Marconi plays the Mamba,
listen to the radio
One week, 27 Kraken beaks and many air miles later, in the office of Sprokitt and Kogg, two very weary airship captains sipped mugs of hot coffee.
Phineas looked at Jack over the rim of his coffee mug and said, "We may be making a lot of money, for ourselves and our crews, but we are all too tired to enjoy any of it."
Jack nodded and replied, "I hope Jacob can get Bane back to me with her modifications soon. Nymbus needs a rest too. And you will have to fly her while Doom gets her new radio gear."
"Starla sent the gear over yesterday. Her tech says it can be installed in a couple of hours, and there is a new wrinkle in place for us. She says we cannot only intercept the signals to the Kraken, we will be able to scramble them. We may be able to immobilize the Kraken, and kill them in that state!"
Jack sat upright, "If we don't have to actually fight the Kraken, I should be able to concentrate on hunting the pirates. This may be the break for which we had hoped."
They had a 24-hour furlough, and used every second of it in sleep and light exercise. Jack took easy walks around Never Drift and visited with neighbours whom he rarely got to see in these very busy days.
Phineas did much the same from his rooms at Brunel Hall.
When it was time to pick up the next convoy for escort, Jacob met them at the lift-off area.
"It's ready, I have tested The Device and it works perfectly. The homing seekers have been installed on 24 of your torpedoes. I could only procure two of the homing goggle selectors, so you only have one spare. Keep them in the protective cases until needed. I have no idea how the Marconi Set works but I am assured it will intercept the signals to the Kraken and sound an alert, and then it can be used to send a signal that will scramble the Krakens senses and render it ineffective. It has been installed on Kraken Doom. This combination should give you a wicked blow to deliver. Hit them hard."
The convoy lifted off the loading docks and formed the usual V formation. Phineas took the high forward position and Jack took the low rear position: the plan being that he could use his new weapons to their best effect from there.
Ajax took the lead Cargo Blimp position and Susan wore her revolver in a secure shoulder holster. The convoy sailed forward into a clear sky with a 3 knot tail wind.
Phineas was eyeing a bank of Cumulus. They were passing the fluffy clouds on their port side when the Marconi device on his console began to emit a series of pingity pingity sounds, that signaled that a Kraken was being activated. Phineas turned Doom to face the cloud bank when a pair of Kraken emerged from its fleecy banks. As Doom sped to the attack, both gunners ready, Phineas calmly lifted the cover on his console and flipped the toggle switch.
Instantly both Kraken stopped advancing and gradually coasted to a stop. They began to writhe and twist, their tentacles flailing wildly. The cutter passed between them and Doom’s gunners fired at the same instant. Both Kraken went still from shots to the head and began their descent to the surface.
As aerial gunnery was taking place, Jack had turned on The Device, and just as predicted, the surface disappeared and he was looking at sea floor in all directions.
Directly under the cumulus cloud, a long, dark form was rising from the sea floor. It stopped just short of the surface. What Jack was sure was a periscope, raised up to just where the surface had been only minutes before. The instant Jack had seen the huge fish shaped submarine, he had put Bane into a turn to port and a steep dive. He placed the tracking goggles over his eyes and launched his forward port torpedo.
He had to curb his instinct to follow the progress of his "fish" through the water. He kept his goggles cross hairs on the target and as the torpedo struck the surface its clockwork mechanism drove it on an unerring course. It struck the submarine where Jack had held his cross hairs and the resulting "whump" could be heard by his whole crew.
The submarine dumped all her ballast and broke the surface like a cork. Crew began to emerge from the sub’s tower and mounted a deck gun in its mount and sent a bullet whistling by Jack’s head. His gun crew both cried out that the sub was out of range of their cannon.
Jack heard a loud report and saw a bright muzzle flash to his starboard. Ajax was beside him and Susan had taken the gunner out with her rifled belly mounted gun. Another pair of rounds took the submarine’s deck gun off its mounts and over the side.
Bane and Ajax approached the submarine slowly. Jack was still out of range for his cannon, but Susan never took her eyes off the vessel’s hull. Two more men emerged from the submarine’s deck with another gun, but the gun turret in Ajax’s belly barked three times and both men and the gun were swept from the deck. Jack was unsure of his next move. He wanted to move in and take prisoners but this bunch of pirates seemed far too eager to fight for his taste. His crew had not signed on for hand to hand combat with hardened pirates.
The submarine itself made the decision. Jack heard a low rumble over the sound of Susan using her gun to rain a constant storm of bullets off the submarine’s iron hull. He spun Bane on her keel and poured on full steam in the opposite direction. Bits of shredded submarine flew past his gondola, buzzing like a swarm of angry, metallic bees. He looked over his shoulder to see Ajax being thrown backward by the shock wave from the explosion and then the blast as it hit Bane.
Bane bucked and jumped but stayed aloft. Ajax had somehow not been dealt a mortal blow but several bits of shrapnel had pierced her gas bag. The self-sealing rubber liner was taxed, but holding.
When Bane had recovered from her thumping, Jack spun her back again and began looking for survivors.
The crew appeared to number about 15, including officers. None seemed to have survived the blast that destroyed the submarine. Jack despaired of finding anyone alive, so thorough was the devastation. As he was about to halt the search, he noticed a wooden table top that was drifting away from the area of wreckage; drifting rather quickly for a table top. He picked up a mooring snare and turned Bane in the direction of this wayward piece of flotsam. As he approached ,his eye caught a glimpse of a pair of kicking feet. The mooring snare gripped said flipping feet and hauled a man onto the deck of Kraken Bane. He was kicking and punching anyone who came close but Brad and Chandler soon had him subdued and bound, hand and foot.
"I will tell you nothing, so do your worst on me," the prisoner said.
They prepared to lift off when Brad spotted another crewman who might still be alive. When hauled aboard, he was breathing and moaning softly, with a bullet wound through his left side.
Jack called out to Susan that he was taking the prisoners to C O U Medical Center and to meet him there with Phineas when the convoy was docked and unloaded.
The race to Medical Center was largely uneventful; the first captive cursed everyone on board with pure vitriol, and was not heard to repeat himself, even once. The badly wounded prisoner continued to moan while Chandler cleansed his wounds and kept bleeding to a trickle.
Two hours later Jack waited for Susan and Phineas in the secure hangar and office, to discuss the battle and get reports from all participants. Jacob walked in with Wyatt in tow, and joked, "Look who I found loitering about the airship docks."
Seconds later, Phineas and Susan entered as well, and exclaimed, "Hail, hail, the gangs all here." At which point Starla made her appearance.
Coffee service was brought in and everyone settled in chairs around the big table, Jack said, "Do we want written reports on any of today’s events"?
Jacob spoke immediately, " NO. Not just no; HELL NO! Some of this affair is still in top secret mode. I want no hard evidence of this discussion. You promised me that Jack."
"Fair enough. None of this will leave this room."
Jack looked at everyone and all were nodding in assent.
Jack took a deep breath and said, " OK, I will start this off. I thought the cumulus cloud looked suspicious and I have always felt the hair on my neck tingle when Kraken are about. So I flipped the switch on The Device. Instantly the surface disappeared and I spotted the submarine hanging off the bottom and starting to rise to its periscope depth. I put on the homing goggles and took Bane into a steep curving dive at the boat. As soon as I was in reasonable range, I launched my #! torpedo and fixed my crosshairs on the submarine. The fish tracked straight as an arrow, and nailed that sub in her port flank. The charge in the nose fired on impact.”
Jack recounted all the events that took place ending with his run with prisoners to the Medical Center and sat down.
Phineas took the floor to recount his adventure.
"I have little to report. I heard the Kraken Alarm just as Jack took his rapid descent. Two Kraken came like arrows at the convoy. I turned Doom in their direction and flipped up the switch on the scrambler wave. The effect was astonishing; both beasts stopped their advance and coasted to a stop. Their arms began flailing wildly about, and their whole body was quivering. Then waves of color in every hue spread from the tips of their tentacles to the opposite end of their bodies. I was transfixed for a second watching them. Becca and Drew woke me with reports from their cannon. They had calmly shot each Kraken in the head and watched as the bodies drifted down to the surface. Becca made some remark about shouldn't we bag ‘em and tag ‘em and by the time we finished that chore Jack and Bane were streaking off with prisoners. So strange, after our previous battles with Kraken, this was like shooting cans off a log, behind Dad’s house."
Jacob had no news to report; the Navy was picking up bits of submarine and bodies of pirates from the site, but there was no information about the sub or its crew yet. He would keep them apprised when he knew more.
Starla sat back in her chair, good a deep drink of her coffee and set the mug carefully on the table. "I have some interesting news to report. The crewman that Susan shot is expected to recover. He is unconscious at the moment but will be interrogated when he is well enough. The savage you apprehended while trying to escape has kicked one of our interns, bitten a nurse on her hand and promised to kill every human in the medical complex. He has special plans for Jack and his whole crew."
At this point, she shook her head and took another long sip of coffee.
"He swore that no level of torture would get anything out of HIM! I told him that I didn't believe that tortures produced reliable results and showed him the syringe. He turned fish belly white. So called Truth Serum works on some people better than others. It made this bird sing: like an expensive canary in a solid gold cage."
Starla looked at the others over the rim of her coffee mug and said, "I have confidence that everything he said is what he believes. That does not actually mean it is hard fact. That being said, this is what we learned."
"He was the Captain of the submarine. He is not very bright, and knows only what he was taught to do."
"He does not know anything about leaf technology, and he thinks I made it up to trick him."
"The submarine was well armed and her crew trained to fight and never surrender. The explosion that ripped her apart was caused by her arms magazine exploding"
"He only knows of two other submarines but he heard that one more was being constructed."
"He does not know where the secret base is located. The submarines are tended weekly by a large, high speed, surface craft. They were resupplied yesterday. They check in by wireless every day."
"They are members of the Cobalt Brotherhood and many of them wear this tattoo on their chest" A screen lit up showing a photo.
Susan spoke up, "What the screaming blue blazes is the Cobalt Brotherhood"?
Starla replied, "We aren’t sure who or what they are, but we do know that they are responsible for the Kraken attacks. They are also aware that "we" have been killing their pets with great effect and in gay abandon. They will soon know that we have taken out one of their submarines."
No one answered.
Starla spoke again, "If you have questions about any of what I just shared with you, please send them to my attention and I will answer if I can. Both of our Cobalt guests are resting at the moment. They are restrained and heavily sedated. The plan is to have another interrogation tomorrow morning. They are being guarded by four of the largest men I have ever seen: all of them in Navy uniform and carrying enough weapons to overload a truck. Jacob, I will ask that these gentlemen are moved from this facility as soon as my Doctors deem them well enough. They overstayed their welcome several hours ago."
Jacob smiled and said, “I am sure you have had your fill of their suave charm. A special place is being prepared for them, and that facility has a well-equipped surgery and medical staff. As soon as you clear them to be moved, they will be removed.”
As the group stood to leave with congratulatory handshakes all around, Wyatt said softly in Jack’s ear, "Green Door in two hours." Jack merely nodded.
***
Elder Tong opened the door and ushered them into the cafe and said, "Wyatt awaits you in his office."
The brothers found Wyatt at his desk sipping a cup of fragrant mint tea.
He nodded at the table and bade them help themselves. As they settled in to the refreshments, Jacob Elwood strode in.
Wyatt took a deep breath and said, "You realize of course that we are all in danger?"
The other three men nodded in agreement.
Jacob said, "We could have guessed that they wouldn't be happy that we had damaged the effective ability for their attack force. Jack and Phineas have killed a lot of tonnage in Kraken, and that was not something they expected.
The certainly didn’t expect to have the "collection " teams hit so hard and so early. Now they are going to want to hit back."
Wyatt said, "Exactly so. We must all be armed at all times."
Jacob nodded in agreement; however, his plan was to hit first, and he planned to make life very interesting for the Brothers Cobalt.
To be continued
(c) All text and pictures by Jack Tracker
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