On the High Road to Oblivion

Chapter 19—Storming the Heavens

Frey delivered the news like a doctor handing out a terminal diagnosis. “Evidently, Walter Barron still has friends in high places. He refused our request to set down for a customs inspection, and about ten minutes later, we were ordered to leave him alone.”

“Don’t they know who we’re dealing with here?” Hurricane growled.

“Even if some of them do, it’s all tangled in bureaucracy now. The army doesn’t have the authority to conduct operations on US soil, and Customs doesn’t seem to think there’s any problem.”

Dodge took the news in stride. He had expected something like this to happen. Since arriving at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station a few hours earlier, he had told several military and political leaders about Von Heissel’s activities and his suspicions about what the man was planning, and had been met with varying degrees of disbelief and distrust.

“Where’s Majestic now?”

“Somewhere over Eastern Pennsylvania, at last report.”

Dodge turned to Hurricane and Nora. “He’s going back to that valley. I’m not sure why it’s important to him, but it’s completely cut off from the rest of the world. It’s the perfect place for him to execute his plan.”

“Then I guess we’ve got choice but to execute ours,” Nora said.

Dodge frowned at her. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I’m going to convince you to sit this one out.”

“No, but I’m flattered that you care enough to try one more time.”

When the plan had first been conceived, Dodge had half-expected Nora to voluntarily bow out. Instead, she had simply said: “Sounds like fun,” and the argument had begun in earnest.

Dodge had learned from experience — experience that he remembered now with a bitter taste — that a woman could be every bit as capable in sticky situation as a man. But like most men, he had an almost reflexive urge to be protective toward the fairer sex, an urge no doubt amplified by his growing attraction to her. The plan to get aboard Majestic was audacious and inherently dangerous; any number of things could go wrong before they ever got inside the floating fortress. Yet, at its heart, his argument came down to the simple fact that he didn’t want to let her go because she was a woman.

“A woman who knows Majestic at least as well as you two,” she had countered. “You’re going to need all the help you can get, and unless the powers that be have a sudden change of heart and decide to send in the marines, it’s just we three. You can’t afford to leave me behind.

His attempts to frighten her with the potential risks were equally unsuccessful. They had already faced so many dangers together, what was one more? Hurricane hadn’t been much help on that front. “Dodge, Miss Nora’s a daredevil. I’ve ridden with her. This is the kind of lady who doesn’t take kindly to being told she shouldn’t do something.”

A fearless daredevil, intimately familiar with the objective was exactly the kind of person they needed, and that was something Dodge couldn’t argue against. And deep down, he didn’t really want to. He wanted her with him almost as much as he wanted her to stay safely behind.

Colonel Frey led them to the waiting Ford tri-motor plane, one of a small fleet used by the US Army for transcontinental transport. Dodge had used a similar aircraft to make his escape from the destruction of the Outpost in Antarctica, and the memories that association triggered were not particularly pleasant. Even worse was the realization that, although this plane would be taking them into the sky, they would not be aboard when it landed.

They had already changed into heavy coveralls, and received a hasty block of instruction—“Let’s not call it a crash course,” Frey had joked, but no one had laughed — in how to use the equipment. Now all that remained was to carry out the crazy scheme.

As the sun sank below the distant horizon, the plane taxied down the runway and headed west. As dangerous as the plan was, they didn’t dare attempt it in daylight; if they were observed by one of Majestic’s gun batteries, they would be doomed. The flight seemed painfully brief. After what seemed like only a few minutes, Colonel Frey came back to give them an update.

“We’re setting up to make our pass over Majestic. She’s holding stationary in the valley, just like you said she’d be. We’re only going to fly over once, so as not to attract their attention. When you get the signal to jump, do it. If you hesitate, you’ll miss the objective.”

Hurricane nodded confidently. Dodge wished he shared the big man’s unflappable courage. He’d done some crazy things before, but usually with a lot less forethought. The anticipation of what was coming filled him with dread. Nevertheless, as the big man got up from his seat and went to the side hatch, Dodge followed, with Nora right behind him.

“Thirty seconds,” Frey called.

Hurricane worked the latch and threw the door open. A blast of cold air rushed through the cabin, but Dodge knew that wasn’t the reason he was shivering.

“Clip on.”

Dodge took his turn securing the static-line ripcord to a wire suspended above the door, and knew that he had passed a point of no return. He tried to empty his mind of all thoughts, putting himself on autopilot as Frey counted down. When the army officer finally shouted: “Go!” and he saw Hurricane step through the open hatch, he lurched into motion right behind the big man.

The drop took his breath away, but the hard part was already behind him. He fell for only an instant before the static line pulled open the soft-packed parachute. The canopy filled with air and he felt himself yanked back from the fall with a bone-jarring snap.

He could just make out the dome of Hurricane’s chute right below and only about a hundred feet away. Nora was somewhere above him, lost from view. Below his dangling feet, he saw only blackness.

With the initial ordeal of jumping from the plane behind him, he felt strangely euphoric. He had done something that went against every instinct, and pushing through that wall of fear and doubt had filled him with a sublime confidence. He knew it wouldn’t last however. In just a few more seconds, he would have to think about surviving the landing.

To the extent possible, the jump had been timed to compensate for wind conditions and the natural tendency of a parachutist to drift. Majestic was so massive — nearly the length of three football fields, and easily as wide as one — it made for an excellent landing zone, but anything could happen between the door of the plane and touchdown. It was possible to steer the chute a little by tugging on the lines and altering the flow of air through the holes in the circular silk canopy, but there were no guarantees.

There was just enough starlight filtering down from the sky for Dodge to make out the darker shape of Majestic against the earth tones of the valley floor. Judging the distance was almost impossible, but with each passing second, the oblong shape grew larger.

Then he glimpsed something unexpected. Right in the middle of the black area, he saw what looked like a light-colored cross. It’s an airplane, he realized immediately. But what’s it doing riding piggy-back?

They had considered attempting to land a small aircraft atop the dirigible, but rejected that idea because there was no way of knowing if the ship’s structure could withstand the weight of an airplane. And then of course there was the fact that the upper section was bristling with gun turrets.

The mystery of the plane got shoved aside as Dodge realized he was only a few seconds away from landing, and starting to drift toward the starboard side of the airship. He tugged on one of his lines, steering back toward the center, and then the black surface of Majestic’s topside was everywhere he looked. He flexed his knees… and slammed down onto the airship.

The jolt of the impact sent him sprawling, but he remembered the advice Frey had drummed into him before leaving: “Gather up the parachute quickly before a gust of wind catches it and drags you off to who knows where.”

Shrugging off the pain that was shooting in pulses from his feet to his hips, he started hauling in the lines until he had an armful of silk. Only then did he look around to see how the others had fared.

When he caught sight of Nora, about fifty yards away, and closer to Majestic’s bow, he breathed a sigh of relief. Had she, or any of them, missed the airship, the most likely outcome would simply have been an inconvenient visit down to the valley floor, but it would have made accomplishing their goal that much harder. Hurricane had also made it down without any trouble, and was already moving to join him.

“Did you see that plane?” the big man asked.

Dodge nodded. “What do you suppose it’s doing there?”

“I reckon we should take a look.”

As they trekked across the broad surface, Dodge found it hard to believe he was walking on the exterior of an aircraft. It didn’t feel that much different from being on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, and compared to the parachute jump, the experience didn’t seem the least bit unnerving. He was a little apprehensive about the proximity of the machine gun turrets, but a quick check revealed that they were all empty. He thought that perhaps Majestic didn’t have crew to spare for a state of constant vigilance, but Hurricane’s next observation made him wonder if there wasn’t a very different explanation.

“It’s a glider.” Hurricane put a hand on the drooping tip of the long wing and pushed experimentally. The entire airframe shifted, seemingly with very little effort required. “Wood frame, covered in cloth.”

Dodge moved in closer and saw a side door hanging open. The plane was empty.

“I think it crash landed here,” Nora said. She pointed to a swath of damage to Majestic’s array of photovoltaic cells, directly behind the glider’s tail section. “But why/”

Hurricane stuck his head into the craft’s exterior. “Looks big enough to hold maybe half a dozen men. You know, there’s been talk about using gliders to drop troops behind enemy lines. Safer than a parachute drop and you can move a lot more equipment. I think somebody else had the notion to crash Von Heissel’s party.” He winked at Nora. “Pun intended, of course.”

“Who? Did the army take us seriously after all?”

“I don’t think the military has actually developed the glider program yet. Your guess about who’s behind this is as good as mine.”

“If someone’s trying to raid Majestic,” Dodge said, “then Doc and the others might be in even more danger than we thought.”

Hurricane nodded grimly, then drew a pistol from the flap-holster on his hip. It was a Colt M-1911A — Frey had supplied one to each of them — but in Hurley’s grip, it looked like a toy. “Guess we’d better get moving.”

Baron Otto Von Heissel stood at the railing alongside the resonance wave projector, gazing down onto the valley floor. The circular depression the machine had earlier cut was now illuminated by spotlights, shining from Majestic’s underbelly. He checked his watch again, then turned to his companion and smiled. “Time to change the world.”

The device began humming, bombarding the ground with invisible vibrations. The light revealed the almost instantaneous effects; the ground began to shimmer as the tiny particles turned to quicksand. Von Heissel’s gaze however was now fixed only on his timepiece, watching as is ticked away the seconds.

“Stand by for release,” he called out. “Ten seconds… five, four, three, two, one, now!”

A faint tremor passed through the deck as a crewman in an adjacent bay released the hook holding the payload in place. The baron looked down just in time to see an oblong gray object plummet into the swirling earth, where it vanished like a rock dropped into the ocean. Almost exactly two seconds later, the depression bulged upward as seven hundred and fifty pounds of the high explosive compound amatol detonated almost two hundred feet below the surface.

As the earth settled, Von Heissel gave the order to shut down the resonance machine, and then noted the time. He could almost visualize the seismic waves spreading out from the point of the detonation, rippling through the earth’s crust and mantle. In less than two hours’ time, those waves would reverberate through the entire planet. Given the tremendous mass of the earth, this single explosion would be no more significant than a mosquito biting an elephant. It might not register on even the most sensitive graphs. Nevertheless, in slightly more than one hundred minutes, at the very moment when the energy returned to the source, the process would be repeated and the resulting wave would be twice as strong.

Another tremor rolled through the deck and Von Heissel saw the spotlight beams waver from their position above the circle. He waited for the ship’s pilot to bring Majestic back to its correct position, but instead the illuminated area continued to shift below. His satisfied smile slipped, and he stalked over to one of the speaking tubes.

“Helm. Why are we moving off station?”

A little bit of drift was to be expected, but it was now evident that Majestic was powering away from the objective. There was no answer from the control room.

“Helm, respond immediately.”

Silence. He rang the ship’s bell, signaling a general alert, and then turned to his companion. “Something is wrong. Go find out what’s happened.”

Newcombe reviewed his solution one last time. This problem was more complex than most, with more variables than he would have liked, not the least of which was his own ability to do what needed to be done. He looked at the length of twisted cloth, torn from a bed sheet, stretched between his hands, and felt sick with dread.

Don’t think about it, he told himself. Just stick to the plan.

The plan. He would open the door to his stateroom and summon one of the two guards posted to ensure that he and the other hostages did not leave without permission. It would be a simple request for help, and the guard would probably comply without protest, imagining the bookish scientist to be the least likely person to attempt any kind of violent confrontation, but as soon the guard passed into his quarters, Newcombe would drop the loop around his neck and pull it tight.

He had worked out the physics of garroting someone. The person holding the strangling rope had all the advantages; comparatively little strength was needed to quickly render someone unconscious.

Yes, just unconscious, he thought. No more than forty-five seconds. The makeshift rope would cut off the supply of blood to the guard’s brain, and he would go down in less than a minute. If it went longer than that, brain damage or death might result, and that wasn’t something the scientist wanted to contemplate. As long as he believed he wasn’t about to possibly kill someone, the odds of his being able to go through with it were about even.

Dealing with the second guard would be a little trickier, and there were a lot more variables there. He would proceed quickly to Fiona’s stateroom. He had managed to pass her a brief note during the dinner service, short on detail, but with the explicit message: “Be ready!” He wouldn’t have time to explain everything to her; the remaining guard would immediately register that something was amiss and come in to investigate, but once more, the belief that Newcombe was incapable of such aggression would render the man vulnerable to a decisive attack.

With the guards subdued and Fiona free, they would need only to collect Lafayette and make their way to the landing platform and freedom.

There were other variables to consider, but ultimately, he knew that the longer he tried to work the equation, the more their chances of survival diminished. Once Von Heissel realized what he had done, it would be curtains for them all.

He took a deep breath, and went to the door.

The ship’s bell rang at just that moment, and he nearly jumped out of his shoes. Whenever the bell signaled the traditional watch periods, it always startled him, but this time the signal was different. The insistent ringing continued for several seconds.

Newcombe sagged against a bulkhead, breathing deeply to bring his heart rate back down to normal and repair his shattered nerves. When he at last regained a measure of his former resolve, he took one last deep breath and opened the door.

The hallway was empty. The guards were gone.

For a moment, he was stunned. The equation had changed; new variables had been added.

No, he realized. It’s an opportunity. Seize it.

He darted across the corridor to Fiona’s stateroom and threw open the door without knocking. Fiona stood there, hefting a broken chair like a baseball bat and poised for action.

“Findlay!” She lowered the impromptu cudgel. “They’ve sounded general quarters. What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “But I think this may be our last chance at escaping.”

She flashed a confident smile. “Then let’s go, shall we?”

They entered Majestic through an access hatch located near the airship’s bow. Hurricane pulled the cover back and Dodge peeked in, but saw no sign of activity. A metal ladder dropped down about thirty feet to a catwalk which curved around the internal helium bladder, and out of sight.

“Looks like this is where we go our separate ways,” Hurricane announced. “But if you’re not on that landing platform in half an hour, I’m gonna come looking for you.”

“We’ll be there,” Dodge said.

“Be careful, big guy,” added Nora.

As Hurricane hastened away to carry out his part in their two-fold mission, Dodge and Nora crept along the catwalk. The interior of Majestic was a vertical maze of platforms, ladders and stairs, all designed to facilitate the unending process of maintaining the ship. Once below the level of the gas bladder, Dodge could make out the landing platform and the neat row of Sparrowhawk fighters lined up behind the two autogyros. There was however not a living soul to be seen.

Nora let out a gasp. “Dodge, is that blood?”

She pointed to a dark stain on the otherwise immaculate metal of the catwalk. It did indeed look like blood, and a lot of it. “Must be the work of our mysterious party crashers. I hope they’re on our side.”

They made their way down, and a few minutes later reached the forward end of the landing platform where they found another pool of blood and a pair of streaks leading away, painting a trail to the cockpit of the nearest biplane. Dodge glanced inside and saw, amid a tangle of stiffening limbs, the bodies of two crewmen. Their distinctive blue uniforms were in shreds and stained black with copious amounts of drying blood. Whoever had dispatched them had done so with brutal efficiency. He didn’t shed any tears for Von Heissel’s “loyal” crew, but the mysterious nature of their killer filled him with dread. Would they find Newcombe and the others similarly hacked apart?

He steered Nora well clear of the grisly discovery and they crept along the platform. As they passed the autogyros, Dodge glanced at the interior. The rotor-wing aircraft were critical to their escape — he knew they could carry three people, for a short distance at least — but Fiona couldn’t fly both of them at the same time. Dodge had studied a technical manual for the aircraft prior to embarking on the mission, and he hoped that knowledge, coupled with his experience in a variety of fixed-wing aircraft, would enable him to get the whirlybird in the air and down in one-piece. His quick look verified that all the controls were where the manual said they would be; there wasn’t much more he could do without actually trying to start it up.

They continued to the spiral staircase that led down into the parts of Majestic with which he was more familiar. Thus far, luck — or more probably, the violent pre-emptive action of the unknown assault force from the gliders — had spared them any encounters with Von Heissel’s men, but he was prepared for a much different reception in the inhabited sections. He drew his pistol, holding it before him and aimed low, as he circled down the stair. He had almost reached the bottom when a door opened and a familiar figure stepped into the stairwell from a door at the back of the stairwell.

Dodge almost dropped his gun in surprise, but the other person looked even more startled as recognition dawned. “You!”

Dodge lowered the gun a little, unsure of how to react. “Anya. I was wondering where you’d gotten off to.”

For just a moment she looked completely lost at sea, but then her face regained its perpetual cat-like calm. “There’s not much time,” she said. “Come with me.”

“Hold your horses,” Nora demanded. “We’re not going anywhere with you till you answer some questions.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Dodge added.

She put her hands on her hips in a gesture of exasperation. “I told you that one of my revolutionary brothers is a spy in the baron’s crew. He helped me sneak aboard at Alamut, and I’ve been biding my time until we could strike. Tonight, we have made our move. I have your friends in a safe place, but you must come with me.”

“The baron?”

She blinked. “Yes.”

“Not ‘Barron.’ You used his title. How did you know that?”

“I’ve been hiding here for more than a week. Of course I learned Barron’s true identity.”

“You claim your spy has been here a lot longer than that. Funny how he didn’t tell you all about that, or about what Von Heissel is really up to.”

“This is ridiculous.” Anya’s imperturbable mask slipped. She half-turned, gesturing to the door. “Your friends are waiting. You need to come with me.”

Dodge leveled the pistol at her. “I really don’t think I want to go anywhere with you.”

“Dodge,” Nora’s voice quavered, and he knew something was wrong.

Tyr Sorensen stood on the stairwell, just behind Nora, with one of Hurricane’s massive automatic pistols pressed to her throat. “I think you should do what the lady says.”

Dodge’s heart sank. He offered no resistance as Anya stepped close and plucked the Colt from his grasp. “As I said, you need to come with me, now.”

Dodge and Nora, bookended by Anya and Sorensen, went into a large bay where Von Heissel was pacing anxiously. “Dalton. I might have known. What have you done to my ship?”

“I spied these two sneaking around on the landing platform,” Sorensen said. “I didn’t see anyone else up there. Not even crewmen. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not certain that he’s part of it.”

Dodge ignored them both and turned his attention instead to the enormous device suspended above the opening in the floor. He took a step closer and saw that the airship was moving ahead at a rapid clip. “I see you built your better death ray. Your plan to destroy the world is already finished, but you could probably salvage your reputation if you handed that thing over to the War Department.”

“Fool. You know nothing of my plans. And if you do not relinquish control of Majestic, I will…” For a moment, his fury overwhelmed his ability to think of a suitable threat, but then his eyes fell upon Nora. “I will put her underneath the resonance generator and let you watch as it turns her skeleton to powder.”

Dodge forced back a rising tide of fear and instead forced out a chuckle. “Now that’s more like I imagined you. All that’s missing is the evil chortle.”

The baron looked like he was about to explode, but Dodge quickly continued: “The honest truth is that I haven’t done anything to your ship. I just came to get Doc Newcombe and the others out of your slimy clutches.” He turned away from the opening and faced Anya. “What’s your story? You obviously aren’t an anarchist. Let me guess… daughter?”

“She is my granddaughter,” the baron said, regaining some of his composure. “The only child of my son who perished in the insanity of the Great War. You may mock me, but do not doubt my conviction to rid this world of this failure we call modern civilization. Now, answer my question. If you and your cohorts are not controlling my ship, why are we moving? Why is the control room not answering?”

Dodge spread his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I’d say you’ve got bigger problems than me right now.”

Von Heissel scowled. “That may be. But you are a problem I can deal with. Captain Sorensen, would you please kill them and throw them out that hole.”

Hurricane worked quickly, using the catwalks to place time-delayed explosive charges at several points around the helium-filled envelope. He set the first one for forty-five minutes and reduced the time for each one in succession so that they would detonate at approximately the same time, and with a little luck, long after they were safely away from the airship. It wouldn’t be a fiery explosion like the Hindenburg, but when the gas envelope ruptured, the ship would no longer be lighter than air. Regardless of whether or not they made it off, Majestic was going down.

He remained vigilant, moving stealthily, expecting at any moment for a crewman to discover him, but the cavernous interior was a quiet as a tomb. With the last of the charges in place, he hastened down, well ahead of his half-hour deadline.

He had just reached the last staircase above the landing platform when he glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye. He whirled around, gun drawn, but before his eyes could alight on anything, something flashed across his vision and struck the pistol from his hand in a shower of sparks.

He sprang backward, narrowly avoiding another swipe, yet his eyes refused to focus on his assailant. The man slipped out of his field of view like an egg white through his fingers. He retreated further, bounding backward, accompanied by the sound of steel slicing through the air where he had stood.

Can’t keep running away from this guy, he thought. But where in the hell is he?

He made a show of looking back and half-turned as if in preparation to flee, but then hurled himself forward in a low tackle, arms spread wide.

He caught just a glimpse of gray before his left arm struck something solid — a leg — and took the shadowy attacker down. He hammered blindly at the man with his right fist, holding nothing back. The blows slammed against flesh, cracked the bone underneath. The man struggled for a moment but then went limp, and Hurricane heard a clatter of metal against the deck plate. He gave one more punch for good measure then rolled off them man.

Even subdued, the man was hard to see; his gray clothes, which covered him from head to toe, seemed to blend perfectly with the shadows that painted the catwalk. But when Hurricane pulled off the hood, more than just the man’s face was revealed.

“Japanese,” he muttered. It might have been the same man that had attacked him in the Azores; it was hard to tell, mostly because Hurricane’s blindly thrown punches had seriously messed up the fellow’s mug. “Well, that explains the glider. I wonder how many more of you fellows are mucking about here.”

Then his eyes widened in horror as the full implications of that thought hit home.

Ryu Uchida gazed out the door of Majestic’s control room at the advancing mass of blue uniforms and breathed a curse. His ire was self-directed. He had been too quick to congratulate himself on the success of his bold venture.

He reached into the folds of his shinobi shozoku and withdrew a handful of what looked like ornate stars. He splayed them out in his fingers like playing cards and then with a deft flick of his wrist, hurled them into onrushing mob.

Cries of surprise and pain went up as the razor sharp points of the hira shuriken found flesh, and Uchida knew that in a matter of seconds, the wounded would realize that the pain of being stabbed by the projectiles was merely a harbinger of a much worse fate; the throwing stars were tipped in a lethal tetrodotoxin harvested from the liver of the fugu fish. Soon, their muscles would be seized by paralysis, and they would collapse, unable even to breathe. There was no antidote to fugu poison; they were already dead men, and didn’t yet realize it.

But his shuriken attack had barely made a dent in the force of crewmen intent on retaking the Majestic’s control room. He was arguably one of the deadliest men alive, but there were simply too many of them. He retreated through the door and slammed it shut.

Through the forward windscreen, he could see the lights of Manhattan, the beacon which was to guide them to the rendezvous with the freighter lying just a few miles offshore. He cursed again. So close.

It had been an audacious plan, and perhaps that was why he was so certain that it would succeed. After Dalton’s escape, he had almost concluded the entire mission to be a loss, but then Nakamura had made contact from Iran. His lieutenant had not only tracked down Dalton and the others, but had ultimately found a way aboard the airship where Walter Barron was already in the process of constructing a large scale version of the device the Empire coveted. For several days, Nakamura roamed the airship, his shinobi skills making him virtually invisible to the crew, and learned everything he could about the weapon and the ship itself. Most important, he had learned its ultimate destination; Barron planned to return to the valley in Pennsylvania.

That was when Uchida had conceived of his plan to capture Majestic and seize the weapon. To accomplish that mission, he had hired a crew of four men familiar with airship operations and willing to risk their lives for the right price. The glider had seemed the perfect way to get his crew onto the airship. Nakamura had made sure that no one would prevent them, silently dispatching the crew of the third watch, clearing a path all the way from the dorsal hatch to the control room, situated just above the regal dining room. Working together again at last, Uchida and Nakamura had quickly dealt with the crewmen there, turning the airship over to their mercenary crew.

Of course, there was more to it than simply seizing the controls. Nakamura had learned this during his weeklong reconnoiter. Each of the ship’s motor nacelles was monitored around the clock by a crewman who received commands through the system of copper speaking tubes that ran throughout the ship. In order to take the ship where it needed to go, the engineering crews had to receive voice and signal commands from the control room.

The engineers had been none the wiser. But then the general quarters alarm had sounded, and Uchida knew that eventually, someone would inform the engineers that the ship had been taken. He had sent Nakamura out to intercept any such messengers, and that had been the last he’d seen of his most trusted subordinate.

The ship was still plowing through the skies on course, so perhaps Nakamura had been successful, but now it would matter little. The crewmen would retake the ship before it reached the rendezvous.

He heard the sound of someone beating on the door, and saw it buckle under the relentless assault. The leader of his hired crew, a rough-looking gaijin, gazed at him balefully. “Looks like the jig is up. I say we cut our losses and turn you over to them. Maybe they’ll thank us for our trouble.”

“That will not be necessary,” Uchida said.

His katana slashed four times before the any of the men could offer further opinions on the matter.

He wiped their blood away, but did not sheathe the blade. Instead, he knelt with his back to the door, ignoring the insistent pounding, and laid the sword on the deck in front of him.

Only one task remained now.

Though he was trained as a shinobi, Uchida had always believed that he had the heart of a samurai. And when a samurai brought shame upon himself, or upon his daimyo, he would take his own life, disemboweling himself with his tanto.

Uchida’s failure however would bring shame upon the Empire. In order to save face, it was not enough to merely commit seppuku; he had to erase himself from existence. He reached in his pack, drew out his last weapon, and hugged it to his chest.

He had given Dodge Dalton five minutes, but he would need only one.