Day of Rebellion (2 page)

“
W
hat does it mean?” Jack stared at the screen.

“Your dad wants to see us. Sounds like he’s been doing some thinking. Cool way to get in touch, eh? Through the game.”

“But…”

“Come on.” Angus looked at his watch. “It’s half twelve. I’ve got a spare helmet. We can be there in less than an hour.”

“I don’t know what he wants…”

“And if you don’t go you never will.”

“What about Mum?”

“She’s out – right?”

“Yeah – she was going on about making sure we shut the door and locked up if we went anywhere.”

“Well, she doesn’t need to know, and that’s how your dad wants it.” Angus was already climbing back up the stairs from Jack’s cellar. He stopped halfway up and turned back to Jack who was still staring dumbfounded at the screen.

“Come on. It’ll be fine. In fact, this could be it – your dad’s plan to finally end the fight with VIGIL… Maybe he’s going to come home.”

Jack followed Angus up the stairs. His mind was so
preoccupied
that he forgot to turn off the console and the message
from ‘timetraveller01’ lingered on the screen behind them.

Jack clambered onto the back of the bike – Angus had ‘borrowed’ his dad’s KTM – and they powered up the old drive from Cairnfield. It was a fine summer’s day and soon they were racing their way through the countryside towards Edinburgh, with Jack still trying to make meaning of his dad’s strange message. He was nervous, but exhilarated. It was less than a month since Jack and Angus had travelled back from 1940. With his dad’s help they had prevented a Revisionist attempt to intervene in World War Two from going disastrously wrong. They had also saved VIGIL from defeat by the Revisionists. It had been a close-run thing. Jack should have felt elated at the result, but actually he was in a state of limbo. Things which should have been sorted out still weren’t. Pendelshape was dead and they believed that the Revisionists had been destroyed; for a moment it had seemed that his dad would be reconciled with his old colleagues, Inchquin, the Rector and the rest of VIGIL. Jack had witnessed a moment of tenderness between his mum and dad and had fleetingly hoped they might get back together. But then, at the final moment, his dad had decided that it was all too much, too soon, and he couldn’t come back… yet. It had been back to square one.

But now this strange message had arrived, only a few weeks later. So maybe Angus was right and his father had finally made up his mind. The Revisionists’ attempts to intervene in history to control the future had failed, but more than that, they had almost wiped themselves out in the process. With Pendelshape
dead and many, maybe all, of the other Revisionists either dead or captured by VIGIL, perhaps his dad had finally decided enough was enough; and it was time to come in from the cold.

Two giant warriors stood either side of the entrance to the museum. The models were very lifelike. One was dressed in a red jacket, blue trousers and boots. He wore light leather and metal armour on his top half. His helmet had leather chin straps and he was carrying a huge black banner. Jack read a small plaque beside the figure:

He did a double take as he realised that the figure was not a man but a replica figure of a female warrior. Opposite, there was an equally ferocious Chinese soldier carrying a green flag. His plaque read:

Ahead, above the information desk to the museum, there was a large banner:

“Do you think this is Dad trying to be funny?” Jack asked.

“Why?” said Angus.

“This… big China exhibition thing. China in the
mid-nineteenth
century – Taiping Rebellion, Opium Wars, all that…”

“What about it?”

Jack sighed, “It’s the same as the game, the new
Point-
of-Departure
– Day of Rebellion
.” Jack tapped his temple with his index finger. “Duh. It’s all the same period of history. Dad knew we were playing
POD
China and so he thought it would be funny to meet us here where they’ve got a big exhibition about it.”

“Oh right… I get you,” Angus said, then grimaced. “Do I?”

Jack shook his head in despair.

“Anyway, what do we do? Just hang around for him?”

“He’ll probably be keeping a low profile. I suppose we should wander around.”

They approached the front desk where a young assistant was pointing a couple towards the far end of the huge atrium, “…introductory lectures are in the open area at the end of the hall there, then there’s a guided tour of the main China exhibit. The guide is just starting one now…” The woman nodded towards the far end of the hall where people were seated in rows in front of a large screen.

Jack shrugged, “Might as well take a look…”

As they moved through the main hall towards the presentation, they could already hear the amplified voice of the guide talking to the group.

“… the Taiping Rebellion in China was the second bloodiest
war of any kind in history,” she announced. As she spoke a series of images were scrolling by on the big screen behind her. There were pictures of great throngs of soldiers holding black flags, Chinese cities with amazing architecture, astounding works of art, peasants at work in fields… The guide kept talking: “Some estimate that the total number of deaths during the Taiping Rebellion, between 1850 and 1864, may have exceeded thirty million. That’s three times as many as died in the First World War. Yet, in the West, few have even heard of the Taiping Rebellion…”

“Do we really want to listen to this?” Angus sighed. “I mean, people talking about history is OK and everything, but they should really ask the experts – people who’ve actually been there. Like me.”

Jack smiled and tuned in to the guide’s talk.

“There were many amazing things about the Taiping people, and their enemies – China’s ruling Qing dynasty. Take, for example, Taiping rebellion’s leader, Hong Xiuquan—” the guide paused and a line drawing of a Chinese man in an elaborately embroidered robe and an ornate hat appeared on the screen. “It is said that Hong Xiuquan fell into a trance and saw visions of heaven that inspired him to over throw the Qing. He and his followers practised their own version of Christianity, and because the Taiping were Christians, they attracted some European support. For a while the Taiping were very successful. They had a good army and they moved north, eventually taking the city of Nanjing in 1853. But the rebellion left China weak and open to exploitation by the British, French and others…”

The guide droned on and after a while Jack found his attention wavering. With the words, “Now, let me welcome you to the Heavenly Kingdom – and the
Taiping Experience
…” she suddenly stopped talking and the screen rose upwards, revealing two large glass doors which swung open to allow visitors into the dimly lit exhibition areas. The crowd drifted forward.

Jack nudged Angus, who was gazing distractedly at the floor. “We’re on.”

It was an impressive exhibition. There were intricately patterned silk costumes of all shapes and sizes. Then there was a full model layout of the Third Battle of Nanjing with an Imperial army assault on the city battlements. It was all laid out in miniature with row upon row of soldiers, cannons and cavalry. The city was being defended by the Taiping – in their red jackets and blue trousers. Further down the exhibition hall, there were more figures, this time representing the Taiping’s enemy – the Imperialist Qing. There was a bit on punishment and torture, including photographs of ‘slow slicing’, where a series of precise incisions cut away the victim’s flesh before he was left to die.

Suddenly, Jack felt himself being jostled by the crowd behind. He half turned in irritation and felt something thrust into his hands. It was an envelope. He scanned the faces behind him but whoever who had delivered the envelope had already slipped away into the throng. 

J
ack barged through the crowd out of the gloom of the exhibition hall and into the light of the atrium. He ripped open the envelope. Inside, there was a single sheet of folded paper. It read:

“What does that mean?” Angus said, finally catching up with Jack and peering over his shoulder. “Did you see who gave it to you?”

Jack looked anxiously around the museum, but it was just the same scene of visitors and tourists quietly milling around. The mystery contact had vanished into thin air.

“He’s gone.” Jack stared at the piece of paper. “Didn’t even see him. Was it Dad?”

“No – he wouldn’t have just left. Anyway, what’s Tantallon?” Angus pressed.

“It’s a castle on the coast… Mum and Dad used to take me there when I was a kid.”

Angus gunned the KTM due east and the Edinburgh suburbs peeled away into the East Lothian countryside which spread out from the bare, rolling hills of the Lammermuirs down to the
grey-blue sea of the Firth of Forth. It was a fine day, but Jack worried about what they would find when they arrived.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his VIGIL smart device. He’d lost the previous model in Paris in 1940, but VIGIL was issuing new devices to all their personnel. Jack had received his the day before at VIGIL and Angus was fed up that his had not yet arrived. The device looked like a smart phone and it gave the user access to all sorts of apps. But it also gave VIGIL agents access to a number of special VIGIL applications about history, technology, inventions and most fields of human endeavour. It was like having a whole encyclopaedia in a little box and, for any VIGIL agent called on another time-travel mission, it would be invaluable.

Jack had shown Angus an amazing VIGIL app that had detailed descriptions of how things worked, with technical drawings, cutaways and animations of different car and bike engines, aeroplanes and just about anything you could think of. The app also showed how these technologies had developed over time. It was important for VIGIL to understand, study and record such things, so they knew how things fitted together and their impact on history. Right now though, Jack was only interested in the device’s Sat Nav, which he was using to guide Angus towards Tantallon.

An hour later they were well into the countryside and had turned off an isolated coast road onto a dirt track. It was a flat, treeless landscape and there was no one around. They could see the sea in the distance and smell the fresh salt air.

After ten minutes, they pulled up to a simple wooden shack built next to a small turning circle.

“There.” Jack said.

There was a rusty sign next to the shack:

“Not much of a castle.”

“That’s not it. That’s where you get in. The castle is further on.” Jack looked around and took off his helmet. The breeze ruffled his hair. “I remember it now. It’s ages since I was here.”

They walked towards the shack.

“Can’t believe there’s anyone in there.” Angus knocked on the window of the shack. Inside they could see an assortment of yellowing postcards, a few souvenirs and a mouldy fridge with some soft drinks way past their sell-by date.

Angus knocked again. “Anyone at home?”

Suddenly a head popped up from behind the counter and the window slid open. Angus jumped. The attendant was old and grey and he had a pipe in one hand which he rested on the counter. He stared at them with beady eyes.

“On your own?” He looked at them suspiciously and then craned his head out of the shack to check there was no one else around.

“Yes…”

“Follow the track up to the castle.” He nodded at the bike. “You’ll have to leave that here. And you’ll need this.” He handed them a small package. “Go to the pit prison. It’s inside the castle; you’ll find it easy enough. Only open the package when you’re down there. Don’t worry, there’s no other visitors today…”
he flashed a toothless grin. “Like most days.”

“But…”

“Go!” The man hissed and he slammed the window shut and the hut shook.

“Polite here, aren’t they?” Angus said.

They opened an old gate next to the hut and set off down a track through a mown field. Ahead was a vast, grassy rampart. Jack and Angus rounded the rampart and suddenly there it was – a massive ruined castle. In fact, it looked less like a castle and more like a solid wall of red sandstone. It towered over twenty metres into the sky and extended across a large promontory hanging over the sea.

“Impressive.”

“Yeah. Beyond that huge wall there is just some land which juts out to sea. There are cliffs on all the other sides. But I don’t get it – why has Dad sent us here – where is he anyway?”

“Yeah – why not just meet us at the museum?” Angus said.

“Maybe he’s still afraid we’d be followed or something. Maybe he’ll be waiting for us in the pit dungeon, or whatever it’s called. We’d better try to find it.”

Suddenly, a worrying thought flashed into Jack’s head. What if the note hadn’t been from his dad at all…?

“Pit prison – sounds pleasant. Look – there’s a plan of the castle on that sign.”

They crossed the drawbridge over the ditch at the front of the castle and passed through the gate into the central courtyard. There were breathtaking views out to sea, which sparkled in the sunlight.

“Look at that.”

Angus pointed at a huge rock rising vertically from the water only about a mile out from the castle.

“That’s the Bass Rock. It’s an island. I remember going round it in a boat once. Nearly threw up. You should see it close up – the cliffs are incredible. It’s got a lighthouse. See?”

“People live on it?”

“No. I think there used to be a prison… would have been impossible to escape. Come on – this hanging around is making me nervous.”

They entered the ruined state rooms at the west end of the castle site.

“Down here…”

“You going to open that package now?”

“The old guy said to open it when we got down there.”

Jack could scarcely see his way as they stepped from ground level and brilliant sunlight into the dank bowels of the castle. They descended a steep spiral staircase before finally reaching a small room. A single electric bulb up on the wall gave off a faint light. The room was empty.

“Grim. Is this it?” Angus asked.

Jack nodded. “Time to open the package.”

He peeled back layers of brown paper and out slipped a thin plastic object. His heart jumped when he saw it and he glanced knowingly at Angus.

“Interesting. Looks just like a VIGIL access device. You going to give it a go?”

Jack’s thumb twitched on the device and suddenly a small
opening appeared in the floor beneath Angus’s feet.

Angus jumped aside, “Whoa!”

Where Angus had been standing, there was a circular metal covering set in a concrete base. It looked a bit like a large drain cover.

Jack pressed the device a second time and the metal cover slid open to reveal a hole in the ground. It led to a steeply raked spiral staircase.

Angus gawped. “Identical to the VIGIL entry portals.”

“Yeah. But I don’t think this one goes anywhere near VIGIL. I think it goes somewhere else altogether.”