Konrad

Konrad trailed behind Von Braun and Lusser as they left the stockade, his heart pounding at his ribs like Reel in her cage. The other two men held a muttered conversation ahead of him, but Konrad wasn’t paying attention to them. Whatever he’d thought he might ask her, he saw that there was no hope of getting an answer. The scattered words of Torellan he’d scraped together had barely been enough to tell her that he meant to help her, let alone ask about how the pieces of machine he saw in his mind fit together. Even if he could have puzzled out how to ask, he hadn’t understood more than one word in ten that she had growled out from between the bars of her cell, and none of those had been useful, or even polite. At least he’d been able to tell her that he was going to help her...She’d seemed to understand that.

The doors of the brig clanged shut behind him and he jumped in surprise; he hadn’t even realized that they’d left the building. Lusser and von Braun were still talking, as though Konrad wasn’t even there, their voices rising. Von Braun’s face was purpling with impotent anger.

“You should have come to me first. Hurting her like that, tearing the implant out, you could have killed her!”

“And what of it?” Lusser dismissed the rebuke with a casual wave of his hand. “She’s little better than an animal. What does one creature’s suffering matter if it means we win the war?”

“If,” Von Braun growled back. His big fists clenched by his sides, squeezing. “That’s a big if. What will this cost us, when her people learn what you’ve done?”

Lusser gave von Braun a pitying look. “What does it matter, Wernher? This will win the war. Come, see what we’ve done.”

Utter loathing for Lusser flooded through Konrad, hot and sticky. The man knew that Reel was no animal, but it didn’t matter to him in the slightest. For some reason Konrad couldn’t clearly identify, that made him a thousand times angrier than all of the hundreds of petty and not so petty abuses he’d suffered at the arrogant bastard’s hands. Konrad took a step towards Lusser’s back, picturing himself tearing the man’s hair out by the roots as he dragged the fool to the ground. He brought his hand up, reaching…

A thick, heavy hand grabbed his wrist, forcing it down. Konrad started out of his reverie, blinking as the red mist cleared from his mind. Von Braun’s clear blue eyes stared intently at him. “Don’t,” he hissed, a single quiet word, and then he released Konrad’s arm and stepped away, just as Lusser turned, frowning, to see what was keeping them.

He was fast enough, but barely. Lusser sneered suspicion at them both for a long moment. He knew that something had passed between them, but he didn’t know what. They stood like that for what seemed an age, staring at each other, as Konrad’s rage drained out of him.

“You were going to show us what you’d been working on?” Von Braun prompted, his voice flat.

Lusser considered them with his flat, snake eyes for an instant longer before turning with a shrug. “Yes; we have a test flight scheduled, I think you’ll appreciate how fast we’ve moved.”

Von Braun blinked at that. “You have something ready to fly already?”

Lusser shrugged in false modesty. “It’s something of a rush job, but it will do what it needs to. Come on, they have it out of the hangar already.”

Von Braun let Lusser pull ahead and leaned over to whisper to Konrad. “Don’t do anything stupid; we’ll help her, I promise, just…be patient,” he said, then hurried to catch up with Lusser.

Konrad didn’t believe him. For all that von Braun might be the commander of this base in name, Lusser had wrangled true control, and the fact that von Braun was now trotting after him like a whipped hound only accentuated that truth. So his promise meant nothing.

No, that’s not fair. He meant it. But he’s just as trapped as I am. Dejected, Konrad dragged after the other men. Even if he really wanted to help, he couldn’t. Lost in his own dark thoughts, Konrad nearly ran into von Braun and Lusser when they came to stop at the edge of the landing strip by the hangar.

A crowd had gathered to watch, dozens of lab-coated scientists and off-duty soldiers clustered around the edges of the strip. A massive, modified Messerschmitt bomber dominated the field. Sharp, sweeping triangular wings stretched from one end of the clearing to the other. White pods hung underneath the wings–they’d used four of Reel’s engines, replacing two of the original propellers and both gun turrets with them. A countdown started from somewhere across the field.

“The engines are simply magnificent; there’s no reason this thing can’t go to the edge of space and back, so long as the pilots are protected,” Lusser said happily, as the engines whirred to life. “We’ve wired in the power generator and additional power packs from Reel’s ship, and initial testing indicates that this thing can carry a multi-ton payload indefinitely.”

Von Braun and Konrad watched, spellbound, as the thing lifted into the air and pirouetted over the landing strip, as graceful as a dancer. “You’re going to drop bombs from…what, a hundred kilometers up? How could you ever hope to aim them?” The older man asked, not taking his eyes from the plane. The engines turned smoothly in their mounts, the plane didn’t even wobble.

Dr. Lusser shrugged carelessly. “Bombs are the obvious option. But why limit ourselves? We can fly so high…I was thinking of big tungsten rods, maybe thirty or so feet long. Drop them from far enough up, and, well...”

At first, that seemed like silliness. But as Konrad thought about it, he realized the implication. The rod would be moving…he wasn’t sure how fast, but it had to be pretty damn fast, when it hit. All that speed, all that weight…the forces involved would be astronomical.

“No bunker would be safe,” Von Braun whispered.

Lusser spread his hands, smiling broadly. “And anywhere in the world, no less. If the United States refuses our terms? We pulverize their capital and move down the list from there until they comply. There will be no place they can hide.” His smile took on a cruel, bloodthirsty edge. “We will finally have air superiority over not just England, but the entire world. All by virtue of simply flying higher!” He laughed and slapped von Braun on the back, a too friendly gesture that bordered on contemptuous. “You’ve been thinking too small, Herr Doktor!”

He was right, Konrad thought bleakly as the monstrosity settled itself back down onto the landing strip. He wanted to object, point out some flaw in the plan, but he couldn’t see any. Lusser really would win the war overnight. Even von Braun seemed to be at a loss for words.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Lusser went on, smug as a cat full of cream. “I have some great ideas about how to use the gravity plates, too. If we can reverse them, make them “push” instead of “pull”, the fields they generate might be useful for deflecting even large anti-aircraft rounds.”

Great, it would be bulletproof too. But something about that thought, of adjusting the power of the gravity plates, niggled at him. It snagged some fragment of knowledge leftover from the implant and dragged at it like a hangnail catching a thread.

He was on the point of grasping that thread when a tall, hawkish guard hurried up to them, puffing and out of breath. He leaned over to whisper something in Lusser’s ear. Whatever he said banished the smile from Lusser’s face, and a grim, angry expression stole in to replace it.

“Show me,” he commanded, and the guard led him away, Lusser signaling to two other soldiers to join them as he went. He didn’t even bother to pretend to consult von Braun, who stood watching them depart, his shoulders hunched, glowering.

“What do you want to do, sir?” Konrad asked, and von Braun started as though he’d forgotten he was even there.

“I’m not sure,” The former commander admitted, grimacing back across the field at the monstrous…Konrad wasn’t sure if it qualified as a plane anymore. A ship, maybe? At the ship, where the pilot was clambering out of the hatch. The man sealed the door with an enormous padlock, handing the key off to security, before clambering down the wheeled stairs. “I need to go to my office to think…see if I can find a way to…” Von Braun trailed off. To what? Konrad wondered. To wrest control back from Lusser, to salvage something from the situation? Neither seemed very likely. “Well, to think,” Von Braun finished lamely. “What will you do?”

“Can I take a look at those gravity plates, if there are any that Lusser's team hasn’t taken?” Konrad asked. His scrambling brain found the trailing edge of the thread of his earlier thought, and as he pulled on it, he thought he could feel understanding just beyond his reach. If he could see the plates, maybe take one apart, he thought he might be able to grasp it. If he was going to free Reel, he needed some edge…maybe the plates would provide it.

Von Braun shrugged. “I don’t see why not. All the bits they tore out of that ship are stored in Building C, second story, just under his office. He wanted it all close... You may have to hunt around a bit.”

...

When von Braun had said all the bits, he really had meant all the bits. Lusser’s men had stuffed three separate storage rooms with everything but the frame of Reel’s ship, and Konrad supposed that the only reason it wasn’t here too was that it was too big to fit through the door. It took him an hour to find a pair of plates that Lusser’s team had overlooked, and a few more to find a clear space to work on them. Lusser’s people had suborned every bench, table, and chair in the place for storage, with unidentifiable parts of the ship boxed up and stacked across their surfaces. Great spools of glassine cable, slick and flexible, lay coiled around plates covered with supremely delicate filigrees of circuitry. Stacks of broad metal fans made of dozens of thin, hollow tubes bound side by side towered over a dozen perfect, fist-sized crystals.

Konrad settled for sweeping some of the less fragile looking parts gingerly into a pile and heaved the plates up onto the stained wood of a table with a thump. He panted with the exertion, looking down at it. The front and back were thin, plain steel, perhaps three feet across. Other than being of excellent quality, there was nothing remarkable about them. He stooped to consider the sides instead.

The edges were about a hand’s-breadth tall, and inset an inch or so into the body of the plate. A dial dominated the center of the space, just like what you’d find on any radio, surrounded by a circle of alien symbols. That would be a power setting...but Konrad didn’t think that as it was, the plate could do what Lusser had described. Offset to one side was a rounded power socket, and a cluster of other buttons.

Konrad hesitated, considering the power socket. The thread of thought in his mind dangled, tickling him with every twist of his brain. He would need a power cell that fit that socket, but…how did he even know that?

He couldn’t say. Rubbing at the back of his head, he stared at it, sucking at his teeth. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew, knew beyond any doubt, that that’s what it was. The more he looked at it, the more certain he became. Mentally, he took hold of that thread of thought and pulled. What do I do once I give it power?

Something broke in his head, and a swirl of images flooded his mind. He gasped, bracing himself against the table for support. Sweat beaded on his brow as he clutched at the edge of the rough-grained wood, his fingernails tearing at it. Tools, he needed tools.

Throwing caution to the wind, he pitched priceless power packs out of his way, rooting through the piles for Reel’s toolbox. He’d seen her use it on the subspace transmission unit, a slender case that folded double on itself to protect the contents.

He found it under the very table he’d been working on, after ten minutes spent destroying delicate machinery in his hurry. It didn’t seem like the other scientists had even realized what it was; it rested closed, and when he found the catch and opened it the tools inside were undisturbed. He grabbed for something that looked analogous to a socket wrench, and it felt somehow at once too big and just right in his hand. The implant left more than a few words behind, he thought to himself in a daze. What would that do to him, long term? He pushed the thought aside; he didn’t have time to worry about that right now.

Konrad straightened and felt along the edges of the underside of the top plate, next to the inset, hunting for the bolts that he knew were there. Scattered fragments of memory were coalescing in his mind, checklists of what to do left over from when he’d made his abortive attempt to use the implant. He had the bolts loose in a moment, and eased the top steel cover off the plate.

A bulbous, flat tank squatted in the center of the space, a valve on top. A vision flashed through Konrad’s head of a faulty valve, leaking the same black liquid he’d spilled when he’d messed with the subspace transmission unit. A scaled, clawed hand reached out in his mind’s eye, trying in vain to clamp the valve down as the liquid flashed to vapor around its four fingers.

He blinked and swallowed, trying to clear the vision. It wasn’t helpful, and beyond that, it scared him a little. He’d have bet money that was Reel’s hand. How much of her was in him now?

Nothing he could do about it right then. Instead, he grabbed the edges of the tank and lifted it upwards. It pulled free with the soft tug of magnetic resistance, apparently held in place only by the faceplate. Something heavy shifted inside, turning and clanking. Several somethings. He toyed with it, shifting it from side to side, trying to picture what it might be, but no fragment of memory offered itself. He set it aside and looked underneath it, bracing himself for the complex machinery he expected.

Instead, he found only a broad straight metal bar on top of a mundane electrical motor. He could even see the power cable running to the port outside. He twirled it experimentally, the pieces coming together in his mind.

The thick metal bar was a magnet, and as it rotated it caught the ball bearings in the tank and spun them in turn. As they all spun, they would whip the dark liquid into a vortex. A diagram jumped into his mind’s eye, of a field of gravity emanating from the plate. It was gone again in an instant, but that was it, he was sure of it.

So what would happen when you tried to reverse it? Maybe what Lusser thought, but Konrad didn’t think it would be so easy. Part of him knew intuitively that everything in the tank had to spin together in the right way, or the gravity field it generated wouldn’t be stable. Getting it do so in reverse…

He paused, an idea blossoming. What did a natural gravity field look like? Earth’s was a sphere, but the plates created a narrow cone, if he could trust the diagram in his head. Like an extension of the vortex that the magnets whipped the dark liquid into. Could he manipulate that to make something that pushed, rather than pulled? Was it just the direction that mattered, or was it how you agitated the dark liquid? Could he change it so that it created a bubble, or another shape?

The answers didn’t readily come to mind, so maybe Reel hadn’t known or he hadn’t gotten those memories. He could figure it out in time, but first...he’d promised Reel he’d get her out. Her Captain was coming, so all he needed to do was find a way to break her out of her cell, some way to surprise and overpower the guards...Sweeping the rest of the table clear, he hauled the second plate up alongside the first and started taking it apart.