Firestorm d-6

by Taylor Anderson

  Silva hefted the Doom Whomper and inspected the repaired wrist in the growing light. The brownish glue hadn’t quite set, but the joint seemed firm. He’d also wrapped it tightly with about a thousand turns of fine, strong thread. It felt as if it would hold. A bunch of dust and other debris had stuck to the tacky glue saturating the thread, but the weapon was otherwise spotless. “Gimme my pouch,” he ordered. Lawrence handed it over. Dennis removed a “paper” cartridge. (Although the allies had “real” paper now, the cartridges were a kind of early “industrial” grade, unfit for writing on, made from pulped, pressed “linen,” and waxed when assembled.) He tore it open and poured the powder down the barrel. Then he opened a small wooden box he’d made in one of Maaka-Kakja ’s shops, expressly for protecting a dozen “perfect” bullets from deformation-particularly of their relatively fragile “skirts.” He chose a pair of the massive, prelubed projectiles and laid one aside, then carefully inserted the other into the muzzle. Drawing the rammer, he seated the bullet down the long, 25-mm barrel until it rested firmly against the powder charge. Removing the rammer, he handed it to Lawrence.

  “You hang ready to hand me a cartridge, that other bullet, and the rammer quick, you hear?”

  “I hear.”

  Dennis nodded and raised the frizzen of the old Imperial lock he’d lovingly tuned, picked the vent with a hammered bronze pick that dangled by a thong from the triggerguard, and poured a dash of finely ground priming powder into the exposed pan. Closing the frizzen, he retested the edge of the flint clamped in the jaws of the gooseneck-shaped “hammer,” or “cock,” with the tip of his finger. “She’s all set,” he said softly, easing closer to the window and sitting down. He’d spent some of the night erecting a sturdy rest for the long, heavy barrel, and he’d placed a wooden chair where it would support his right elbow. Carefully, he settled in.

  “You sure you can shoot that long?” Lawrence asked, his eyes flicking from Dennis to the distant target. “ I never saw you shoot that long! Four hundred ’Cat tails…”

  “Just shut up, wilya?” Dennis growled. “I shot it this far enough times to mark the sight,” he added, flipping up the sight slide and easing the aperture up. “I ain’t done it since then,” he admitted, “but I ain’t had to. I know it’ll do it… I know I can do it. That’s what counts. Now, I’m gonna start concentratin’. Things might fuzz up, and ol’ Bunny Crap’s just a red blob in this sight. You get that glass and tell me everything you see!” He pulled the hammer back all the way and squeezed the rear trigger until it clicked.

  Lawrence raised the brass telescope and peered through it, adjusting the length to suit his vision. The device fascinated him. He couldn’t use human binoculars, but the telescope worked just fine. “He’s the guy dressed in the red sail, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Real fat booger with a goofy white hat. There’s other guys in red capes, or whatever, but they got helmets on.”

  “Okay. I got hi… he. He’s going through the soldiers, touching they, raising his hands o’er they… I think he’s going to get on a wrecked thing so they see he easier.”

  “Swell.”

  “You still got he?” Lawrence asked.

  “I still gottee,” Dennis mocked.

  Lawrence’s crest twitched upward, but he said nothing for a moment. “You… don’t think this is… incorrect to your soul, to… ass-assinate he like this?”

  The brow over Dennis’s eye patch arched slightly, while his right eye continued staring fixedly through his sights. “Uh, nope.”

  “It… gi’s I a strange… sensation…”

  “You ain’t gettin’ cold flippers on me, are you?” Silva demanded. “We’ve killed lots o’ fellas together that had less of a chance than fatso over there.”

  “Yes… in war, in ’attle. Close. This ’eels… sneaky-like hunting, though not to eat. You should not hunt thinking, knowing things.”

  “It is sneaky, you nitwit! But I ain’t gonna eat him. He’s like a shik-sak, see? You kill ’em to keep ’em from killin’ you or people you care about. Some things need killin’ just because they’re bad, and there’s folks the same way. Bad folks that need killin’-an’ damn sure don’t deserve a ‘fair fight.’”

  “Shiksaks don’t know they’re ’ad.”

  “Which makes me feel more regret killin’ them than that fat bastard over there! Look, you know me. I’d rather walk over there and knock his brains out with a rock, but I don’t expect all them other fellas around him would let me. I’m told he’s the… shiksak’s head around here. If you cut a shiksak’s head off, the body might flop around a while, but it ain’t near as dangerous. In this case, if I take the ‘head’ off, the ‘body’ could do the same thing for a while, but it won’t necessarily die. Maybe… not all of it really deserves to die. Lotsa times, the body only does bad things it needs killin’ for because the head makes it… see?”

  Lawrence sighed noisily. “Sorta. Now I think sad to kill… ’ody, and not just head!”

  Silva grunted. “Well, that won’t do. Look, war’s a hell of a thing, and there just flat ain’t any rules like we think of ’em otherwise. You try not to kill folks that don’t have it comin’, but the bottom line is to protect those that matter to you. Period. The enemy’s gonna try to do the same thing-and somebody’s gotta lose. That’s the deal, and it’s our job to make sure it ain’t us and ours doin’ the losin’. Now, we been sittin’ here most o’ the night waitin’ for this, and we better not screw it up. I gotta concentrate, an’ if you won’t spot for me, then get the hell outta my sight.”

  “I’ll s’ot,” Lawrence said quietly, and refocused his glass. “Okay, he’s on wreckage, still talking. He’s standing still-exce’t his hands. Looks like all now gathered to see… To hear. They kneeling, looking down, all exce’t ’unny Craph. He’s looking down too now, still talk…”

  Lawrence jerked when the mighty roar and physically stunning overpressure of the Doom Whomper took him completely by surprise. He almost dropped the glass, but he managed to steady it just in time to see most of the Blood Cardinal’s head erupt in a crimson explosion that launched large chunks of flesh, bone, and other matter in all directions-and sent the ridiculous white hat tumbling high in the air. The bloated body beneath the red blast instantly collapsed and rolled from its perch.

  “I thought you only see red thing!” Lawrence cried.

  “So?” answered Silva, his voice strained.

  “You knocked his head… gone!”

  “No shit? I was aimin’ pretty much ‘center of blob.’ Musta shot high.”

  Lawrence looked at him then and saw Dennis still sitting, a slightly stunned expression on his suddenly bloody face. The Doom Whomper remained in his hands, but the wrist repair had obviously failed under the intense recoil of the weapon, folding the buttstock back on itself within the frayed and shattered coils of thread. Something, most likely the hammer, had struck Silva under his right eye as the gun traveled backward, opening a long gash. Dennis shook his head and blood pattered the dusty floor around him.

  “Damn. Busted my favorite gun again.” He looked at Chack, his eye now clear. “We better get the hell outta here! Nobody else is shootin’ just now, and they’ll have seen our smoke. Remember what I said about cut-tin’ a shiksak’s head off? I bet its whole, floppin’ carcass is about to land on top of us!”

  Lawrence’s bright eyes bulged. “You didn’t say carcass could choose where to land!”

  Dennis gently kissed his broken weapon and laid it on the floor. “So long, Doll. I’ll be back for ya!” He snatched his Thompson and the belt loaded with his pistol, cutlass, bayonet, and mag pouches that he’d removed for comfort during his shot, and hustled Lawrence toward the stairs. “Well… maybe it won’t, but you know how them shiksaks are! They tend to flop toward what killed ’em even after they’re dead! Don’t forget your musket-might need that!”

  “Batteries, commence firing! Fire at will,” Chack roared down from the crumbling rooftop on wh
ich he, Blas, Blair, some of their staffs. .. and others… had assembled.

  “What in blazes are they shooting at?” Blair demanded. “All morning, not a shot, then they grow irked at that one structure? Madness!”

  “That ‘structure’ is the one Chief Silva asked us to avoid demolishing last night,” Chack reminded him, his tail swishing irritably, “while he was repairing his giant musket. He and Lawrence must’ve secured it, and now they have managed to… do something exceptionally annoying to the Doms. You may have heard Silva has that effect on people?”

  The “grand battery” the allies began assembling the morning before now included almost thirty big guns, plus all the field artillery with its explosive case shot Chack and Blair could bring down from the Waterford pass. From their hastily formed, then carefully reinforced positions roughly a thousand yards or “tails” (handy how that worked out so closely) from the “Dom” bastion, Chack’s batteries opened fire in ones and twos, but soon the entire line hammered at the enemy from within an impenetrable white cloud of continuous, earsplitting thunder and dazzling, lightninglike flashes. Smoke billowed across the shot-churned, devastated “no-man’s-land” that had evolved between the positions, and drifted west toward the base of the more extreme slope that still lay under a blanket of lingering gun smoke caused by the long duel. Despite the improved visibility daylight afforded the enemy, Chack was amazed to see, from his elevated post, almost the entire remaining Dom artillery target the nearly lone-standing structure both sides had thus far largely ignored. The building was very rapidly disintegrating under the combined hail of iron.

  “Whatever he did,” Blas said, “ ‘irked’ seems a weak word. It means ‘a little pissed,’ yes? They pissed a lot!”

  “I certainly hope your strange friends have made their escape,” Blair said, “but whatever they did to attract such fire, our guns are now slaughtering theirs with virtually no reply.” He looked meaningfully at Chack. “And the enemy’s attention is suddenly quite fixed.”

  “Very well.” Chack looked at Blas and motioned her to join the “partisans” who’d brought them one of Colonel Shinya’s exhausted “Maa-ni-lo” Marines, along with a squad of the first Imperial Marines he’d found when he wandered into a command post near the waterfront a few hours before. “Assist that Marine in his task, Lieutenant,” he said. “He has earned the honor.”

  The Marine, a corporal by the stripes on his kilt, blinked appreciation, but waved at the locals. “Thank you, sir, but this is their Home.”

  “Well put,” Chack agreed, nodding. “Corporal, would you assist Lieutenant Blas-Ma-Ar in showing the loyal citizens how to fire the signal rockets Colonel Shinya sent? Major Blair, I’m going to join my troops. I suggest you remain here.”

  Blair smiled. “Major Chack, if I thought it necessary for anyone to remain behind, I’d insist it be you… but we’ve all earned this!”

  Chack grinned, his sharp teeth shining in the sunlight. “Very well, Major. Lieutenant Blas will remain and direct the reserves, if any are needed.” He glanced at the furiously blinking female. “ She has ‘earned’ the rest!”

  “Rockets!” Lawrence said, staring into the sky from the debris-choked culvert where they huddled, scarcely a hundred and fifty yards from the wheelwright’s shop being systematically pulverized. Fewer Dom guns were firing now, however. “’Retty rockets!”

  Silva looked up at the sputtering, dissolving flares. “Those’re signal rockets, you imbi-cile!” he shouted. The sudden thunder of drums couldn’t compete with the allied guns, but it bled through between reports. “Attack’s a’comin’!” he announced gleefully. Then his abused ears heard other drums, more distant, resonating against the mountains. “Ha- ha! I knew that Jap couldn’t stay outta this!” He removed the twenty-round stick from the Thompson, blew dust off of the rounds clustered at the top, and slid it back in with a shklak. “C’mon, Fuzzy, let’s try to get back in this fight before it’s all over!”

  Lawrence looked at the cap under the hammer of his musket. “You think it’s nearly o’er?”

  “Yep… if it ain’t already! Let’s go!”

  “Ain’t ’uzzy!” Lawrence grumbled, and the two of them bounced up amid a cloud of plaster dust and ran and leaped toward the middle of what had once been the exclusive “Company” district of North New Dublin where nothing of the desolated houses and shops still stood higher than Silva’s knees. That was where the center of the advancing ranks would pass.

  “It” wasn’t completely over for some. Now almost surrounded, the Doms in the old bastion had no chance. The grueling, almost thirty-hour bombardment had taken a terrible toll on lives and nerves, and the “regulars” and rebels had been ready to surrender with the coming of the day and the realization they were all alone. The city burned and smoldered beneath the smoky sky and against the incongruously achingly beautiful landscape beyond. Reinforcements weren’t coming; there was nothing on the coast road from Bray but refugees fleeing the only direction they could from a wall of fire that encompassed all the vast valley of the island. The entire host Don Alfonso and the Bishop of the Seven Relics led down the Waterford road had surely been consumed by the flames of the hell they’d marched into. Even Bray would probably burn. Nothing re- mained on that now-desolate, virtual plain between the stronghold and the enemy in New Dublin, and nothing could possibly remain of the grand plan to advance the “Modo de los Santos” and take this place for themselves, their leaders, and the greater glory of God.

  Into this outpost of ruin, misery, death, and defeat, Cardinal Don Kukulkan de los Islas Guapas, newly appointed Ruler of the Conquest and Saver of Souls, emerged into the hot, bloody day and went among the shattered men of the garrison. Few were unmoved by his gesture and most honestly expected him to Purify himself before them and release his soul into God’s embrace. Perhaps that was his ultimate intent, but first he began to pray. He prayed that the men of the garrison would enter paradise boldly, each with a long tally of the unclean heretics they’d cast into hell. He prayed their families wouldn’t suffer excessively due to their sacrifice, and if they did, that God and the saints would readily accept them because of it-in some capacity at least. He’d just finished this last plea on behalf of the doomed men around him, the men he was condemning with his words, his charge, his edict not to yield, when his head blew up.

  At first, there was shock and, frankly, superstitious awe, until an artilleryman cried that the cardinal had been shot by a distant, hidden marksman. That announcement created pandemonium because it just wasn’t possible… was it? Regardless, the artillery commander shook off the dreadful implications of the event and summoned the wits-or whatever it took-to order all his guns to fire on the indicated building. That galvanized all the troops into action of some sort, and they’d begun reverting to their training… when the barrage suddenly resumed. Dominion soldiers, rebels, fugitive family members, all were caught in the open when heavy roundshot and high-velocity shards of stone slashed them apart. Case shot exploded over the fort, scything into flesh and bone with red-hot copper fragments and musket balls. The hail of death was unrelenting, and the screams competed with thundering guns and bursting case. The garrison would cast no heretics into hell; hell had found them there, within their demolished walls.

  Then the apostates formed for their final assault, not only from the southeast, but from the west where no troops could possibly have gathered! The artillery commander, who’d somehow survived the onslaught, saw this, and his confused mind finally crystallized around a coherent thought: surrender. He raced for a pair of blood-spattered breeches that had been blown nearly off a corpse, yanked a mangled leg out of them, and cast it away; then he began tying the morbid garment to a rammer staff. A “Blood Drinker” cut him down with a sword. Outraged, the artillerymen fell upon all the Blood Drinkers, joined by the regulars who dared to brave the maelstrom. The elite, holy guard of the pope himself all got their most fervent wish when they were shot, stabbed, and torn apart by their o
wn countrymen. Only then did the white flag wave above the bastion.

  “All that beautiful music, then somebody called off the dance!” roared an unhappy voice behind Tamatsu Shinya. He was standing on the rubble of what had been the southwest wall of the bastion, thinking dark thoughts, and staring down into a pulverized cauldron of mangled flesh. Men and ’Cats moved through the carnage, coughing on the dust they raised and occasionally retching at the stench. They were searching for signs of life, but there were few survivors after the majority of the shell-shocked defenders had been led or carried from the fort. In spite of himself and the scene he viewed, a corner of Shinya’s mouth quirked upward, and he turned. Dennis Silva stood grinning at him, Lawrence by his side. Both were filthy, and Silva had an ugly wound on his face.

  “You have contrived to cheat death once more, I see,” Shinya said.

  “Good to see you too, Colonel. I’m fine. Thanks for askin’.” Silva gestured around. “You missed a good fight.” He paused. “In the city the other night, I mean. This was just killin’.”

  “I heard you had a hand in that… again.”

  Silva waved modestly and kicked a bronze gun tube, half-buried. “Shucks, it was nothin’.” His expression turned serious. “You musta seen Chack?” Shinya nodded. “Good. He was lookin’ for you.” The grin returned. “You mighta missed the fight, but I sure was glad to see you come marchin’ across that field, yonder. How’d you get there, and so damn fast?”

  “A quite dreadful march, I assure you,” Shinya said ruefully. “And still too late.”

  “Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty more fights in this war, and you can’t miss ’em all! I’ve decided to retire from the battle-winnin’ business. Folks are startin’ to whisper that maybe I’m hoggin’ all the glory.” Silva shook his head. “Spread the joy, I always say.”