My First Ever Biggles Project...
Nov. 4th, 2023 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rosanicusHaving been encouraged byblack_bentley one (1) time, I hereby present to you: the Biggles time loop fic I started writing after reading my first Biggles book back in April. It's a good chunk of fic but as I read more of the books I realised the characterisation was a bit wonky, and then I got the yips about the plot itself, and then the whole thing languished in my docs unchanged for *checks notes* six months. Which also means we must be past my semi-anniversay in Biggles fandom and I have to say: I've been having the time of my life.
Haven't even reread this before posting! And actually now I think about it I started writing this before I'd even read a book with Bertie in it. Truly weird to think about now that these characters are amongst the closest friends I've made this year (lol).
It began, as so many strange adventures do, in a covert scientific research base in the Swiss Alps.
James Bigglesworth – Biggles to his friends – packed away his field glasses with a sigh. The alpine breeze ruffled his sandy hair. No movement came from the direction of the building. The doors may as well have been painted on for all the opening and closing they did.
“Still no sign of dear Erich?” asked Bertie, halfway through a cheese and pickle sandwich.
“I think that’s a touch obvious, old top,” interjected Algy. He was attending to a minor mechanical fault and therefore slightly muffled by the screwdriver in his mouth.
Biggles’ gaze remained fixed on the base. The RV point was closer than usual, a few hundred yards from the target as the crow flew, but handily concealed by virtue of altitude. It took a good effort to climb up the cliff face to the relatively flat, wide plain. The group was relying on that to deter any potential interlopers.
It would be stupid to rush in now. Von Stalhein had been late for RV before, and in fact had warned that it was likely to occur once more due to the difficulty involved in infiltrating such a remote location. He would doubtless turn up soon and castigate Biggles if he caught him in the act of mounting a rescue mission.
Half an hour crawled by. Algy finished working on the engine and entered the cabin; a series of banging noises soon emerged which usually accompanied a full inventory of the medical kit. Bertie polished off another round of sandwiches – corned beef this time – and wandered off to peer vertiginously over the cliff edge. Biggles fought the urge to grab him by the scruff like a kitten.
Ginger was back in Mount Street with a broken ankle. It was not often that Biggles envied a broken bone.
Still, the base remained quiet.
“I say, Biggles, if you don’t stop pacing like that you’ll make me dizzy,” said Bertie. He put a hand on Biggles’ shoulder and peered at him through his eyeglass.
Biggles, shame-faced, stopped pacing. He looked down at his boots and took a deep breath.
Algy appeared from the machine’s cabin, hands full of part-rolled bandages. “Good lord, man, if you go to pieces over this I have dreadful news about some of our past escapades.” But he did look sympathetic.
There really was no reason for the anxiety Biggles could feel gathering like a dark cloud in his chest. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been struck so badly by nerves before something happened.
It was the certainty that something was going to that threw him the most. He could feel it like electricity sparking in his bones.
“This is damned odd behaviour from you, Biggles,” said Algy, after a long moment. “Something more than usual the matter?”
Biggles inclined his head; the urge to fetch out his field glasses again and train them on the base was almost unbearable. “There’s… something. Can’t put a finger on it, I’m afraid to say.”
As he was speaking, Bertie made a startled noise and reached for his monocle. “Chaps, I fear I must interrupt your chinwag – does that look like fire to anyone else?”
The field glasses were out and up to Biggles’ eyes in a flash – he trained them on the windows, watching for telltale flickering shadows. The base was in an old chalet – lucky for their purposes, as it allowed for a multitude of covert entry and exit points. Unlucky for this current disaster, given the historically poor relationship between timber and flame.
“I can’t see a thing,” he said after a minute. “Could be going blind, I suppose. The snow is bright enough for it.”
“It’s already dusk, old top,” said Algy. Biggles lowered the field glasses and glanced at his friend in time to see him frown. “I could have sworn I saw it too, Bertie. Something was licking up the roof.”
“I would swear the same,” said Bertie. “Under oath, even.” He seemed genuinely unnerved; he removed his eyeglass and polished it on the fur lining of his hood. His mouth was set in a hard line. “Something damned odd is going on.”
“Erich is still in there,” Biggles said, after a moment. It was the foremost thought in his mind.
“Oh, go on,” said Algy. He sighed loudly. “I may not count the man amongst my bosom friends but I don’t exactly relish the thought of him burning to death.”
“Quite,” offered Bertie. He held out a pair of ice axes to Biggles. “Do be careful, though. We’d rather like the both of you back in one piece.”
–
Climbing down a hundred vertical feet of ice-covered rock was not Biggles’ idea of a relaxing evening; thankfully, the Alps were beautiful enough to make up for the physical strain it put on his shoulders.
The cross-ice travel towards the chalet was equally difficult in another way; guards looped the facility on a regular schedule, three times in the hour, and his watch was acting up in the cold. He’d dropped it in a snowdrift the day before and the thing was still very unhappy with him.
He paused for breath in the last ditch before the clear path to the veranda surrounding the main part of the chalet. His elbows sank into fresh snow. His face was warm beneath his balaclava but he couldn’t say the same for his fingers; a hole had formed in one of his gloves and was only now making itself known.
The field glasses afforded him a better vantage point for watching the upper windows; the limited scouting they had managed before von Stalhein’s solo entry had gathered that most of the scientific equipment was held up there, away from the majority of foot traffic through the building.
As Biggles was about to set the glasses aside, he caught a glimpse of something flickering in the top left-hand window. He felt a hand tighten around his heart. The fire must have died back and was now roaring to life – he trained his eyes on the window.
The flames licked higher and higher; it occurred to Biggles after a long moment of confusion that they were a deeply odd colour. Not the cheery orange of wood burning nor the bright green of copper but a vivid, unnatural purple.
Then, as suddenly as the flames had appeared, they vanished. Biggles blinked several times, the after-image still burned into the blackness behind his eyelids.
He refrained from commenting on this strangeness aloud, as tempting as it was. The night guard was making his slow way across the front of the chalet, the light of his torch trained on the ground in front of him. It seemed that initiative was unlikely to be one of the man’s strengths.
Biggles waited for him to pass by, cheek pressed to the frozen ground. The wind whistled through the valley between mountains and smothered the sound of footsteps in snow.
The gap between his current position and the door he estimated as no more than fifty yards. The guard turned the corner and began the slow climb up the hillside that abutted the east wall of the chalet. Biggles, still feeling that thrumming urgency in his bones, propelled himself across the gap in under thirty seconds, despite the heavy winter gear. His penknife jimmied the latch of the first window easily – a poor show of security on the part of the researchers, but not a gift horse Biggles would look too closely in the teeth.
He slipped through and lowered the sash behind him, landing lightly on the balls of his feet.
The corridor was dark and cold. The whole place seemed honestly abandoned; Raymond had implied that the entire operation was winding down to be moved somewhere more easily defended. Only a skeleton crew remained. This was the best chance the British had at obtaining certain research – exactly what the research entailed, Raymond had not been at liberty to say.
Biggles stowed his ice axes and withdrew his automatic from his coat pocket. He crept down the corridor towards the staircase, a handsome affair in what looked like solid oak.
No guards or scientists appeared from behind the doors lining the corridor, or from the corner behind him. Biggles began to feel more unnerved than if he’d been forced into hiding. The stairs creaked very slightly beneath his weight; it sounded unnaturally loud in the silence.
Bertie was right. Something damned odd was going on.
At the top of the stairs Biggles paused. It took a moment to orient himself – the staircase had turned as it rose, and he was now facing a quarter turn further east than he had been on the ground floor. The window with the disappearing flames would be in the wing behind him, he was fairly sure.
A faint echo of footsteps came from the floor below. Time to head off, then.
He set out towards the fire. It stood to reason that von Stalhein would end up in the only room which spelled trouble for the occupant.
It was hard to identify the correct door – Biggles peered through the keyhole of two others before coming across the right place. The other rooms seemed to be full of canisters of some kind, like the oxygen they’d brought on their expedition to the Himalaya.
The third was immediately obvious as the correct door. A large yellow hazard sign informed Biggles that delicate equipment was contained within. There was a deadbolt at both the top and bottom of the door; both had been thrown. Someone, or something, was stuck inside.
He drew back both bolts. The sound of flames was clearly audible. Biggles, not one to waste time, rattled the door handle and, when that failed, slammed his shoulder into the door until the lock broke and sent him tumbling to the floor on the other side.
“Ah, Bigglesworth,” said von Stalhein.
He was in the act of smothering a fire – the familiar purple flames that Biggles had watched from the RV and then the ditch outside – with a coarse blanket. It seemed that the blaze had spread to the furniture. A number of charred objects littered the room. His hair and clothes were in disarray; his shirt cuffs were rolled back revealing bruises that circled his wrists.
Biggles pushed himself to his feet, wincing at a tugging pain in his knee, and stowed his automatic. “Erich,” he said. A crashing wave of relief washed over him. “Do you need a hand with that?”
“I am fine,” said von Stalhein. “The fire is out.” He shook out the blanket, scorched and blackened, and revealed the source of the fire – a strange metal contraption, several concentric circles of steel with a pile of ash in a central dish. A translucent dome of some kind surrounded the thing, shimmering the same ethereal purple as the flames. A bank of controls behind it flickered with electric lights; a panel of buttons lit up and then extinguished. A large dial swung from the extreme right and began winding back towards the left.
Biggles walked across the room and stood, hands on hips, inspecting this new development. “I don’t suppose you’ve any idea what this is for?” He asked.
Von Stalhein put his hand in the air and tilted it from side to side – more or less. “I must confess the interrogation was very one-sided. It seems to be some sort of perpetual energy experiment.” He indicated the dish of ash; Biggles squinted at it.
“Is it just me or is the ash – reconstituting, somehow?” The briefing on this base had been noticeably light on scientific detail; Biggles had to admit that this was beyond his usual remit. He wasn’t sure this would respond very well to his preferred method: a long fuse and a fast sprint.
“It is not just you,” confirmed von Stalhein. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. His face was covered in smudges of soot, highlighting the hollow of his cheeks. The ash continued to solidify. “I have smothered this same fire five or six times now. The thing seems destined to exceed its grasp.”
Biggles felt very out of the loop. He rested one hand on the bank of controls. “Sorry, I think I’ve missed a few steps in this conversation. Did you say – interrogation?”
“Naturally,” replied von Stalhein. He indicated his bruised wrists, then turned his head far enough that Biggles could see the beginnings of a black eye. “They locked me in when I failed to give them information which satisfied them. They seemed surprised that simple restraints were not enough to gain my compliance.”
Despite himself, Biggles grinned. It was typical von Stalhein to insult a criminal gang for a lack of imagination. He reached for von Stalhein’s wrist, cradling it with both hands. The other man hissed quietly.
“It was at that time,” he said, as Biggles inspected his catch with gentle fingers. “That the fire began to spread. It seems that the experiment is not intended to be run so many times in succession. The technician seemed very angry that he was not permitted to terminate the program.”
Biggles focused on the bruises. Thin scratches passed around the whole of his arm; he wondered exactly how von Stalhein had managed to remove a pair of manacles without further damaging himself. “Did you lift the keys to your restraints while they were… welcoming you to the chalet?”
“Of course,” said von Stalhein, with a glimmer of a smile. “And – ah. It seems that another conflagration is upon us.” He indicated the machinery, which was making a clicking sound that Biggles took only a moment to identify as the sound of a gas element attempting to ignite.
“It does seem like we’ve outstayed our welcome,” Biggles said before turning to the door. It was at that unfortunate moment that the lightning mechanism malfunctioned.
The first and only warning of this issue was a high-pitched whining noise which came a split-second before the whoosh of flame igniting.
Biggles covered his ears with both hands as the noise drilled into his mind. He had never heard anything like it. It was hideous. It was like a plague of locusts had taken up residence in his skull. It seemed it would never end.
Then it did. He removed his hands from his ears, and looked at the machinery.
The panel of buttons had exploded. The dial, previously so smooth in motion, jittered between measurements at random. The concentric circles surrounding the pile of kindling were collapsing as the roaring fire spread.
The dome of energy expanded outwards. Biggles grabbed von Stalhein by the elbow and tugged him towards the door.
“Out!” He shouted, as the strange purple light washed over them. The sensation was unlike anything Biggles had experienced before; a dreadful tingling spread through him like the worst sort of pins and needles. His vision blurred briefly. An odd sense of deja vu left him staggering in the doorway, just as the effect wore itself out.
There was no time to react to anything. The remaining staff of the chalet had made the same decision to evacuate; he could see several people at the other end of the hallway, between the both of them and the stairs.
He forced himself upright and let go of von Stalhein, who seemed less affected by whatever had just happened. Although Biggles had to admit, at least to himself, that the man had seemed rattled even before the thing had blown a gasket.
“This is not ideal,” commented von Stalhein. He reached for his holster then, with an expression of deep irritation, put his hand out instead for Biggles’ spare pistol. Biggles handed it to him and made a mental note to retrieve von Stalhein’s equipment if at all possible. The man could be sentimental in the extreme, although he would never admit it aloud.
Four men immediately aimed at him, centre mass. Biggles wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or offended at being ignored; as it was he charged into the largest opponent, shoulder first, and knocked him down in a rugby tackle before slamming his head into the hard wooden floor.
Von Stalhein shot the closest man – tall and broad shouldered with close-cropped blond hair – in the calf before drawing a concealed knife from his boot and stabbing another in the shoulder. The motion carried him through and allowed him to throw the second man – dark haired and stocky – to the floor with a knee on his sternum, driving the knife deep into the joint and most likely severing an artery.
A well placed shot to the thigh put another – a slim figure, perhaps two inches shorter than Biggles himself – out of action; Biggles, adrenalin heavy in his veins, sighted the last man standing – the sole redhead of the group – and shot him in the side, hoping to avoid his stomach. All five men were on the floor and out of commission for the moment. After a moment to ascertain his condition, Biggles loosened his tie and fastened it as a tourniquet on the third man’s leg; there was no need for him to die, so long as they could escape.
The whole affair was done in under two minutes. Biggles took von Stalhein’s hand and pulled himself upright, taking a moment to regain his balance. He resisted the urge to lean into von Stalhein’s side – if nothing else, he doubted the man’s bad leg could take it unwarned.
He glanced back at the door of the laboratory. The fire was out. No scorch marks remained, even as the machine sent sparks into the air.
“What’s our escape plan then, Bigglesworth?” asked von Stalhein, with heavy irony. “I trust there was some semblance of one, anyway. Not that I resent your assistance.” He added this last with a trace of a smile in Biggles’ direction.
“I don’t fancy jumping out a window tonight, so I’d say the stairs are our first objective,” said Biggles.
“As brilliant as ever,” von Stalhein retorted. He led the way to the stairs. Biggles noted, absently, that von Stalhein was still holding his hand.
“Your confidence warms my heart as always, Erich,” said Biggles. He paused at the top of the staircase. “I do have to wonder why it was that you were in need of rescue in the first place.”
Von Stalhein grimaced. “I was found while investigating the room full of canisters – it seems there is at least some competent security here. Eventually I convinced them I am a helpless tourist who has been separated from his skiing group.”
Biggles stifled a laugh. “I’m sure you were very convincing,” he said. And he was. Von Stalhein took his roles as seriously as any West End thespian. “Your most challenging cover since El Shareef.”
“Regardless, my ruse was effective. They left me unattended long enough that I could free myself from their manacles. The door, as you noticed, was bolted from the outside. The window was blocked by that… machine.” He spat the last word, lips curled. “And attempting to summit it produced a sort of mental torpor which I do not wish to experience again.”
Biggles could understand that very well. “Did you retrieve the documents?”
Von Stalhein fixed him with a withering glare.
“Forget I asked,” laughed Biggles. “Of course you did. Where did you stash the packet?”
With a swift glance towards the end of the hallway – thankfully devoid of approaching enemies – von Stalhein outlined its approximate location. Biggles raised his eyebrows.
“You threw it out of the window, didn’t you?”
Von Stalhein did not reply; Biggles decided he would have to keep this information to himself until he could tell Algy in private.
“We’d best be on our way,” he said, trying very hard to hide his amusement. “Unless you’ve anything else you’d like to conceal?”
“Are you asking for a shortcut, Bigglesworth?” Von Stalhein asked. Biggles shook his head, smirking.
Downstairs, the darkness loomed once more.
Biggles pushed von Stalhein behind him as they crept along the corridor. At each door he paused briefly, listening for any sign of movement in the rooms beyond.
It was at the third door that he was surprised by the sharp retort of a semi-automatic. A heavy one-two punch to his stomach told him he was hit; the feeling of the wooden floor against his back told him he’d fallen. He blinked several times and tried to speak. No sound emerged.
Von Stalhein’s face swam into view above him. He was saying something; Biggles couldn’t make it out. Both his hands were pressing down on Biggles’ chest, a shock of pain against a sea of confusion. Something warm and wet spread out beneath him.
The terrible drilling noise rang in his ears. He wanted to cover them but his hands refused to move. His vision tunnelled until he could see only the familiar blue of von Stalhein’s eyes.
He tried to breathe and choked; the same warm wetness dripped from his lips and down his chin.
Biggles blinked. He was standing in the doorway of the room of machinery, von Stalhein’s hand in his. Four men were at the end of the hallway, already turning towards them.
He handed von Stalhein his backup pistol and made a mental note to retrieve his equipment if at all possible.
black_bentley one (1) time, I hereby present to you: the Biggles time loop fic I started writing after reading my first Biggles book back in April. It's a good chunk of fic but as I read more of the books I realised the characterisation was a bit wonky, and then I got the yips about the plot itself, and then the whole thing languished in my docs unchanged for *checks notes* six months. Which also means we must be past my semi-anniversay in Biggles fandom and I have to say: I've been having the time of my life. Haven't even reread this before posting! And actually now I think about it I started writing this before I'd even read a book with Bertie in it. Truly weird to think about now that these characters are amongst the closest friends I've made this year (lol).
It began, as so many strange adventures do, in a covert scientific research base in the Swiss Alps.
James Bigglesworth – Biggles to his friends – packed away his field glasses with a sigh. The alpine breeze ruffled his sandy hair. No movement came from the direction of the building. The doors may as well have been painted on for all the opening and closing they did.
“Still no sign of dear Erich?” asked Bertie, halfway through a cheese and pickle sandwich.
“I think that’s a touch obvious, old top,” interjected Algy. He was attending to a minor mechanical fault and therefore slightly muffled by the screwdriver in his mouth.
Biggles’ gaze remained fixed on the base. The RV point was closer than usual, a few hundred yards from the target as the crow flew, but handily concealed by virtue of altitude. It took a good effort to climb up the cliff face to the relatively flat, wide plain. The group was relying on that to deter any potential interlopers.
It would be stupid to rush in now. Von Stalhein had been late for RV before, and in fact had warned that it was likely to occur once more due to the difficulty involved in infiltrating such a remote location. He would doubtless turn up soon and castigate Biggles if he caught him in the act of mounting a rescue mission.
Half an hour crawled by. Algy finished working on the engine and entered the cabin; a series of banging noises soon emerged which usually accompanied a full inventory of the medical kit. Bertie polished off another round of sandwiches – corned beef this time – and wandered off to peer vertiginously over the cliff edge. Biggles fought the urge to grab him by the scruff like a kitten.
Ginger was back in Mount Street with a broken ankle. It was not often that Biggles envied a broken bone.
Still, the base remained quiet.
“I say, Biggles, if you don’t stop pacing like that you’ll make me dizzy,” said Bertie. He put a hand on Biggles’ shoulder and peered at him through his eyeglass.
Biggles, shame-faced, stopped pacing. He looked down at his boots and took a deep breath.
Algy appeared from the machine’s cabin, hands full of part-rolled bandages. “Good lord, man, if you go to pieces over this I have dreadful news about some of our past escapades.” But he did look sympathetic.
There really was no reason for the anxiety Biggles could feel gathering like a dark cloud in his chest. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been struck so badly by nerves before something happened.
It was the certainty that something was going to that threw him the most. He could feel it like electricity sparking in his bones.
“This is damned odd behaviour from you, Biggles,” said Algy, after a long moment. “Something more than usual the matter?”
Biggles inclined his head; the urge to fetch out his field glasses again and train them on the base was almost unbearable. “There’s… something. Can’t put a finger on it, I’m afraid to say.”
As he was speaking, Bertie made a startled noise and reached for his monocle. “Chaps, I fear I must interrupt your chinwag – does that look like fire to anyone else?”
The field glasses were out and up to Biggles’ eyes in a flash – he trained them on the windows, watching for telltale flickering shadows. The base was in an old chalet – lucky for their purposes, as it allowed for a multitude of covert entry and exit points. Unlucky for this current disaster, given the historically poor relationship between timber and flame.
“I can’t see a thing,” he said after a minute. “Could be going blind, I suppose. The snow is bright enough for it.”
“It’s already dusk, old top,” said Algy. Biggles lowered the field glasses and glanced at his friend in time to see him frown. “I could have sworn I saw it too, Bertie. Something was licking up the roof.”
“I would swear the same,” said Bertie. “Under oath, even.” He seemed genuinely unnerved; he removed his eyeglass and polished it on the fur lining of his hood. His mouth was set in a hard line. “Something damned odd is going on.”
“Erich is still in there,” Biggles said, after a moment. It was the foremost thought in his mind.
“Oh, go on,” said Algy. He sighed loudly. “I may not count the man amongst my bosom friends but I don’t exactly relish the thought of him burning to death.”
“Quite,” offered Bertie. He held out a pair of ice axes to Biggles. “Do be careful, though. We’d rather like the both of you back in one piece.”
–
Climbing down a hundred vertical feet of ice-covered rock was not Biggles’ idea of a relaxing evening; thankfully, the Alps were beautiful enough to make up for the physical strain it put on his shoulders.
The cross-ice travel towards the chalet was equally difficult in another way; guards looped the facility on a regular schedule, three times in the hour, and his watch was acting up in the cold. He’d dropped it in a snowdrift the day before and the thing was still very unhappy with him.
He paused for breath in the last ditch before the clear path to the veranda surrounding the main part of the chalet. His elbows sank into fresh snow. His face was warm beneath his balaclava but he couldn’t say the same for his fingers; a hole had formed in one of his gloves and was only now making itself known.
The field glasses afforded him a better vantage point for watching the upper windows; the limited scouting they had managed before von Stalhein’s solo entry had gathered that most of the scientific equipment was held up there, away from the majority of foot traffic through the building.
As Biggles was about to set the glasses aside, he caught a glimpse of something flickering in the top left-hand window. He felt a hand tighten around his heart. The fire must have died back and was now roaring to life – he trained his eyes on the window.
The flames licked higher and higher; it occurred to Biggles after a long moment of confusion that they were a deeply odd colour. Not the cheery orange of wood burning nor the bright green of copper but a vivid, unnatural purple.
Then, as suddenly as the flames had appeared, they vanished. Biggles blinked several times, the after-image still burned into the blackness behind his eyelids.
He refrained from commenting on this strangeness aloud, as tempting as it was. The night guard was making his slow way across the front of the chalet, the light of his torch trained on the ground in front of him. It seemed that initiative was unlikely to be one of the man’s strengths.
Biggles waited for him to pass by, cheek pressed to the frozen ground. The wind whistled through the valley between mountains and smothered the sound of footsteps in snow.
The gap between his current position and the door he estimated as no more than fifty yards. The guard turned the corner and began the slow climb up the hillside that abutted the east wall of the chalet. Biggles, still feeling that thrumming urgency in his bones, propelled himself across the gap in under thirty seconds, despite the heavy winter gear. His penknife jimmied the latch of the first window easily – a poor show of security on the part of the researchers, but not a gift horse Biggles would look too closely in the teeth.
He slipped through and lowered the sash behind him, landing lightly on the balls of his feet.
The corridor was dark and cold. The whole place seemed honestly abandoned; Raymond had implied that the entire operation was winding down to be moved somewhere more easily defended. Only a skeleton crew remained. This was the best chance the British had at obtaining certain research – exactly what the research entailed, Raymond had not been at liberty to say.
Biggles stowed his ice axes and withdrew his automatic from his coat pocket. He crept down the corridor towards the staircase, a handsome affair in what looked like solid oak.
No guards or scientists appeared from behind the doors lining the corridor, or from the corner behind him. Biggles began to feel more unnerved than if he’d been forced into hiding. The stairs creaked very slightly beneath his weight; it sounded unnaturally loud in the silence.
Bertie was right. Something damned odd was going on.
At the top of the stairs Biggles paused. It took a moment to orient himself – the staircase had turned as it rose, and he was now facing a quarter turn further east than he had been on the ground floor. The window with the disappearing flames would be in the wing behind him, he was fairly sure.
A faint echo of footsteps came from the floor below. Time to head off, then.
He set out towards the fire. It stood to reason that von Stalhein would end up in the only room which spelled trouble for the occupant.
It was hard to identify the correct door – Biggles peered through the keyhole of two others before coming across the right place. The other rooms seemed to be full of canisters of some kind, like the oxygen they’d brought on their expedition to the Himalaya.
The third was immediately obvious as the correct door. A large yellow hazard sign informed Biggles that delicate equipment was contained within. There was a deadbolt at both the top and bottom of the door; both had been thrown. Someone, or something, was stuck inside.
He drew back both bolts. The sound of flames was clearly audible. Biggles, not one to waste time, rattled the door handle and, when that failed, slammed his shoulder into the door until the lock broke and sent him tumbling to the floor on the other side.
“Ah, Bigglesworth,” said von Stalhein.
He was in the act of smothering a fire – the familiar purple flames that Biggles had watched from the RV and then the ditch outside – with a coarse blanket. It seemed that the blaze had spread to the furniture. A number of charred objects littered the room. His hair and clothes were in disarray; his shirt cuffs were rolled back revealing bruises that circled his wrists.
Biggles pushed himself to his feet, wincing at a tugging pain in his knee, and stowed his automatic. “Erich,” he said. A crashing wave of relief washed over him. “Do you need a hand with that?”
“I am fine,” said von Stalhein. “The fire is out.” He shook out the blanket, scorched and blackened, and revealed the source of the fire – a strange metal contraption, several concentric circles of steel with a pile of ash in a central dish. A translucent dome of some kind surrounded the thing, shimmering the same ethereal purple as the flames. A bank of controls behind it flickered with electric lights; a panel of buttons lit up and then extinguished. A large dial swung from the extreme right and began winding back towards the left.
Biggles walked across the room and stood, hands on hips, inspecting this new development. “I don’t suppose you’ve any idea what this is for?” He asked.
Von Stalhein put his hand in the air and tilted it from side to side – more or less. “I must confess the interrogation was very one-sided. It seems to be some sort of perpetual energy experiment.” He indicated the dish of ash; Biggles squinted at it.
“Is it just me or is the ash – reconstituting, somehow?” The briefing on this base had been noticeably light on scientific detail; Biggles had to admit that this was beyond his usual remit. He wasn’t sure this would respond very well to his preferred method: a long fuse and a fast sprint.
“It is not just you,” confirmed von Stalhein. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. His face was covered in smudges of soot, highlighting the hollow of his cheeks. The ash continued to solidify. “I have smothered this same fire five or six times now. The thing seems destined to exceed its grasp.”
Biggles felt very out of the loop. He rested one hand on the bank of controls. “Sorry, I think I’ve missed a few steps in this conversation. Did you say – interrogation?”
“Naturally,” replied von Stalhein. He indicated his bruised wrists, then turned his head far enough that Biggles could see the beginnings of a black eye. “They locked me in when I failed to give them information which satisfied them. They seemed surprised that simple restraints were not enough to gain my compliance.”
Despite himself, Biggles grinned. It was typical von Stalhein to insult a criminal gang for a lack of imagination. He reached for von Stalhein’s wrist, cradling it with both hands. The other man hissed quietly.
“It was at that time,” he said, as Biggles inspected his catch with gentle fingers. “That the fire began to spread. It seems that the experiment is not intended to be run so many times in succession. The technician seemed very angry that he was not permitted to terminate the program.”
Biggles focused on the bruises. Thin scratches passed around the whole of his arm; he wondered exactly how von Stalhein had managed to remove a pair of manacles without further damaging himself. “Did you lift the keys to your restraints while they were… welcoming you to the chalet?”
“Of course,” said von Stalhein, with a glimmer of a smile. “And – ah. It seems that another conflagration is upon us.” He indicated the machinery, which was making a clicking sound that Biggles took only a moment to identify as the sound of a gas element attempting to ignite.
“It does seem like we’ve outstayed our welcome,” Biggles said before turning to the door. It was at that unfortunate moment that the lightning mechanism malfunctioned.
The first and only warning of this issue was a high-pitched whining noise which came a split-second before the whoosh of flame igniting.
Biggles covered his ears with both hands as the noise drilled into his mind. He had never heard anything like it. It was hideous. It was like a plague of locusts had taken up residence in his skull. It seemed it would never end.
Then it did. He removed his hands from his ears, and looked at the machinery.
The panel of buttons had exploded. The dial, previously so smooth in motion, jittered between measurements at random. The concentric circles surrounding the pile of kindling were collapsing as the roaring fire spread.
The dome of energy expanded outwards. Biggles grabbed von Stalhein by the elbow and tugged him towards the door.
“Out!” He shouted, as the strange purple light washed over them. The sensation was unlike anything Biggles had experienced before; a dreadful tingling spread through him like the worst sort of pins and needles. His vision blurred briefly. An odd sense of deja vu left him staggering in the doorway, just as the effect wore itself out.
There was no time to react to anything. The remaining staff of the chalet had made the same decision to evacuate; he could see several people at the other end of the hallway, between the both of them and the stairs.
He forced himself upright and let go of von Stalhein, who seemed less affected by whatever had just happened. Although Biggles had to admit, at least to himself, that the man had seemed rattled even before the thing had blown a gasket.
“This is not ideal,” commented von Stalhein. He reached for his holster then, with an expression of deep irritation, put his hand out instead for Biggles’ spare pistol. Biggles handed it to him and made a mental note to retrieve von Stalhein’s equipment if at all possible. The man could be sentimental in the extreme, although he would never admit it aloud.
Four men immediately aimed at him, centre mass. Biggles wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or offended at being ignored; as it was he charged into the largest opponent, shoulder first, and knocked him down in a rugby tackle before slamming his head into the hard wooden floor.
Von Stalhein shot the closest man – tall and broad shouldered with close-cropped blond hair – in the calf before drawing a concealed knife from his boot and stabbing another in the shoulder. The motion carried him through and allowed him to throw the second man – dark haired and stocky – to the floor with a knee on his sternum, driving the knife deep into the joint and most likely severing an artery.
A well placed shot to the thigh put another – a slim figure, perhaps two inches shorter than Biggles himself – out of action; Biggles, adrenalin heavy in his veins, sighted the last man standing – the sole redhead of the group – and shot him in the side, hoping to avoid his stomach. All five men were on the floor and out of commission for the moment. After a moment to ascertain his condition, Biggles loosened his tie and fastened it as a tourniquet on the third man’s leg; there was no need for him to die, so long as they could escape.
The whole affair was done in under two minutes. Biggles took von Stalhein’s hand and pulled himself upright, taking a moment to regain his balance. He resisted the urge to lean into von Stalhein’s side – if nothing else, he doubted the man’s bad leg could take it unwarned.
He glanced back at the door of the laboratory. The fire was out. No scorch marks remained, even as the machine sent sparks into the air.
“What’s our escape plan then, Bigglesworth?” asked von Stalhein, with heavy irony. “I trust there was some semblance of one, anyway. Not that I resent your assistance.” He added this last with a trace of a smile in Biggles’ direction.
“I don’t fancy jumping out a window tonight, so I’d say the stairs are our first objective,” said Biggles.
“As brilliant as ever,” von Stalhein retorted. He led the way to the stairs. Biggles noted, absently, that von Stalhein was still holding his hand.
“Your confidence warms my heart as always, Erich,” said Biggles. He paused at the top of the staircase. “I do have to wonder why it was that you were in need of rescue in the first place.”
Von Stalhein grimaced. “I was found while investigating the room full of canisters – it seems there is at least some competent security here. Eventually I convinced them I am a helpless tourist who has been separated from his skiing group.”
Biggles stifled a laugh. “I’m sure you were very convincing,” he said. And he was. Von Stalhein took his roles as seriously as any West End thespian. “Your most challenging cover since El Shareef.”
“Regardless, my ruse was effective. They left me unattended long enough that I could free myself from their manacles. The door, as you noticed, was bolted from the outside. The window was blocked by that… machine.” He spat the last word, lips curled. “And attempting to summit it produced a sort of mental torpor which I do not wish to experience again.”
Biggles could understand that very well. “Did you retrieve the documents?”
Von Stalhein fixed him with a withering glare.
“Forget I asked,” laughed Biggles. “Of course you did. Where did you stash the packet?”
With a swift glance towards the end of the hallway – thankfully devoid of approaching enemies – von Stalhein outlined its approximate location. Biggles raised his eyebrows.
“You threw it out of the window, didn’t you?”
Von Stalhein did not reply; Biggles decided he would have to keep this information to himself until he could tell Algy in private.
“We’d best be on our way,” he said, trying very hard to hide his amusement. “Unless you’ve anything else you’d like to conceal?”
“Are you asking for a shortcut, Bigglesworth?” Von Stalhein asked. Biggles shook his head, smirking.
Downstairs, the darkness loomed once more.
Biggles pushed von Stalhein behind him as they crept along the corridor. At each door he paused briefly, listening for any sign of movement in the rooms beyond.
It was at the third door that he was surprised by the sharp retort of a semi-automatic. A heavy one-two punch to his stomach told him he was hit; the feeling of the wooden floor against his back told him he’d fallen. He blinked several times and tried to speak. No sound emerged.
Von Stalhein’s face swam into view above him. He was saying something; Biggles couldn’t make it out. Both his hands were pressing down on Biggles’ chest, a shock of pain against a sea of confusion. Something warm and wet spread out beneath him.
The terrible drilling noise rang in his ears. He wanted to cover them but his hands refused to move. His vision tunnelled until he could see only the familiar blue of von Stalhein’s eyes.
He tried to breathe and choked; the same warm wetness dripped from his lips and down his chin.
Biggles blinked. He was standing in the doorway of the room of machinery, von Stalhein’s hand in his. Four men were at the end of the hallway, already turning towards them.
He handed von Stalhein his backup pistol and made a mental note to retrieve his equipment if at all possible.
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Date: 2023-11-04 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-05 09:58 am (UTC)I love the little hints that something's off at first, Biggles being anxious and restless, the spooky disappearing fire, his watch being wrong - and then they all agree that he's got to go rescue Erich!
The self-igniting circular fire is delightfully creepy and a wonderful counterpoint to EvS being sarky about his captors' lack of skill and also Biggles's worried examination of his injuries. And then it goes boom, there's a fight which Erich wins spectacularly, and they start their escape - holding hands <333. And I love that Erich is sentimental about his kit, that's a great detail, and is extremely competent at everything. And then Biggles is shot, and bleeding to death in Erich's arms - and then they're back at the start again. Fanastic! In my imaginary version of the rest of this, Biggles solves his time loop problem by bringing the rest of the team with him to rescue Erich, in classic Biggles 'phone a friend' style <333
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Date: 2023-11-05 06:28 pm (UTC)Biggles does indeed have some history with the time loop... he just never got quite this far before.
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Date: 2023-11-05 06:29 pm (UTC)