by Scott McKay
Nevertheless, Cross was in contact with Mark. The teletype machine in the farmhouse the First Airfighter Squadron was using as a headquarters had been chattering away more or less at all hours, giving them a fix on Udar troop movements and requesting situation reports as to their own readiness. There had been a back-and-forth between Mark and Cross about whether the First was combat-qualified. Mark’s position was that he only had four air crews who’d been weapons-rated, and that was if he embraced an overly generous, if not completely reckless, definition of the term. They’d been practicing with small wooden barrels filled with water as bombs, and their inability to drop them anywhere close to a target was driving Mark crazy.
It wasn’t any better with the chain guns mounted to the wings. To keep from shredding the propellers with bullets, the guns were spread out on either side of the fuselage on the Thorne Model 1-A prototype biplanes, but what that meant was it wasn’t easy to line up a shot accurately. Worse, the interface with those guns from the cockpit was difficult to master; shooting them required taking one or both hands off the control stick, and that meant an inability to steer the plane while firing.
The whole thing was exceptionally challenging, and Mark’s pilots just hadn’t mastered it.
How could they? They were trying to become proficient at using a revolutionary, radical and almost fanciful flying machine as a weapon of war, and none of them had much of a background in this kind of work. Some were drawn from the automotive industry, a couple had come from steamships, one from the Thorne Technology Group factory floor, and even one from the Alvedorne Raptors rugby team.
Mark expected they’d eventually figure the whole thing out, and when they managed to do that, the theoretical warfighting capability of the airfighters would begin to come into play. What he wasn’t sure about was whether the Model 1-A would be the vehicle they’d win the skies with.
It wasn’t just the trouble working the chain guns. The Model 1-A had a nasty problem with its landing gear, which kept bending and breaking on landing. They’d tried to change out the wheel assembly for a sturdier design and materials, but the problem was weight. Too much, plus keeping the plane level, became troublesome. They were experimenting with balancing the weight by applying some of it to the tail, but that had its own problems, among them being fuel efficiency and the plane’s range.
Then there was the tendency of the canvas-and-plywood wing assembly to rip apart during flight, something that made the planes highly temperamental.
There was something else that was a real concern, which was the fact that the altimeter was highly inaccurate. This was a problem since the plane became a deathtrap at anything more than ten thousand feet; the cockpit was open air, and the pilots reported getting dangerously lightheaded at that altitude for a lack of oxygen. There had been an incident when one of the pilots had lost consciousness at what he thought was nine thousand three hundred feet, and the plane fell into a nose-dive that the navigator had fought very hard to pull it out of.
Miraculously, they hadn’t crashed any of the planes badly enough to permanently put them out of commission. But the farm’s sizable barn had turned into a constantly active repair shop with planes lined up for body work, engine work, tinkering and upgrades. From one test flight to another, very little stayed the same, and the constant changes made the pilots uneasy.
Morale hadn’t really suffered over the four months they had been at Carmody Farm trying to master the airfighters, though, and why should it? This brand-new adventure was an orgy of adrenaline, and the danger only served to bring the pilots into a brotherhood none had felt even among their own kin.
Mark enjoyed the camaraderie of his team, but the responsibility for their safety and survival wore heavy on him. Especially today, because ready or not, they had received their orders from Barley Point and they were flying southwest to engage Udar troops moving in three massive columns on Trenory. Cross had sent Mark an order by teletext to bomb and strafe those advancing columns, in hopes that their presence would break the Udar lines and slow the attack.
But the airship reconnaissance of earlier that day had it that the enemy was coming with somewhere more than a quarter-million troops, and moreover, at least some of them had rifles. That meant they’d be shooting back, so the opportunity to strafe them carried a risk Mark wasn’t sure was justified given their puny numbers of planes and pilots. They had only seven qualified air crews, meaning they couldn’t even keep all nine planes flying at the same time.
And this was before they started taking enemy fire. What casualties they suffered today could cripple the squadron or put its combat readiness in jeopardy.
It was a lot to be concerned about, Mark thought, as he taxied Abigail, his Model 1-A, down from the barn to the hilly grass runway the First was using. He goosed the engine and got the plane started down the slight decline heading south, and at a groundspeed of forty-five miles an hour the tail rose, giving Mark a view of the horizon before he pulled back on the control stick, lifting Abigail off the ground. The plane gained speed as it gained altitude, and Mark quickly looked back to see six other planes taking off one after another behind him.
Corporal Brantley Cousins, his second, was holding up a series of colored flags to signal those planes to form up to either side of Mark’s plane, something they’d practiced and had developed a facility for. Whether flying in formation would be useful against the enemy was questionable, as Mark was of the opinion they needed to address the enemy in a single file line, or perhaps a staggered single-file line, in order that the planes following behind might protect those ahead from ground fire.
That would be a potential change they’d have to make after this, their first combat run-- assuming they had enough planes and pilots to survive their first contact with the Udar.
After a few minutes, as they reached the northern outskirts of Trenory, Mark saw that all seven planes were in a wedge formation, three on each side of his. Cousins had arranged them that way, waving green and red flags in the direction of each in order to form them up, and then the navigator hollered into the speaking tube that they were ready to attack.
Mark looked down on the right side of the plane, over the Tweade, as they began to approach Trenory. He could see evidence of a sizable evacuation of the city by boat, as the river was full of watercraft, nearly all heading northeast up the river. The river road was similarly crowded, with a line of pedestrians weighed down with belongings along the shoulders and a procession of motorcars, lorries, horses, carriages and other conveyances streaming northward on the road. As they flew, the procession slowed for its participants to gawk at them, with a nearly audible roar of applause greeting their arrival and cheering them into the fight. Hats were waved in salute, which Mark returned by waggling Abigail’s wings. He looked back to see that the rest of the First Airfighter Squadron was doing the same.
Now they were passing just east of the city, and on the west bank of the Tweade, Mark could see troops in defensive positions preparing for the enemy’s arrival. That was also true along the north bank of the Aileen, where boats were lined up to ferry people away from the fight.
A little further to the south, across the Aileen from Trenory, Mark could see that the famed Nineteenth Infantry was taking up positions in the woods southwest of town. They’d begun digging trenches, setting up gun emplacements and stacking boxes of ammunition and supplies throughout their positions. From Mark’s vantage about a thousand feet in the air, it didn’t look like the Nineteenth was all that formidable a force considering what he’d heard about the enemy.
Thirty minutes later, his suspicions were confirmed, as the First Airfighter Squadron happened upon the Udar army marching north for Trenory.
He’d heard there were three separate columns moving northward, and that was true; there was one which looked like it was mostly cavalry moving toward the foothills of the West Peaks west of town, though not at any faster pace than the others that Mark could see. There was a particularly huge colum
n of infantry in the center headed straight for the woods south of the Aileen, and then another column of infantry marching to its east along the Tweade. They were far more than Mark could count, as all three columns seemed to stretch beyond the horizon.
This wasn’t two hundred and fifty thousand men. This was three or four times that many. Mark wasn’t trained to make an accurate estimate, but he’d seen large crowds at finish lines of rally races he’d participated in, sometimes as many as sixty or eighty thousand people. This dwarfed anything like that.
And he realized this mission would be categorically, suicidally useless.
But they couldn’t go back to Carmody Farm with nothing but a scouting report, so Mark decided they’d hit the big column in the center with everything they had.
“Brantley, flag the formation that we’re going in!” Mark yelled into the speaking tube. “Will do!” came the barely audible response.
“Guns first, then bombs after!” Mark hollered. “We’ll get as deep into the column as we can before we have to turn back!”
Cousins waved a series of flags, and Mark saw the other six planes in the formation waggle their wings.
He started his descent, using the control stick with his left hand and depressing the lever for the right wing-gun with his right hand. The gun began chattering as it fired round after round into the enemy column, men scattering everywhere as it kicked up clouds of dirt. He was hitting little, though Mark did see some of his fire finding purchase.
And now I’ve killed, he thought to himself. Give me a medal, for what that’s worth.
So far as he could tell, the enemy wasn’t shooting back. They were advancing through the column at nearly eighty miles an hour, with the guns blazing and Udar scattering everywhere. Mark’s right wing-gun was soon empty, so he switched to his right hand on the control stick to keep the plane steady and depressed the lever for the left wing-gun. It began chattering, and he continued plowing through the enemy formation.
Then that gun went quiet, all its ammunition spent, and Mark brought the plane into a steep ascent to fifteen hundred feet, only to press the control stick forward and begin another decline. As he dove, he flipped the lever to release two small barrel-bombs loaded with white phosphorous and gunpowder, and then banked hard to the left, away from the explosion to come. As he did, Mark could see a white flash, and then he heard the sound of two loud bangs as the bombs went off.
That repeated itself four more times.
But not six.
As he banked around, Mark could see that his formation now had five planes rather than the seven the First Airfighter Squadron had brought to the fight. Heading back north, he frantically searched the ground for evidence of what had happened to the remainder.
That’s when Mark saw Lily, the plane being flown by Second Lieutenant Vernon Bray with Sergeant Mike Nerland as his second, broken into pieces in the middle of the enemy column. Udar were rushing at the plane, and they were hacking away at the cockpit. Vernon and Mike were being chopped to pieces, though both were likely already dead.
“By the Saints!” he could hear Brantley exclaim into the speaking tube.
“Nothing we can do for them now,” Mark said. “See if you can find Helena!”
Helena was Second Lieutenant Adam Stone’s plane, and he had a fresh-faced private named Steven Endring as his second. Helena was probably the most temperamental of their aircraft, and the one Mark was most concerned they’d lose.
And then he found her. Adam had apparently made a forced landing close to the riverbank before they’d reached the Udar column, and there was smoke coming from the plane’s engine. The two pilots had left the cockpit and were hustling on foot north along the riverside.
“See them!?” Brantley yelled. Mark held up a thumb.
Two of the planes dipped down and made fast landings in front of where Adam and Steven were running, and as he circled the area Mark could see the men climb into the crowded second seats of Georgette and Louise, respectively. Helena was now on fire, as whatever engine trouble she’d run into was clearly a catastrophic failure, and Adam and Steven were lucky it had hit them before they could get to the battle.
They’d have ended up like Vernon and Mike, he thought. We all might, eventually.
Georgette and Louise soon lumbered into flight, and the five remaining planes of the First Airfighter Squadron made a hasty trip north for home.
NINE
Barley Point, Tenthmonth Fourteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
It was a little before dawn, and an exhausted Sebastian straggled to the front door of his new Barley Point home. Of course, he didn’t feel like he ought to call it that, since he’d spent scant little time there since buying the place a few days earlier. Most of his waking moments, and even his sleeping moments, had been spent at his command hut at the military base a mile or so north of this tree-lined neighborhood a few blocks from the river Tweade. Cross had planned on using the house as the primary office of the new Ardenian Air Force, which had been a misjudgement.
It’s like that old saying goes, he thought. Everybody has a plan until the fighting starts.
Sebastian’s plan was to catch a few winks in his own bed, then clean himself up and make a trip down to Fort Stuart by noon in order to have a final conversation with Latham about the air base and what it would look like. Sebastian knew they’d be getting a lot more airships than just the two they had, so the base would need to be large enough to accommodate them. That meant hangars upon hangars for the giant vehicles, and likely several more buildings to house the coming fleet of airfighters he was eventually going to bring on.
But what he needed was a bare minimum of three hours of shuteye, because he was groggy and couldn’t think straight anymore.
He was also getting a little depressed that he was climbing into bed alone, as that was something Sebastian hadn’t experienced much of in his previous life as a civilian airline CEO. It appeared that military life and a sex life weren’t as compatible as he’d hoped.
Maybe if the war stabilized some, he’d be able to have a go at the Barley Point social scene. Such as that was.
Sebastian scolded himself for letting his mind stray and knew that his lack of focus was the product of exhaustion. He stomped up the stairs to the master bedroom, noted the spartan furnishings, made a mental work order to get the place dressed up a bit when he had time, stripped down to his union suit, and then finally, after all of that, crashed onto the mattress. He was barely able to insert himself under the covers before sleep took him.
But after what seemed like no time at all, Sebastian awoke to the sound of someone pounding on the front door. He leapt out of bed, threw on a bathrobe and stuck his feet into a pair of boots, and hustled downstairs to answer the door. A sharp-looking fortyish man in a gray wool suit with a black waistcoat and a top hat was on the landing.
“Can I help you?” Sebastian asked. He noted that it was well past dawn. At least I got my three hours of sleep, he thought, before whatever emergency this is turned up.
“Major Cross, I take it?” asked the man.
“In the flesh, though not in my usual resplendent attire,” Sebastian cracked.
The man gave a wry smile. “My name’s Reese Bloodworth. You probably haven’t heard of me, but we have the same boss.”
“Nice to meet you, Reese,” Sebastian said. “Why don’t you step inside?”
As Bloodworth did, Sebastian looked at the clock on the wall. It read nine o’clock, which meant he was already behind schedule for the day.
“Can I interest you in some coffee or tea?” he asked Bloodworth. “I imagine it’s a might early for whisky.”
“Nothing, thanks,” came the response. “I won’t take up any more of your time than I have to, especially since I’m going to be something of a pain in your ass.”
“Outstanding,” Sebastian said, pouring himself a glass of lemonade left over from a gift from his neighbors two days earlier. It wasn’t the best he’d ever had.
“What do you need?”
“I need to borrow your airships for one day, or maybe just part of one day.”
“Out of the question,” Sebastian said. “I’m two airships against two million Udar, and in a couple of days they’ll be at the Tweade. We’re going to be running three missions a day for the foreseeable future. Can’t fit you in, old boy.”
“Oh, I think you can,” Bloodworth said. “What I need them for will make all of our jobs a whole lot easier.”
Sebastian squinted at the man. “This comes from Dees, yes?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll wager this is about those eight savages we were going to get yesterday.”
“Excellent. He told you. I wasn’t sure he had.”
“He did. I even have the map locations where you want them dropped. You’re not as much an inconvenience as I expected, Mr. Bloodworth.”
“Very good, sir,” Bloodworth said.
“Where are your prisoners?”
“They’re at the base,” came the response. “I was hoping to get an order from you to load them on Clyde and Ann Marie for the mid-day mission.”
“Well,” Sebastian said, “this morning they’re bombing and strafing the enemy west of Battleford. When they return, they’ll get rearmed for a mission down in Dunnan’s Claim doing more of the same. Then this evening they’ll be hitting those columns on their way to Trenory. I’m not sure how we swing your deposits.”
Bloodworth wrinkled his brow.
“What if we dropped two of these guys on a hill somewhere a little north of the enemy’s location in Dunnan’s Claim before you started your attack?” he asked. “And then maybe we could do something similar ahead of those columns on the way to Trenory for the afternoon run?”