Day of the Assassins

intent to harm. But his arm cracked straight into the bridge of Gordon’s nose. Gordon was more surprised rather than hurt. But then he wobbled — like a large building just after the demolition button has been pressed. To steady himself, he instinctively reached out with his hand. But he only managed to grab a handful of Jack’s blonde hair. It was not sufficient to prevent Gordon from finally losing his balance and with one hand still clutching a shock of Jack’s hair, he tumbled onto the ground, taking Jack with him.

Jack’s instinct was to escape. He was breathing very hard and he knew that with his weak lungs he might not last long. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Tony leering down at them on the floor, a look of mild amusement on his face, as Gordon struggled to get Jack under control.

Jack pawed his pocket instinctively for his puffer. His fingers scrabbled desperately as Gordon twisted him this way and that looking for a way to insert the syringe. But then Jack’s fingers encircled something else in his pocket. It wasn’t his inhaler. It was the lance head! In one movement, Jack whisked it from his pocket. It flashed briefly in the dull light as he lashed out and down in a violent stabbing motion. It cut through the air and into the black leather of Gordon’s boot, before slicing through the flesh of his foot. Gordon screamed with pain as blood spurted from his boot. He clutched it with both hands. Jack picked up the syringe that Gordon had dropped. Tony’s look of amusement turned to alarm and he moved forward. But Jack was too quick — he stabbed the syringe into Tony’s thigh and pressed home the plunger. Tony fell to one knee, groping his leg. Then he reeled backwards, his eyes flickering as he tried to fight the anaesthetic.

Jack stood up shakily, wheezing and coughing in equal measure. He felt a brief moment of triumph as he surveyed his two assailants groaning on the floor… then, he ran. The door from the Admiral’s lobby exited straight onto the starboard upper deck, just below the forecastle. He had to find help or at least a hiding place — but where? He looked around and spotted the squat grey steel outline of a turret positioned a third of the way down the ship’s starboard side. Its giant twin fifty-eight tonne gun barrels loomed only a couple of metres above his head. Between where the twin gun barrels protruded from the turret was a short ladder that lead on to the turret roof for access to the two smaller twelve-pounder guns. Without thinking, Jack vaulted over the angled breakwater and clambered up the ladder. He was only a few metres from the deck, but he kept low to avoid over-balancing on the gently rocking ship.

Now Jack did something that he would later reflect on as being both inspirational and complete madness. He lowered himself gently from the lip of the turret roof onto the left-side gun barrel. The gun seemed to stretch endlessly towards the bow. He started to shin his way along the top of the gun towards its tapering end.

In a minute, he was there. He looked down over the end of the barrel. A couple of metres below, the starboard deck yawed as the ship moved through the water. Jack turned round on the gun so his back was now facing away from the turret and towards the bow. Balancing dangerously, he inserted first one foot and then the other into the barrel and pushed his body carefully into the end of the gun. It was a tight squeeze, but he was small for his age and he just made it. As long he kept his blonde head down, nobody would ever know he was there.

But he did not have much time to enjoy his new hiding place. Suddenly he felt a slight vibrating sensation around him coupled with a low, grinding sound. Imperceptibly at first, the giant gun barrel in which he was encased, slowly started to move. The massive gun swung its way from its position parallel with the starboard deck out towards the sea. As it moved laterally, it also rose upwards into the air. Below, in the gun turret itself, he began to hear muffled voices and the commotion of men preparing… for what? Jack, whose head had been flush with the end of the barrel, pushed himself up a little and sneaked a look. He was shocked at what he saw. His gun was now pointing well out over the starboard side of the ship and ten metres below all he could see was the grey water of the sea churning to white as Dreadnought drove through it at a mind-spinning twenty knots.

Emerging from a light mist on the distant horizon, he spotted first one, then two and then three ghostly shapes. They were not ships — they seemed to be stationary — although it was difficult to tell. He remembered what the sailor had said: “exercises”. Were they on some naval drill? The gun rose a little further into the air, and he realised with sickening fear that Dreadnought was about to open fire.

For some reason, Jack remembered very specifically what Pendelshape had explained about the awesome firepower of Dreadnought. The shell from a twelve-inch naval gun of the sort used by the ship weighed about three hundred and eighty kilograms — combined steel and explosive. When the gun was fired, the shell would leave the muzzle at about two thousand eight hundred kilometres an hour. In a few seconds, Jack was going to get one up his rear end. He started to panic.

The angle of the gun was nearing its thirteen and a half degrees of maximum elevation. Before he could take any further action, Jack started to lose his grip and, slowly at first, began to slip down the inside of the dark barrel. Bizarrely, the sixty rifling grooves etched on the inside of the gun, designed to spin the shell to achieve greater stability in flight, started to act on him — but in reverse. His whole body twisted, round and round, inside the barrel like he was on some crazy waltzer at the fair. The circle of daylight from the end of the gun rapidly contracted — it was like looking out from the rear of a train after it had entered a tunnel. Then, almost as soon as the uncomfortable ride had started, with a rather painful ‘bang’ he came to rest. There was a mechanical whirring sound and suddenly, as the breach of the massive gun was opened, he tumbled out, landing inside the turret.

The operators watched and stood like statues, their faces blank with amazement. Realising that he had not been hurt, Jack clambered up and, not knowing what on earth else to say, announced, “Clean up — ready for use — carry on…” marched purposefully to the side entrance of the turret, and left.

There was no sign of Tony and Gordon. Jack suspected that Tony was sleeping like a baby, given the anaesthetic that he had pumped into him. Presumably Gordon was playing nursemaid, as well as tending to his own wound. Regardless, he needed to try and put as much distance between himself and any potential pursuit, then find somewhere more sensible to hide… and think. He sneaked around another turret towards the stern and the port side of the ship. Tethered to the port side was a vast observation balloon. As he got closer, Jack realised that it didn’t look like the observation balloons he had seen in books — the kind they had used on the Western Front for artillery spotting — ‘kite balloons’. This one looked like a more modern design — it even had its own gas burner. Jack could make out the large passenger basket, which was just touching the aft deck area on a small raised platform, ready for flight. A single cable was holding the balloon precariously to the ship and four crew members manhandled long hooked poles to control the basket, which wobbled in the wind. Jack could make out a man’s head peaking over the side of the basket — the observer. He was agitated, and rushed from one side of the basket to the other, shouting orders at the crew on the deck.

Jack crept slowly towards the platform. He turned to look back up towards the bow of the ship. Still no sign of any pursuit. What should he do? As he considered his options, he spotted a strange red dot on his white trainer. At first he thought it might be some blood from Gordon’s wound, and he leaned down to wipe it off. Then he noticed it was wobbling around, even with his foot still. Suddenly, it dawned on him what it was. He glanced back along the side of the ship. A stubby black barrel was poking surreptitiously from a porthole attached to what looked like a large zoom lens. Gordon was hidden from view, but using the unique characteristics of the Corner Shot APR, he had Jack nicely in the cross hairs of its laser sight. Jack wasn’t going to hang around to find out what would happen next. There was only one thing for it.

He raced towards the balloon crew who were still struggling to control the huge gas bag that rocked back and forth in Dreadnought’s draft as she powered through the waves, her twin funnels belching black smoke. Jack heard a muffled ‘crack’. Gordon must have fired! There was a loud ‘twang’. Jack, with a hop, skip and jump that would have made Belstaff, the games teacher, proud, leaped from the deck of Dreadnought and onto the gantry, which secured the balloon’s winding gear. With both hands, he grabbed the rope ladder attached to the side of the balloon basket. He knew that he could not hold on for long. The basket was swirling dizzily just off the deck and it felt much more unsteady than it first appeared. Over the side of the balloon basket the observer’s head appeared. He stared down at Jack with a mixture of amusement and confusion. He was wearing a strange leather skullcap from which wispy shocks of yellow hair escaped and blew around in the breeze. He also wore aviator’s goggles placed over small round spectacles. He looked ridiculous.

Suddenly, there was a second loud ‘twang’, and a mechanical whirring noise. The basket, with the rope ladder attached, shot upwards. Jack could only just cling on. The bullet from Gordon’s APR had split the mooring cable and the balloon had broken free. There was consternation from the crew. One of them still had his tether pole hooked to the basket and as he clung onto it, he found himself being lifted right off the deck of Dreadnought and out over the sea. He could only hold on for a few seconds until he let