by Brent Reilly
CHAPTER 60
Few people appreciate just how vast Siberia is. Although larger than Europe, now fewer civilians lived there than Peking, so Billy had to figure out an easier way to find his Americans.
So when he came across a Mongol division, he killed a sentry and put on his uniform as they settled in for the night. It was a mixed unit, half filled with two-wanders as scouts, sentries, and communications. The battalions formed a skirmish line across one hundred kilometers facing south.
They’re looking for me, Billy realized. The Empire had ten times as many two-wanders as quads. Having lost several million quads recently, Genghis had little choice but to utilize his available resources. Two-wanders can’t fly as fast or as far, but they can shriek their wands just as loud. The commander would simply rotate them twice as often to keep his quads well rested.
After dinner and a refreshing nap, Billy noticed sleeping Mongols as far as the eye could see. Because it had few trees and less shade, the steppe resembled a grassy ocean that never seemed to end. It was why the Mongols worshiped Father Sky and Mother Earth, since they both seemed infinite, powerful, and capricious. Billy walked through the quad companies, stabbing as he went.
He didn’t need to kill them, either. He could simply cut deep into an arm or leg so they could no longer operate four wands. Better yet, they’d forever burden their families.
But he had to walk quickly in case one got off a shot at him. Most of them yelled, so Billy tried to get out of their line of sight before they shot him. Such were the advantages of twenty-meter long blades. Whenever someone fired, he just flew ahead to lose them in the dark. After all, he had several hours to kill. Stabbing sleeping quads certainly beat fighting them in the air when they shot back.
He heard someone shooting at him from his right, so he headed in the opposite direction. A squad flew close, so he dropped to the ground and pretended to sleep until they passed by. More and more quads now looked for whoever was stabbing their buddies, so he flew away to start with a fresh battalion.
He again got lucky by surprising the night watch. Things went well for another hour before a wounded company commander got his men looking for him, so he fled again to the next unit.
All too soon, however, someone shot him in the back. He dived to one side as soon as he heard the blast, but they fired at close range and burned his stolen armor. Laying on his belly in the grass, he used his boot wands to propel himself down a gentle slope while his hand wands helped him avoid obstacles. A fallen branch still smacked him in the face. Once out of sight, he started again.
He cut deep into a commander’s bicep and the bastard’s wand shrieked “attack.” Billy popped up and flew away as dozens of blasts sought him out. He maneuvered through some trees and over a hill, until he lost them between camps. He landed in a secluded pocket and hid under bushes until they looked for him elsewhere.
The meat he saved tasted delicious. After resting, he found the next camp too awake, so he flew around it.
And found the bomber battalion. They wore different uniforms, so he changed clothes with a two-wander guard who didn’t challenge him until too late. Sleeping next to a bomb is nerve-wracking; sleeping near a thousand even more so.
His guard uniform allowed him to walk around the camp. Bombers spread out more than other units, so he had to locate the quads closest to the munitions. He wouldn’t have much time -- he could see a dozen sentries flying above, and many more patrolled farther out.
Billy played the part of the bored security guard as he cut quads. Inevitably, one caught him. The veteran must have been awake while faking sleep because Billy had not even gotten to him yet. He let Billy slice several quads until Billy showed him his back, then fired at point blank range. Billy hugged the grass as soon as he heard the blast, and rolled away from the shooter as soon as the fireball scorched his back armor.
The teenager used his boot wands to slide across the grass until he could behead the cunning bastard. Desperate, he ran to slash everyone getting up. With the whole camp waking, Billy levitated munition packs to throw them at dense clusters of quads while he blasted threats too close to bomb. Troops launched high in the air under the logical assumption they were being bombed from high altitude. Billy knew he only had seconds, so made each one count. When the sky started raining fireballs at him, he wisely escaped, close to the ground to use the terrain to conceal himself.
The division stretched out east-to-west, so he made himself visible flying south. Once the battalion committed itself to chasing him, he reached maximum speed, then soared up as soon as he believed they couldn’t track him in the dark.
Billy slowed his breathing to reach his ceiling. The fliers below him looked like ants crawling south as he raced north. They must inform the general in command, so he ambushed the one Mongol flying east and put on his messenger insignia. When a sentry flashed a challenge, Billy flamed the code that he saw other messengers give.
The general must have the tent with all the guards, so he shrieked a greeting and landed well away from them. To avoid questions, he played the video that he took from the messenger. The bomber commander recounted the attack and warned that the Red Baron may be near -- which almost made Billy giggle. A guard went inside and, a moment later, waved him in. Two guards followed. Both the division and the battalion commander were just getting out of bed.
Billy didn’t recognize the general, although the battalion commander looked like a younger, slimmer version, so he couldn’t address him by name. Instead he projected the video again while positioning himself so his targets lined up.
“I’ve never seen a video that large,” the general remarked, surprised.
Oh, crap! Billy didn’t dial down his wand power and the head of security was already drawing wand. Billy continued with the video to keep some eyes focused on that, projected steel through three of his victims, while kicking up his leg at the security leader, who looked puzzled until a sword from the boot wand poked a hole in his chest. All those stretching exercises his father made him do finally paid off!
Billy quickly finished them, but the guards outside must have heard something, so Billy crouched down behind a shield to cut them down as they charged in.
With a moment’s peace, he transferred wands while eyeing the locked chests. The heavier one must contain the division’s petty cash and the others probably organized the administrative paperwork -- a big military unit fills out lots of forms. The treasure chest was designed to fit within a big backpack. Although Billy certainly didn’t need the money, the idea of depriving the enemy of gold appealed to him.
No sooner did he heft the pack onto his back than two more troopers entered. Billy got them both, but more warriors outside started shooting in, igniting the tent. If they took another heartbeat to aim, they’d have killed him. Billy sure didn’t want to fight when loaded down with a few hundred kilos, so he burned a hole in the ceiling when the sight of the other chests caught his eye. It only took a second, so he torched them before launching, laughing to himself. He knew better than most the hours that went into keeping paperwork current -- who got paid, who was out wounded, who deserved bonuses, who got penalized for drinking, etc. It’s why he had Grandma do it. He just gave the staff pukes an administrative nightmare, and all warriors in all militaries hated bureaucrats.
Billy knew he took his ridiculous speed for granted when he needed all four wands just to open the range between the hundreds of quads chasing him. He couldn’t even shoot at them without letting them catch up, and he could have blasted so many of them. The gold acted like an anchor on his humility.
Billy rose to the south, then hit his ceiling far too early. Appalled, he realized the weight made him need more oxygen, which meant he couldn’t rise above the fanatics trying to blast him to hell. He had often wondered how it felt to get hit in the face with a fireball, then tumble out of control to earth, screaming as the flames burned his lungs, coughing
up smoke. He searched for cover and didn’t see a cloud in the sky.
He only flew south to misdirect them. Now he sped north. Only a few dozen of the fastest quads were high enough to track him. He tried to clear his head to focus, but the previous fighting had tired him out. If he only took half the gold, he’d have escaped. The irony of exhausting himself before battle, instead of the enemy, hit him like an angry wife. Yet he could not afford to take the time to cut off his backpack. The prospect of greed killing the world’s biggest philanthropist dizzied him.
Billy dived to increase speed. Something about the terrain caught his eye. It took him an eternity to realized what it was: if I was an American, that wooded ridge is where I’d hide. He needed to lose the backpack anyways, so he changed course, pulled up in an arc, and wiggled loose the albatross on his back while tumbling head over heels in an uncontrolled fall.
He righted himself in time to not splatter on the bounders below -- unlike the chest full of gold. With the weight off his mind, as well as his shoulders, he popped up to greet his pursuers, flashing his wands and venting his fearsome scream.
Billy watched them watch him, then check out the coins that glittered below them. His momentum kept him flying north, although he flew backwards at half speed.
“Go for the gold,” he whispered urgently. “You don’t want the Red Baron.”
Apparently they disagreed. Their leader signaled them to form up. About thirty total, Billy guessed.
Now, normally Billy wouldn’t hesitate to engage so few enemies, but these guys knew who he was, and still wanted to fight. His dad hated fighting enemies who wanted to fight because it was so much easier to kill enemies when they didn’t want to fight. These guys had calculated the odds, and still wanted to engage the dreaded Red Baron.
Which meant Billy needed to run.
“The enemy only wants to fight when they think they’ll win,” his father had taught him. “Knowing nothing else, you can safely assume that you don’t want to fight when the enemy expects to win. If you don’t have a clever trick up your sleeve, it’s because they do.”
That’s when the obvious hit him: Genghis must have given every division a company of super-quads assigned to kill him. And not mercenaries, either, but fierce Mongols out for revenge. Well, now he really didn’t want to fight these guys -- they had scores to settle with him.
Until a shadow rose behind them. Or perhaps ten shadows. From the rocky woods where he splattered the coins.
Billy flew lower and slower to lure the enemy down. The shadows timed it carefully. Just as the Mongols positioned themselves to fire on Billy, the strangers struck silently like flying ninjas. They only needed to wound, and they could injure more with steel than blasts. The unluckiest got cut twice.
For his part, Billy fell back-first shooting to make noise, keep their attention, and to look like an easy target. The Mongols could either track his impossibly fast fireballs, or they could avoid the guys slicing them up. But not both.
After a few confused seconds, the enemy chose to fight the guys on their backs, so Billy flew up to take his turn, hitting them from behind. Everyone drew steel, which suited Billy just fine since he had twice the length. The Americans had backed away as soon as the few Mongol survivors turned on them, and Billy expertly swatted them from the skies.
One American dropped like a sack of rice, and another flailed like a duck. Billy dived to scoop her up before she fell among the injured Mongols. Her arm bled badly and she lost her grip on her wand. Billy dressed her wound as soon as they landed, while the others blasted the enemy and transferred their super-wands before the burnt assassins stopped screaming.
“You guys!” she yelled. “The Red Baron saved my life. Record him putting on my bandages. My dad is gonna piss himself.”
Once recording, Billy gave his own version of the “battle” that emphasized how she and her squad saved his life. Then he dropped the bad news:
“You won’t heal soon enough to go raiding with us, so you’ll need to make your own way to one of the coastal rendezvous points as best as you can.”
The problem with fighting several thousand clicks in enemy territory is any illness or injury could prove fatal. Landing too hard could sprain an ankle; a fever that keeps a quad on the ground; even diarrhea, which happens all too often from drinking dirty water.
Billy turned to the rest of the squad. “Your fallen comrade will be covered by the Death Benefits Fund I gave the University, but you guys can’t keep up with me when weighted down with a few hundred kilos.” He turned to the wounded marathoner: “How much gold can you carry once you get better?”
She couldn’t stop laughing long enough to answer. By the look in her eyes, he could tell he’d be sleeping with her that night. He may have the body of a roasted rabbit, but everyone wanted powerful children.
What bothered him is how much she looked like Princess. Not as beautiful, of course, but they had the same dark eyes, skin, and hair. It didn’t make him want to have sex with her any more or any less, but it made him miss his wife so much it almost brought him to tears. They had so little time together before he had to leave to kill the guy who murdered his babies.
Their tactical situation was so unsurprising that it surprised Billy that he had not anticipated it. Of course, he had other things on his mind this past year.
Eleven American battalions snuck in a year ago. They waited for a storm to conceal their crossing, rather than contest the Bering Strait. All eager for another summer of profitable raiding, they instead never even reached Mongolia.
Genghis hid sentries on every mountaintop, and a division every thousand kilometers. Dividing Siberia into areas of responsibility made those generals study their territory in detail. They hid squads, companies, and battalions according to the size of whatever concealed them, and instructed those units to inform others and/or attack on their own. The Khan came up with so many divisions by filling half of them with two-wanders, who could spy, scout, and patrol just as well as quads. Instead of gathering a huge armada, each unit -- from squad to division -- acted independently to inflict as much pain as possible.
That sneaky bastard stole from dad, Billy realized with horror.
“No matter how far, how fast, or how high we flew, they kept surprising us at night,” the squad leader confessed. “The bigger the unit, the easier it was to find us, so we split into eleven battalions. Then into companies. To make it easier to hide and forage, our company broke into squads. Once spring starts, we were all suppose to unite at Fish Lake,” she said, referring to their northern-most base camp. They long ago built concealed bunkers there. “Just before we left, the closest enemy division suddenly abandoned its territory and formed a long skirmish line facing south. We thought that so odd that we searched for the next nearest division, which was also sweeping south in a long line.” The squad leader smiled at the Baron. “Well, we all agreed that only you could make Mongols act so crazy, so we followed them down and hoped we ran into you.
“Mr. Baron, what do we do now? A huge force still blocks the Strait, so we can’t go home, yet we’re not accomplishing anything staying here.”
Naturally, Billy knew exactly what to do. “Let’s go to Fish Lake, then do some fishing! But first, let’s divide the gold.”