Men of War (17 page)

The smoke and steam had the same quality as the billowing afternoon cumulus, cloaking a mountaintop, but this mountain was man-made, the clouds man-made as well. The lighting, however, was unworldly, the deep morning reds unique to this world.

He smiled at the thought of the word unworldly, unworldly for home, but then this was home now, after all these years the sunlight normal, the twin moons normal, the lighter feel when one walked normal as well.

“I take it yesterday’s session with the Senate was bad?” Hans asked.

Andrew nodded. “It’s deadlock. Kal is nowhere out of the woods yet. Flavius refuses to step in as acting president since it would mean that a pro-peace man would take his place, and Bugarin is badgering to sign the agreement presented by the Chin ambassadors.”

“Well, in an hour I’ll be beyond it all,” Hans announced.

“I know,” Andrew whispered.

“Maybe by doing nothing at all you might be doing the best thing possible,” Hans said.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

Hans chuckled, and Andrew knew his friend had presented him with a little something to dwell on and was not about to say anything more on the subject.

Their path led them through what had once been the grove where he had first admitted to Kathleen that he loved her, long since gone and replaced with warehouses and yet more brick homes. Finally, they crested the road leading along the banks of the reservoir and were out of the new city of Suzdal. The waters of the lake were still, a mirror surface reflecting the morning sky, a soft welcome relief.

Directly ahead were several low clapboard buildings covered with camouflage netting and painted a dark green and brown. Lights still glowed in the windows and there was a bustle of activity inside. Out around the building dozens were racing back and forth.

Riding up, the two dismounted and hitched their horses. Varinna stood in the open doorway, and it was obvious she had been up all night, as she wearily came down to greet the two.

Since the decision to launch the mission all of her people had worked at a frenzied pace, made more difficult because of Andrew’s decision to clamp down a tight lid of security on the whole operation. It was a near-impossible thing to contain, with the city only a couple of miles away but by some miracle no one in Congress had found out, most likely because they were too preoccupied with their own squabbles to notice the round-the-clock insanity up at the aero-steamer field.

As for the dozens of messages sent to the front and to Roum, ordering the redeployment of aerosteamers and the remaining regiment of land ironclads, that had all been done using a book code. Admiral Bullfinch had personally overseen loading the ironclads during the night. The two ships carrying the machines and a transport hauling hydrogen vats, ammunition, and ground crews had all sailed under cover of night. If everything was going according to plan, they should have arrived during the night at Tyre and also alerted Stan Bamberg that things were suddenly going to get very hot.

Varinna smiled and extended her hand.

“Everything’s ready,” she announced. “Any word from Roum?”

“Nothing. The front’s quiet.”

“Good.”

Andrew took her hand and squeezed it, pleased by the light that seemed to sparkle in her eyes. This effort had triggered something within her, and he felt a surge of confidence that she was the mastermind who had conceived so many of the details. The death of Chuck had deeply shaken him, so much so that he had failed to realize the capabilities that were alive in her.

“Let’s go to the field.” And leading the way, she walked down the slope and out onto the flat open landing field. Crews were dragging out the last of the airships from the hangars, and engines were beginning to turn over.

He was awed by the panoramic sight laid out before him. Sixteen Eagle airships were lined up wingtip to wingtip. Twelve of them brand-new, four having come back from the front for repairs and engine replacements. In the shadowy light they looked ghostly, giants out of some forgotten age of the past, or a foretaste of the world to come.

The men chosen for the mission were already lining up beside their machines, ten to each airship in addition to the crews. Nearly all of them were Hans’s old companions, survivors of his liberation last year, or the winter flanking assault down into the valley of the Ebro.

Three hundred of their comrades from the Chin brigade had been loaded on trains the morning after the decision was made to launch the assault and sent by express to Roum, there to take transports to Tyre. With them went equipment to refit the twenty-eight Eagles and thirty Hornets that would fly from Capua to Roum, and from there down to Tyre as well. If all went according to plan there, those airships would lift off shortly before midday.

“You know, Varinna, you were holding out on me,” Andrew said, looking over at her and trying to appear cross.

“The airships? Some needed repairs, the rest, well there were problems, adjustments, and several were finished ahead of schedule.”

“They could have made a difference at Capua.”

“I don’t think so. If Chuck had been alive, he would have told you not to do it and then done the same thing I did.”

“So that justified holding back on these Eagles?”

“No sir, but you are glad now that I did.”

Andrew could not argue with her on that point. And he knew eight, twenty, fifty airships would not have made a difference that day.

The morning silence was shattered as more engines turned over, stuttering up to a humming throb.

He saw Jack Petracci slowly walking toward them, moving stiffly. Andrew motioned for him to stand at ease.

“Everything ready?”

Jack laughed softly.

“I guess so, sir.”

Andrew said nothing. With most men he would have torn into them over such a lackadaisical air, but there were some, especially those like Jack, who danced so closely with death for so long, that one had to understand their fey attitude, especially at a moment like this.

“Numbers forty-seven and fifty-two, we should check them both off the list. I think forty-seven is leaking too much gas; the inboard starboard engine on fifty-two is shot.”

Jack looked over at Varinna, who shook her head.

“Everyone goes,” Andrew said. “Order those two to hug the coast as long as possible but everyone goes.”

“What I figured, sir. I already told them that.”

“These new pilots, you think they have the ability?” Andrew asked.

Jack again chuckled softly. “Well, sir, as long as there’s no storms, the sky is clear, we don’t get jumped by any of the Bantag aerosteamers. I sort of figure half of them will be dead within the week anyhow, even if this doesn’t work, but that goes with the job.”

“All right, Jack,” Andrew said quietly, but his tone conveyed that Jack’s fatalism shouldn’t be pushed too far.

Andrew looked around at the assembled group, then put his hand on Jack’s shoulder and led him off so the two could talk alone.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk with you about this plan.”

Jack said nothing, leaving no opening.

“You don’t like the plan.”

Again the laugh. “Don’t like it. Well, I always figured I’d die ever since I got myself drafted into this damn fool air corps. You see, sir, I was just thinking yesterday that if I had kept my mouth shut about having flown in a balloon back on the old world, none of this would have happened.” And he waved vaguely toward the assembled ships.

“And we would have lost the war long ago. The missions you flew made the difference.”

“Sir. We’re going to die. I mean all of us. I saw the fight at Capua from a mile up. The reserves they have, the numbers. They just keep coming and coming. And I thought about all that we were taught when we were young. Remember the poems, ‘Old Ironsides,’ even that Tennyson fellow and the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade.’ We believed it was good to die the heroes’ death. But I wonder now, maybe it’s all meaningless. You die, and that’s it. So you lose.”

Andrew said nothing. Anyone with a mind had dwelled on this idea, just that it was poison when it took hold on the eve of battle.

“You ever have the feeling they had just made the bullet with your name on it?”

Andrew nodded. “Sure, plenty of times. Remember Cold Harbor. We wrote our names and pinned them on our backs before we went in? At Hispania, the morning of the third day, I knew I was going to die.”

“And the winter, at Capua?”

Andrew felt a cold shiver. No, no real premonition then, and yet it had all but killed him. Yet far too often he had seen men like Jack, the darting eyes, the inner agony, made worse by the sense of futility that seized some.

As he looked at Jack the thought came yet again about the nature of courage. Some men, those like Vincent, for some strange reason truly lacked the imagination to contemplate just how agonizing a wound or death could be. They simply went about their duty, mind at ease. Vincent had suffered a horrifying wound, yet it seemed not to have scarred his soul. The scar in that boy was different, an inner woe triggered long ago because of the conflict over his Quaker upbringing and his innate talent for leading men in battle. Vincent’s answer was to let his soul sink into a cold indifference to all suffering, his or anyone else’s.

There were others though, like Jack, who were continually tormented by their imaginations, inwardly flinching as each bullet flickered past, who awoke in the middle of the night, sheets sweat-soaked, the nightmare of what could be twisting into their fluttering hearts. As he looked at Jack he felt a surge of admiration, knowing that Jack’s type of courage was far more difficult to grasp and maintain. Every day he had to mask that terror and go out to face death yet again.

Jack, his hand trembling, reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded slip of paper.

“I was never much of one for being a gentleman with the girls. Remember the Oneida Society back before the war? Actually tried to join it. I did, but they said I was too young then.”

He laughed softly, and Andrew smiled.

“She’s a girl in Roum, works in Ninth Corps main hospital. Took care of me right after I crashed back in the spring. Funny, she’s suddenly very important to me now, so see that she gets this.”

Andrew solemnly took the letter, knowing it was senseless to try and talk differently at a time like this.

“Jack, I wish I could let you stand down from this one. But you’re the only one who can lead it. That’s why I asked you to fly back here. These boys are so green I was afraid they couldn’t find Tyre unless you were there to shepherd them along.”

Jack smiled weakly. “I know, and believe me, I’d take the offer if I thought I could.”

“Jack, in all honesty, is there a chance for this one? I mean Vincent seems to believe in it. Hans, well of course he’d do it. We’ve done desperate things in the past, but this is a throw in the dark.”

Jack looked at him silently, and Andrew regretted his few seconds of weakness. He had pulled Jack aside to gently tell him to brace up in front of the others, and he was asking for reassurance instead.

“As long as we limit it to what we agreed on. I know Hans wants to push it all the way, but sir, the ships simply don’t have the range. I can’t ask the boys flying the ships to go on a one-way trip with no hope of survival. Stick to the original idea, and there just might be a chance. If we had three or four times as many airships, a real fleet of a couple of hundred of them, I’d guarantee we’d do it. That’d mean we’d have a full brigade of troops rather than barely a regiment. At the very least, though, it will throw one hell of a punch into their supplies and might take the pressure off at the front.”

Andrew nodded. That had been the big fight argued out all week. Varinna’s plan called for a two-step approach, the second phase not being launched unless the first half went flawlessly and a truly secure base was seized to operate out of. The morning after the decision was made to go Hans started the argument that it had to be done all at once. Andrew could understand the argument about surprising Jurak and not giving him time to react, but he knew as Hans most certainly knew that it was suicide to try.

And yet he could sense what Hans would indeed do once he was out there. The first phase was, at best, a spoiling raid, to swoop down on the Bantag port city of Xi’an, smash things up, sink ships, and destroy supplies. Vincent’s mission was to act as bait to draw troops and better yet ironclads out of Xi’an before the air attack hit. The goal, if it could be achieved, was for Vincent to cut all the way to the Great Sea and secure a base for airships and perhaps even for oceangoing ships captured at Xi’an.

But it was still only half a victory. If they could actually hold Xi’an, transferring troops by sea from Vincent’s force to reinforce the captured city, Jurak would be cut off from his supplies and forced to abandon all of the Roum territory all the way back to the Great Sea. He’d have to pull back all the way to Nippon. It would be a tremendous victory … but the Bantag army would still be intact, the war machine still working and ready to come back yet again. What Hans wanted was to take it all the way, but he felt he could never order that, for such an action would surely result in the death of all those who attempted it. It could mean, as well, that in attempting to reach for everything, Jurak could counterstrike and smash the plan apart.

Andrew took Jack’s hand and grasped it tightly.

“Fly carefully.”

“The soul of caution I’ve always been. It’s how I’ve made it to twenty-eight very old years.”

Coming stiffly to attention Jack saluted. “Sir, I think it’s about time we got the show moving, so if you’ll excuse me.

Andrew returned to his small group. While he had been talking with Jack, Vincent rode in. As usual he was dressed in his “Phil Sheridan” uniform, oversize riding boots, snowy white gauntlets, uniform with a bit too much gold braiding, rakish kepi, and still the ridiculous pointed goatee and mustache.

Andrew could see the boy was eager to be returning to MEN OF WAR 117

the front. He would have preferred that Vincent stay in Suzdal, but given the assassination attempt on his father-in-law Andrew now felt that it was best to get him out of town for a while. If not the target of an assassin’s bullet, Vincent could, on the other hand, do something rash. And besides, given what he was contemplating doing, Vincent’s presence in the city simply wouldn’t fit into the plan.