“Boarding team, complete preparations and ready yourselves. We deploy in five minutes.”
The voice resonated through the low buzz of the Saxon scout rotor, cutting through the stifling air like a boat through water and every single person paid attention. The words continued.
“Now then, all of you! Look sharp! I don’t deny that we’re going to have one hell of a fight on our hands with the squareheads. But I am absolutely and completely sure that each one of you extraordinary people will give it your all! That’s what we ask from you and that’s what we expect! Follow your training, stick to your fellows and we’ll have their Oberst’s surrender in less than… how long will it take before we have her surrender, Alice?”
“Twenty minutes, sir!”
“And remind everyone how long is too bally long, Alice?”
“Twenty one minutes, sir!”
The exchange drew a few soft laughs from the assembled team and some of the pre-battle tension drained from the interior of the small craft into which they were all crammed.
James ‘Jack’ Cooper looked up at the tall, well-built man who had been speaking and took the words in, inhaling them as though they were oxygen. As inspiring speeches went, it was pretty simple. But it was loaded with potential and possibility and it pumped adrenaline through his system. In short, it did the job.
Jack contemplated the respirator in his hands, turning it over and over and considering it with the ignorance of a man who didn’t know anything about the gadgetry that would sustain him when they jumped. He may not have known anything about it, but that did not stop the gratitude that came with the knowledge that it would, in fact, sustain him. This was his second mission and the fear that had chewed at him the first time was markedly absent.
“Cooper! All ready for this, old man?”
He looked up at the sound of his name as it left the squad leader’s lips and offered a brief smile in response. Something about Smethington’s manner always made him sound as though he exclaimed everything rather than spoke it. It wasn’t uncommon, Jack had noted, in those who had been born to wealth and privilege. Speak softly and carry a big stick wasn’t an option for the rich and unencumbered. Shout loudly and have someone else carry the stick for you was closer to the mark. That said, Jack was well aware that Smethington would gladly carry his own stick, but it would be the best stick of the bunch.
“Always ready, Bert… um… sir.”
Lord Bertie Smethington let out a barking laugh as Cooper checked his use of his superior’s first name. They had been friends before they had been teammates and Cooper did not have a soldier’s training. Embracing the formalities that had come with his admission to the Royal Flying Corps as a rocketeer had not been easy for him. Smethington dropped down onto the seat beside Cooper and slapped him on the shoulder with easy familiarity.
“Second mission, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’ll be a breeze. You made it through your first mission without exploding or catching fire. Or catching fire and then exploding. Trust me, after this, it all gets easy. And the thrill of it all… ah, Cooper.” Smethington drummed his booted feet against the floor in a childish and irritatingly infectious manner. “The thrill of it is what keeps us coming back time after time!”
Well, Jack thought but did not vocalise, most of them came back again. The ones who didn’t die during the boarding actions, or whose rigs malfunctioned on the drop, but there was little point in lingering on the what-if’s. The Rocketeers Unit of the Royal Flying Corps didn’t exist in a bubble. They knew the risks every time a mission was called. But they still came back, as Smethington said, time after time. Maybe it was the thrill. Maybe he was right about that. But for Jack Cooper, there was an indefinable something else. Smethington slapped his friend’s shoulder encouragingly again and stood, moving to complete his own pre-jump preparations.
Jack fixed the respirator in place and stared ahead of himself, allowing his thoughts to stray to the unlikely set of circumstances of his life that had brought him here, to this moment.
He had been born in Lancashire twenty eight years previously and was absolutely a product of the workhouse and later, the orphanage mindset. He was the only son of a seamstress and ‘absent’ father; just one scrawny child among many who were instantly forgettable. At eight years old, he had begun working in the cotton mills in his native Lancashire, as a bobbin-boy. It had been gruelling, difficult work and as he’d grown to young manhood, Cooper had also grown out of the childhood dream that one day, he would make his fortune as a wealthy mill owner.
When he turned fifteen, he turned his back on his home county, heading south to seek his fortune, just like so many others had done before him. His success level was more or less on a par with them as well, except he survived. He survived, because he had the instinct to do so.
It did not take long to establish that the streets of London were not in fact paved with gold. They weren’t even paved in most places. He did not become rich, he did not discover the meaning of life, but what he did discover was that he could fight. And fight he did. He fought with other youngsters over scraps found at the back of hotels and houses in the London streets. He fought with thugs who would otherwise have torn him to shreds. He found work as a potman in an east London public house and he doubled up as the muscle whenever things turned ugly. Things turned ugly a lot.
It had been no surprise when the pub’s proprietor, spotting talent when he saw it, had entered his young employee into the local prizefights. The Ratter they’d called him: a Jack Russell with all the characteristics of that breed – a tightly packed ball of rage and fury. It was where he’d dropped ‘Jim’ in the face of all those who called him Jack as a result.
Yes, he’d certainly made a name for himself – and a decent amount of cash for his employer-manager – quickly enough on those circuits and for a short time tried his hand at boxing as well. It was the boxing which had brought him into the circles where the lower class and criminal underbelly of London moved in the same circles as those from the other side of the tracks.
Bertie Smethington had also had a keen eye for talent and it had been during one particularly intense bout that young Cooper had caught his eye. Impressed by Jack’s focus and single-minded approach to fighting, he had easily identified raw strength and power when he saw it. He’d correctly identified the real anger at the injustices in the world that bubbled just beneath the surface and sensing a kindred spirit, he had struck up conversation and an unlikely friendship.
Those early days had been heady. They contained stories all of their own.
Smethington had been deeply impressed by Cooper’s agility, he said. He had seen the potential in the pugilist’s small, wiry frame that seemed capable of delivering startlingly powerful blows seemingly with very little effort. Even now, two years after the first time they had sparred, Cooper could still knock the bigger, stronger Smethington on his backside in a training session. Smethington literally pulled no punches, but Jack was graced with sinuous celerity. Built like a racing snake, as they said.
Six months previously, Smethington had finally told Jack about the Corps. He had expanded that knowledge and shared information about the Rocketeers. He painted it quite clearly as a chance for Jack to utilise his brawling skills and his singular fearlessness for the greater good. It’d not been an easy road, far from it. The young peer had fought Jack’s corner from the very beginning, eventually became his financial sponsor and he was pleased to see his instincts bore fruit from the start. Jack, although in many ways an outsider in the unit, was nonetheless invaluable. He had the courageous quality that was essential for one of the Twenty Minuters and he had it in spades.
Jack’s eyes scanned the rest of the squad until they came to rest once more on Smethington, who was talking at the other unit commander. At, not to. But that was fine, because she talked back at him. The Sky-Captain didn’t seem to like Jack very much, but it didn’t matter. Jack was not bothered one way or another if she liked him or not, as long as she was satisfied that he was doing his job. He turned his attention back to Smethington.
They were complete opposites in every conceivable way. Physically, Smethington was tall and powerfully built, fair-haired and classically handsome. His face was almost perpetually cheerful and his attitude was wholly upbeat. He was the kind of man who, faced with his own mortality, would tweak its nose and challenge it to a race. By contrast, Cooper was dark of hair and eye, only of medium height, whippet-lean with rangy muscles and a distinct lack of padding. He had learned through the hardships of his life to keep himself emotionally distant from those around him; not showing his feelings, not opening up and certainly not capable of the loud, cheerful acts of gregariousness displayed by the other.
Above everything else, they could not have been more different socially. Lord Bertie Smethington (Cooper had only discovered the honorific two months previously and was still annoyed about it for reasons he was not educated enough to articulate), was the middle son of a family who could trace their wealth and lineage back several generations.
In this world in which they lived, despite the advances in equality, the class structure was still one of the unshakeable truths. Those who lazed in the warm, basking waters at the top of society’s oceans rarely mingled with the bottom feeders. And yet…
And yet, here they were. In the sky, preparing to fight together for a common cause. Up here, they were equals. Sure, Smethington was still richer, more suave and sophisticated than Jack would ever be, but once they stepped out of the rotor and plummeted to the ground below, class no longer separated them. The ground did not care if they had been born to power, or if they had been born to serve it. Gravity did not discriminate between class. A body hitting the ground with the propulsion provided by the flight rig was still going to shatter and feed it with lifeblood.
Death, someone had told Cooper once, was the great leveller. So was the ground.
The thought bolstered his spirits, made him feel that perhaps finally, he had found the fortune he sought. Only it wasn’t riches of gold and money. It was the right to be treated as an equal. Smethington had fought hard to get him onto the team and he was still very much under probation and deep scrutiny. He was the odd one out, the one to watch, the unpredictable element. The thorn amongst the roses.
His hand strayed briefly to the pistol at his side, and he swore again that he would use it only as a last resort. Fists first. Always fists first. He was no gentleman with the right to bear arms, whether he had been granted special dispensation or not. He was a fighter whose fists talked for him in situations when words would simply not do. Jack could accomplish more with a well-place right hook than any amount of monologuing could achieve.
He was pulled back to the present by a clap of gloved hands.
“One minute! Let’s do this, girls and boys. Do what you must when we get down there. Clear a path. Remember! Without us, the rest of this army would never get anything done. Fight well and stay alive, or I’ll kill you!”
“Smethington.” Sky-Captain Parkhurst’s voice could cut diamonds at the best of time, but the admonishing three syllables were so clearly enunciated that even Smethington flinched slightly. He pulled himself together with astonishing speed.
“Right! Let’s do this thing. Let’s get down there and we will re-group in… how long?”
“Twenty minutes,” came the answering chorus and Jack grinned, adding his voice to the collective. One voice among many. Indistinguishable from its fellows. Equal.
The door slid open and Smethington looked over his shoulder at his unlikely friend.
“Bet you five pounds I can beat you to the fight, Cooper!”
It was precisely the jolt he needed. Nobody, absolutely nobody beat Jack Cooper to the fight and he flung himself out into the great nothing, perfectly willing to prove that point. Smethington chuckled lightly and jumped out after him.
“I love my work,” he roared into the gathering wind that rose to meet him.