Rommond spent a lot of time with Doctor Mudro in the final hours of planning. Together, they devised a form of sleight of hand that only the two of them could muster, the movement of the cards made by the magician, the general keeping those cards unseen by anyone else, not even his most trusted lieutenants, not even the dead.
The plan was simple on paper: three large carriers, taller than man, would be loaded into a dark assembly bay, and all men would be asked to clear it. Brooklyn would bring in his prototype through a secret entrance, completely covered to keep those who did not yet know what it was in the dark. Simultaneously, two other abandoned prototypes would be wheeled in. Inside the bay, a random carrier would be selected, and the genuine missile launcher, along with Brooklyn and his supplies, would enter it, where he would continue his work on the move. The other two carriers would be loaded with the fakes.
No one else would know which of the carriers had the real deal. Not even Rommond or Mudro. Just Brooklyn. Three platoons would be arranged to escort the carriers out into the desert, each taking a different route towards the Rift, catering for that portal's gradual movement north and south. No matter its current location, at least one group should reach it in time. Every soldier was told that their carrier contained a vital weapon, and were tasked to defend it with their lives. No one would even know there were two empty cups. It was not just a guessing game. It was a game where you did not even know you had to guess.
The three carriers, dubbed Shell, Cup, and Thimble respectively, or just A, B, and C, were each assigned a leader and a crew. Shell was marshalled by Rommond, and protected by his finest. Cup was guided by Leadman, bolstered by a fresh batch of reserves from Copperfort, along with Trokus and his band of Regime deserters. Thimble was led by Mudro, with Jacob, Whistler, and Nox making up part of its guard.
To further add to the deception, and ensure a change of plan could be made at the last minute if the real carrier came under fire, separate platoons were to be sent out into the desert, to scout ahead, to harry and distract the enemy, and to act as reinforcements along any of the three selected routes.
Rommond was not content with even this, for he handed out a dozen alternate routes for each carrier, all given in code, along with a decryption sequence (supplied by Codex Carter, who now took over from Tardo in the clock tower) that would only be used once the transports were in motion. It meant that even the drivers did not know where they were going, or how they were getting there.
It was the perfect plan. On paper. Implementing it would not be so easy.
11 – THE MINEFIELD MARCH
Rommond's team took the northern road, the quickest but most dangerous route, towards the last known location of the Rift, well aware that at any moment they might have to change direction to chase that elusive portal, or be chased by the enemy itself.
The journey was initially uneventful, as Rommond expected, but the general left nothing to chance, changing course periodically so that any spies that saw their advancement would be unsure of their intended destination, or the route they would take to get there. He wondered if he was being over-cautious, but the Baroness' words came back to him, urging him to come back. She never quite specified, but he thought she meant: come back alive.
The Shell was the most protected of all three carriers, even though Rommond himself was not certain that Brooklyn was in it, working away frantically to finish the Hometaker in time. The General had several Menacer Mark II landships, one Menacer Mark III, which he commanded directly, and a handful of smaller, more utilitarian vehicles, such as the Anchor, a larger and heavier vessel with an extra guiding wheel at the back, designed to help the carrier if it got stuck in the uneven sands; the Deafener, a larger artillery gun hauled by a half-tread truck; and the Lasher, a small landship with two arms that extended far out in front of it, clutching a rotating bar, to which were attached many long, metal chains: to clear a minefield.
This latter was brought with clear intent, for Rommond had long mapped Regime territory and made a variety of plans for theoretical incursions, few of which were tried in action. The northern path was closest to Resistance strongholds, with the fewest natural obstacles to bar the way, making it a likely line of assault for any advancing army. The Regime had spent a lot of time, money and effort on shoring up the defences along that route, the most notable being a thousand metres of mines hidden beneath the sand. Many Resistance spies had paid with their lives to find that out.
It was an odd feeling to travel across the tracks that were once the Iron Wall, and to pierce well into Regime territory, with not a bullet fired in their direction. On one hand, it was reassuring. How far they had come. On the other, it was unsettling. How far would they go?
The platoon snaked their way through the sand in single file, the mine clearer taking the lead, whipping the ground with its rotating chains, which would have set off any mines they struck, before the other landships came too close. It was a painfully slow advance, for the Lasher needed to move slowly to ensure that every strip of sand it crossed was well and truly safe. It was time well spent, but Rommond knew that they did not have much of it to spend. The Regime knew about the Hometaker. They were coming.
Then the first explosion came, and it rattled the team that had grown a little complacent by the long and quiet journey. The chains clanged and the sand swept high into the air as the first of the mines triggered. Another followed shortly after, and all the landships slowed even more, careful to ensure they stayed precisely behind the Lasher, straying not a millimetre to the left or right, where the edge of another mine could be waiting.
It was a treacherous journey, played out to the explosive percussion of the mines, which sometimes seemed to overlap one another, so that the sand barely had time to fall before it was thrown up once again. The carrier crunched over the ruined shells of the mines. If Brooklyn was inside, he would have heard those immense explosions, and was no doubt grateful that he had years prior come up with a vehicle that could disarm them.
They were halfway through, making good progress, when the mines became the least of their problems. Artillery fire started to rain down on them, tearing apart one of the Mark II landships, and setting off many of the mines in the field around.
Rommond quickly got the Deafener set up to fire its answering volley, but it was impossible to see exactly where the enemy artillery were. It seemed that they were over a large set of dunes to the north, and were playing a guessing game by firing shells into the valley below. That was good for the carrier, because the targeting was random, but bad for the Deafener, because it too had to make shots in the dark.
So the rounds were fired, back and forth, like a game of badminton over a net of sand, a game where you did not want to catch the shuttlecock. The Deafener held back away from the carrier, so as not to inadvertently draw the enemy's attention towards it. They could afford for the artillery gun to be destroyed, not the carrier.
Throughout this back and forth of ear-rending gunfire, the mine clearer continued its careful advancement, followed eagerly by the carrier. Yet each explosion in the minefield now presented a new danger: the risk of highlighting just where their advancement was. Volleys started to rain down closer to the carrier, while others continued to aim for the artillery gun. The enemy had many at its disposal, so it did not have to be picky.
“Keep up the pace,” Rommond urged. Then he directed the drivers of the other landships to follow him. He broke rank, letting the artillery gun continue to boom, and the carrier advance, while he guided the rest of the platoon back from where they had come, and around the edge of the gigantic dune. There, they spotted a row of three artillery guns, a little smaller than the Deafener, but just as deadly.
The artillery loaders were caught off guard, so much so that one set loaded a shell wrongly, resulting in the entire gun exploding in their faces. The other two guns went down to turret fire from Rommond's landships, and the fleeing gunners did
not flee for long.
Yet this small victory came with the revelation of defeat, for from this vantage point they saw, through the smoke and fire of the ruined artillery, a black strip on the horizon, which Rommond's seasoned eyes knew was a massive army advancing their way.
12 – PUSH ON
“Quick!” Rommond cried when he returned to the carrier. “We've got to clear the path ahead.”
“We're already clearing it,” Lieutenant Algrip replied. He was standing waist-high from the hatch on the mine clearer, relaying to the team inside the general's need of haste.
“We need to clear it faster,” Rommond said, firing several bullets from his revolver into the sand ahead. One of them bounced off a hidden mine, sending the sand sky-high once more.
The others joined him in this new-found technique, unloading magazines and barrels into the deceptively empty sand around. The general gave them sections to concentrate on, which would result in a zig-zagging path for the carrier to go through.
“Why not straight?” he was asked.
“Because an army is on our tail, and we want to clear the way for us, not for them.”
So they cleared by gunfire as well as by the spinning chains of the Lasher, which pressed forward a little faster than the engineers recommended. There was little time for caution now. The enemy was hot on their trail.
“We're spending a lot of ammunition on this,” Algrip warned. He was always rather frugal in battle, Rommond noticed, which at any other time he would have commended.
“If we don't get out of here quick, we won't be able to spend those bullets any other way,” he growled. “If we saved every single shot we had, we still wouldn't have enough for the army that's coming.”
“So we're fleeing?”
“You damn well bet we are! We're fighting this on our terms, not theirs.”
If the enemy had not known their location by now, they would have seen the leaping sand from a great distance away, and the regular ringing of metal as mine shells joined the jumping grains.
I kind of hope you're not in there, Brooklyn, Rommond thought to himself, caressing the side of the carrier. I hope you went on the easier paths. He had to stop himself there. There were no easier paths now. It was all an uphill struggle to topple the king at the top.
A passage was cleared for more than three quarters of the way, but there was still room to go. And yet, the enemy started to appear on the dune overhead, where the waiting Deafener took its first carefully-aimed shots. The first of those Regime landships, square and solid, fell to those shells, but more came through the haze of sand, smoke, and fire. Some aimed at the artillery gun, but many more aimed at the bulky carrier, whose size made it a noticeable—and easy—target.
“Push on!” Rommond cried, diving into the driving seat of his landship, while his gunner rotated the turret into place. The enemy had the higher ground, but the general had the greater experience, and the greater speed. His vessel evaded the rounds of the enemy, but many were not even firing at him.
If Brooklyn was inside that carrier, spanner and screwdriver in hand, he would have trembled at the rattle of gunfire off the reinforced hull. Though none of the bullets pierced it yet, they were leaving larger and larger dents in the surface. If a single shot got through and struck the engineer inside, it could end all of their hopes of reclaiming their home and putting an end to this war.
So, even as Rommond tried to draw the enemy fire, and his gunner took down some of the landships overhead, a few of the Resistance fighters continued to hand-pick empty spots in the desert to clear the minefield, and the Lasher continued to pick up the pace, against all advice to the contrary.
Push on! was the motto of the day, even as the day was quickly waning, and the sun threatened to throw darkness into the mix, where all would be wary, unsure if they might tread upon sand or metal, or the feet of the enemy, or into the cross-hairs of their guns.
Then, as the carrier came to the last of the known section of the minefield, the Lasher's haste was their undoing. The metal chains continued their frantic whipping of the sand, but the acceleration was faster than the spinning, so that whole strips of sand went unwhipped. The treads of the vehicle pressed down upon the pressure plate of an unexploded mine, tearing the mine clearer apart, and sending its chains out in all directions, where some exploded other mines, and some struck the hulls of other vehicles, even lashing at Rommond's own landship.
It also had another effect.
The explosion was so great, enhanced by the fuel and fire of the mine clearer's engines, that the carrier that followed swiftly and closely behind, was rocked by the force, and knocked over onto its side. The explosion cast a great wind out around it, which cleared many of the grains in all directions, exposing a handful of other unexploded devices that were now dangerously close to the carrier. They had gotten to the edge of safety, but it was just the edge, where you were not safe enough.
13 – THE MEDICAL CONVOY
Back in Blackout, those left behind were growing restless. The Hometaker project had helped motivate people, and gave many a job to do. Some of those now left without work donned a uniform, joining the Resistance ranks. Others were left to fade away in the foggy streets of the city.
One of the restless was Lorelai. She had watched the landships roll out, and waved to the men, like so many other women waved, and threw a white rose out to them, like all those wives and mothers and sisters did. White roses, not red. A symbol of peace, not war.
Then the vehicles vanished into the dunes, with the only identifying mark being the cloud of smoke that wafted with them. To many eyes, it seemed like another smog-smothered city crawling across the desert plains.
The women went back to work, if they had jobs, or back to their families, if they had families. There were human women and maran women, and mostly maran children, though everyone looked largely the same. There were a handful of human babies, one born from one of the Pure, and the others born in recent days, after Taberah's successful destruction of the Birth-masters. Things were changing, and that feeling of change and hope filled the air. It passed from eye to eye, and mouth to ear. You could see it and feel it and taste it, and it made many people happy, overcoming their anxiousness about their loved ones who once again marched to war. It did not make Lorelai happy. It made her more anxious than ever. Things were changing. She feared they were changing for the worse.
She was inadvertently ushered away with a group of women after the men departed and brought into someone's home, one still marked with gunfire from Rommond's trip through the city in the Hopebreaker all those weeks ago. She tried to say she had things to do, and she did, but her training kicked in like instincts, and told her to try to blend in. The other women went, so she went. It was precisely why she was there when the landships left in the first place, why she was holding a white rose, when she knew she was sworn to red.
“My Tom'll have 'em sorted,” one Geraldine, an older women, said. She wore a faded floral-pattern dress, a little big for her, with not much shape to it. Lorelai felt herself document the details, like she had done so many times before on her scouting trips. It was the details that mattered when you had to blend in, when you had to immerse yourself in a foreign culture and change the population without anyone there even knowing it.
“My money's on Rommond,” one Carol replied. It was her home (after it was taken from someone else), and she was pouring the tea into a row of porcelain cups. She was maran. Lorelai could sense it, but Carol's loyalties clearly lay with the Resistance. She had that air about her, that air of defiance.
“You haven't got any money,” Geraldine replied.
The women laughed, so Lorelai laughed.
“I know what you mean though,” one Urla said. She was the youngest of the lot, a brunette, barely in her prime. Her husband had just recently been promoted by the general. They were both honoured. Lorelai knew better.
She had tried to sew up many of Rommond's “promotions” before.
“If anyone can do it,” Geraldine said, “it'll be Ricochet Rommond.”
“What about you, dear?” Carol asked, addressing Lorelai now. “Got a man on the front line?”
Lorelai blushed. She had learned to blush when blushing was called for, but she felt it was a little more real this time. “Yes,” she said shyly. She did not need to be shy, but here it helped. “We're not together very long.”
“And he's whisked away already,” Carol replied. “I think they do it deliberately. Leave us at home with the kids!”
“I kind of wonder though,” Lorelai said, “if I should be out there. It doesn't feel right to be stuck here. I'm a field nurse. I should be out there, helping them, healing them.”
“We've got plenty to heal here,” Geraldine commented. “The infirmary's packed with 'em!”
“I know, but having first aid out there on the field can make a huge difference. It could help win the war. I mean, what if Rommond was hurt? What if we needed someone to get to him quick?”
Urla spoke into her cup her common refrain: “I know what you mean.”
Lorelai wondered what she would do if she found the general out there, if it was up to her to save him. She thought she might, but if Rommond would topple the Iron Emperor, then he was a threat to her people. Maybe she would let him bleed.
“So, why aren't you out there then?” Carol asked.
“Don't be daft!” Geraldine interjected. “She probably has the kids to mind.”
“No kids,” Lorelai replied.
“You're lucky,” Geraldine said with a chuckle. “I had ten. Most of 'em were before the Harvest though. And you know what, I don't care what people say about 'em, whether they're 'demons' or not. They're my flesh and blood, so they are. I raised 'em and reared 'em, and they cried the same, and slept the same, and soiled the same, bless 'em!”
Hometaker: A Steampunk Dystopian Action Adventure (The Great Iron War, Book 6) Page 5