Email:
Lespion@msn.com
Larra’s eyes swept over the storage
room. There was a fire-axe on
the wall.
Yanking it from its bracket. She wedged the
handle of the axe into the wheel-lock on the compartment
door. She was just in
time. The wheel turned, but it
only made it halfway before jamming the axe against the
doorframe.
Outside there was quite a commotion and considerable cursing as the members
of the Ludendorff’s crew tried to force their way
in. Larra stepped
back. She was safe for the time
being, but how long would it take before her enemies found a way
in? She had to find some way
to defend herself.
She began to rummage through the boxes and bales in the storage compartment,
but there was nothing to help her. She worked her way toward the back of
the compartment, unpacking box after box.
She found a number of tools and articles of clothing, as well as a
good supply of preserved food and some quite fine bottles of wine, but no
firearms or other weapons. She
would have to find some other way of dealing with the
situation.
By this time she was about as far back in the storage compartment as she
could go. And then she came to
a hatch in the ceiling. “This
must lead to the outside,” Larra
thought. “Probably some
sort of maintenance hatch.”
The sounds from the door were getting
louder. It sounded as if the
door was slowly being bashed in.
Larra turned the wheel-lock on the hatch and popped it
open. A rush of air from the
compartment almost pulled her through the
hatch. Fortunately, the Zeppelin
wasn’t at too great at altitude and the difference in pressure between
the inside and the outside of the airship was not too
great. Larra was able to hold
on.
Scrambling through the hatch, she climbed onto the top of the
gondola. Above her loomed the
immense expanse of the Ludendorff’s fabric-covered
hull. Running from the gondola
to the hull was a ladder leading to an access
hatch. Quickly Larra clambered
up the ladder. The hatch was
not locked and she pulled herself
through.
“I’m back where I started,” she
thought. “Time to carry
out my original plan, but I better get a move
on. When they find I’ve
gotten out of the storage room they’ll be up here in a
hurry.”
Larra made her way up to the gallery where the gas cells
were. There was a
problem, however, she no longer had her
knife. She would have to open
the valves of each cell. It would
be slower, but just as effective.
She started with the one closest to her, opening the valve as wide
as she could, and then moved on to the
next.
She moved steadily down the gallery, opening one valve after the
other. Soon a large volume of
gas was escaping from the cells.
“A few more,” thought Larra, “and the ship should start
to lose altitude.”
She was opening the valve on the seventh cell when the crew of the Ludendorrf
rushed into the gallery. They
had finally figured out where she had
gone. Huptmann Kranmer and Herr
Diels were among them. Diels
pulled a Luger from his coat pocket and directed it at
Larra. Quickly, Kranmer pulled
Diels’ arm
down.
“Quite right Herr Diels” said Larra. “With all this gas escaping,
one shot and the whole ship will
explode.”
Kranmer motioned to his men.
“Get her!” he commanded.
Several members of the crew moved rapidly toward Larra, hoping to get hold
of her before she could do any further
damage. A couple of them were
carrying what looked like billy clubs.
Larra turned to face them. She
was supremely confident in her ability to handle the half dozen crew members
that were coming toward her.
The men with the clubs led the attack.
Larra made short work of them.
As the first man raised his club to strike her down, she stepped toward
him, blocked his downward blow, and drove a palm heel right into his
nose. The impact of her strike
smashed the man’s nose flat and knocked him off his
feet. Blood splattered in all
directions as he hit the deck, but Larra had not waited to see him
fall. She followed through her
first attack by swinging fluidly into the second
man. Using her long legs to
advantage, she drove her foot into his abdomen before he even had time to
react. With a scream the man
dropped his weapon and clutched his ruptured
abdomen.
Larra had moved so quickly that her enemy was caught
unprepared. Startled at the ferocity
of her attack her erstwhile attackers gave way, each one fearing to be the
next victim.
More men now emerged from the lower section of the airship, but these
reinforcements, seeing their comrades writhing on the deck, hesitated to
close with the adventuress. And
all the while, the gas continued to pour from the opened valves on the deflating
gas cells. Already, the deck
was beginning to cant to one side as the airship lost
lift.
Diels and Kranmer had disappeared.
Larra suspected that Kranmer had probably returned to the gondola
to take charge of the listing airship.
As to Diels’ whereabouts, she was not
sure, but she kept her eyes open in case he had found a way to circle behind
her.
Diels suddenly appeared again. He
was at the back of the line of men who were slowly advancing on
Larra.
Larra held her position. She
wanted to make sure that the gas cells were completely drained before
retreating. The large number
of crew members moving toward her was clearly
intimidated. “Come on
boys,” she taunted, “who wants to be
first?” None of the men
made a move toward her; they clearly respected Larra’s fighting skills.
Diels shouted a command and the line of men
parted. He stepped forward and
Larra got ready to receive the Gestapo
agent. But this time it was she
who was caught off guard, because Diels did not close with her, instead he
directed a jet of foam toward her.
Larra knew what it was immediately, but she was too close to get out of the
way. The chemical stream from
the fire extinguisher caught her full in the
face. Temporarily blinded, she
fell back, trying to give herself time to recover, but she did not move far
or fast enough. The other members
of the crew pounced on her.
Even blinded, she put up a good fight, taking down three of her attackers
with blind kicks and punches before they overwhelmed her by sheer weight
of numbers. Then she was subjected
to a severe beating, as the crew laid hold of her arms and legs while the
others kicked and punched her.
While two men held her legs, and another two pinned her arms, a third and
a forth took turns delivering punches to her face and
torso. Larra tensed her gut muscles,
taking the punches to her midriff without giving in, but she could not deal
with the blows to her face in that way.
A fist struck over her left eye, closing it and leaving a large bruise n
her face and forehead. Then her
lips were split by a second blow. A
third loosened her teeth and badly bruised her
jaw. As she reeled from these
punches, she took two more. One
cut open the skin on her right cheek and closed her right eye, and the other
caught her in the middle of her forehead, dazing
her.
Slumping in the arms of the men who held her, she was not able to resists
a punch to her midriff. It knocked
the wind right out of her. She
fell onto her knees and a pair of boots drove into her chest, flattening
her prominent breasts, and taking the rest of the fight out of
her. Black spots danced briefly
before her eyes, and she faded into
unconsciousness.
When Larra awoke, she was no longer in the
Ludendorff. She was bound hand
and foot and lying on the ground.
Near her were two of the airship’s crew members, keeping a close
eye on her. Her first instinct
was to test her bonds, but the slightest movement sent waves of pain through
her body. The crew had really
worked her over. Probably they
had continued to beat her after she passed
out. She felt as if they had
broken every bone in her body, and in all likelihood, probably a few bones
had been broken. Her eyes were
mere slits. She could see, but
not very well. She guessed that
her face was as battered as the rest of her
body.
“It’s about time you woke up,” said a voice she recognized
as belong to Diels.
“We’ve been waiting for almost half a
day.” Her hair was grabbed
roughly and she was pulled into a sitting
position. She realized as Diels
manhandled her that her clothing was badly
torn. It may have happened in
the fight or perhaps some of the crew had enjoyed themselves after she was
knocked unconscious, but her sweater was gone and her undershirt was badly
torn, as was her bra. Her right
breast was completely exposed, as was most of her
left.
She had not been sexually assaulted, as she felt no pain in her nether regions,
and she was still wearing her trousers, but her breasts felt as if a herd
of horses had walked across them.
Larra could hear quite a bit of activity around her and could smell campfire
smoke. She tried to open her
eyes for a better look. Through
the puffy slits of her eyes, she saw that the Germans seemed to have set
up a full camp. The surrounding
vegetation told her that they were in a region of
rainforest.
“Yes,” said Diels, yanking on her hair, which was no long neatly
braided, “we were forced to land.
The Ludendorff could not continue in the condition you left
it. Now we are stranded somewhere
in the middle of this God-forsaken
continent.”
“Well,” though Larra, “at least I stopped them from getting
to where they wanted.” That
brought her some satisfaction. She
hoped it would be enough to compensate for the ordeal that the Germans no
doubt had planned for her.
Diels was doing something to her.
Larra’s wrists were bound in front of her and he was attaching
a length of rope to them.
“Give me a hand,” Diels called to Larra’s two
guards.
Together they raised her to her feet.
She could not walk so they dragged her across the clearing where the
camp was set up to a large tree on its
edge. As they did so, Larra saw
the great bulk of the Ludendorff looming over the
camp. It was still
airborne. Probably it could still
fly a little, but probably lacked the lift to gain any
altitude.
They reached the tree. One of
the men attached a stone to the end of the rope and threw it high into the
branches. It took him several
tries, but eventually he got it to loop over one of the lower
boughs. Then, all three men pulled
on the rope, raising Larra a couple of feet off the
ground.
Larra hung full-length from the rope.
The Germans had tied the loose end to the trunk of the tree, so that
she swung slowly back and forth with every movement of her
body. Her body cried out in pain
at this latest outrage. Until
her captors had suspended her from the rope, she had not realized how badly
battered she actually was. She
felt as if every inch of her body had been severely
beaten. It was only with difficulty
that she was able to keep from crying out as her body was hauled into
position.
“Now
She would have given him a good kick if she had been able to, but her ankles
were bound and she hurt far too much to try to swing both feet at once into
him. Diels seemed to realize
this or else he would not have stood so close to
her.
Thwack!
Diels swung the bamboo
staff across her backside. Larra
realized that until now, it was one of the few areas of her body that was
not already bruised. Gritting
her teeth, she endured the first
stroke.
“Still resisting,
Miss
Court?
I would have thought that you would be begging for mercy by
now. You are as tough as your
reputation said you were. Perhaps
I will speed things up.”
Diels put down the staff and moved closer to
Larra. Unable to resist, she
could only watch helplessly as he unbuckled her belt and removed her
trousers. He took them right
off, unlacing and removing her boots to complete the
job.
He picked up the staff again.
Thwack! This time the staff cut into
the tender flesh of her buttocks, leaving a nasty
welt. Larra gasped in
pain. A few more like that would
have her screaming.
There were more than a few. Diels
beat her to the point of unconsciousness.
Her once perfect backside was crisscrossed with
welts. Larra bore up under the
beating with stoic determination.
Each blow of the bamboo rod elicited a gasp from her bruised lips,
but that was all. Then he started
on her breasts.
Already swollen from her beating at the hands of the Ludendorff’s crew,
her quivering, burgeoning mounds were especially sensitive to the sort of
treatment meted out by the ruthless Gestapo
officer.
Thwack!
“Uuggnnnh!”
Larra could no longer
hold back a grunt of agony. She
was close to breaking.
Suddenly, she became aware of a strange
sensation. It felt as if she
was rising in the air. She looked
at Diels. There was a stunned
expression on his face. Then
she realized that she was at least five feet off the ground and rising
quickly. Someone or something
was pulling her into the upper branches of the
tree! Her head
swam. This final shock overcame
her defenses and she fainted.
PREVIOUS
CHAPTER WIZARD'S
LAIR MAIN PAGE
L'ESPION'S
STORY PAGE
NEXT
CHAPTER