WITHOUT even pausing to see the effects of his charge upon the
three air-ships above Alexandria, Alan kept the _Avenger_ going at
full speed, soaring up into the higher regions of the atmosphere
with her prow pointed to the north-east. About three hours later
she was floating at an elevation of nearly five miles above Moscow,
not stationary, but sweeping round and round in vast circles on her
quadruple wings after the manner of the condors of the Andes, which
thus sustain themselves on almost motionless wings at vast elevations
and very small expenditure of force.
Below an immense expanse of country lay in unclouded clearness under
the glasses of the captain of the ship and George Cosmo, late engineer
of the _Narwhal_, who was now chief engineer of the Aerian flagship.
Not only Moscow, but a dozen other towns lay at the mercy of the
_Avenger’s_ twenty-four guns, and yet no shot was fired, for Alan,
despite the tremendous debt of vengeance that he owed to her who now,
at last in very fact crowned Tsarina of the Russias, held her court
at Moscow, was yet extremely loth to involve non-combatants in the
destruction which he knew must follow the discharge of his guns.
Added to this, his present designs were rather to reconnoitre than to
destroy. He was in command of the fastest and most powerful air-ship in
the world, and the task that he had set himself was to supervise the
whole of the complicated arrangements that had been made for repelling
the coming attack upon the Federation by the Moslems and Russians.
Thus he had started soon after midnight from Gibraltar, one of the
chief power-stations and depôts in Europe. Thence he had run along
the African coast over Oran, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, noting the
sleepless activity of the brilliantly-lighted towns, the swarming
transports and battleships in their harbours, and the crowds of anxious
watchers in their streets. Then he had got round to the south of
Alexandria, as has been seen, and there struck the first blow in the
war.
Now, his object was to discover what disposition of troops were being
made for the invasion of Austria and Germany. Another scout-ship would
be by this time floating over St. Petersburg, and another over Odessa,
and these were to report to him at noon.
He had kept the _Avenger_ moving with sufficient rapidity to make it
extremely difficult for her to be seen from the earth, as he wanted to
see without being seen, and he remained undiscovered until nearly noon.
All this time trains had been seen running in swift succession into
Moscow from the east and out to the west, evidently conveying troops to
the frontier.
A large fleet of air-ships, numbering apparently between two and three
hundred vessels, were seen lying in four squadrons on the open space
about the Kremlin, and others were constantly flying into and out of
the city in all directions.
A few minutes after half-past eleven, Cosmo, after a long look through
his glasses, called to Alan, who was looking out from the other side of
the deck--
“I fancy they must have seen us at last. Three ships are coming up on
this side as if they wanted to investigate.”
Alan crossed over and soon picked out the Russian vessels rising in
long spiral sweeps from the earth about three miles to the northward
and coming up very fast.
“They seem to have learned something in tactics during the year,” he
said. “They evidently know better than to rise perpendicularly while
they suspect we are up here. They think they’ll be much more difficult
to hit coming up like that.”
“Yes,” said Cosmo. “But we can soon show them the mistake in that idea.
What are you going to do with them?”
“Destroy them, of course,” replied Alan. “It doesn’t matter about
giving the alarm now. I think it’s pretty certain that the Russians are
going to concentrate at Kieff, Vitebsk, Dünaburg, and Vilna, and those
four squadrons down there are intended to cover them. We’d better let
them concentrate, and make the fighting as short and sharp as possible.
It would be a waste of time to destroy them here in detail, and the
moral effect wouldn’t be anything like as good. What do you think?”
“I don’t think there’ll be any fighting,” replied Cosmo, “unless
between the air-ships. The most hardened troops of the nineteenth
century would have broken and run like a lot of sheep under our shells,
and these poor fellows, who have never seen a battle in their lives,
will do the same.
“I don’t believe we shall have any land fighting at all to speak of
during the whole war. There will be nothing but massacres from the air
on both sides. Still, I think you’re both wise and merciful in waiting
until you can hit hard, though perhaps from the strictly military point
of view we ought to have Moscow in ruins by sundown.”
“I won’t do that,” said Alan, shaking his head decisively. “There are
three or four millions of women and children in it who have done no
harm, and I’ll shed no more blood than I’m obliged to. We had better
destroy those fellows, however, before they get too close. You know
what to do.”
“Very well,” said Cosmo. “You’ll take the deck, I suppose?”
Alan nodded, and Cosmo saluted and went into the conning-tower. The
_Avenger_ now altered her course, so that her circling flight took her
to the northward, above the three Russian air-ships that were sweeping
round and round so fast that it would have been impossible to train a
gun upon them.
As soon as she got over them the _Avenger_ quickened her course until
she was flying round in the same circles and at the same speed as the
Russians. This, of course, made her relatively stationary with regard
to them, and it was now possible to take aim. Two of the broadside
guns, one on each side, were much shorter than the others, and had been
specially constructed for firing almost vertically downwards.
Alan stood by one of these and trained it on the first of the Russian
vessels, which were coming up in a spiral line. At the right moment
he pressed the button in the breech and released the projectile. The
shot struck the Russian amidships. They saw the glass deck of the roof
splinter, then the blaze of the explosion flashed out, the air quaked,
and the next moment the fragments of the Russian warship were falling
back upon the earth.
A second and a third shot followed as the other two came into position,
and when Alan looked down towards the city again he saw that the four
squadrons had taken the alarm, and were rising from the earth and
scattering in all directions. This was just what he wanted, for it
relieved him of the scruples which had prevented him from firing on
them while they lay within the precincts of the city.
In an instant the crew of the _Avenger_ were at their guns, and shell
after shell sped on its downward way after the flying ships. Although,
under the circumstances, the aim was necessarily hurried, for the
captains of the Russian vessels, seeing the terrible disadvantage at
which they were placed, had put on their utmost speed, the guns of the
_Avenger_ were so smartly handled that nearly a score of the Russians
were either blown to fragments or crippled before the squadron escaped
out of range.
“Well done!” said Alan. “That will teach them to keep a little smarter
look-out next time.” And then he went on to himself--“I wonder whether
_she_ was on board one of those that are lying in little pieces down
there? I suppose that would be too good luck to hope for, and yet I
don’t know, I think her end ought to be something different to that. I
wonder what it really will be?”
He ordered his men to cease firing now, and placed the _Avenger_ once
more in her old position over Moscow, keeping her at a great elevation
to guard against surprise from the squadron he had scattered. A few
minutes later two air-ships were reported coming from the south and
north. The flash of the sun on their blue hulls proclaimed them friends.
They were the vessels bringing the reports from St. Petersburg and
Odessa, and these reports were to the effect that during the whole
of the morning trains had been pouring through from the eastward and
all the surrounding country towards the Austro-German frontier. Other
reports from the westward had been received by the commanders of these
two vessels to the effect that the Russian troops were massing along
the frontier and seemingly preparing to invade the Federation area from
the four points already selected by Alan.
He at once despatched orders by these two courier-vessels to the
depôts at Königsberg, Thorn, Breslau, and Budapesth to assemble four
squadrons of fifty vessels each, which were to be over the points of
concentration at daybreak on the following morning.
These ships were to maintain their greatest possible elevation--that
is to say, about three miles and a half--until the sun rose, then if
the sky were clear they were to bombard the towns at once from that
height; if not they were to use all precautions against surprise in
passing through the clouds, and then the commanders were to use their
own discretion as to the plan of operation, but Odessa, Kieff, Vitebsk,
and Dünaburg were to be destroyed at all hazards as soon as it was
certain that the invading forces were concentrated there, and preparing
to march eastward.
As soon as these orders had been despatched the _Avenger_ left Moscow,
and started at full speed for Gibraltar, where she arrived about four
o’clock in the afternoon.
Here Alan, after once more inspecting the land batteries and the
aerial defences of this important outpost of the Federation, received
news of the annihilation of the four Moslem expeditions, and heartily
congratulated Admiral Ernstein on the complete success of his
operations.
It was at once apparent that the Sultan would not risk a second loss so
enormous as this even if he had sufficient transports left and could
persuade any more of his people to brave the terrors of such another
sea-fight. This being so, only two alternatives would be open to him,
either he must give up all idea of invading Europe by land or sea, or
else he must attempt to force the bridges across the Dardanelles and
the Straits of Gibraltar, and cross into Europe _viâ_ Turkey and Spain.
Both these bridges, the main highways between Europe, Africa, and Asia
Minor, were guarded on the European side by batteries of enormous
strength, similar to those which guarded the Federation posts in the
Mediterranean. They were magnificent structures, each four hundred feet
broad, carrying twelve lines of railway as well as carriage drives and
promenades, and, once in the hands of the enemy, troops could be poured
across them in tens of thousands every hour.
Alan, after a brief conference with Ernstein, decided to pursue the
same tactics here as he was going to make use of on the Russian
frontier. The bridges were to be left completely open, but their
supporting pillars were to be mined with torpedoes, connected by
electric wires with the batteries.
If the Sultan attempted to force them, his men were to be allowed
to concentrate on the African and Asiatic shores and to occupy the
bridges, then the bridges were to be blown up and the forces on the
opposite side to be dispersed by the batteries and the air-ships.
The message to the Dardanelles bridge was despatched by telephone over
the cables connecting Gibraltar with Candia and Gallipoli, and similar
instructions were sent on from Gallipoli to Constantinople, in case any
attempt should be made to force the bridge which spanned the Bosphorus.
The Mediterranean patrol was to be maintained as before, and three
air-ships were sent out to reconnoitre the African coast from Ceuta to
Port Said during the night, and learn what they could of the Sultan’s
intentions.
The rest of the evening and the greater part of the night were spent
by Alan receiving and answering reports from the northern coast of
the Mediterranean, the Russian frontier, and the principal cities of
Europe, and in assuring himself that everything was ready, so far as
was possible, to meet the storm that must infallibly burst over the
Continent within the next few days.
What would have been in the nineteenth century a matter of weeks was
now only one of days and hours. The enormously-developed system of
intercommunication made transit, even for very large numbers of men
and between very distant points, rapid to a degree undreamt of in the
present century.
Trains could travel at two hundred miles an hour along the hundreds
of quadruple lines which covered the Continent with their gigantic
network, aerial cruisers could fly at more than twice this speed,
and squadrons of submarine battleships could cleave their silent and
invisible way through the ocean depths at a hundred and fifty miles an
hour.
It was, therefore, almost impossible to tell without certain
information where and how the blows of the enemy would be struck,
or from how many points the European area of the Federation might
be assailed at once, and vast indeed were the responsibilities and
anxieties which weighed upon the man whose single brain was the centre
of this vast and complicated system of defence, and on whose decisions
would depend the safety or the destruction of millions of human beings.
Alan had managed to get four hours’ sleep in the afternoon between
Moscow and Gibraltar, and he snatched two hours more before midnight.
Then he was called, and the _Avenger_ was just about to take the air
to return to the Russian frontier, so that he might supervise the
operations there, when the look-out on the summit of the Rock of
Gibraltar saw and answered the Aerian private signal from the sky, and
a few minutes later a fleet of more than a hundred air-ships dropped
down out of the darkness and hovered over what is now called the
neutral ground between the Rock and Spain.
One of these alighted at the signal station itself. It was the _Isma_,
and within three minutes after she had touched the ground Alan was
shaking hands with Alexis and asking him what brought him back so soon
from the East.
“I have come back because there is nothing much more to do there,” said
Alexis. “Have you had any fighting here?”
“Yes,” said Alan; “or, at anyrate, a big massacre.”
And then he described what had befallen the Sultan’s expeditions.
“Horrible but necessary, I suppose!” replied Alexis, not without a
shudder at the news. “I have been doing my damage on land. I didn’t
wait for the enemy to begin hostilities, so as soon as day broke we got
to work. We have wrecked Ekaterinburg, Slatonsk, Orenburg, and Uralsk,
and blocked the four roads into Russia from Asia.
“The Tsarina’s Asiatic forces had concentrated there in large numbers
ready to come into Europe. We found some air-ships intended to cover
them, but we had the best of the elevation, and smashed them up. The
slaughter has been something perfectly frightful. I had a hundred and
fifty ships in action, and there isn’t a man left of the Asiatic troops
that is not getting back to where he came from as fast as he can go.
“The towns are mere heaps of ruins and the railways utterly useless. I
left twenty ships to patrol the frontier and stop any further movements
into Russia, and twenty more are strung out in a line from the Caspian
to the head of the Red Sea to cut communications between Asia and
Africa.
“We came westward over Odessa this afternoon, and had a skirmish,
in which, I am sorry to say, I lost five ships, but we destroyed
twenty Russians, blew up the dockyard, and shelled the city by way of
punishment. And now I’ve got myself and a hundred and thirty ships to
place at your disposal for the present. There is nothing more to be
feared from the East, for by to-morrow night, I think, the Asiatics
will be thoroughly terrorised.”
“You have done more than I have in the way of slaughter and
destruction,” said Alan. “But there will be some fearful work along the
Russian frontier to-morrow morning. The Tsarina, as you call her, is
concentrating her forces at Kieff, Vitebsk, Dünaburg, and Vilna for a
descent upon Germany. I have ordered those four places to be destroyed
as soon as possible after sunrise, and I am just starting now, so you
had better come with me and order your ships to follow us.”
Both the commanders felt, as their combined squadrons were winging
their way towards the Russian frontier, that the events of the next
twenty-four hours or so would go far towards deciding the issues of the
war, and therefore the fate of the world.
Alexis had given up the command of the _Isma_ for the night to his
first lieutenant, and was travelling on board the _Avenger_, in order
that he and Alan might finally arrange their plans for the terrible
deeds that were to be done on the following day. Both of them were
serious almost to depression, for it must be remembered that neither
possessed that love of fighting and slaughter which distinguishes the
professional soldier of the nineteenth century.
Armed with the most awful weapons ever wielded by human hands, they
had already, within the space of a few hours, hurled millions of their
fellow-creatures into eternity and made thousands of homes desolate
which a couple of days ago were happy. Now they were going to repeat
the tragedy, on how vast a scale neither of them knew. Before the next
sunset a red line of blood and flame would mark the frontier between
Russia and Germany.
All the horrors of months of the older warfare would be concentrated
into those few fatal hours. Those who were to do battle in the air
would hurl their irresistible lightnings at each other more as gods
than as men, while on earth the unresisting swarms could only stand in
helpless agony of suspense waiting for the death from which there was
no possibility of flying.
Within a hundred miles of the frontier the two fleets stopped, and
Alexis went on board his own vessel. It was then a few minutes after
three in the morning, that is to say, about an hour before sunrise, and
the warships were floating in a serene and cloudless atmosphere at an
elevation of nearly four miles, or about twenty thousand feet. It was
already quite light enough at that elevation for signals to be plainly
seen, and a rapid interchange of these took place, communicating the
final instructions from the flagships to the commanders of the smaller
squadrons into which the fleets were to be divided.
Just as the last signal had been answered, and the vessels were about
to separate, a tiny speck of light was seen far away to the westward. A
hundred powerful field-glasses were instantly turned upon it, and soon
showed it to be a hostile air-ship coming up very fast at an elevation
of about three miles. The silvery sheen of her hull instantly betrayed
the fact that she was neither an Aerian nor a Federation vessel, for
the former were blue and the latter painted dull grey. A moment’s
reflection showed that she must have sighted the Aerian fleet, and if
she got past would take tidings of its presence to the frontier and
destroy all hope of a surprise.
Within twenty seconds of her true nature being made out a signal was
flying from the mizzenmast of the _Isma_, which read, “Shall I stop
her?” “Yes. Cripple her if you can. Don’t fire unless necessary,” came
the reply from the _Avenger_, and the _Isma_ at once darted away on her
errand.
Alexis, of course, understood that if he struck the enemy with a shell
her fragments would fall to the earth, and might probably give the
impression that a battle was being fought in the air, and, as they
were now so near to the Russian frontier, this was to be avoided if
possible. He therefore determined to cripple her without destroying
her, and, if he could manage it, to capture her in mid-air, a feat that
had never been performed before under similar conditions.
He descended until the _Isma_ was only floating about a thousand feet
higher than the enemy, and then began to fly round and round in a wide
circle, at a speed which made it practically impossible for her to
be hit with a shell, save by the merest chance. The stranger, on
sighting the fleet, slowed down and swung round to the northward, so as
to have the advantage of being able to present her stern chasers to the
enemy.
This gave Alexis the opportunity he wanted. The instant that her stern
was visible, the _Isma_ swooped down, and rushed at her at such a speed
that she looked more like a stream of blue light flashing through the
sky than a solid material body. Those on board her saw this flash dart
past their stern. Their ship shivered from stem to stern with some
shock that came so swiftly that not until the _Isma_ was almost out of
sight did they realise the damage that had been done.
[Illustration: THE “ISMA” SWOOPED DOWN. _Page 281._]
The ram of the Aerian had cut through the barrels of the two stern guns
and the shafts of the three propellers as cleanly as a razor would have
divided so many straws. Sustained and propelled only by her wings, she
dropped from two hundred miles an hour to about twenty-five, and then
the _Isma_ reappeared in the sky above her, flying the signal, “Will
you surrender?”
Her commander saw that the brilliant and almost miraculous manœuvre of
the _Isma_ had placed him utterly at her mercy. If he refused, a single
shell would send him and his ship and crew in fragments to the earth,
while none of his guns could touch the Aerian, floating as she did a
thousand feet above him, so he bowed to necessity and sent the white
flag to his masthead. Alexis then signalled again, ordering him to
unload all his guns and leave the breeches open, and when he had seen
this done he sank down to a level with her, passed a steel-wire rope on
board her, and towed her away in triumph to the fleet.
The brilliant achievement delighted the Aerians as much as it
confounded the crew of the captured vessel, especially when it was
discovered that she was the _Haroun_, a Moslem warship taking a message
from the Sultan to the Tsarina at Moscow.
Khalid’s letter, which had been despatched the night before from
Algiers, informed Olga of the disaster that had overtaken the Crescent
in the Mediterranean, and of his determination to avenge it by
storming the bridges of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles, and the Bosphorus,
and pouring his remaining troops over them into Europe as soon as he
could concentrate them.
Far more important than this, however, was a notification of his
intention to at once lead a fleet of two hundred and fifty air-ships to
the west of Europe, and there destroy city after city on his eastward
course until they joined forces and proceeded, if necessary, to
devastate the rest of the Continent.
The Moslem’s guns were now rendered useless, and she was left to her
own devices to fall an easy prey to the first enemy that might attack
her. The Aerian fleet then divided into fifty squadrons of five vessels
each, and these winged their way towards the Russian frontier, ever
soaring higher and higher, until their wings were beating the rarefied
air at an altitude of over three miles.
Odessa, Kieff, Gomel, Vitebsk, Dünaburg, and Riga were all covered by
the time the sun rose. Scores of Russian air-ships were seen by the
various squadrons darting about hither and thither along the frontier
at varying elevations, evidently on the look-out for an enemy.
It was not many minutes before the Aerian squadrons were discovered
by these, and they instantly got away out of range, and then swerving
round sought to rise to a similar altitude so as to place themselves on
equal terms with the Aerians.
But long before this attempt could be made the work of death had begun,
and two thousand guns were raining their projectiles, charged with
inevitable destruction, upon the devoted cities. They were swarming
with men who had come through the interior of Russia during the night
for the invasion of Europe, but there were no troops on land to oppose
them, for Alan had seen that there would be no need for these.
Within an hour the six cities were so many vast shambles, and still
the relentless rain of death kept falling from the skies. Houses and
public buildings crumbled into dust under the terrific impact of the
explosions.
The streets were torn up as if by earthquakes, the railways running in
and out were utterly wrecked, and the victims of the pitiless attack,
panic-stricken and mad with fear and agony, rushed aimlessly hither
and thither through the bloody, fire-scorched streets and amidst the
falling ruins until inevitable death overtook them and ended their
tortures of mind and body.
There was no escape even as there was no mercy. Thousands fled out
into the country only to find the same rain of death falling upon the
villages. It seemed as though the unclouded heavens of that May morning
were raining fire and death from every point upon the devoted earth,
and yet no source of destruction was to be seen.
But ere long new horrors were added to the desolation which had already
befallen the cities. Terrific explosions burst out high up in the air,
vast dazzling masses of flame blazed out, mocking the sunlight with
their brightness, and then vanishing in an instant, and after them came
showers of bits of metal and ragged fragments of human bodies, all that
remained of some great cruiser of the air and her crew.
The Russian squadrons, numbering in all about three hundred warships,
by flying several miles to the eastward and then doubling on a
constantly ascending course had by this time gained a sufficient
elevation to train their guns upon the Aerians, and as soon as they had
done this the aerial battle became general along a curved line more
than a thousand miles in length, extending from Odessa to Riga.
George Cosmo had been right when he said that there would be little or
no land fighting, for along that line, from the Baltic to the Black
Sea, there was scarcely a man left alive by midday who was not mad with
fear and horror at the frightful effects of the aerial assault.
On land as well as on sea fighting was impossible. Armies and fleet
could exist only in the absence of the air-ships, and they were
everywhere. Cities lay utterly at their mercy, and nothing shaped by
the hand of man could withstand the impact of their projectiles.
But all day long the fight went on in the skies above the Russian
frontier, yet not at all after the fashion imagined by the poet of the
nineteenth century, who wrote, as he thought prophetically, of
Airy navies grappling in the central blue.
The first and chief endeavour of the captain of every vessel was to
avoid the shots of his opponents and to get his own home. It was brains
and machinery pitted against brains and machinery, and grappling was
never thought of.
The air-ship which could gain and maintain a greater elevation than her
opponent infallibly destroyed her, and so, too, did the one that could
fly unhurt at full speed along the line of battle and use her stern
guns upon those which became relatively stationary enough for her to
take aim at them.
It would have been a magnificent spectacle for an observer who could
have followed the contending squadrons in their swift and complicated
evolutions. He would have seen the blue and the silver hulls flashing
to and fro as though apparently engaged in some harmless trial of
speed, then, without the slightest warning, without a puff of smoke or
the faintest sound of a report, the long, deadly guns would do their
work.
The moment of vantage would come, and the silent and invisible
messengers of annihilation would be sped upon their way; then, with a
roar and a shock that convulsed the firmament, a mist of flame would
envelop the ship that had been struck, and when it vanished she would
have vanished too, falling in a rain of fragments towards the earth
nearly twenty thousand feet below.
It was a battle not so much for victory as for destruction. There could
be no victory save to those who survived after having annihilated their
enemies, and this was the sole object of the struggle. High in air
above the contending squadrons, the _Avenger_ and the _Isma_ swept to
and fro along the line, raised by their superior soaring powers beyond
the zone of battle, and from their decks the two admirals commanded
the fight, and, like very Joves above the tempest, hurled their
destroying bolts from their terrible guns far and wide over the scene
of strife.
From morning to night both Alan and Alexis sought in vain for the blue
hull of the _Revenge_ among the Russian squadron. Unless Olga was on
board one of the other ships she was either engaged in some work of
destruction elsewhere or was directing the operations of her forces and
learning the disasters that had overtaken them in her palace in Moscow
or St. Petersburg.
It had been previously ordered that, as soon as it became too dark to
take accurate aim with the guns, those vessels of the Aerian fleet
which had survived the battle were to fly westward and rendezvous at
midnight on the summit of the Schneekoppe, one of the peaks of the
Giant Mountains to the north-east of Bohemia, whence, as soon as the
amount of damage had been ascertained, the remainder of it, if strong
enough, was to set out and if possible intercept the Moslem fleet
before it could form a junction with the Russians.
When the last vessel had alighted on the summit of the mountain
it was found that out of a fleet numbering two hundred and fifty
warships only a hundred and eighty remained--the rest were scattered
in undistinguishable fragments along the Russian frontier. As for
the amount of damage that had been done to the enemy as a set-off to
this heavy loss, the Aerian commanders could form no even approximate
estimate of it.
All they knew was that the six frontier cities, and a score or so
of smaller towns and villages, were now mere heaps of ruins, vast
charnel-houses choked with unnumbered corpses. The Russian army of
invasion must have been practically annihilated, and certainly its
remnants would be too hopelessly demoralised by the unspeakable horrors
it had survived to be of the slightest use for further fighting.
As soon as the roll had been called, the fleet, in two squadrons of
ninety vessels each, took the air and crossed the mountains to Gorlitz,
which had been selected a year before as a convenient spot for the
establishment of an arsenal and power-station, standing as it does at
the angle of intersection of two great mountains which form the natural
bulwarks of Bohemia.
Here the stock of motive-power and the ammunition of all the vessels
were renewed, and at daybreak the squadrons were just about to take
the air when a telephonic message was received from Paris that a
large fleet of air-ships had appeared above the city and had begun to
bombard it. This message had been sent in compliance with a system of
intercommunication which Alan had instituted between all the great
cities of Europe, and all the power-stations and rendezvous throughout
the Continent.
The moment an enemy appeared over any town messages were to be sent to
all the stations simultaneously, and detachments of warships were to be
despatched to the threatened point as soon as the warning was received.
It will be seen that this system would enable a very large force to
be concentrated upon any threatened point, and, in fact, before the
sun was two degrees above the horizon of Paris, eight squadrons of
Federation warships, including the two under the command of Alan
and Alexis, were flying at full speed from all four points of the
compass towards the city which for over half a century had been the
acknowledged capital of the Continent.
Little more than an hour sufficed for the _Avenger_ and the _Isma_ to
pass over the six hundred miles which separated Gorlitz from Paris.
Flying at their utmost speed they left their squadrons to follow the
two admirals, knowing that every captain could be implicitly trusted to
do the work allotted to his ship without further orders.
The object of Alan and Alexis was to get first to the scene of action,
and to avail themselves of the superior soaring powers of their two
vessels to deliver an assault upon the Moslems which they could not
reply to.
A fearful scene unfolded itself before them as they swept up out of the
eastward over Paris. The vast and splendid city was surrounded by a
huge circle formed of at least two hundred Moslem warships floating at
an elevation of some three miles, and pouring a tempest of projectiles
from hundreds of guns indiscriminately into the area crowded with
stately buildings and nearly ten millions of inhabitants.
[Illustration: A FEARFUL SCENE UNFOLDED ITSELF AS THEY SWEPT UP OVER
PARIS. _Page 286._]
Nearly three miles above the centre of the city floated a solitary
scout-ship ready to signal warning of the approach of an enemy. Fires
were already raging in hundreds of places all over the city. The
streets were swarming with terrified throngs of citizens who had rushed
out to escape the flames and the falling buildings, only to meet the
hundreds of shells that were constantly bursting among them, rending
their bodies to fragments by scores at a time.
Such was the beginning of Khalid the Magnificent’s revenge for the
disaster of the Mediterranean--a vengeance which proved that, in his
breast at least, the savage spirit of the ancient warfare was still
untamed.
The _Avenger_ and the _Isma_ gained an altitude of four miles above the
doomed city, half a dozen shells from their guns struck the scout-ship
and reduced her to dust before she had time to make a signal in
warning, and then the forty-four guns began to send a radiating hail of
projectiles upon the Moslem fleet. Shell after shell found its mark in
spite of the vast range, and ship after ship collapsed and dropped in
fragments or blew up like a huge shell.
But before the fifth round had been fired a strange thing happened. A
single Aerian warship rushed up at full speed out of the south, and as
soon as she sighted the _Avenger_ signalled, “Orders from the Council.
Come alongside.” The new-comer soared upwards as they sank to meet her,
and the three ships met and stopped some three miles and a half above
the earth. The stern of the _Azrael_, as the messenger-ship was named,
was brought close up to that of the _Avenger_, the deck doors were
opened, a gangway thrown across, and the captain boarded the flagship
and placed a sealed despatch in Alan’s hand.
He opened it, and to his unspeakable astonishment read--
AERIA, May 16th, 6 P.M.
All Aerians are to return at once with their ships to Aeria, and take
no further part in the fighting. The Federation fleets may be left in
the hands of foreign crews and commanders, to whom the power-stations
and batteries are to be given up. This order is to be obeyed with the
least possible delay.
ALAN ARNOLD, President.
To the Admirals in command of the Federation Fleets.