Christopher Nuttall: Second Chance

“Do a full systems check,” Jackson said, wishing that the aerospace companies had managed to complete the promised VTOL airliner. Landing a 747 on a motorway would be… tricky. He scowled; in fact it would be bloody dangerous. “Find out where the hell we are?”

“Captain… Sidney, everything outside the plane is down,” Diarchal said, horror in his voice. Jackson passed him control and glanced at the flight computer; GPS, emergency beacons, the French, British, German, Spanish airports seemed to be completely off the air. There was no contact at all with ground control; no signals from them at all.

“What the fuck happened?” Jackson asked. The plane shuddered again; one of the engines was starting to flicker in and out of use. “I think we’re going to have to put her down and hope.”

“We should be over farmland,” Diarchal said. Jackson tried not to think about the potential for disaster in modern-day French farmlands. “We have no choice.”

“We’ll lose our licences for this,” Jackson said. He picked up the intercom, hesitated, and then spoke in the firmest tone he could muster. “If I could have your attention please,” he said, “the problems have grown severe enough to warrant an emergency landing in a field. I assure you that we can manage such a landing; it will, however, require some cooperation from you.”

He took a breath. “I want everyone strapped in and secured,” he said. “Hold hands, pray, but it is vitally important that you do not panic or distract us. Once the aircraft is down, the emergency exits will open, and you must make your way away from the plane with as much care as you can muster.”

He closed the intercom. “Syeda, give them five minutes to buckle in, then go check on them,” he ordered. “Then go buckle in yourself, understand?”

Syeda nodded. “Good luck,” she said.

SS- Standartenfuhrer Herman Roth was bored. Despite his high rank, he hadn’t seen any service in the recent campaign, when the glorious Wehrmacht had crushed the French and proved the Fuhrer right about the French. Roth sniffed; the French innkeeper who’d – unwillingly – put his men up for the night had been careful to send his daughter away for the night. Some of the lower-ranking SS men had objected to this, but Roth had overridden them, asking who would want to lower himself to court a French peasant girl?

He looked down at the board again and sighed inwardly; calling on all the diplomacy he possessed to avoid showing his frustration, and moved his knight forward. The almost pathetically grateful innkeeper had been more than willing to play chess with him, but his skills would have been better employed on the battlefield. Roth wasn’t certain if he should mark the man down as a possible recruit – he’d gleaned that he’d once been a member of certain right-wing groups – or as a possible resistance leader. The man wasn’t playing consistently; showing flickers of a greater skill on the board, and then tossing away his advantages. It was so subtle that Roth half-suspected that he was imaging it.

“Excuse me,” the innkeeper said, and got up to put some more wood on the fire. Five of the fifteen-man squad lounged by the fire, playing cards; the others slept the sleep of the just in their rooms. The technical experts, the technicians who would evaluate the developments in French tank design in the factories near the armistice line, were also sleeping. They had had a busy day.

The French have no fight in them, so the Fuhrer said , Roth thought. Here were twenty-five men, the cream of the SS and technical experts who were quite important, and the innkeeper had made no attempt to poison them or shoot them or anything. He leaned back over the chessboard… and then the entire inn began to shake.

“What the hell was that?” He shouted, as… something passed overhead; the wake of its passage shaking the inn. It seemed to him as if it were at treetop height; he snatched up his Mauser rifle and ran outside; the entire village was awake. He stared in disbelief; a monstrous aircraft was moving through the air, heading down into the fields past the village. As he watched, the aircraft landed on the ground, glowing with light and fire.

No, not fire , he realised, although he couldn’t believe his own eyes. Those are electrical lights .

“ Herr Standartenfuhrer ?” Roth glanced around to see one of the technical experts. “It is a British bomber,” the man said with calm confidence. Roth wasn’t so sure; the British, unlike the French, were stubborn; their bombing raids had been as effective as the Luffwaffe’s own. Mere pinpricks, to be sure, but it showed the sheer determination that an Aryan race could call upon, should it need to fight.

And the British would not be so foolish as to send a bomber over the French mainland so brightly lit, he knew, and shook his head. The motion brought him back to himself and he started to bark orders; sending one of the men to call for reinforcements, while he led the squad forward. He cursed; he’d been deceived by the sheer size of the thing; it was further away than it looked.

“There are people there,” his deputy, Untersturmfuehrer Johan Schmidt, gasped.

“You were expecting men from Mars?” Roth asked. “Like in the Ami trash?”

“This might have come from Mars,” Schmidt said, awe in his voice. Roth had to agree with him; up close, the monstrous aircraft seemed like a dream. It wasn’t shaped like any bomber he’d seen, and he’d been privileged to guard some of the secret research facilities during the years before Hitler had revealed the German air force to the world, and how had it flown without propellers?

The crew were even stranger. They milled about, without any sense of discipline, and they were complaining loudly. Their complaints seemed trivial; if the aircraft had been forced to land, then they were lucky to be alive. Their babbling voices spoke in English; they were English then.

“They must be from their empire,” he said to Schmidt, who nodded. There were strange people; dark-skinned men, covered women, whites and blacks and even some Chinese. He felt a shudder of revulsion; no wonder the Aryan blood of the British was running thin, with all these people mixed in with them. A black man held a white woman and two brown children, and he felt loathing rising within his heart.

“Excuse me,” a man, clearly the Captain, said. His uniform seemed vaguely British, but unfamiliar; his accent strange and unknown. “I wish to report a crash landing.”

Roth closed his eyes, trying to remember the English lessons he’d had hammered into him at school. “I see that,” he said carefully. His accent caused the Captain’s eyes to widen, but he seemed to dismiss something, a thought from his mind. “Captain, what are you?”

“I am the Captain of British Airlines Flight 747,” the Captain said, and he recognised the tone of the British within his words. He stepped back and for the first time the Captain saw his uniform clearly. “Who are you? What are you?”

Roth reeled. Did the British know nothing about the SS rank structure? Was he looking for an equal? “I am SS- Standartenfuhrer Herman Roth,” he said. “Can I have your name, rank and serial number?”

The Captain stared at him. Roth saw horror and fear in his eyes. “I am Captain Sidney Jackson, British Airlines,” he said. “Ah… Herr standing fuehrer , can you tell me what year it is?”

Roth felt Schmidt stiffen behind him at the implied insult; he held up a hand to forestall any response. The pronunciation had been dreadful, but he suspected that it stemmed from unfamiliarly, rather than a desire to insult. The question, however, was stupid – and then it hit him that it might not be as stupid as it sounded.