fighters in a reconnaissance formation? Not something you see over New Jersey these days.

  The giant engine revved, and Jack made up some distance, grabbing the pair of field glasses from their storage cubby in the cockpit and peering through them. He scanned for markings, for identifiers, even the basic body shape. They were Fokker planes, he was sure of it. War surplus D.VIIs, by the looks of them. Sleek biplane design, probably fitted with those BMW water-cooled engines from the latter part of the war. Painted pitch black with silver diamond wing markings… no… there was a decidedly concave sweep to the sides of the diamonds. Those were four-pointed stars.

  Less than a decade ago, Jack McGraw had been a young and fearless fighter pilot, one of the countless Americans who had skirted their country’s official neutrality to serve overseas in the Great War. He’d belonged to a squadron of American fliers in the Royal Flying Corps, one of only two aces from that unit. He knew German planes and German tactics, and this chance sighting set him on edge. He angled around to try to keep the sun at his back, but the black planes suddenly banked left and converged toward him at full throttle.

  It was too late to hide—they’d seen him and were closing.

  Jack leaned hard and flipped over into a dive, drawing the enemy fighters behind him. Four Spandau machine guns chattered in his wake, and Jack knew at that moment the pilots must be young and inexperienced. Battle-tested fighter pilots would always lead the target and fire in bursts to conserve ammunition. They certainly wouldn’t have both followed in his dive like these pilots had.

  As the checkered farmland of New Jersey zoomed up at him, Jack pulled back on the stick. He felt his stomach sink into his boots as the horizon dropped and the Curtiss roared into a steep climb. As before, the hostiles followed in the maneuver. Another staccato spray of lead and tracers flew wide.

  Jack knew he was out-manned and outgunned—his weapons numbering exactly zero. He also knew his Hawk had twice the climbing power as the D.VIIs, better speed and a slightly higher service ceiling. And he had the edge in experience.

  But that didn’t answer his questions: where had they come from, what was their purpose here, and what was he supposed to do about them—aside from simply avoiding being shot down? There weren’t any D.VIIs at any of the airfields in the northeast region, of that he was certain. So they weren’t local. If anything they looked like an elite offshoot of some Central Powers military force. But if that were the case, was the U.S. under attack by a foreign nation?

  Jack leveled out of the climb at about 8,000 feet, cloaking the Curtiss above a bank of clouds, thinking frantically as the fighters pulled higher beneath him. Then the veil of mist beneath the Curtiss became instantly black and swelled up like the sea under a breaching whale. It surprised Jack, who throttled back and climbed again as a mammoth form erupted from the clouds. Eight hundred feet long and two hundred wide, the Luftpanzer was a leviathan. Torpedo-shaped and metallic black in color, the nose and tail fins were marked with the same four-pointed star
icon. The roar of sixteen diesel engines cut through the air like its fuselage cut through the vapor. Jack couldn’t remember seeing a zeppelin of such scale during the war, on any side. It rose through the sky in a wide turn east.

  He felt his stomach leap into his throat, and his mouth went suddenly dry. In most people, such an encounter would have inspired a primal fear response. For Jack McGraw, it was excitement. Who did this airborne behemoth belong to? And why was it here?

  # # #

  The bridge of the Luftpanzer was broad and cold, a latticework of aluminum struts and tempered glass windows, spartan save for the twin steering wheels and one duty station to each side. To port sat the comm station, an Austrian radioman dutifully searching the airwaves with headset covering his ears. To starboard, the navigator’s station, where a scar-faced, bespectacled Romanian poured over charts and maps of the Atlantic coastline.

  Behind the two uniformed helmsmen stood the impressive Captain Jonas Ecke, sapphire eyes peering out from beneath the brim of his cap, a well-trimmed but voluminous white beard hiding a troubled expression. Next to him, a tall, slender woman paced the floor. She wore a black uniform almost identical to Ecke’s, with the same collar tabs bearing a silver four-pointed star. Her officer’s cap was pulled down just above almost-feline gray-blue eyes, her severe features accentuated by a short bob of raven-black hair. Shiny black knee-boots and jodhpurs completed the look. Maria Blutig scowled, visibly unhappy with the results of the day’s reconnaissance.

  Suddenly the radioman turned in his seat, one hand on his headset. “Alarm! Our fighters have engaged an American plane off the port stern!”

  Maria spun to face the man. “American plane?”

  “Ja. Civilian aircraft.”

  Captain Ecke regarded his associate with a slight tinge of exasperation. “Of course, Maria. We are in their airspace. It is not safe for us here.”

  “The American plane has seen us and must be destroyed!” Maria insisted.

  Ecke glared with an arched eyebrow. “And what will happen when the local authorities discover the wreckage? When the U.S. government finds out?”

  Maria locked eyes with the veteran airship commander and he could almost see the heat radiating from her gaze, but he didn’t back down.

  “Firing on this pilot is an act of war, and not part of our mission here,” he maintained.

  There was an awkward pause as the cogs turned in Maria Blutig’s mind. The respect she maintained for Ecke, and the fear inspired by their mutual master, prohibited further debate. “Very well,” she sighed. She turned away from the captain and barked at the crew. “Call back the escorts!”

  # # #

  Jack watched from a distance as the German planes banked away and took up docking positions under the giant ship. Had they overstepped their mission parameters by engaging with him? What wasn’t he supposed to have seen? Something told him they shouldn’t have been this far inland, and that they hadn’t prepared for encountering local aircraft—a sign of poor planning in Jack’s mind. He knew that in their place, if he wanted his presence to remain secret and he’d already fired on a civilian plane, he’d probably hightail it out of there as quickly as possible. It seemed like that was exactly what they were doing.

  He glanced down at his fuel gauge and realized he’d been aloft far longer than he’d thought, what with the short but one-sided dogfight. There would be no further interaction with this Luftpanzer or its fighter escorts today. He’d file a report when he got back to the airfield and let the authorities take it from there.

  The massive zeppelin turned south and became a shrinking dark silhouette in the afternoon sky, and Jack McGraw banked the Curtiss toward the patchwork of fields and farmlands below.

  # # #

  He descended over the new airfield at Kenilworth, dropping to a smooth landing in the dusty gravel. Turning the Curtiss off the landing strip, he taxied toward the midfield hangar, where a crew of mechanics would double-check the engine before putting her away for the night.

  As he brought the plane to a stop near the hangar, he noticed a black Ford Model T touring car parked by the office. A couple of burly men in trench coats and fedoras stood nearby as a woman in a wool jacket and cloche hat approached the runway.

  Powering the engine off, Jack hopped out of the pilot’s seat and slid down to find purchase on the lower wing. He raised the flight goggles to his forehead and squinted as he watched the woman come closer.

  “Well well well,” said a warm voice. “Look what fell from the sky.”

  A rush of memories flooded back to him and he recognized someone he’d known years ago. Someone he’d shared a war with. Someone he’d loved.

  “What the—?” Jack stammered. “If it isn’t nurse Dorothy Brown!”

  He smiled in spite of himself, feeling bewildered and attracted simultaneously. She hadn’t changed in the six years since the war. Sure, they both had acquired some “experience lines” around the eyes, but she was still the same slender brunette, with the same mischievous, disarming smile and sparkling emerald eyes that made his chest hurt. The same feeling he’d had when she’d broken off their romance in Paris in 1918.

  “Starr, actually,” she corrected him, still smiling. “And it’s been six years since I was stitching up doughboys at the front, Captain McGraw. I’m all grown up, with an M.D. now.”

  Jack reached up with a gloved hand and nudged the flight cap back on his head, releasing a sweaty lock of dishwater blond hair from underneath. “Fair enough, Doctor Starr,” he said. “ And what brings you to this airfield in Nowhere, New Jersey?”

  For a moment, Jack thought he sensed nervousness, but then it was gone, and the woman returned to her heartbreaking smile.

  “I have a proposition for you.”

  Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He put on his best poker face and decided to indulge in some sparring. “A proposition? Isn’t that a bit forward, Doctor?”

  Dorothy Starr was in no mood for the game. In an instant her smile was gone, replaced by a look that was all business. “Isn’t that a bit presumptive, Captain?” she shot back. “The proposition isn’t from me.”

  Jack folded his arms across his broad chest. His leather jacket creaked with the motion.

  “Then who’s it from?”

  The playful smile returned to her face. “Let’s just say you won’t want to miss this opportunity. Glenmont Manor, 7 p.m. Should we send a car?”

  “I can take a taxi,” Jack replied.

  “Good. Might want to wash up.” She turned and began to walk back to the Ford.

  Jack suddenly blinked in a realization. “Wait a minute. Glenmont? Isn’t that—?”

  “Edison’s home?” Dorothy finished. “Yes, it is.”

  She arrived at the car and one of the men opened the rear door in anticipation. She turned back to face Jack and warned, “Remember what I said about washing up.”

  Then she was in the car and so were the men in long coats, and the Ford pulled away onto Coolidge Drive, leaving Jack McGraw one very confused pilot.

  - Chapter 2 -

  The sun had set in layers of deep orange and purple which gradually gave way to a starlit sky. A black Checker cab negotiated the circular driveway in front of Glenmont, pulling to a stop under the cover of the second floor living room which thrust from the house to overlook the front lawn like the eye of a cyclops. The structure rested on brick pillars and created a covered approach which allowed for guests—or Edison himself—to come and go without regard to inclement weather.

  Jack paid the hack and got out, facing the east entry of the formidable Queen Anne mansion with a slight sense of apprehension. He cleaned up well, having donned a tweed sport jacket, gray twill trousers and a white fedora. He’d also rid his jaw of the beard which had cultivated over the past few days.

  The taxi pulled away, and Jack cleared the steps to the front door, knocking tentatively.

  There was an ominous clunk from inside as the bolt was drawn back
and the heavy door opened into a lavish reception area. A butler in black livery welcomed him inside. As Jack removed his hat and handed it to the butler, he heard another set of doors open, and a loud welcome from a white-haired man of almost-80 in a powder gray three-piece suit.

  “Come in! Come in!”

  Following him was Dorothy Starr, dressed in a black dinner gown, with an expression that told Jack she was seeing him in a completely different light.

  Edison moved to shake Jack’s hand firmly. “Captain McGraw! Delighted to meet you, sir.”

  Jack couldn’t believe he was being personally greeted by the Wizard of Menlo Park.

  “Likewise, Mr. Edison. Please, call me Jack.”

  Edison turned, indicating Dorothy. His voice was much louder than it need have been, but he was compensating for his hearing impairment. “You already know our charming Dr. Starr.”

  Dorothy nodded, a slight blush to her cheeks. “Captain.”

  Jack allowed himself a half-smile. “Doc…” he nodded, then returned to business. “Forgive my impatience, Mr. Edison, but Dorothy mentioned a proposition. What’s this all about?”

  Edison grew serious for a moment, then clapped him on the shoulder as if they were old friends. “Not to worry, Jack. All in due time. Won’t you come with me?”

  The old man led them around the corner through a beautiful dark wood archway into a well-appointed drawing room. Jack stooped just inside the arch and took the room in. He could picture Edison burning the midnight oil at his desk, coming up with the next great invention to send down to the boys in Research & Development. The windows in the room looked west, opposite of the east-facing entry. Jack could see the dark silhouettes of structures further out on the property.