Johnny O'Brien - Day of Deliverance

“What happened to him?” Jack asked.

“Gun shot — got him in the shoulder,” Joplin said. “Keep your heads down — the cabin has already been hit twice.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“Think so — if we can get him home quickly while we still have the time signal.” Joplin nodded towards Tony. “But you two need to help over there — we’ve got a problem.”

Then Jack heard it. Over the sound of the cannon, gun fire and sailors’ cries, they could hear the shrill whine of an aircraft engine and a loud mechanical whirring. Jack and Angus peered gingerly through the windows at the rear of the captain’s cabin. Emerging from the billowing clouds of gun smoke, a black military helicopter appeared, hovering a mere ten metres above the water. The machine was utterly incongruous with the great sailing ships of the Armada.

Joplin had said that Pendelshape would require a ‘decisive military advantage’ to defeat the English fleet and give the Spanish the naval superiority they would need to stage the invasion of England. It was now clear how that advantage would be achieved and how the Armada would snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In a final throw of the dice, Pendelshape was about to give Philip II his day of deliverance and change the course of history for ever.

“What is that ?” Jack said.

“Helicopter gun-ship,” Tony answered. “Pendelshape and the Revisionists have transported it back on the time signal. We got here at the right time.”

“It’s a what?”

“A Westland WAH-64 Apache — the British army version. It’s got the Rolls-Royce engines, a chain gun that will fire over six hundred rounds a minute, and those pods on the side carry hellfire and CRV7 rockets. It’s a beast,” Angus said in admiration.

“Never mind that — Pendelshape is inside with a co-pilot and God knows what else. We haven’t got much time before he takes out the whole of the English fleet — and us with it.”

Jack and Angus looked at the strange device that Tony was wrestling with as he spoke. It was like a fat steel tube. There was a large sight attached to the top and a trigger underneath.

“What is that thing? Looks like a bazooka.”

“It’s a MANPAD,” Tony said.

“Is that a real word?”

“Does it really matter?” Tony replied in frustration. “It’s a Man Portable Air Defence System. One of the toys we brought back with us. There…” Tony said triumphantly, “we’re ready.”

Angus nodded through the window. “Well, I hope so, because we have incoming.”

The helicopter pirouetted on its vertical axis, sniffing out its first prey. The English flagship seemed a good place to start and the machine was directly level with the stern of The Revenge . Suddenly, the chain gun hanging from its belly exploded into life and bullets ripped into the upper part of the cabin unleashing a blizzard of splinters over the heads of Jack and Angus, who hugged the floor. Tony was not so lucky. One second he was holding the MANPAD by the window, the next he was gone — flung from one side of the cabin to the other by a single round from the helicopter gun. He lay on the floor, clutching his upper arm, cursing bitterly. The firing stopped and the helicopter hung in the air, gathering itself for a final assault. Jack and Angus rushed over to help Tony.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said through gritted teeth. “Get him before he kills us all.”

Angus rushed back, grabbed the launcher and heaved it up onto his shoulder. He staggered towards the window, which had been completely obliterated by the storm of bullets. He aimed at the helicopter, closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Jack was now at his side and they could both see the helicopter inching forward for the final kill.

“I think you need to switch it on.”

Jack flicked a switch on the side of the launcher and it hummed into life.

This time, Angus kept his eyes open and aimed. He fired and the rocket fizzed from the muzzle of the launcher and smashed into the housing beneath the rotor blades. There was an explosion, but then the smoke cleared and, incredibly, the helicopter was hanging in the air.

In desperation, Jack turned to Tony at the back of the cabin. “He’s still there!”

But then the tone of the engine changed and the rhythmic whirring of the blades seemed to falter and slow down. The machine hung for a moment longer and then dropped like a stone into the sea. Jack and Angus looked on as the two pilots struggled to free themselves from the water rising up inside the cockpit. As he looked down from the stern cabin of The Revenge , Jack clearly saw Pendelshape raging at them from the cockpit.

Beneath his feet, Jack saw the shimmering eddies of electricity consolidate and then morph into the steel platform of the Taurus. The heavy metal struts that bounded the inner shell of the great machine gradually came into focus and the features of the control room beyond the thick green glass of the blast screen became clearer. The blast screen was lowered and a number of people in the control centre came forward — they were clapping and cheering. Jack blinked. He could see Inchquin, the Rector, Beattie and, right at the front, his mum, Carole, beaming from ear to ear. They were home.

Jack could hear the hum from the generators powering down as he and Angus made their way down the gantry from the Taurus. The medical team rushed forward to help down the injured Tony and Gordon, who were immediately dispatched to the underground surgery. Carole Christie rushed forward to hug Jack and seconds later Inchquin and then the Rector were shaking their hands. It was over.

Following a medical examination and a meal, they decamped to VIGIL’s Situation Room to debrief. The team sat round the same table where Inchquin had chaired the first war council, on hearing the news leaked by Jack’s father following his bust-up with Pendelshape. They spent the next hour picking through their experiences in the sixteenth century — supported by analysis from the rest of the VIGIL team. Jack struggled to get his head round it all.

“So how do you know that our mission was a success? Is it just because you know we don’t have to go back and, kind of, do any more ‘tidying up’?”

Inchquin smiled. “I know it is difficult to understand, but it is self-evident. We are all still here and history as we remember it is the same before your mission as it is now — a very short time later.”

“But, but — what if Pendelshape had succeeded?” Angus said.

“If the Revisionist mission had been a success we would be living in a very different world. Perhaps we wouldn’t exist at all. We don’t really know for sure what the consequences would be — and for that reason alone it is extremely dangerous to meddle in history.”

“When we met Pendelshape, he said that the Revisionists’ modelling techniques were now so sophisticated that they would somehow be able to ring-fence themselves from the changes they made. So they’d, you know, make changes to history so the future was better, but kind of keep themselves and their Taurus separate and in control.” Jack looked at Inchquin with a furrowed brow. “Is that possible ?”

Inchquin shook his head. “It’s called ‘lineage isolation’. They clearly think it’s possible — and it may be, perhaps with repeated interventions — but we think it would be utter madness.”

Jack’s brain was working overtime. “By what you’re saying then… does that mean we kind of know that the Revisionists will never be successful, because, you know, if they had — history would already be different?”

Inchquin smiled. “Very good, Jack. Indeed that is one theory — that history as we know it already reflects what has happened, including any interventions that the Revisionists have made, and, in fact, interventions we have made to stop them.”