Men of War (6 page)

“And he damn near got killed doing it if I remember correct.”

Andrew nodded. “It’s just that this battle is different. Most all of them were either meeting engagements like Rocky Hill, or we were on the defensive and well dug in, like Hispania or Suzdal. Now they’re the ones dug in, and you’re right, I have to assume that Jurak has this one figured.

“It’s more than that though. We both know we’re all but finished. Its becoming evident that Jurak is outproducing us. You saw those reports Bill Webster sent us from the Treasury and Vincent from the Ordnance Department.”

Hans spat a stream of tobacco juice and grunted.

“They’d change their song if the Bantag were at the gate.”

Andrew shook his head.

“We’re running out, Hans. The pace of production, it’s exhausted the nation. The same thing we saw with the rebs by the autumn of ’64. There are too many supply bottlenecks, too many men in the army, too many people making weapons, not enough making the basics for living, and a millton people from Roum driven off the land. In short, we’re collapsing. ”

“And that’s your reason for attacking here and now?”

Andrew leaned forward, resting his chin on his drawn-up knees.

“No, Hans. I think I’d have enough sense to stop it if I understood that was the only reason for attacking. But Marcus is right, we have to do something. The people of Roum have to know that the Rus will fight to help them take back their land. So there is the politics. We have to find a way, as well, to end this war before we either collapse or Kal succumbs to the pressure that’s growing in the Senate to accept Jurak’s offer for a negotiated settlement.”

“If Kal accepts that, he deserves to be shot,” Hans snapped.

“He’s the president,” Andrew replied, a sharp edge to his voice.

“And you wrote the bloody Constitution. So change it. I tell you I smell something in this.”

“Are you accusing Kal?”

“No, damn it, of course not. If anything he’s a rotten president because he’s too damned honest and simple.”

“We used to say that about Lincoln, but under that prairie-lawyer exterior there was a damn shrewd politician.”

Hans nodded, spitting a stream of tobacco juice and wiping the bottom of his chin with the back of his hand.

“We have to end this war now,” Andrew announced, shifting the topic away from matters that he felt bordered on treason. Hans was right; he had indeed written the Constitution for the Republic. But once that Constitution had been accepted by the people of Rus and Roum, it had gone out of his grasp, and it now must bind him as it bound any other citizen who swore his allegiance to it, and thereby accepted its protection.

He stood up. Raising the field glasses that hung from his neck, he turned his attention to the opposite shore. The eastern bank was lower than the western, the terrain flat, not cut by the ravines of the western bank. Jurak should have drawn his line farther back, not here. It was almost as if he chose a weaker position to tempt them in. Andrew could see the outlines of the fortifications lining the opposite bank.

Wisps of smoke, morning cook fires, rose straight up in the still air. Again the shiver of a thought. The monthly moon feast had been two days ago, the cries of the victims echoing across the river throughout the night. He wondered if what was left was now roasting on those fires.

Originally he had planned the attack to go in then, but it was too obvious a night for them to strike, and, besides, the bastards usually stayed awake throughout the feast night and might sense something.

There’s still time to stop, the inner voice whispered. The battlements along the eastern bank were clearly silhouetted. This was the precious moment, the west bank draped in darkness, the east bank highlighted. He heard footsteps behind him … it was Pat, followed by Marcus.

“Andrew, it’s three-thirty.”

Andrew looked at Hans, almost wishing he could defer the decision. Hans was staring at him.

Andrew lowered his head, whispering a silent prayer. Finally he raised his gaze again.

“Do it.”

* * *

Jack Petracci, circling five miles back from the front, took a deep breath, not sure if he was glad that the moment had finally come, or dreaded the fact that the show was really on.

“There’s the signal flare,” he announced to Theodor, his copilot. “Make sure the others follow.”

Banking his aerosteamer over to a due easterly heading, he scanned to port and starboard. The formation appeared to be following. Leaning over, he blew into the speaker tubes.

“Romulus, Boris, report.”

“One airship, turning back,” Romulus announced, “think it’s number twenty-two. Rest are forming up.”

Better than expected
, Jack thought; forty heavy aero-steamers and thirty of the new Hornet single-engine escorts, it would be the largest air strike ever launched, the dream of more than five months of planning. Not exactly the way he wanted it done, but it would prove once and for all that the tremendous investment in airpower was worth it.

More flares were soaring up along the front line, marking the beginning of the assault, slowly rising heavenward in the still morning, catching the scarlet light of dawn. Seconds later sheets of fire erupted, climbing rapidly and filling the sky with curtains of flame and smoke as more than three thousand rockets thundered across the river, smothering the Bantag in an inferno of explosions. Long seconds later the dull concussion washed over him, clearly audible above the howl of his ship’s engines and the wind racing through the rigging.

Another volley rose up, several errant rockets twisting, corkscrewing back toward his formation, which was now less than two miles from the front. The shells detonated in the air, leaving white puffs of smoke drifting.

He was now over the rear lines of the fight.

Long snakelike columns of troops were below, black against the landscape, waiting to head down into the ravines lacing the riverbank, which were the assault paths to the front. Pontoon crews were already out into the river, floating their barges into place, dropping anchor lines, while hundreds of assault craft, water foaming about them as the men paddled furiously, were already approaching the far shore.

It looked like the first wave was making it, men swarming out of the boats, struggling up the muddy embankments. Mortar shells were impacting on the river, foaming geysers erupting.

“Colonel, sir?” It was Romulus, his top gunner.

“Go ahead.”

“Formation is spreading out as planned, sir.”

“Fine, now keep a sharp eye for their ships up there, son.”

He caught a glimpse of half a dozen of his airships breaking formation, turning to the northeast, and was startled as four Hornets passed directly overhead, moving fast, forging straight ahead to penetrate deep into the rear, ready to interdict any Bantag airships that dared to venture up.

They were over the river, thickening clouds of dirty yellow-gray smoke obscuring the view.

“There’s our target!” Theodor shouted, pointing off to starboard. Jack picked it out, an earthen fort on a low rise that jutted out into the river. It looked just like the sand table model of the front that he and his force had spent days studying and planning over. Smoke was rising up from the position; the rocket barrage had hit it hard, but he could see where dark-clad Bantags were pouring into the position from a trench connecting the battery position to the rear. Two fieldpieces were already at work, spraying the river with bursts of canister.

“Hang on, boys. Here we go!” Jack shouted, as he pushed the stick forward, the heavy four-engine craft rapidly picking up speed. Slipping out of his seat, Theodor dropped down below Jack’s legs, fumbling to open the steam cock to the forward Gatling gun.

A dark shadow slipped overhead, and, cursing, Jack jammed the throttles to his four engines back as he stared up at the underbelly of an aerosteamer slipping across the top of his ship, the bottom gunner and bomb dropper gazing down at him in wide-eyed fear. Jack pushed the nose down, praying his tail wouldn’t slam into the ship above. Romulus, in the top gunner position, cursed wildly in Latin.

For an instant he forgot the fight below until a rifle ball slammed up between his legs in a shower of splinters. Looking down, he saw the ground racing up and pulled back hard on the stick. The aerosteamer nosed up, swinging in almost directly astern the ship that had almost collided with him. The Bantag trenches raced by, several hundred feet below, and Theodor opened up, .58 caliber Gatling bullets stitching the earthworks.

He felt his ship surge up and at almost the same instant Boris, his bomb dropper in the cabin slung below, cried that their load had been dropped. Ten canisters, each weighing a hundred pounds, tumbled into the fort. Jack violently swung his craft over into a sharp banking turn. He caught a glimpse of his bomb load slamming in; the first two tins burst open but the percussion fuses which studded them failed to ignite. The third one, however, blew, sparking the load of benzene to life. The fort disappeared in an incandescent fireball as nearly two hundred gallons of benzene exploded, the concussion rocking his ship.

Bright orange-red flares of fire ignited along the entire front as one after another the aerosteamers unleashed their new weapon. He caught a brief glimpse of one ship, folding in on itself.
Too low, damn it, you bloody fools!
he silently cried as the ship’s hydrogen air bags, ignited by the burst of flame from below, flared with a pale blue flame, the wings folding in, flaring as well, the wreck spiraling down and disappearing into the inferno.

The heavy airships turned, racing back to the west, heading for the airfields twenty miles behind the front to reload and rearm. Jack swept low over the river, passing over the second wave of assault boats and pulled back hard, going into a spiraling climb, turning to head back over the front for a closer look at the action.

He watched as the squadrons of Hornets swept in, dodging around the fires, raking the enemy positions with their Gatling guns. On the river he could see several land ironclads, loaded onto rafts pushing off into the river, dozens of men slowly poling the ungainly cargos across, geysers of water erupting around them. Blue-clad bodies bobbed in the swirling confusion.

On the eastern shore, the lead regiments of the 9th Corps were up into the wire entanglements, cutting their way through. He caught a glimpse of a regimental standard going up the embankment of the fort he had just bombed. Other flags were going forward, men spreading out around the fires ignited by his aerosteamers. Damn it, it looked as if they were actually making it!

A Hornet passing below him suddenly went into a tight spiraling climb, seemed to hang motionless, then started a slow sickening backwards slide, crashing tail first into the ground next to an ironclad, rupturing into a fireball as its gasbag ignited.

Another rifle ball cracked through the cabin, showering Theodor in splinters.

“Damn it, Jack, if you’re going to float about up here, at least go higher.”

Embarrassed, he realized his copilot was right. He had allowed the spectacle below to capture his attention. Pulling over into a tight corkscrew turn, he started upward, looking down at the ironclad as it churned past the flaming Hornet. The top of the machine’s turret had a white cross painted on, signifying that it was a regimental commander’s machine, most likely Timokin’s. At least the kid was safe for the moment, he thought grimly, turning back to survey the layers of defense still to be penetrated. They had breached the first line, but there were still three more lines to go before they would be across the rail line to the rear.

* * *

“Put that next shot through the embrasure damn it!” Brigadier General Gregory Timokin, commander of the First Brigade of Land Ironclads roared, looking down from his perch in the top turret to his gunnery crew below.

Without waiting for a response he turned his attention back forward, then slowly rotated his turret aft, sweeping the shoreline with his gaze. The first wave of assault boats was ashore, at least what was left of them, men hunkered down low on the riverbank, most of them still half in the water, hugging the protection of the low rise. He could see columns of fire rising up from Jack’s firebomb strike, but directly in front the enemy were still holding. Half a dozen ironclads to his right were up over the bank, crushing down the wire entanglements, the lead ironclad already into the first line of bunkers and entrenchments, its Gatling gun shredding the Bantags who panicked and climbed into the open to run. Back across the river everything seemed an insane confusion. Dozens of broken canvas boats littered the muddy waters that were still churning up from mortar rounds and shells detonating. Men floundered about in the chest-deep water, some struggling forward, others flaying about in panic, trying to head back to the west shore, while others bobbed facedown, no longer moving.

It looked like a disaster but experience told him that at least the first stage of the assault, the gaining of a foothold on the eastern shore, was apparently succeeding. When first approached by Pat O’Donald with the proposal that he and his ironclads would attempt to ford the river in a frontal assault he had thought the scheme insane.

“Damn it all, even if we don’t sink, we’ll get hammered by their artillery before we’re halfway across,” he had argued. “Make the shore, and their rocket crews will slaughter us on the muddy banks as we wallow about.”

Well, he had made it across. As for incoming fire, precious little had hit yet, the human’s barrage of weaponry all but incapacitating or panicking the Bantag forward defense.

Another wave of boats came out of the swirling smoke, men paddling hard. He turned his turret forward again as the crew below shouted with triumph, their next round having torn straight into the Bantag bunker.

“Take us forward,” Gregory shouted. “Everyone look sharp, gunner load with canister.”

He slowly pivoted his turret back and forth, scanning the ground ahead as they inched up over the river embankment. Crushing down the wire, he caught glimpses of blue-clad infantry surging forward to either side of his machine, leaping into the trenches. Cresting up over the top of a bunker, he saw a mob of Bantag running along a communications trench, heading back toward the second line. A well-placed burst from his Gatling dropped half of them before the survivors disappeared around a cutback in the trench.