The Forbidden City, Beijing
China, Pan-Asian Empire
Sunday June 30th, 1940
The Forbidden City was draped in banners, alternating between the Golden Chrysanthemum on red and the blue Imperial Dragon on gold. Gone were the weeds and grass that had thrived during the Interregnum in the cracks between its flagstones. Now, on the vast square facing the Palace of Supreme Harmony, the two Imperial Guard divisions of China and Japan, both in full dress uniform, stood in strict attention, awaiting the arrival of their new master.
Inside the Palace of Supreme Harmony the intricacies of a Chinese Imperial coronation were taking place; and when finally, after hours of waiting, he appeared, tall and proud in red and golden robes to take his seat on the great throne facing the square, he was no longer Fu Manchu, a mere mandarin among many, but The Son of Heaven, Emperor Fu, founding father of the dynasty of the Younger Qing and already before his coronation known among ordinary people as Fu The Great. Thirty thousand men in arrow-straight lines and ranks saluted him presenting their rifles and huge bronze gongs were struck so that their clangour would inform the expectant masses outside the walls (and the hundreds of millions all over the Empire and overseas that followed the coronation through radio broadcast) that the coronation ceremony was complete. Instantly, the oppressive silence which had only been broken by the command calls of the officers and the clattering of rifles was shattered by a choir from outside the walls made up by millions of cheering Imperial subjects. The Pan-Asian Empire, and China, had a new Emperor.
San Francisco, California
Imperial Province of America, Pan-Asian Empire
Saturday June 29th, 1940*
*This takes place immediately AFTER the above but on the previous day because of separation by the date line.
‘Hey, Buck, it’s almost time!’ Frank Mitsui shouted from his perch next to the radio receiver. ‘The coronation is almost over; his Imperial Halfwit the Viceroy will address his loyal officers any minute now!’
Buck Rogers, hanging from his harness in his seat, rather than sitting in it, made a thumbs up. Without the Japanese-American OSS agent, he was certain he could never have flown this bird at all. Bob Mitsui had managed to infiltrate a Pan-Asian army air base soon after the invasion, working as a ground crew private. In that capacity, he had amassed most of what America knew about the Fu fighters, but soon thereafter he had lost contact with his OSS controllers (this was around the time that Reno was overrun) and had been unable to report until The Shadow had made contact with him. He had escaped from his post at the Presidio Imperial Army Air Force Base in order to be able to tutor Buck, but claimed he would return afterwards, after first acquiring a colossal hangover. There would be hell to pay, maybe even corporal punishment, but in all likelihood not execution.
In theory, flying the Mitsubishi Ki-200 rocket interceptor was easy compared to flying a piston-engine fighter like the P-40B; there was no torque effect to take into account; it would not stall whatever manoeuvres the pilot would pull, short of a sustained vertical climb – it could sustain a 45 degree climb for as long as there was fuel left. It’s wide delta wings were sturdy enough to withstand g-forces that would snap the wings of a P-40 like dry twigs. After the fuel was exhausted, it handled admirably as a glider, if perhaps loosing altitude more quickly than Buck would have liked. Many, if not most of the problems associated with flying a conventional plane were simply not applicable to a rocket-powered Fu fighter.
Instead a whole new batch of problems appeared, stemming mainly from the rocket plane’s tremendous speed and the means through which it was achieved. With 1 500 kg (or 3 300 pounds, as Buck would immediately mentally translate) of thrust, it could easily reach 900 kph (or 485 knots, or 560 mph) in level flight. It could climb to over 39 000 feet in a little more than four minutes. All well and good if you had the whole sky to play with, but one thing that neither the Mitsubishi engineers nor Fu Manchu (if indeed he was the aircraft’s designer) had planned for the Ki-200 was doing strafing runs. Ideally, Buck would have liked to reduce power to perhaps 25% in order to make a slow, controlled approach, but the Ki-200’s rocket engine had only two settings: “ON“ and “OFF”. The very limited fuel capacity, giving him less than eight minutes of powered flight time was a serious limitation. And finally, and most alarmingly, both fuel types were highly corrosive, and Fu fighter pilots normally wore a protective suit in order not to be dissolved alive should any fuel leak into the cockpit. Unfortunately, Bob had been unable to procure such a suit. Buck did not fancy the idea of being dissolved alive while trying to pilot a rocket plane.
On the radio, the emissions from The Forbidden City (where, due to the time difference, it was Sunday now) had ended to be replaced by a commentator outside the Palace Hotel. Bob Mitsui translated his description from Japanese for Buck’s benefit;
“…the crowd, although I dare hardly use that word for this assembly of the very cream of the Empire in the American Province, cannot take their eyes from the balcony, where the Great Viceroy, our Golden Master is expected to appear at any minute now! Anticipation is running high, everyone is impatient to partake of our leader’s eloquence…”
Buck made a face. ‘Bob, I sure do hope the Divine Viceroy doesn’t keep us paining in blissful anticipation of his eloquence much longer. I’m about to puke, and not only because I’m hanging with my ass up.’
Mitsui nodded, looking miserable as he endured the seemingly never-ending panegyric going on in the radio. Suddenly his expression lit up like a Christmas tree. ‘He’s out! The Golden “Asster” is on the balcony for his grand speech! Go, Buck, go blow the bastard away!’ The OSS agent quickly ran down the stairs to leave the field free for Buck’s takeoff. He pressed the ignition primer.
Ignition! Buck was violently pushed back in his seat as the Fu fighter shot into the sky after the first few instants of ponderous ascension, when it seemed to balance on a column of solid fire. He anxiously checked his rate of climb; he could not afford to climb too high or he’d loose orientation. He was already far beyond Alamo square and looked desperately about for the broad asphalt band of Market Street, which he could follow all the way to his target.
He glanced at the air speed and altitude indicators, but it was no use. Despite having spent a great fraction of the last two days sitting (or more accurately, hanging) in the cockpit, trying to memorise the position of the different dials and listening to Robert Mitsui translate from the technical manual, he found that he could not spare the brain capacity to translate the metric measurements to something that made sense to him – well, at least they told him he was accelerating and still climbing, something his gut and his eyeballs Mk I confirmed.
****
On the balcony that girded the top floor of the Hotel, Siwan Khan was in near ecstasy. No longer a fugitive criminal, no longer the lobotomized inmate of a psychiatric ward, no longer even a mere Imperial Viceroy; the ascension of his father to the Dragon Throne had made him a Prince of the Blood! And when Fu Manchu either faded back into the shadows, as was his way, or was forcibly retired by his younger, stronger offspring, then Siwan Khan would rule the world as it’s immortal Emperor!
Powerful loudspeakers magnified his voice to incredible levels, so it was easily audible to the army of antlike spectators filling the street far, far below him.
‘…our glorious conquest is assured!’ he thundered like a wrathful God. ‘Our invincible armies strike fear in the hearts of our cowardly foes! These once arrogant Foreign Devils are finally learning, to their chagrin of the natural superiority of our great race! We shall show no pity, no weakness, no..’
In the corner of his eye, Siwan Khan saw the telltale fire streak of a launching rocket interceptor over central San Francisco. Apparently the Americans were trying to ruin his great speech with a deep raid! Well, his superior air power would put a quick stop to THAT nonsense! He didn’t remember any rocket interceptors being based downtown, so he assumed it was on the personal initiative of the commander of the 1st Rocket Interceptor
Hikodan, Colonel Tagami. Siwan Khan made a mental note to congratulate him for his foresight next time he met him. Tagami was one of the very few higher officers in the American Theatre who Siwan Khan had never seen the need to dress down. Those responsible for the raid coming this far, however, would soon know the error of their ways! Suddenly Siwan realised he had become so absorbed by anticipating the regal abuse he would subject the incompetent fools to, that he had trailed off in mid speech. He quickly recovered his aplomb and continued where he had stopped;
‘…no remorse! We shall take their land, their natural resources, their industries and we will not stop until their entire decadent nation is prone and begging for mercy at our feet! Soon, soon we shall be there, ready to dictate our terms to them in their capital, because the Americans are cowards!’ Spittle flew from Siwan Khan’s mouth as he reached the crescendo of his hate harangue. He lifted his arms in a grand gesture for the finale.
****
Gliding silently as a bat in the night, Buck’s Fu fighter swooped down Merchant Street with engines shut. Since a strafing run at over 500 mph was out of the question, that meant that he had had to turn off the engine and glide in for the actual attack. It had the advantage of making his immediate approach more stealthy, but he dreaded the moment when he’d have to turn it on again, since that was when the risk was the greatest of a catastrophic engine failure which would result in either a crash or Ma’ Rogers’ brat being spread out over the Greater Bay Area. And that he wouldn’t like any more than old Ma’ Rogers would, probably even a little less. On the bright side, no one had fired on him, even if at one point he had sailed straight over an AA battery obviously placed to defend the approaches to the Palace Hotel. Either they didn’t notice him or they assumed he was a friendly.
Almost there. He did a slight left turn to steer free of the towering Call Building, which he had used to shield his approach and then reversed his turn to steer back on track. He was now flying straight towards the promenade balcony which encircled the top of the luxury hotel turned Viceregal Palace. And there, clearly marked by gigantic banners hanging from the balcony under him, on the middle of the northern promenade wall of the Palace stood a man in golden robes with arms held out wide – Siwan Khan, The Golden Master, Viceroy of America!
‘They do not stand and fight!’ he roared, making many a member of his audience wince from the painful sound volume. ‘They flee from the glorious might of our arms, they run, they scatter, THEY SCAMPER OFF LIKE CRINGING RATS!’
Buck lined up the viceroy in his sights. Siwan Khan, fully caught up in his rhetoric, noticed nothing. He pressed the trigger.
Six parallel beams of yellow fire erupted from the nose of the Fu fighter as the battery of 20mm cannons opened up. In the time of a heartbeat, nearly a hundred cannon shells were flying towards the Viceroy. Only one thing prevented his instant demise: Buck Rogers was used to the capabilities of the M2 Browning .50 cal heavy MGs installed on his P-40B. The Japanese Ho-5 20mm autocannon was actually a scaled up version of that weapon, but it fired it’s rounds at only 80% of the muzzle velocity of the American machine gun. The slower, heavier shells dropped quicker, leading Buck to aiming the tiniest bit too low, and the first shells impacted a few metres short, tearing apart the floor of the walkway in a spray of debris.
This in itself would not have saved Siwan Khan, because as the plane moved ahead, it’s fire would walk on too, until reaching the Viceroy within a span of time too short for him to jump out of the way. But the Fu fighter was not flying under power, and unbalanced, the savage recoil from the many cannon jerked it’s nose up. Thus the cannonade was much thinned out when it reached the location of the Viceroy. But it did reach him; blood and gore and tatters of yellow silk spattered in all directions, mixing with the flying fragments of the shredded walkway. Siwan was flung brutally sideways as his right leg was cleanly blown off at the knee joint and his abdomen grazed by shell. He was peppered with shell fragments as the projectiles detonated all around him against the structure of the Hotel. A bloody, mangled ruin, he collapsed, screaming and trashing.
Meanwhile Buck had his own problems. The sudden tilt backwards of his plane threw the slowly gliding rocket interceptor into a near immediate stall. Now the Ki-200 was no longer flying, but falling belly first along an almost ballistic curve straight towards the stricken Siwan Khan. That would certainly kill the Viceroy, but Buck was not going to let that happen nonetheless. Feeling as if he was moving in slow motion, he slammed his fist down on the ignition button. Only metres above the ruined walkway and the bloody mess of shattered flesh and bones that had been the Viceroy of America, the rocket engine fired, propelling the falling interceptor up and away, trailing a column of searing white fire.
Siwan Khan presaged what was about to happen and tried to crawl and roll back into his penthouse apartment, away from that fiery death. He only succeeded partially; the rocket exhaust swept over his lower back and legs, burning them to a crisp and igniting his tattered, blood-spattered robes. His animal scream of pain, horror and disbelief echoed through the still working loudspeakers and was audible over a substantial area of downtown San Francisco.
Buck guided his stolen interceptor out over the bay. Now some AA batteries on the beaches opened up, chasing him as he swept under the Golden Gate bridge and out towards the open sea. He checked his radio beacon navigation device and sure enough, there it was. The Rear Admiral was apparently as dependable as he was daring! As soon as he was clear out of AA range, Buck pulled back his stick and began a climb to maximum altitude, which he accomplished in good time before his fuel ran out a few minutes later. It would be a long glide to reach the USS Wasp. He just hoped that that jury-rigged net contraption, connected to the carrier’s arrestor wire, which Rob Mitsui had described, would hold. It was not like Halsey had had time to try it out.
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