Men of War

Chapter Seven

“There’s the coast,” Jack shouted, trying to be heard above the roar of the engines. “That looks like Tigranus Point, means we’re about twenty miles north of Tyre.”

Jack lowered his field glasses and passed them to Hans, but at the moment Hans really didn’t care. For the last hour he had been far to busy suffering from an acute bout of airsickness.

“I can still see the Hornets, though.” He pointed down and to the right. Hans vaguely looked in the direction Jack was pointing and nodded bleakly, though he saw nothing.

“We’ll have to wait out here another ten minutes or so, give them a little more time to cut up the Bantag telegraph lines just to make sure.” Even as he spoke he turned the wheel hard over to the right.

Hans grasped the edge of the forward panel, sparing a quick glance to his right as the aerosteamer went into a sharp banking turn. A mile or more below the ocean sparkled, catching the light of the late-afternoon sun. He tried not to contemplate just how far down it was, how long the fall would take.

Jack grabbed the speaking tube to his topside gunner and blew through it.

“You still with me up there? Tell me if everyone turns on me, and I want a count off.”

Hans uncorked his own speaking tube to listen in as the Roum gunner counted off the ships, still holding at eleven Eagles, and all were turning.

As Jack had predicted the one with the leaking hydrogen bag had turned back after only an hour. After leaving the coast of Rus behind and crossing out over the Inland Sea for the run to Tyre the topside gunner had excitedly reported that one of the ships had burst into flames and gone down. Two more just seemed to have wandered off.

The ship bumped through another bubble of air, and Hans was again leaning out the side window, gagging.

They spiraled through half a dozen banking turns. Hans looked around bleakly. He guessed it should be a beautiful sight. Puffy clouds seemed to dance and bob around them, the aerosteamers pirouetting in circles like butterflies in a field of white flowers. They slipped through the edge of a cloud, the world going white, the air colder, the ship bobbing up and down. Suddenly the world exploded back into blue, the turquoise blue of the ocean below, the crystal blue of the horizon, the darker sky above.

He could hear a moaning curse echoing through the speaking tube connected to the compartment holding their passengers. A small hole had been left in the floor for the men to relieve themselves but from the shouts and curses only minutes after they had taken off he could figure easily enough that it didn’t work thanks to the forty-mile-an-hour breeze whistling through the compartment. Someone apparently had missed the target yet again. Jack chuckled at their distress.

“We should have papered over the compartment at least. Those boys must be freezing back there.”

Jack pushed his ship through one more slow banking turn, gaze fixed on the eastern horizon.

“They must have cut the telegraph lines by now; we gotta head in if we want all these ships down by dark.”

Hans sighed with relief as they leveled out, again picking up a southeasterly heading.

After several minutes he could finally distinguish the eastern shore of the Inland Sea, recognizing the point north of Tyre and the gentle curving coast of shallows and mud flats that finally led down to the rise of ground and narrow harbor. Jack edged the elevator stick forward, easing back slightly on the four throttles. They thumped through another small cloud, which was beginning to glow with a pale yellow-pink light. The summits of the Green Mountains, fifty miles to the north and east, were cloaked in the clouds and what appeared to be a dark thunderhead.

Jack pointed out the storm.

“Get caught in one of those, and you’re dead,” he shouted.

Hans nodded, breathing deeply, struggling against the urge to get sick yet again.

Scanning eastward, he wondered if his eyes were playing tricks or could he actually see the distant shore of the Great Sea nearly a hundred miles farther east. The two oceans, back on the old world they’d more likely be called great lakes, were closest together at this point. Long before the wars there was even a trade route going overland from Tyre eastward to the small fishing village of Camagan.

Back in the old days of the Great Ride, the eternal circling of the world by the hordes, this region between the two seas was usually disputed by the Tugars to the north and the Merki, making their long ride farther south through Tyre and from there around the southern end of the Great Sea and then up into Nippon and the edge of the vast populous lands of the Chin.

He took the field glasses, which rested in a box between his seat and Jack’s, checked the map, then raised the glasses to scan the coast. After months in the siege lines of Tyre he knew it all by heart, the outer circle of the Bantag lines, half a dozen miles from the city, the inner line of his own works, the ancient whitewashed walls of the town clustered around the harbor. He caught a glint of sunlight reflecting off the wings of a Hornet out beyond the enemy line, held it for a second, then lost it, wondering how Jack could so easily spot such things from ten, even twenty miles away. He again looked eastward with the glasses, but they were lower now. It was hard to tell just how far he could see out across the open brown-green prairie.

He studied the harbor again, bracing his elbows on the forward panel containing the pressure and temperature gauges for the four engines. The machine was bobbing up and down too much, though, for him to keep a steady lock, and another wave of nausea started to take hold. Taking a deep breath, he settled back in his chair.

The air was getting warmer, humid.

“I see transports in the harbor. Hope they’re the right ones, or we’re finished.”

Hans nodded, closing his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply, wishing they were higher up again, where the air was cooler. The minutes slowly passed. He finally got his stomach back under control. He opened his eyes again. They were just a couple of miles out from the harbor, flying parallel to the coast.

He spotted the aerosteamer landing field, south of town, right on the coast. There was already one airship down.

“We got more ships to the north.” It was the top gunner.

Hans looked over anxiously at Jack. Several seconds passed.

’“Four engines, must be the ones from Roum.” Both breathed a sigh of relief. The Bantag had committed only a couple of ships to that front, and both had been aggressively hunted down over the last week and destroyed, but there was always the prospect that Jurak had moved reinforcements down there.

From due east he could see two Hornets coming in as well, one of them trailing a thin wisp of smoke. They passed directly west of the harbor, and Hans saw half a dozen ships tied off at the docks. Several land ironclads were on the dock, puffs of smoke rising as they slowly chugged along, joining a long column of machines weaving up through the narrow streets of the town. At least that phase of this mad plan seems to have gone off, he thought.

They passed the airfield on their left and a quarter mile in from the coast, Jack looking over at it, then at the ocean below.

“Bit tricky, crosswind coming off the sea, about ten knots or so. Keep both your hands on the throttles. Remember the two to the left are for port engines, the two on the right for the starboard. It takes several seconds for them actually to change anything, so be damn quick.”

Hans shifted uncomfortably, doing as ordered. Jack started into a shallow banking turn to port, altitude still dropping. As they got halfway through Hans looked up through the topside windows, which were now angled down toward the horizon, and saw the other aerosteamers bobbing along like moths, following in a ragged line stretching ba?kT half a dozen miles or more.

Jack gradually started to straighten out, having drifted past the airfield, turning slightly to port to compensate for the crosswind. Hundreds of antlike figures ran about along either side of the field-the ground crews. It was going to be a tricky balancing act.

They had started out heavy, but after close to fifteen hours of flying they had burned off hundreds of gallons of fuel. They could have dumped some of their hydrogen to compensate, but orders were not to do that since it would be impossible to cap off all the hydrogen needed if the ships were to be turned around quickly. The center air bag was filled with hot air, drawn off the exhaust of the four engines. On the way down Jack had dumped all of it. In the fine balancing act between hydrogen bags, hot air, and the lift provided by the bi-level wings, the ship should have a stall speed of only ten knots or so, about the same as the crosswind. That meant they would touch down almost standing still, then ground crews would have to snag lines and secure tie-downs. If not, the ship would start drifting backwards, drag a wing, and within seconds be destroyed.

Jack kept the ship nose low, coming in over the edge of the field, then continuing down most of its length to leave plenty of room behind for all the other airships to touch down. Hans, nervous, kept both hands tight on the throttles, never quite matching up to what Jack wanted as he shouted commands to throttle up on one side, then the other, ease back, then throttle up again.

The airship bounced down once, gently, soared back up, Jack cursing sharply, quickly slapping Hans’s death grip on the throttles, knocking all four of them back. The ship hung in the air for a moment, then settled back down, harder this time, as Jack spun the crank to his left, which opened and closed the vent to the top of the hot-air bag.

Hans saw someone darting up toward their cab, disappearing underneath to grab the forward hold-down line; a dozen others swarmed in to either side. Jack seemed to have three arms and four hands all at once, making sure the throttles were back, but not all the way, so that if the ground crew lost grip, he could slap them forward and try to claw back up into the sky. The hot-air vent was opened again. The machine lurched, ground crew under them becoming visible again as they spliced on a long pull line and a dozen men took hold, allowing the ship to weather-vane into the wind, and then pulled it off the field.

A pop that sounded more like a dull whoosh than an explosion startled Hans. Jack looking back out the port-side window, cursed softly, then settled back into his seat.

“Looks like number twenty-eight; I knew the boy was too green.”

“What?”

“Burning, what’s left of it. Most likely jammed a wing into the ground, snapped it, fuel line sprays, then the fire hits the hydrogen bags.”

He said it matter-of-factly, but there was a deep, infinite weariness in the tone.

The crew chief in front of their machine held up a red flag, spun it in a tight circle several times, then slapped it down to his side.

“Throttles off,” Jack announced even as he pushed them all the way back. “Fuel valves off, controls neutral.

He continued down the list, announcing each step as he did it, leaning over to Hans’s side to perform several of the tasks.

“Fine, that’s it. Open the hatch.”

Hans opened the bottom hatch, dropped the ladder, and, feeling very stiff and old, slowly went down the dozen feet to the ground. The air felt different, the memory of the long months in Tyre triggered by the scent of the ocean mingling with the dry musky sage. As he stepped away from under the ship he looked back and saw the flaming wreck of one of the airships. A wagon was drawn up, a crew working the pumps, laying down a feeble spray of water. More airships came in, pilots wisely swinging to windward so no errant sparks caught them.

Some of the ships came in easily, touched down as gently as hummingbirds; others plodded in, slamming down hard, bouncing. A few came in without enough speed, hung motionless, and started to drift backwards, one of them digging its tail in. Jack cursed soundly as the machine just hung there, ground crews frantically jumping up and down, trying to grab the hold-down lines. The pilot threw on full throttles, the machine started back up, hung in the air, finally stalled, and this time the nose dropped, most likely from his having opened the forward hydrogen bag. The machine slammed down hard, undercarriage wheels snapping, driving up into the wings, while the cargo compartment seemed to disappear. Even though they were upwind, Hans could hear the screams of the men trapped within.

As the ground crew around him secured the tie-down ropes to bolts fastened into heavy concrete blocks, the crew chief finally gave permission for the top gunner and the men in the cargo compartment to dismount. One by one they came down the ladder and were a pitiful sight, obviously half-frozen, covered in vomit, disgusted with themselves and the world in general. The last two had to be helped down and laid out on the grass. Hans realized he most likely didn’t smell too good himself.

He was relieved to see Ketswana coming up with Vincent right behind him, and together, as the shadows lengthened, the last of the airships from Suzdal landed. Then several minutes later the first of twenty-eight more ships, Eagles all of them veterans from the Roum Front, came in, the more experienced pilots having no problems with the cross-wind landing. Several of them simply bypassed the landing strip and, ignoring the shouted protests of ground crews, picked out a tie-down location, slowed to a hover, then gently floated in to a touchdown.

Last of all were the twenty-five Hornets from Suzdal and Roum, buzzing in like tiny insects after the heavy cumbersome four-engine machines. Mingled in were half a dozen more Hornets that had been fighting throughout the day in front of Tyre. Powder-smoke stains from the forward Gatling gun blackened the undersides. One of the ships was badly shot up, streamers of fabric fluttering from a starboard wing.

The display made Hans’s pulse quicken. Here, obviously, was one of the most remarkable sights in history. Over seventy flying machines, all of them gathered together in this one place. And though it was a wild, mad scheme, it gave him hope for the moment. Nature seemed to be adding to the display, the long shadows of late afternoon lengthened, exaggerating the size of the machines so that they looked like giants skimming over the ground. The bloodred sun hung heavy in the western sky, while to the north the towering thunderstorm, which everyone had been eyeing nervously, marched on in stately pageantry to the east.

The last of the Hornets, stripped-down versions with no forward gun, replaced by a small compartment underneath which could hold one man, came in and landed. There was barely any room left on the open field as the last ship rolled to a stop.

A young major came up to the group, and in the shadows Hans recognized the sky-blue jacket and silver trim of an officer in the air corps.

“Welcome sirs. Sorry I couldn’t come over earlier but I was kind of busy,” the boy announced, obviously from Roum and struggling to speak in Rus.

Jack clapped him pn the shoulder.

“Varro. Good job, son, your people did a damn fine job.”

“Thank you, sir. It helped to have those extra ground crews brought down by transport from Roum but still all the hold-down crews were infantrymen yesterday. I’ll pass the word along.”

“The Hornets that flew down from Roum yesterday”- he nodded to the half dozen machines that had the unusual baskets underneath-“started out this morning as ordered. Two haven’t come back, but the first reports are that they’ve cut the telegraph lines at twenty or more places from here all the way up to the Green Mountains.”

“Damn good news,” Vincent announced.

Hans nodded in agreement. Yet another idea of Varinna’s. One of the first objections he had raised when the plan was presented was that the moment they touched down with so many airships in Tyre, Jurak might surmise the real target. She immediately countered with the sketch of how to convert the light fighting airships into a two-man unit. Strip out the Gatling gun, put in a small crew compartment. The ship touches down along some isolated stretch of the telegraph line, the crew member hops out, climbs the pole, cuts the line, and if there’s enough time rolls up jLCouple of hundred feet of wire and takes it with them while a second Hornet, this one fully armed, circles to keep back any riders posted to patrol the wire.

Hans was delighted with the simple ingenuity of the proposal. Telegraph lines had always been so damn vulnerable. Back in the old war on Earth a couple of dozen cavalry men could play hell with a line, and it took regiments of men, posted damn near at every pole to keep a crucial line up and running. The Bantag umens at Tyre were now completely out of touch with Jurak, and it’d take at least a couple of days for word to be carried by horse. The trick, of course, was in the timing. To let Jurak get word of the ironclads’ landing in order to draw his attention to Tyre, but not the entire air fleet.

“Are General Timokin and Stan Bamberg here?” Vincent asked.

“Follow me, sirs; they’re waiting over at headquarters.”

Hans fell in with the group as they strode across the field. The passengers from the airships were out, nearly all of them a sorry-looking lot.

“Major, are copies of Gates’s Weekly making it down here?”

“Ah, yes sir, we just got the issue about what happened up at Capua. They came in on the transport carrying the ironclads.”

“Well detail off some men. I want every copy you can find rounded up. Then find some glue, if need be take some flour and mix it into a paste. Then paper it on the outside of those wicker troop carriers.”

The major looked at him confused, then called to a sergeant who had been tailing along and detailed him off.

“In all the rush we never thought of it,” Jack said. “Damn foolish mistake, type of thing that can lose a war.”

As they passed the line of Hornets Hans slowed to inspect the machines. More than one was holed, a couple had hydrogen bags that were completely deflated, a patching crew was working by feel since no lighting of any kind was allowed near a ship that could be leaking hydrogen.

Several of the Hornet pilots came up to Jack, saluting.

“We really grabbed their tails out there,” one of them announced excitedly. “I came over a low rise, must have caught a hundred of them camped out in the open, about fifty miles back from the front. Damn did I tear them up.”

“The landings, did they work?” Vincent asked.

The pilot was startled to see the chief of staff of the army standing in the shadows and snapped to attention and saluted.

“Ah, yes sir. The Hornet I was escorting, he landed three times along a ten-mile stretch of the wire and tore out a good long piece at each.” The pilot nodded to a slight boy standing beside him.

“Tell him, Nicholas.”

“Like he said, sir. We took down wire between two poles at three different places.”

Hans could see that the boy was shaken, left hand clasping his right arm in the evening twilight, the black stain on the arm obviously blood.

“Your crewman?” Jack asked.

The boy shook his head.

“I lost him on the third landing. Some of them bastards were hiding in a gully, no horses. They shot Petra as he was up on a pole, then came rushing out. I got hit, too, but managed to get off.”

He lowered his head.

“I think Petra was still alive when I left him,” the boy whispered.

Jack patted him lightly on his left shoulder.

“You did the right thing. You had to save your Hornet.”

“No sir, I was scared. I might have been able to get him in.”

“No you couldn’t,” the other pilot interjected. “I had no more ammunition, so all I could do was try and scare them by flying low. That’s when they shot up my ship as well.”

“I was scared and ran.”

“We’re all scared,” Jack replied softly. “Now get some rest. I want both of you back up tomorrow at first light, wounded or not. Anyone who can fly has to be in the air tomorrow. You saved your ship, so don’t think about anything else now.”

They continued on, Hans catching a glimpse of a bottle being passed around as soon as they had passed.

The headquarters hut for the airfield was nothing more than a-hrown-walled adobe shack, typical of Tyre, where lumber was in such short supply. It was the only light on the field as the men labored under the glow of the twin moons that were breaking the eastern horizon.

As they stepped in Hans was startled to see Gregory Timokin. His face was still puffy, pink, blistered. Hands were wrapped in bandages, and it reinforced yet again just how desperate this venture was. Stan stood beside him, grinning, obviously eager for the operation to begin.

Though his stomach was still in rebellion over the flight he quickly took up the bottle of vodka sitting on a rough-hewn table, uncorked it, and took a long drink.

“All right. What’s the bad news first?”

Gregory snickered.

“You want the long or the short version?”

“Go on.”

“Fuel first of all. If we were burning coal, there’d be more than enough. Fifty-two ironclads. I’ll need twenty-five thousand gallons if you want them to get to Carnagan.”

“I have first priority,” Jack interjected.

“And that’s at least another forty thousand gallons for one way.”

“We supposedly had it stockpiled,” Hans said, rubbing his forehead as the vodka hit him.

“The oil field is lost. We had enough stockpiled through our coking of coal and getting the coal oil,” Vincent said. “What’s the problem? And what do you mean ‘fifty-two ironclads’?”

Gregory sighed, staring at the ceiling. “One of the ships carrying more coal oil and ten land ironclads hasn’t docked.”

“What the hell? There was supposed to be a monitor escort for you people.”

“Fog. Yesterday and the day before. We came out of it, near Tigranus Point, and the ship was missing. I asked a Hornet to go up the coast, and the pilot thinks he found the wreck. It went straight into a shoal and foundered.”

“Damn all,” Hans snapped. “So we’re short how much?”

“Fifteen thousand gallons.”

Hans looked over at Vincent, who shook his head.

“We could make that up in a week from the coking plants at Roum and Suzdal. It’s getting it here, though.” An argument broke out between Jack and Gregory over who got priority on the fuel; Hans just sat woodenly, staring at the bottle for a moment, while meditatively munching on a piece of hardtack to put something back into his stomach.

“Ground the Hornets that got shot up. Pull off the Eagle that cracked its undercarriage, then detail off four more Eagles to stay behind.”

“What?” Jack snapped. “That’s ten percent of my remaining force.”

“Our force, Jack, our force. We need fuel for the ironclads. The Eagles can be used locally for support. Once more fuel comes in they can be used to haul what, a couple of hundred gallons each out to the column to keep it supplied. Gregory, I’m taking five thousand gallons from you for our remaining airships.”

Now both Gregory and Jack were^on him, but he sat silent, his icy stare finally causing them to fall silent.

“I know that won’t give you enough fuel to reach your objective with any margin to spare. Figure this though. Half your machines will break down before you even get there. Do like we did on the Ebro. Drain off the remaining fuel, load it into the ironclads still running, then move on.”

The two started to object again, and Vincent slammed the table with his fist.

“Damn all. There’s no time to argue now. This operation is supposed to kick off tomorrow morning. The argument’s over. Gregory, your machines, are they ready?”

“If you mean off-loaded, yes sir. Like I said, we’re down to fifty-two.”

“And did the Bantag see them before the lines got cut?”

“Certain of it.”

Hans smiled. “Good. That’s what we wanted.”

“I don’t get it,” Gregory replied sharply. “Why didn’t you cut the telegraph wires first before we brought the ironclads down here. Now they’ll know and be on us.”

“That’s what I wanted,” Vincent replied. “We’re the bait.”

“The what?” Stan asked. “And what do you mean ‘we’?”

“Because I’m going with you, Stan.”

“Fine, but what the hell is this about bait?”

“We had to cut the lines before we flew all the airships in here to Tyre. The moment we did I assumed Jurak would figure what the real target is. I didn’t want him to guess the true intent, so I wanted him to get word that all our ironclads had been moved down here. He’ll assume that we are trying to break out of Tyre and take Camagan. After all, it is a logical move. We take Carnagan even briefly and we could threaten his supplies moving over the Great Sea. Beyond that we could tear up that rail line they’re building from there over to here. I want him to focus on here while Hans presses the main attack.”

Both Stan and Gregory nodded, but it was obvious that they were less pleased with this role, and the definition that they were to be a diversion rather than the main attack.

“So it’s Third Corps and nothing else?” Stan asked.

“Yes. We have to keep a minimum of two corps here in Tyre to hold this base. I think one corps is more than enough.”

“You ready?” Hans asked.

Stan smiled, shifting the plug of tobacco in his cheek, looking a bit like a younger version of Hans.

“We scraped up ten days of rations per man, one hundred rounds of ammunition with an additional hundred in the supply wagons. New shoes have been issued. We’re ready.”

“And your feelings on this one?” Timokin asked.

Stan smiled. “Oh, about the same as everyone else, I guess. But what the hell. Kinda figured we all should have drowned off the coast of Carolina ten years ago. Every day since has been a bonus. If we’re going to go down, let me do it out in the open fighting. Tell me where to go, Hans, we’ll get there.”

Hans smiled and looked over at Vincent. The three corps cut off in Tyre had developed a unique spirit. In the one sense they felt abandoned, cut off on a useless front while the big actions were fought up around Roum. But on the other side they had a blind faith in Hans and any sense of difference between Rus and Roum had been burned out of them during the harrowing retreat from the Green Mountains down to this coastal port and the long months in the trenches afterward. These men were battle-hardened but not battle-exhausted as were the survivors of Roum and the nightmare assault at Capua.

“Effectives?”

“Ten thousand two hundred men with the corps ready to march. Six batteries of breech-loading three-inchers, and one mounted regiment.”

“What about supply wagons?” Gregory asked. “That’s the crucial thing. We need healthy horses and good strong wagons that can keep up.”

“About a hundred,” came the reply, and again there was the look of exasperation from Gregory.

“Hell, four hundred wounded in a fight, and we’re in trouble.” He looked over at Hans.

After the horror of leaving over a thousand wounded behind during the retreat of last year, Hans had made a firm statement that never again would wounded by abandoned. He shifted uncomfortably.

“Ammunition and coal oil have to come first. With luck we’ll capture a lot of horses at the start. That’ll alleviate food and transport for lightly wounded. Wounded that can be saved get wagon space; those who can’t make it …” He lowered his head, leaving the rest unsaid, that the man would be left behind with a few rounds of ammunition.

“What I figured,” Stan replied. “Just I think of old Jack Whatley at times …” His voice trailed off.

“Anything else?” Hans asked.

The group was silent, looking one to the other.

“Fine, we start up in six hours. Try and get some sleep.” One by one the group headed out. He knew Jack and Gregory would be up all night, double-checking on each machine. Finally, only Vincent was left. He settled down in a chair across the table from Hans, eyed the bottle, and finally uncorked it and took a drink. Hans said nothing.

“War’s changed too much.” Hans sighed, stretching out his stiff leg. “I miss the old ways. God, there was something about a division, an entire corps on the volley line. It was hell, but I’ll never forget Fredericksburg, watching the Irish brigade going up the hill. Damn what a sight.”

“Even Hispania,” Vincent replied. “When we pivoted an entire division, closing off the flank, the men cheering, shoulder to shoulder, perfect alignment, over four thousand men. Wonder if we’ll ever see the likes of that again.”

“Not with these new machines. Changed everything. Guess it’s inevitable. Back on the old world, bet they have ’em as well by now.”

Vincent took another drink and passed the bottle to Hans, who nodded his thanks, shifted his chew, and enjoyed another gulp.

“Don’t go getting yourself killed out there,” Hans said.

“Goes with the job.”

“No, there’s more to it.”

He leaned forward, staring into Vincent’s eyes.

“Son, my generation, Andrew, Pat, Emil, we’ve played out our part. A chapter’s closing with this war. If we win.” He shook his head. “No, when we win, I pray that will be the end of it for us. But that doesn’t end it on this world. You and I, perhaps even more than Andrew and Pat, are the real revolutionaries. I was their prisoner. You, well you had your own torment from them.”

Vincent said nothing.

“We both know this war will have to sweep the entire world. The Bantag are of the great northern hordes, but there must be more out there. We only know of one small part of this world. We have no idea of what is southward beyond the realm of the Bantag, what’s on the other side, what threats there still are. The only hope is to free all of humanity on this world, then build from there. It will be your war then.”

“So stay alive, is that it?”

Hans smiled. “After this is over you’ll have Andrew as your mentor. He thinks he wants to let go of the reins, but knowing Andrew that will change. There’s supposed to be an election at the end of the year. Who knows, he might even run if we still have a country and are still alive. If he does, well you’d be the choice for who would run the army.”

“What about you, or Pat?”

Hans smiled and waved aside the question.

“You can’t have a better model than him to follow. And watch out for him, too. It will be tough at times.”

“As he followed you,” Vincent said, and Hans was surprised to see a softening, something so rare in this boy who had come of age too early in the crucible of war.

Hans cleared his throat nervously.

“You talk like you don’t expect to come back,” Vincent said.

“Well, when you planned this mad operation, what chance did you give to the air operation?”

Vincent said nothing for a moment.

“Well?”

“Varinna was a bit more optimistic than I.”

“I see. But you know, it’s what I wanted, what I said from the very beginning. That's why Andrew decided it was me who should lead it rather than you.”

“I know that now.”

“And Vincent.”

“Yes?”

“I’m going all the way with this one.”

He didn’t mention Andrew’s authorization; he’d only play that if he had to.

“Kind of figured you would,” Vincent replied calmly. Hans looked up at the simple wooden clock hanging over a tattered picture from Gates’s Illustrated, a full-page print of Jack Petracci with four smaller images, one in each corner of the illustration, showing airships fighting.

“Well past ten,” Hans announced. “We’re up at three, so let’s get some sleep.”

Vincent nodded. He was never one to be able to hold his liquor, and the three shots of vodka had made him noddy. Within minutes he was snoring peacefully. Hans stepped outside. By the light of the twin moons he could see the shadowy forms of the airships lined up, men laboring about them in the dark. A wagon clattered past him, trailing a heavy scent of kerosene. He heard muttered snatches of conversation in Rus, Latin, Chin, even a few choice expletives in English. Overhead the Great Wheel filled the sky. It was a comforting sight. A good world this. Maybe we can go beyond the mistakes of the old one, build something better. But first we have to survive, he thought.

He went back into the hut and quietly lay down on the other cot. Strange memories floated for a moment, not of the war, even of the prairie, but long before, Prussia, the scent of the forest wafting through the open window at night when he was a boy. The shadow of his mother coming in to check on him, then drifting away.

Why that? he wondered. His hand rested on his chest, feeling the quiet beat. Steady now, not the hollow drifting sense that came too often. Emil kept talking about the need to take it easy. Old Emil, God just how old was he? Must be well over seventy. Hard to keep track of the years, real years as counted back home.

The clock quietly ticked, his thoughts drifted, and he knew there would be no sleep tonight. Far too much to think of, not of what would come … but rather of what had once been.

Jurak sifted through the reports, carefully reading the roughly printed Rus letters taken down by the Chinese telegraphers. All lines south of the Green Mountains had been cut by airship attacks.

That was not the concern of the moment, though. It was the airships that were troubling him. Along the entire Capua Front there was only one airship.

It was supposed to represent ten ships, and it was the clumsy deception that gave it away. The humans had taken to the use of symbols which were known to be numbers in their English language. Observers along the front were given the strictest of orders to note down such symbols when they reported sightings. The same ten numbers kept appearing for the last seven days but it was only this afternoon that one of his warriors, a lowly commander of ten, had been allowed into his presence, claiming that he was convinced there were not ten ships but only one. When questioned he said he remembered the one particular ship since it had almost killed him during the river battle and that it had a slight stain along the underside of its left wing and a triangle-shaped patch not much more than a hand-span across on the right wing. All of the supposed ten ships now had the identical stain and patch.

With that Jurak had made it a point to observe the ship as it flew over twice during the day and the commander of ten (who was now commander of a hundred) was right. They were pasting different numbers on the ship. It was an old trick, and the fact that the humans resorted to it must mean that their airships were all somewhere else.

He had already sent faster riders southwest from the nearest garrison to the breaks in the line, demanding a full report. News, though, would be a day old.

In the morning he thought he had a clear grasp of the plan. Now he wasn’t sure. Such an operation would not require every airship of the Yankee fleet. There were several scenarios possible, a couple within the capability of what the humans knew of war. There were several beyond them, or had they realized that airships could be used for more than just reconnaissance and bombing?

He felt a cold shiver at that thought and called for a guard to summon Zartak.