"Nothing to report, nothing to report, nothing to fucking report-you had me stuck there for three damned months."
Gerta knocked back a shot of banana gin and followed it with a draught of beer, savoring the hot-cold wham contrast of flavors. The place had been a nobleman's townhouse before the Chosen took Ciano and the Empire with it, and an officer's transit station-cum-club since. Gerta and her husband were sitting on the outdoor terrace, separated from the street by a stretch of clipped grass and a low wall of whitewashed brick. It was hot with late summer, but nothing beside the sticky humidity of this time of year in the Land, and there was an awning overhead. She reached moodily for another chicken, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. At least it wasn't rotten horsemeat, and she'd gotten rid of the body lice.
"And there wouldn't have been anything but a bloooV hole in the ground to report at Libert's precious Academy, if I hadn't been there," she said. "The froggie imbecile supposedly in command didn't even remember elementary tricks like putting out plates of water in the basement to detect the vibrations of sappers trying to dig under the walls. And I had to practically stick a knife in his buttocks to get him to listen."
"Still, I hear that got exciting," Heinrich said. The countermining."
Too exciting," Gerta said dryly, remembering. -cold wet darkness, water seeping through the belly of her uniform. Squirming down like birth in reverse, and then the dirt crumbling away ahead of her, falling through into the enemy tunnel, slamming against a timber prop, the man's mouth making an O in the dim light of the lanterns as she brough her automatic up…
"What took you so long?" she asked again.
"Well, you were the one who thought there was something to Libert's 'methodical' approach," Heinrich said reasonably. He lit his pipe and blew a smoke ring skyward, watching as the shapes of dirigibles heading for the landing field passed across it. "We took so long because every time we took a village we'd stop to shoot everyone suspicious, then everyone Libert's police could winkle out, then waited while Libert appointed everyone from the mayor down to the sewer inspector and checked that things were working smoothly."
"Got stopped butt-cold outside Unionvil, too," Gerta said. "By Imperials, of all things."
"By the Freedom Brigades," Heinrich corrected. He closed the worked pewter lid of his S-shaped pipe and reached for a sandwich. "Imperial refugees, Santies, some Sierrans, Santy officers, damned good equipment and so-so training. But plenty of enthusiasm."
"Well, what are we going to do about it?" Gerta demanded. "I've been working internal-security liaison since I got back."
Two can play at that game," Heinrich said with satisfaction. "That's why I'm back here. We're going to Volunteer'-"
Pop.
The small spiteful crack on the sidewalk outside was almost inaudible under the traffic noise. Gerta was out of her chair and halfway across the lawn with a single raking stride; Heinrich was too big a man to be quite as graceful, but he was less than two paces behind her at the start and they vaulted the wall in tandem, landing facing each way with their automatics out.
A woman ran into Gerta, looking back over her shoulder. She bounced off the Chosen as if she had run into 282 S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake a wall; Gerta grabbed and struck twice, punching with clinical precision. Something tinkled metallically, and the Imperial Protege" collapsed to the brick sidewalk, her face turning scarlet as she struggled to suck breath through a paralyzed diaphram. Behind her the dense crowd had scattered like mercury on dry ice, leaving a Chosen officer lying facedown. He was doggedly trying to crawl forward when Heinrich stooped over him.
"lie still," he said. The bark of command penetrated the fog of pain; Heinrich cut cloth and wadded it into a pressure bandage. "Bullet wound, left of the spine, just south of the ribs. Looks nasty."
Gerta came up, nostrils flaring sligjitiy at (he iron scent of blood. There was no fecal smell, so the intestine hadn't been perforated, but there were too many essential organs and big blood vessels in that part of die body for comfort. She was dragging the Protege* woman by one ankle, and holding something in the other.
Heinrich looked at it and almost laughed. It was like a child's sketch of a pistol; a short tube, a wire outline for a grip and another piece of wire to act as a spring and drive a striker home on the single cartridge within. "What sort of weapon is that?" he asked. "It's not a weapon, it's an assasination tool. One shot and you throw it away; just the thing for killing a straw boss, or one of us on a crowded street."
Heinrich's features clamped down to a mask. After a moment he said: "Wouldn't have thought the Santies would come up with that."
"They're nasty when they get going," Gerta said. "We've been finding more and more of these. The problem is tracing back the chain of contacts. This animal will tell us something, perhaps." "Indeed."
They looked up; a medic had arrived, with two Land-born Protege" assistants, and a man in civilian clothes. The long leather coat might as wefl have been a uniform: Fourth Bureau.
"That was quick," Gerta said neutrally. Not the time for another intercouncil pissing match, she told herself. This was their turf.
"Not quick enough. We had some information, but clearly it was insufficient."
The woman had recovered enough breath to recognize what was standing over her. She tried to crawl away, then screamed when he stamped on her hand.
It died away to a whimper when he knelt beside her and held up something: a jointed metal like a gynecologists speculum, but with a toothed clamp on the end. Gerta recognized it, an interrogation instrument designed to be inserted in the subject's vagina, clamped on the uterus and tear it out with one strong pull.
"Now, my dear, I would like to ask you some questions," the secret policeman said. "And you would like to avoid pain… and there is so much pain you can feel." His hand clamped on her jaw. "No, no, you cannot bite off your tongue. Not yet."
Heinrich stood as the specialists staunched the bleeding of the wounded man, set up a saline drip, and began to ease him onto the stretcher. An unmarked police car drew up as well; the woman was drugged with a swift injection and thrown into the wire cage at the back.
"My oath, but going back into combat down in the Union looks better and better," he said.
Gerta looked morosely at the bloodstain on the deserted sidewalk. "Better and better, but where's it leading?"
"We'll win, of course."
"We won here."
Heinrich hesitated. "You know, you've got a point." He shrugged. "It's the Santies behind all this. If we finish them off, we can pacify successfully."
"Come on baby, you can do it," Jeffrey crooned. The dogfight had swirled away into patchy cloud to the west; all he could see were two plumes of smoke rising from the ground where planes had angered in. The engine coughed again, a slap in its regular beat that produced a sympathetic lurch in his own heart. He banked gently over the zigzag trenches that scarred the land below, breaking into knots of strongpoints and bunkers in the ruined buildings of the university complex just south of Unionvil. Even now he shivered slightly at the sight of them; the winter fighting there had been ghastly, stopping the last Nationalist offensive in the very outskirts of the capital city.
"Come on," he said again.
Bits of fabric were streaming back from the cowling and upper wing of his Liberty Hawk II, ripping off as the slipstream worried at the bullet holes. That wasn't his main concern; the Mark I had sometimes had the whole wing cover peel off in circumstances like this, giving the remaining fuselage the aerodynamics of a brick in free-fall, but the new model was sturdier. He really didn't like the sound the engine made, though. Slowly, carefully, he brought the little fighter around and began to descend towards the landing field. Only a mile or two now…
And the engine coughed again and died. "Shit," he said with resignation, and yanked at the tab to cut the fuel supply. Then: "Shit!" as he looked down and saw a thickening film of gasoline in the bottom of the cockpit. "I hate it when things like that happen!"
Make a note to write to the dexign team., Raj prompted. If it had been Center, he would have taken that literally…
A few black puffs of antiaircraft fire blossomed around him. Friendly fire, which was just as dangerous as the opposition s. It petered out; someone must have noticed the red-white-and-blue rondels on his wings, the mark of the Freedom Brigades' Air Service. Then the X shape of the field came into view over a low ridge, a ridge uncomfortably close to the fixed undercarriage. He concentrated on the white line of lime down the center of the graded dirt runway, ignoring the crash-truck that was speeding out to meet him with men clinging to its sides and standing on the running boards. A pom-pom in a circular pit near the edge of the runway tracked him, its twin six-foot barrels looking bloated in their water jackets, but at least that bunch seemed to keep their eyes open-a single fighter of Santander design with its prop stationary was hard to mistake for a Chosen or Nationalist raiding group, but every now and then a gun crew with active imaginations managed it.
Lower. Lower. Wind whistling through the wires and struts, flapping his scarf behind him. Lower… touch. The hard rims of the wheels ticked at the ground in a scurf of dry dirt and gravel, ticked again, settled with a rattling thud. The unpowered aircraft slowed rapidly to a halt. Jeffrey snapped open his belts and swung out to the lower wing, then to the ground, and lumbered away as fast as the weight of the parachute and the fleece-lined leather -flight suit would let him.
"Motherfucking son of a bitchl" he shouted, throwing the leather helmet and goggles to the ground, followed by the parachute.
"You all right?"
That was one of the Wong brothers. Jeffery rounded on him. "The interrupter gear still isn't working right," he said as the crew from the crash truck swarmed over the Hawk, tire extinguishers at the ready.
"My guns both jammed. Which left me a sitting duck. And the fuel lines are still leaking into the pilot's compartment when the integral tank gets cut-do you have any fucking idea how good that is for pilot morale?"
Wong made soothing motions with his hands. "As soon as we can get more rubber, we can make the tanks self-sealing," he said.
Jeffrey snorted. The Land had all the natural rubber on Visager-(he only places that could grow it were tile Land itself and-the northernmost peninsula of what had once been the Empire. John's factories were just 286 S.M. SfiHing 6- David Drake beginning to produce a trickle of synthetic rubber from oil, but it was fiendishly expensive and the Land would cut off the natural type the minute their extremely efficient spies caught Santander using it for military purposes.
Crazy war, he thought. We're fighting here in the Union, but it's all "volunteers"' and normal trade goes on. "And the latest Land fighter is still better than ours." The biplane?" Wong said with interest. "Yes, the Skyshark. It's almost as fast as our Mark II and it's got a better turning radius in starboard turns." Wong took out a notepad and began to scribble as they walked back towards the squadron HQ; behind them the crew hitched up the plane and pulled it away towards the hangar and revetments, half a dozen walking behind with a grip on its wings to steady it. A group was waiting for Jeffrey.
"You should not risk yourself so, General Farr," General Pierre Gerard said.
"You must be really pissed, Pierre; you never call me that otherwise."
The loyalisf officer shrugged, a very Unionaise gesture. "Still, it is true. And someone must tell you."
You, John, my wife, and my two invisible friends, Jeffrey thought. And 1 can never get away from those two. T have to have hands-on experience to work effectively with the designers," he said, looking over his shoulder for Wong. The little engineer and ex-bicycle manufacturer was trotting off to take a look at the shot-up Mark II. "Also to help refine our tactics for the pilot schools. We're sending them up with less than thirty hours flight time, so at least we should be teaching them the right things."
They walked into the HQ, a spare temporary structure of boards and two-by-fours. John stripped out of the flight suit, shivering slightly as the chut spring air of the central plateau hit the sweat-damp fabric of his summer-weight uniform.
"What is your appraisal?" Gerard said.
"The enemy have more and better planes than we do," Jeffrey said, sitting down and accepting the coffee an orderly brought. Coffee was another tiling they were going to miss if-when-all trade with the Land was cut off. "And better pilots, more experienced If it's any consolation, we're improving faster than they are, but we're starting from a lower base."
Gerard frowned, looking down at his hands on the rough table. "My friend, this is bad news. Although perhaps the government will listen now when I tell them the offensive on the eastern front is a bad idea."
Jeffrey halted the coffee cup halfway to his mouth. They're still going ahead with that?" he asked incredulously.
"And they will strip men, guns, aircraft from every other front for it," he said. The Committee talks of recapturing Marsai and splitting the rebel zone in half."
"The Committee has its head up its collective butt," Jeffrey said.
Gerard's head swiveled around. Unfair, Jeffrey chided himself. He could say that; the Committee of Public Safety had no jurisdiction over Brigade members, they'd insisted on that from the beginning. Gerard was in high favor after helping to stop Libert's thrust for the capital in the opening months of the war, but even so the Committee's name was nothing to take in vain. Chairman Vincen seemed to think that if he made himself into a worse mad bastard than Libert and the Chosen, he could beat Libert and the Chosen. It didn't necessarily work that way, but desperate men weren't the best logicians.
Gerard cleared his throat "And it will be even more difficult if they can continue to use Land dirigibles to shift troops and supplies at will behind their lines."
They can as long as they can keep our planes from punching through," Jeffrey said. Those gasbags are sitting targets for fighters, but we don't have the numbers or the range to penetrate their own fighter screens. 288 S.M. Stirling 6 David Drake Gerard's bulldog face grew longer. "Then they will be able to shift faster than I can-what is that expression you used?"
Jeffrey sighed. "They can get inside your decision curve. I just hope things are going better back home."
Admiral Arthur Cunningham was a big, thickset man, with graying blond hair. Rigfat now his face and bull neck were turning red with throttled rage, and he pulled at his walrus mustache as he stared at the ship model in the center of die glossy ebony table.
The hull was a large merchant variety, an eight-thousand-ton bulk carrier of the type used to ferry manganese ore from the Southern Islands under Santander protectorate. The top had been sliced off and replaced with a long flat rectangular surface; the funnels ran up into an island on the port side, and a section had lowered like an elevator to show rows of biplanes in the huge hold below the flight deck. "Ifs an abortion," Cunningjiam said. "It's what we need for scouting," Maurice Fair corrected.
The rings on his sleeves and the epaulets on his shoulders marked him as a rear admiral, and kept Cunning-ham superficially respectful. Nobody could mistake his expression, or the meaning in the look he shot John Hosten where he sat beside his father.
"Fair, I'm surprised. I expect politicians to act this way." From his tone, he also expected them to have sexual intercourse with sheep. "You're a navy man and the son of a navy man. Why are you doing this?"
"We work for politicians, Cunningham-there's a little thing called the Constitution that more or less tells us to. And in this instance, the politicians are right. We need aerial scouting if we're going to match the Land's fleet; otherwise they'll be able to lead us around like a bull with a ring in its nose."
"We need airships with decent open-sea range, not flying toys on this abortion of a so-called ship!" Cunningham said, his voice rising toward a bellow and his fist making the coffee cups rattle.
John spoke: "We've tried, Admiral Cunningham. Here."
He pulled glossy photographs from an envelope and slid them across the table. "You see the results."
The frame spread across a hillside was just recognizable as a dirigible's, after the fire.
"The Land is too far ahead of us on the learning curve with lighter-than-air craft. They've got the diesels, the hull design, and most of all, plenty of experienced construction teams and crews. We can't match them, not at acceptable cost, not with everything else we're trying to do. And land-based aircraft just don't have the range to give cover and reconaissance to a fleet at sea. Hence, we need the… aircraft carriers, we're calling them."
"Your shipyards need the contracts, you mean," Cunningham said bluntly. "Farr, this is diverting effort from capital ships."
Farr shook his head. "Look, Arthur, you know very well the bottleneck there is the heavy guns and the armor-rolling capacity."
Cunningham rose and settled his gold-crusted cap. "If you will excuse, me, sir-" he began.
"Admiral Cunningham, sit downl" Fair barked.
After a moment's glaring test of wills, the other man obeyed. "Admiral Cunningham, your objections are noted. You will now cooperate fully in carrying out the decisions of the Minister of Marine and die Naval Staff, or you will tender your resignation immediately. Is that clear?"
Twenty minutes later John Hosten sank back in his chair, shaking his head as he looked at the door that Cunningham had carefully not slammed behind him.
"I hope there aren't too many more like him, Dad," he said.
Maurice Farr sighed. His close-cut hair and mustache were gray now, but he looked as trim as he had when he stood on the docks of Oathtakuig nearly two decades before.
"I'm afraid there are quite a few," he said. "A lot of the officers are convinced that this is being forced on die navy by politicians-and Highlander politicians from the east, at that, with their industrialist friends." He smiled. They're right, aren't they?"
"But-" John began, then caught the look in his stepfathers eye. "You can still get me going, can't you?"
Farr laugfaed. "You take everything a bit too seriously, son," he said. "Don't worry; Artie Cunningham would rather eat his young than resign just before the first big naval war in a generation. If he has to swallow that"- he nodded at the model of the aircraft carrier that filled the center of the big table-"he'll swallow it, for the sake of the battlewagons."
Farr lit a cigarette. "He's not stupid, just rather specialized," he went on. "I can understand him; I'm a cannon-and-armorplate sailor myself. But I don't like operating blind." He stared at the model. "I do hope this concept's as workable as you and Jeffrey say. It looks good on paper, certainly, but I don't like ordering straight from the drawing board."
"Dad, I'm as sure as if I'd seen them fight battles myself." pearl harbor, Center said helpfully, the pursuit of ie bismark. taranto. midwayGreat, and how do I tell Dad that? John replied. Hastily: That was a rhetorical question.
Maurice Farr rose and began stacking papers in his briefcase. "No rest for the wicked-I've got to get back to HQ and deal with more bumpf. God, for a fleet command."
"Not long, I think, Dad," John said.
A long moment after his stepfather had left John heard the door behind him open.
Touching," a voice said in Landisch.
"English," John said sharply. Tradecraft."
"Oh, indeed."
The man-he was dressed in Santander civilian clothes, with a well-known yachting club's pattern of cravat-came and sat not far from John. He looked at a duplicate set of die airshipwreck photos.
"What caused this?"
The design was overweight and underpowered; they took out a section in the center and enlarged it to take an extra gasbag. The bag chafed against the bolts internally, and they had a terrible problem with leaks. Probably they nosed in on that hill in the dark, or there was a fire from static discharge, or both."
"Sloppy," the Chosen officer said, tucking the pictures away. He nodded to the model of the aircraft carrier. "Will this work?"
"Probably, after a fashion. I can't turn down aU the good ideas, you know-not and keep my standing with the military and defense industries."
"Indeed."
"I suppose we'll have to build them, too. Dirigibles are so vulnerable to heavier-than-air pursuit planes."
"Perhaps," the intelligence officer said. "And perhaps not."
"Straight and level, straight and level, damn your eyes," Horst Raske said, in a tone that was as close to a prayer as one of the Chosen was likely to get.
The bridge of the Grey Tiger was vibrating itself, very slightly, despite the skilled hands on the wheels and controls set about the U-shaped space. Through the vast semicircle of clear window they could see the teardrop shape of the experimental airship carrier Orca as she quivered in the clear air over the Land's central plateau, a hundred miles north of Copernik. The craft was huge, nearly a thousand feet from nose to stern, with beautiful swept control tins in an X at the rear, its smooth 292 S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake sheet-aluminum hull showing it to be one of the new metalclads.
Underneath it a small biplane fighter was making another run, first matching speeds with the dirigible, then edging upwards. A strong metal loop was fastened to the biplane's upper wing, and a long trapezoidal hook mechanism dangled below the airship's belly. The fighter swayed and clipped as it rose into the buffeting wake of the huge dirigible, then again as it hit the prop-wash of the six bellowing high-speed diesels. It rose sharply, and the observers on the Grey Tiger's bridge sucked in their breaths, certain it would crash into the thin structure of the airship's belly.
Instead it pulled nose-up, almost stalling, then slipped into contact with the hook. A cable locked the mechanism shut, and it moved smoothly backwards with the aircraft pivoting and jerking on the hook-and-rine connection. The rise stopped with the biplane just below the entrance hatch intended for it,
"What?" Professor Director Gunter Porschmidt spoke with his usual quick, slightly angry tone. Some of the white-coated assistants around him moved away a little. "What? Why do they wait?"
Gerta Hosten replied. "Because, Herr Professor, the plane will only fit into the entrance hatch if aligned precisely with the airship's keel… and it is difficult to get it to point that way traveling at ninety miles per hour."
Porschmidt blinked at her. "Oh. Yes, yes, make a note." One of the assistants scribbled busily.
Tiny human figures on ropes dropped out of the airship's belly. Laboriously, they fixed rope tackle to the biplane's wings and body, and the trapeze swung it up once more. On the second try-the first crumpled a wing against the side of the hatch-they got it through. Porschmidt beamed, and there was a discreet murmur of applause from the Research Council officials with him.
"Good, good," the chief scientist said. "But perhaps we should assign a better pilot to the next series of tests?"
"The pilot is Eva Sommers," Gerta said. "Her reflexes were among the ten best ever recorded in the Test of Life; she has fifteen kills to her credit from the war down in the Union and is currently the Air Council's best test pilot."
"Oh." Porschmidt shrugged. "Well, the purpose of operational testing is to improve the product."
"Herr Professor?"
"Yes?"
"While this is undoubtedly a great technical achievement," Gerta said, "given our current quality control problems, don't you think-"
He made a dismissive gesture. "The Chosen Council told me to design a device which would give us greater heavier-than-air scouting capacity than the enemy's new ship-borne aeroplanes. Production is not my department."
Horst Raske waited until they had left Ms bridge before putting a hand to his forehead and sighing.
"Well, this proves one thing conclusively," Gerta said, watching the Orca turn away.
"What?"
"That the Chosen are still Visager's supreme toymakers," she added.
"Brigadier, I do not think that is funny."
"It isn't. Porschmidt falling out a hatchway without a parachute at six thousand feet, that would be funny."
"If only the man were an incompetent!"
"If he were an incompetent, he wouldn't have passed the Test of Life," Gerta said. "Unfortunately, that is no guarantee that he will not be wrong-just that he'll be plausibly, brilliantly wrong with ideas that sound wonderful and are just a tantalizing inch beyond realization.''
Raske shuddered. "I hope some of his ideas work out better than that." He nodded towards the disappearing airship. "When I think of the conventional models we could have made for the same expenditure of money and skilled manpower… and you're right, quality control has fallen off appallingly."
"A complete waste of-" Gerta stopped, struck. "Wait a minute. The problem there is hull turbulence, right?"
Raske looked at her. "Yes. No way to eliminate it, that I can see. An airship pushes aside a lot of air, and that's all there is to it."
"But fifty, sixty feet down there's less problem?"
"Of course-but you can't put the hook gear that far down. The leverage would snap it off at the first strain."
Tes, but why do we want to hoist the plane aboard the airship's cargo bay?"
She began to talk. Raske listened, his face gradually losing its hangdog expression.
"Now why can't Porschmidt come up with ideas like that?" he asked.
"Oh, some of Porschmidt's brainchildren work well enough, better than I expected." Gerta said. She smiled. "As our friends to the south will soon find out."
"A great difference from the beginning of the war, n'est pas?" General Gerard said with melancholy pride.
Many of the soldiers trudging along the sides of the dusty road cheered as the car carrying Gerard and Jeffrey went by. They were almost all Unionaise on this front, not Freedom Brigades, so they were probably cheering the local officer-although Jeffrey was popular enough.
And they do shape a lot better, Jeffrey thought. For one thing, they were all in uniform and almost all had plain bowl-shaped steel helmets, and they all had the Table of Organization and Equipment gear besides. More importantly, they were moving in coherent groups and not getting tangled up or scattering across the countryside. Infantry marching on either side, horse-drawn guns and mule-drawn wagons and ambulances towards the middle, and a fair number of Santander-made trucks, Ferrins, and big squarish Appelthwaits. Occasionally an airplane would pass by overhead, drawing no more than a few curious stares; the men were accustomed to the notion that they had their own air service, these days.
The air was thick with dust and die anirnal-dung-and-gasoline stink of troops on the move. Around them the central plateau stretched in rolling immensity, with the snowpeaks of the Monts du Nora growing ever closer on the northeast horizon. The gramfields were long since reaped, sere yellow stubble against reddish-yellow earth, with dust smoking off it now and then. Widely spaced vineyards of trained vines looking like bushy cups covered many of the hillsides, and there was an occasional grove of fruit trees or cork oaks. The people all lived in the big clumped villages, looking like neaps of spilled sugar cubes with tbeir flat-roofed houses of whitewashed adobe. The peasants came out to cheer the Loyalist armies; Jeffrey suspected that prudence would make them cheer the Nationalists almost as loudly. Not that title government wasn't more popular than the rebel generals, who brought the landlords back in their train wherever they conquered, but Unionvil's anticlerical policies weren't very popular outside the cities, either.
"Everyone seems to be expecting a military picnic," Jeffrey said, leaning back in the rear seat of the big staff car.
It was Santander-made, of course; a model that wealthy men bought, or wealthy private schools. Six-wheeled, with a collapsible top, and two rows of leather-cushioned seats in the rear. Gerard had had the original seats replaced with narrower, harder models, plus communications gear and maps, with a pintle-mounted twin machine gun set between the driver's compartment and the passengers. Henri Trudeau stood behind the grips of fLe weapons, carefully scanning the sky.
"Morale is good," Gerard acknowledged. "The men know they've gotten a lot better, these past two years." "You've done a good job," Jeffrey said. "And you, my friend. Those suggestions for an accelerated ofBcer-training system helped very much."
Ninety-day wonders, courtesy of Raj and Center, Jeffrey thought. Center had a lot of records of sudden mobilizations for large-scale warfare.
"Well, combat is the best way to identify potential leaders," Jeffrey said. "It's sort of expensive as a sorting process, but it works."
Henri spoke unexpectedly. "Things wouldn't be going this well if you hadn't got those anarchist batards killed off right at the start, sir."
Gerard looted up with a smile; the Loyalist Army was still informal in some respects. Jeffrey shook his head.
"The rebels inflicted heavy casualties on the anarchist militia, that's true," he said judiciously. I'm becoming a politician like John, he thought. "But that's scarcely my fault. They wanted to fight, and I put them where they could fight Besides, you were with them, Henri."
The Unionaise solider grinned. "I wanted to win, sir. Which is why I've stuck with you since. And they were a wonderful example, in their way-everyone could see what came of their notions."
Then his head came up. "Watch it!" The machine gun swiveled around on its pivot.
"Listen up, people."
The selection of Chosen officers who would be supporting the offensive braced to attention inside the green dimness of the tent.
"Colonel Hosten is Military Intelligence for this operation and also our liaison with the Union Nationalist forces. She will conclude the briefing."
Gerta stepped up in front of the map easle. "At ease. The situation is as follows…"
She talked for ten crisp minutes, answering the occasional question. What a relief, she thought. Liaison work was a strain; foreigners chattered, they didn't know how to concentrate on the business at hand, they wandered off into irrelevancies. At last she finished.
"Now, let's go out there and fctH."
Inspiring and informative," Heinrich said. The double stars of a general rested easy on his shoulders, standing out from the hybrid uniform of the Eagle Legion, the Land "volunteer" force fighting with the Nationalists. "I suppose you'll go collate some reports?"
Gerta smiled. "Well, actually, Copernik wants detailed reports on the performance of the Von Nelsing two-seater," she said.
Heinrich shrugged his shoulders ruefully. There are times when I think this whole war is nothing but a laboratory experiment," he said.
"It is," Gerta said. "Good on-the-iob training, too."
True." He frowned. "The problem is, the enemy learns as well-and they needed it more than we. So they improve more for an equal amount of experience. If you play chess with good chess players, you get good"
My darling Heinrich, you are extremely perceptive at times, Gerta thought as she ducked out of the tent and headed for die landing field.
The squadron looked squeaky-clean and factory-new, even the untattered wind sock and the raw pine boards of die messhalL Everything but the pilots. They'd all been transferred from Albatros army-cooperation planes to the new Von Nelsings; Gerta walked around hers admiringly. The fuselage was Hgbt plywood, a monocoque huD factory-made in two pieces ana then fastened together along a central seam, much stronger than the old fabric models and extremely simple to make, which was crucial these days. Hiere were two engines in cowlings on the lower wings, giving the craft a higher power-to-weigjit ratio than a fighter, it was heavier than the pursuit planes, but not twice as heavy. Six air-cooled machine guns bristled from the pointed nose, and there was a twin-barreled mount facing backwards from the observer's seat. Prot6g6 groundcrew were fastening four fifty-pound bombs under each wing, and then a one-armed Chosen supervisor came along to inspect. Gerta gave the plane a careful going-over herself. They'd set up a multiple checking system, but with all die new camps full of Imperial deportees making components, it paid to be careful.
"All in readiness, sir," the squadron commander said expressionlessly, saluting.
And it would be even more ready if a hot-dogger from HQ wasn't pushing her way in, Gerta finishedfor him silently. She didn't mind; she was a hot-dogger from HQ, and she was pushing her way in shamelessly.
She was also a better pilot than any of die youngsters here; she'd been flying since the Land first put heavier-than-air craft into the sky.
"Let's show what these birds can do, then," she said.
The Prote'ge' gunner made a stirrup of her hands and Gerta used it to vault up and climb into the cockpit. Then she stuck a hand down and helped the other woman into the plane. More than half the aircrew were female; diey had lower averages on body weight and higher on reflexes, both of which counted on the screening test. This one seemed quite competent, if not a mental giant, and what you needed in an observer-gunner was good eyes and quick hands.
The first planes were already taxiing when she completed her checklist and signaled to die groundcrew to pull the chocks from before the spat-streamnned wheels. This production model seemed very much like the prototypes she'd flown back home, but the airfield was at three thousand feet rather than sea level. She pulled her goggles down over her eyes and followed the crewman widi the flags; four more seized the tail of her plane and lifted it around to the proper angle. They held the plane against the growing tug of the motors until she chopped her hand skyward and it leapt forward.
Good acceleration, she noted. There'd been a bit of a tussle between the three aircraft companies over die scarce high-performance engines, with some claiming they were wasted on a cooperation airplane. Smoother on the ground, too. The new oleo shock-absorbers on the wheel struts were reducing the pounding a plane normally took on takeoff. The fabric coverings of the wing rippled slighdy, as they always did. Have to see how those experiments with rigid surface wings are going. No reason in theory why the wings shouldn't be load-bearing plywood on internal frames like the body. That would really speed up production.
Up. She pushed the throttles forward and waggled her wings to test the balance of the engines, then banked upward and started glancing down at the ground, smiling to herself with the familiar exhilaration of flight. And there was nothing more fun than strafing missions. There was the Eboreaux River, the town of Selandrons… and the irregular line of die trenches. Not a solid maze of redoubts and communications lines like some sections of the front, just field entrenchments. Enemy artillery sparkled along it and through it-their offensive was getting off to a good start, penetrating the thin defenses and thrusting for the river.
Ground crawled beneath her, like a map itself from six thousand feet. The cold, thin air slapped at her face, making her cheeks tingle. An occasional puff of black followed the squadron as the converted naval quick-firers the Santies had supplied to the Reds opened up, but there were a lot of targets up here today; aircraft were rising from all along the front, swarming up from the front-line airfields by the hundreds. There were planes on either side as far as she could see, black dots against the blue and white of die sky, the drone of engines filling her ears.
Magnificent, she thought. Even better, the fighter squadron assigned to g›ve them top cover was in place.
Ahead, the squadron commander waggled his wings three times and then banked into a dive. At precise ten-secend intervals the others followed. Gerta grinned sharldike as she flipped up the cover on the joystick and put her thumb lighdy on the firing button.
Those aren't ours," Gerard said sharply, standing.
No, they aren't, Jeffrey thought with sharp alarm. The Loyalists and Brigades didn't use that double-arrowhead formation.
"Get me some reports," Gerard said sharply to the communications technician.
She-die Union forces had a Women's Auxiliary now, too-fiddled with the big crackle-finished Santander wireless set that occupied one side of the great car. Tnere weren't many other sets for the tech to talk to; wireless small enough to get into a land vehicle was a recent development… courtesy of Center. Jeffrey kept his eyes on the growing swarm of dots along the western horizon, but he could hear the pattern of dots and dashes through the tech's headphones. Center translated them for him effortlessly, but he waited until the tech finished scribbling on a pad and handed the result to Gerard.
"Sir. Enemy planes in strengdi attacking the following positions."
Gerard took it and flipped through die maps on the tabfe. "Artillery parks and shell storage areas and fuel dumps behind our lines."
Anodier series of dots and dashes. "And our airfields. Fortunate that most of our planes are already up."
Jeffrey whisded, leaning against one of die overhead bars and bracing his binoculars. "I make that over two hundred," he said. "Fighters… and diere are two-engined craft as well."
"The new Von Nelsings we've heard about. That puts a stake through the heart of diis offensive."
"I'd say we've run right into a rebel offensive," Jeffrey said.
"Exacdy. And I will advance no further into the jaws of a trap. Driver! Pull over!"
The big car nosed over to die side of die road. Several smaller ones rull of aides and staff officers drew up around it.
"No clumping!" Gerard ordered sharply. "You, you, you, come here-die rest of you spread out, hundred-yard intervals." He began to rap out orders.
A fighter cut dirough the Land formation, die red-white-and-blue spandrels on its wines marking it as a Freedom Brigades craft. The twin machine guns sparkled, and a series of holes punctured die wing toner right; one bullet spanged off die steel-plate cowling of die engine. Behind Gerta, the Protege" gunner screamed with rage as she wresded die twin-gun mount around, tracer hammering out in die enemy fighter's wake. The Von Nels-ing next to her dove after it, but die more nimble pursuit 302 S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake plane turned in a beautifully tight circle, far tighter than the twin-engine craft could manage. However, Gerta thought, and dove. Tnat cut across the cord of the Brigades fighter's circle; the heavier Von Nelsing dove fast. For a moment the wire circle gunsight behind her windscreen slid just enough ahead of the Santy Mark II. Her thumb stabbed on the button, and the six machine guns ahead of her hammered. Over a hundred rounds struck the little biplane fighter in the second that her burst lasted, ripping it open from nose to tail like a knife through wrapping paper. It staggered in the air, collapsed in the middle, and exploded into flame all in the same instant. The burning debris fluttered groundward in pieces, die dense mass of the engine falling fastest.
"And fuck you very much!" Gerta shouted, banking sharply to the right and heading groundward.
Tne Brigader had interrupted her mission. There was the road, still crowded with troops and transport. The men were running out into the fields on either side, or taking cover in the ditches, but the vehicles were less mobile. She lined up carefully, coming down to less than two hundred feet, ignoring the rifles and machine guns spitting at her. You'd have to be dead lucky to hit a target luce this from the ground, plus being a very good shot, and the engines were protected.
Now. She yanked at the bomb release and fought to hold the plane steady as the fifty pounders dropped fitom beneath each wing. The explosions in her wake were heavier than shells of the same weight; less had to go into a strong casing, leaving more room for explosives. They straddled the roadway, raising poplar shapes of dirt and rock, also wood and metal and flesh. The guns in die nose of her airplane stammered, drawing a cone of fire up die center of die road.
Jeffrey dove for the floor of die car, pulling Gerard after him. Hot brass from the twin mounting fountained over them both. Bullets cracked by and pinged from die metal of the car. There was a fountain of sparks from the wireless and die operator gave a choked cry and slumped down on them with a boneless finality that Jeffrey recognized all too well, even before die blood confirmed it. It was amazing how much blood even a small human body contained. A second later there was another explosion, huge but somehow soft and followed by a pillow of hot air; a wagon of galvanized iron gasoline cans had gone up.
The two men heaved themselves erect; Gerard paused for an instant to close the staring eyes of the wireless operator. Henri was still swinging die twin-barrel mount, hoping for anodier target. The driver slumped in the front seat, lying backward with die top dipped off his head and his brains spattered back through die com-parment. Other vehicles were burning up and down die road, and some of die roadside trees as well. A riderless horse ran by, its eyes staring in terror. Other animals were screaming in uncomprehending pain. The officers who'd gadiered around Gerard were bandaging their wounded and counting their dead.
"You all right?" Jeffrey asked.
Gerard daubed at his spattered uniform tunic and dien abandoned the effort. "Bien, suffisient. Yourself?"
"None of it's mine."
"Then let us see what we can do to remedy this- what is it, your expression?"
"Ratfuck."
This ratfack, then."
"Damn, they actually got them to work," Jeffrey said, scratching. Damn. Lice again. I may be a lousy general, but I'd rather it wasn't literal.
Two weeks into die latest offensive, and die Loyalists were already back nearly a hundred miles from their start-lines. One of the reasons was parked in the valley below them. It was a rhomboid shape more than forty 304 S.M. Stirling 6- David urake feet long and twenty wide, thick plates of cast steel massively bolted together. The top held a boxy turret with a naval four-inch gun mounted in it, and each corner of the machine had a smaller turret with two machine guns; a field mortar's stubby barrel showed from the top as well, to deal with targets out of direct line of sight. There were drive sprockets in four places along the top of each tread, and steam leaked from half a dozen apertures. The long shadows of evening made it look even larger than it was, gave a hulking, prehistoric menace to the outline.
A Loyalist field-gun lay tilted on one wheel in front of the Land tank, its horses and men dead around it. Three lighter tanks had clanked on by up the valley towards the tableland, and only a few infantry and crew stood around the monster, the crew pulling maintenance through open panels, inspecting the tracks, or just enjoying spring air that must be like wine from heaven after the black, dank heat of the interior. A thick hose extended from its rear deck to the village well, jerking and bulging occasionally as the pump filled its tanks with water.
"That thing must weight fifty tons." And we gave them the idea. Some disinformation. You had to hand it to the Chosen engineers; they were perennially overoptimis-tic, but their hubris brought some amazing tour-de-force technical feats at times. the vehicle weighs sixty one point four three tons, Center said, maximum armor thickness is four inches at thirty degrees slope, estimated range eighty miles under optimum conditions, mechanical reliability and ergonomics are poor, cost effectiveness is low.
Beside him on the ridge Henri was staring at the Land tank, his mouth making small chewing motions. Jeffrey had a hundred-odd men with him, Brigade troops and Loyalists, whatever had been left when the front broke. Many of them were taking a look and beginning to sidle backwards. There was a phrase for it now: "tank panic."
The ordinary ones were bad enough, but these new monsters were worse.
"No movement," he snapped.
Discipline held enough to keep his makeshift battle group from dissolving right there. Then again, the ones who'd felt like quitting had mostly gone in the days since the rebel counterattack and its Land spearheads had broken through the Loyalist front. These were the ones with some stick to them.
"Gather around, everyone but the scouts." He waited while the quiet movement went on; the men had good fieldcraft, at least. "All right, there's a heavy tank down there. They're dangerous, but they're also slow and clumsy, and the enemy doesn't have very many of them. We're behind their lines now, and they feel fairly safe. As soon as it's dark, I'm leading a forlorn hope down there to take it out with explosives. I need some volunteers. The rest will cover our retreat, and we'll break out to our own front. Who's with me?^ He waited a moment, then blinked in surprise as more than half lifted their hands. A nod of thanks; there was nothing much to say at a time like this.
"Ten men, no more. Henri, Duquesne, Smith, Woolstone, McAndrews-"
Night fell swiftly, and the highland air chilled. The commandos spent the time checking over their weapons, and making up grenade bundles-taking one stick grenade and tying the heads of a dozen more around it. Those who thought several days stubble and grime insufficient blacked their faces and hands with mud; a few prayed.
"How does a general keep getting himself into this merde, sir?" Henri asked, grinning.
"Going up to the front to see what's going on," Jeffrey said. "It's a fault, but then so are women and wine."
He looked up; it was full dark, and still early enough in spring to be overcast.
Bain? he asked.
Chance of precipitation is 53%, ±5, Center replied.
"We'll go with it," he said aloud. "Spread out. Avoid the sentries if you can; if you can't, keep it quiet."
The commandos moved down from the ridge, through the aromatic scrub and into the stubblefields of the valley bottom. There was little noise; the men with him had all been at the front for long enough to learn night-patrol work. I'd have had more posts and a roving patrol here, he thought.
Whoever was in charge wanted to keep pursuing as fast as he could, Raj said. He left the minimum possible with the tank when it broke down. Sound thinking. The chances of a Loyalist band big enough to cause trouble being bypassed are low. But even low probabilities happen sometimes.
There was a low choked cry from off to the left in the darkness, and a wet thudding sound. We're going to- A rifle cracked, the muzzle flash bright in the darkness. Jeffrey could see the crew around the tank scrambling up out of their blankets and heading for their machine; half or better of them would be Chosen and deadly dangerous even surprised in their sleep. He tossed his pistol into his left hand and drew the bundle of grenades out of the cloth satchel at his side, running forward, stumbling and cursing as clods and brush caught at his feet. Abruptly the landscape went brighter, to something like twilight level. Thanks, he thought; Center was reprocessing the input of his eyes and feeding it back to his visual cortex. It no longer felt eerie after more than twenty-five years with Center in his brain. A red aiming dot settled on a panicked Protege" soldier staring wildly about him in the near-complete darkness. Jeffrey fired, then dove and rolled to avoid the bullets that cracked out at the muzzle flash of his weapon. He didn't need to check on the enemy soldier. The dot had been resting right above one ear. A series of vis-cdous blindsided firelights was crackling around the rebel encampment, men firing at sounds and movement glimpsed in split seconds. Or firing at what they thought Was sound or movement.
Chooonk. The mortar in the turret of the Land heavy tank fired. Jeffrey dove to the ground again, squeezing his eyes shut. Reflected light from the ground still dazzled him for an instant as the starshell went off.
What was really frightening was a high-pitched chuff and squeal of steel on steel. The tank was live; they must have kept the flash-boilers warm for quick readiness. He'd counted on the half hour it took to bring the huge machine on-line.
One of the corner turrets cut loose, beating the ground with a twin flail of lead and green tracer. Then die four-inch gun in the main turret fired. That must be more for intimidation than anything else, since they didn't have a target worth a heavy shell. It was intimidating, a huge leaf-shaped blade of flame, the ripping crash and the crump of high explosive from the hillside where the load struck.
He couldn't fault the men he'd left behind on the ridge. They opened fire on the camp and the Chosen tank, dozens of winking fireflies showing from their rifles. Sparks danced over the heavy armor of the panzer as it shed the small-arms bullets hlce so many hailstones… but it did force the commander to stay buttoned up, vision limited to whatever showed through the narrow vision blocks that ringed the cupola on top of the tank.
Schoonk. Another starshell. Tne machine-gun turrets were beating at the ridge, trying to supress the riflei amp; 1 l. ° i.1 amp;‹-. «-*. r men there, and o.oing a good job ot it. The enemy infantry were taking cover behind the tank, firing around it. Then it began to move, grinding across the little valley towards die ridge. Towards him.
Stupid, Jeffrey thought as he hugged the dusty earth, blinking it out of his eyes. The Loyalist force didn't have anything that could threaten the four-inch armor plate of die Land war machine. That's the Chosen for you. Aggressive to a fault, ready to attack whether it was necessary or not .Of course, if he was unlucky they'd reduce his own personal ass to a grease spot in this stubblefield.
The earth shook as the massive weight ground slowly, slowly towards him. The machine gun bursts from the four turrets and the coaxial weapon blended together into a continuous chattering punctuated by the occasional chugging of the mortar, firing illuminating rounds or high explosive to probe the dead ground behind the ridge. Closer. Closer.
Now it was looming over him. Good. No one had noticed him in the dark and the flickering shadows of die descending starshells as they wobbled on their parachutes. Steel screamed in protest and the earth groaned with a creaking sound as the walking fortress rolled towards him, lurching as the driver tried to keep the treads working at equal speeds. His stomach felt watery, and his testicles were trying to crawl up into it for comfort: "tank panic" felt a lot more understandable, even sensible, right now.
Black shadow passed over him as the prow moved by. There should be more than two feet of clearance between the tank's belly and the dirt. More than enough for him, if this was one of the ones without hinged blades fitted to the bottom. He rolled on his back, despite the voice at the back of his head screaming that he should bury his face in the dirt. The pitted, rusty surface of the hull was moving only inches from his face, closer when a bolthead went by. And there were the big eyebolt rings near the rear, fitted for use with a towing line.
He dropped his pistol on his stomach and reached out with both hands. There. He pushed the handle of the stick grenade through the bolt. His cap stuffed in beside it snugged it close enough not to move for a few seconds. He scooped up the pistol again with his right hand, and kept hold of the pull-tab at the base of the stick grenade with his left, letting the motion of die tank pull it loose, arming die weapon.
Don't stop now, baby, please, he diought.
It didn't. The commander must have been waiting until he was closer to use the main gun again, and die automatic weapons were reasonably effective on die move. The weight rolled from overhead, like freedom from die grave. Jeffrey began to crawl frantically, tlien rose and ran two dozen paces.
The first explosion was muffled by die bulk of die tank. It seemed absurdly small beneath the huge bulk of die Land vehicle, but even on somediing weighing sixty tons die armor couldn't be diick everywhere. The tank came to a lurching halt, although one machine-gun turret continued to fire for fifteen seconds. Then diere was a second explosion, tiiis one inside die tank. Steam jetted from die back deck, dien a few seconds later from every opening and crack in the hull, squealing into die night like so many locomotive whisdes. Jeffrey could feel his skin crawl slighdy at the thought of what it must have been like inside, die sudden wash of superheated vapor flaying die crew alive.
That did not stop his pumping run. A low wall of crumbling stone and adobe showed ahead of him; he hurdled it and went to the ground with his face pressed to die dirt. Hot metal was in contact widi ruptured shell casings and vaporized gasoline, and right aboutW/iump. The fuel and ammunition went off togedier, and die Land panzer came apart along the lines where die sheets of cast and rolled armor were riveted togedier. Chunks plowed into die wall a few feet from him, showering powdered dirt and small stones with painful force. He raised his head cautiously; he could see nothing near the twisted wreckage of die tank, although movrnt die light from die burning remnants was bright enough to read by. The turret lay on its side a few yards distant; further out still were bodies diat lay still. Mostly still.
"I hope none of diem were mine," he muttered. His voice sounded faint and faraway in his ringing ears. Louder: "Rally here! Rally here!"