John Schettler - Grand Alliance

“We were lucky,” said Bogrov as he tallied the damage. “But she’s a good ship, Admiral. Tunguska came through well enough. What we need now is a little time to catch our breath. Then I can see about that number six engine aft and everything else on this list. We can try making some of these repairs in flight, but it would be much better if we could find some high ground down there and anchor the ship in place. This storm seems to have moved well out to sea, and quicker than I thought. Not a sign of any rain now, and it feels much warmer, strange as that sounds. There should be cold air behind that front. Well sir, we can certainly get down to ground level now.”

“As you wish, Captain,” said Karpov. “Find us an nice bald hill somewhere with a tall tree and we’ll anchor there. But the locals will get an eyeful, won’t they.”

They would.

It was late that night and the train had just made its brief stop at Hoveton amp; Wroxham, a humdrum bywater of Norwich. Tom Willers had been on holiday to the north, visiting relatives in Walsham, and was now riding his motorbike home in the dead of night. He could have waited until morning, but he had promised to be back by midnight, and was running late. So when his late supper was finished he bundled up and gave it a go, ready for the short twelve kilometer ride south to Wroxham. He had had one too many nips at the bottle that night, but it would keep his blood warm for the ride, or so he dimly reasoned.

Tom was well known in these parts, and well off to have his own motorbike to ride about at any ungodly hour of the day or night. He putted along, taking a side road to the bridge at Wroxham over the broad sloughs of the River Bure. In modern times the area would berth many boats near a place called Summercraft, but these were not modern times, at least not times Karpov would describe that way.

The night was wreathed in misty drifts of grey clouds, and the moon was not yet up. It was a cold, lonesome time, even for May, and no time to be out, but he was almost home. He reached the bridge and started across, when the front lamp on his motorbike suddenly went out. So he coasted to a stop to dismount and have a look, not wanting to ride the rest of the way home in the dark. It was then that he saw it, catching something out of the corner of his eye, a dark shape above him that blackened the stars.

“Now what in bloody hell?”

Tom Willers looked up, stricken with fear to see a massive shape in the sky above him, huge and threatening, like a great behemoth of the night. Then, to his great surprise and discomfiture, he was suddenly illuminated by a blinding white light. It was a dazzling display, lingering on the bridge where he shivered by his motorbike until the light moved on, searching along the winding road ahead.

His eyes adjusted, and now he could see the dark mass above again, long, cigar shaped, with the faint drone of a whirring sound. He could also see that the light that had dazzled him was from what looked like a powerful searchlight, now fingering the ground beyond the river, and a second light flashed from its other end, so far from the nose of the craft that it seemed to stretch half way across the county!

He was not the only one who saw the strange lights that night. Mrs. Turner of New Catton, Norwich, was near the window on the upper floor of her home, restless and unable to sleep. Her eye was suddenly caught by the brilliant columns of light, so bright that they illuminated the street outside as bright as daylight. She would later report the incident, saying that: “… I looked up and there I saw a big star of light in front, and a big searchlight behind… It was coming from the north-northeast, from the direction of the Angel Road School, and flying very low, so low that it would have touched the pinnacle of the school had it passed directly over it.”

Others in Norwich reported seeing a similar strange shape in the sky that night, and a few minutes later, a man riding a bike in Tharston south of the main town said he saw a ‘torpedo shaped’ object in the sky, and with a powerful searchlight.

Tunguska had come down to a very low altitude, and they were making a search in the dark for a place Karpov was fingering on his navigation map. There had been no suitable hills about as they had earlier hoped to find, but Karpov could see a place denoted RAF Coltishall, which would offer plenty of unobstructed space for the massive airship to hover in place, anchored by the buckets they might lower and fix to the ground. The base had been established in 1938, and would serve until sold off in 2010 after its closure in 2006. It would give them a safe place to stabilize the ship for the repairs they wanted to make, and they could also clear their arrival with the R.A. F. Karpov gave the order to try and raise the base on radio earlier, but they had no response.

“I’m surprised they don’t have fighters up after us by now,” said Bogrov. “The storm is passing. Are the British pilots all asleep?”

“I’m more surprised that they do not answer our hails. Are you certain the equipment was not damaged from those lightning strikes?”

“It seems to be working, sir,” said a signalman. I can hear signals, though they all seem to be in Morse code.”

‘Well why don’t they answer? Signal in Morse then. We need to get this ship sorted out.”

“Well we can’t even seem to find the damn airfield,” said Bogrov. “Where’s the moon?” He seemed somewhat disoriented.

“It’s likely lost in that storm,” said Karpov.

“Storm? Have a look out there, Admiral. Its settled down to a fine quiet night. But where is this airfield? It should be right in front of us.”

“Are you certain these charts are accurate?” Karpov gave him an irritated look.

“The best I could find on short notice, sir. That’s the river there that we were illuminating with our searchlights a moment ago. If I keep it on our left then the airfield should be no more than 5 kilometers northwest, but I can’t see a thing out there. There’s certainly no sign of air activity here.”

“Well, there’s plenty of open ground about. We’ll just have to hover low and anchor in a field. Then get the engineers busy. I want to be over London at dawn, just as I surprised the Germans. Tunguska will be quite a sight over Big Ben, will it not?”

“I can only hope we get a better reception than the Germans gave us. We’re fair game down here, sir. And their Spitfires are good planes.”

But they saw no sign of aircraft, and heard no return to their radio hails. It was as if England had just gone to sleep, with only the faint snoring of Morse code over the airwaves, but that was not so. Tom Willers had been wide awake that night, as was Mrs. Turner of New Catton and Bob Thatch of Tharston, and the reports were soon coming in all over East Anglia. For Tunguska was not where Karpov thought to take it, at least not the hour and day he had hoped to arrive.

Something in the awesome power and magnetic energy of that towering storm over the North Sea had found affinity with the bones of the ship, the odd flecks of exotic metals that had been smelted into the beams which made up the massive structure. The dancing fire and rippling light that Karpov had seen was the telltale sign of its power, and the ship was elsewhere for some time, until it finally settled into the here and now-but not the one they had left behind them at nearly 15,000 meters, with the shaking winds and battering ice of that massive thunderhead. It stood like a great anvil in the dark tormented sky, and the hammer of god had descended upon it, falling on the ship that carried something from another world in the core of its very structure.

Karpov would not find that out for some hours, while the airship hovered like a great beached whale over the downs of Tunstead. There was a winding road not far from the place where they ground anchored for repairs, and on that road was another late traveler on a bicycle, working his way along the track towards the old rectory. He was making a very early delivery at two in the morning, and he had promised the parson he would have fresh cheese, milk, and a morning paper well before dawn. He had come up Peter’s Lane from Ice Well Wood, feeling the chill on the air as he rode, and then he saw it, the massive shape hovering silently above the ground, the shadows of men beneath it, and the sound of an odd language being spoken.