by Derek Gunn
Chapter 10
Von Kruger had left orders with his men to maintain patrols along the entire border. He expected retaliation but he did not expect it to be overly troublesome. Von Kruger was a vampire with centuries of experience. He did not have any regard for those beneath him, especially not young upstarts like Wentworth who were still merely children among the ranks of the undead.
What he did not consider was how cunning Wentworth might be. His experience with humans was limited to an existence of centuries in secret, when he had viewed them only as cattle. Even during the brief few months during the war the vampires’ sheer ferocity and power cut through the human’s resistance far too easily to credit them with any respect—of course, the serum also had something to do with that. He was used to dealing with powerful opponents who developed their strength and cunning over centuries; he was used to a structure that relied upon tradition and mutual respect among the vampire lords. He had no experience with dealing with those who had spent their lives in a position of weakness and who had relied upon their minds rather than their strength to achieve their aims.
In this he underestimated his opponent terribly. His men were also overconfident in their assumed position of strength. They had the best vehicles and equipment and plenty of fuel to power them. They had transport and a supply line that could deliver men and supplies where and when they were needed, although the general consensus was that there would be a brief retaliation that would be easily dealt with and then the status quo would resume. After all, they were only retaliating against an attack that Wentworth had instigated. So he could hardly complain to the council.
The generals deployed their men openly in a show of strength along the border. It was assumed that the attack would begin at dawn. Why at dawn, no one had asked, but dawn was the accepted timescale and Von Krugers’ men settled down for a night under the stars around campfires that lit their camps like beacons as the darkness rolled in.
Falconi could see the disposition of their enemy clearly against the backlight of the fires and the lighting that illuminated the camp nearest him. The tanks lay silent, appearing as darker, angular shapes to the side of the camps. His men would be decimated if they attacked from the front. Even if they had the fuel to spare to bring their own tanks forward, the noise of their approach would warn the other side and allow them plenty of time to redeploy their heavy armor to concentrate fire on their own smaller force. It didn’t matter, in any case, they did not have the fuel to even get their tanks to the front let alone take part in a sustained battle.
Von Kruger had fewer men than Wentworth, but their armament was far more impressive and easily made up for their smaller numbers. Falconi looked behind him toward his own camp and saw over a hundred vampires gathered there. Wentworth would not deploy vampires against thralls. For one thing, it would escalate the current squabble beyond where he was prepared to go. It was inconceivable that a thrall could kill, or even raise a hand to, a vampire, so he could not use them in the attack. However, there was nothing to stop him using his vampires to help reposition his forces to a more strategic position.
As he watched the first of the vampires gripped their thrall charges in their powerful arms and leapt into the air, wrapping the darkness around them and transforming in a blink of the eye. In seconds the dark shapes disappeared into the night and Falconi shivered. The vampires were terrifying; no matter how many times he saw them his stomach still knotted and his heart beat faster. He again reaffirmed that his decision to join them rather than fight during the war was the correct one, but something still nagged at him, even after all these years. Something that rebelled against the fear and refused to allow him to forget what he had been.
Falconi savagely repressed the feeling and headed down to his men and crossed over to Wentworth. The vampire grinned at him and Falconi nodded at his master with more than a little trepidation. There was something very unsettling about the vampire’s grin. It was far too feral and served to remind the thrall of how different the vampires were to the humans they had once been. The prospect of the slaughter to come was exciting, he felt a quickening of the heart himself, but it was as if Wentworth would be happy to slaughter his own men as easily as the forces they were deploying against, and it made Falconi question his own sanity in pledging his allegiance to the vampires.
“They won’t know what hit them, sir,” he forced the comment but found himself looking away from the vampire, lest he notice his doubts.
“They certainly won’t,” Wentworth replied and then reached out and pulled Falconi to him. For a brief second Falconi thought that he had done something wrong, that somehow Wentworth had sensed his subject’s doubts. His body tensed as he anticipated the claw that would tear through his body at any moment. But then he felt his stomach lurch as Wentworth shot upwards and, suddenly, he was flying.
His body rebelled at first as his equilibrium went awry and he struggled against the vampire’s grip. His legs kicked out in all directions and his arms rotated as he tried to regain some semblance of balance. As realization slowly began to penetrate his fear-soaked brain he slowly let his body grow limp. There was little point in struggling against such strength anyway, and, as he had done two years ago when faced with a similar decision, Falconi accepted the easier path and allowed himself to be carried along on the path of least resistance. Large wings beat powerfully above him and the cool night air snatched at his clothes and sapped his warmth. His face quickly grew icy and it was painful to open his eyes with the speed of their flight. Despite this he reveled in the feeling and forced his eyes open to study the ground below. They were hundreds of feet up to ensure that they were not heard but he could still see the deployments of the enemy below.
There were more camps along the border than he had thought and he paled as he saw the line stretching into the distance, each one marked by the pinpricks of light from the fires. Each camp seemed to be a few miles apart immediately below them but some of the camps further along the chain were farther apart as natural geography provided its own protection from attack.
The plan was not to take out all of the camps but Wentworth had not wanted to attack an isolated camp either. He had wanted Von Kruger to know that his weaponry did not scare him so he had chosen the two main camps in the centre for his lesson in warfare.
Wentworth was not a general by any means, but he had plenty of men around him who were, and he had had two years to perfect this plan. Falconi began to feel himself dropping as they passed over the camp and soon he stood firmly on the ground, if somewhat shakily.
“You know what to do,” Wentworth stated. He did not expect or wait for a response. “Do not let me down.”
Falconi looked into Wentworth’s piercing eyes and saw the threat that lay there. He shivered. If the night did not go as planned there was no way that he would return to face that stare. Either he would return victorious or he would be dead.
Once the vampires left, Ralf Falconi felt briefly that he was entirely alone. The dark surrounded him, and seemed to press inwards on him as the moments ticked by. The responsibility of his command was far greater than anything he had ever had before. Before the vampires had come he had been a small-time criminal. He had run rackets and protection for the larger families as their local representative. He was used to being in command, but only with small groups of people.
He had remained in his position by being more vicious than any of the men beneath him and by being just a little smarter. When the vampires had come he had merely traded one set of masters for another. To him they were little different to the men he had served all his life. Nameless bosses who imbued him with power and left him alone as long as he showed the right respect and made sure their cut reached them on time each month. The vampires had promised an easy life; all he had to do was keep the population docile and carry out any orders that were sent his way. So they lived on the blood of their captives; his mafia bosses had lived off the blood of their victims for years. He had decided ve
ry quickly that he would be on the side of those who ruled rather than those who opened their veins and meekly gave their blood.
The recent run of events was more than a little daunting, though, and as he stood in the dark all he could hear was the thump of his heart as he frantically tried to remember what he should do. For a brief moment he lost it. He considered running blindly into the dark and hiding from the vampires—surely they would not have the time or resources to look for him. Surely he was not important enough. He moved one leg and felt a tremor run through him.
He took a second step and then he saw Wentworth’s eyes in his mind and he stopped. The eyes seemed to float in front of him, mocking him with their baleful stare, their piercing black pupils drawing him in and sending a bolt of terror through him. He realized with a start that Wentworth would look for him no matter where he went and no matter how well he hid. He really had as little choice as he had had when he was sixteen and had been approached by the local boss.
He could either join the family where he would make great money and have any of the local working girls he wanted, or he could suffer a beating he was unlikely to ever recover from. There was really no decision to be made. Life had never had many choices for Ralph Falconi, though he had never really looked hard for alternatives, either. He had always chosen the easy route. In school, when he had actually gone, he had found it easier to steal money rather than earn it, get others to do his work for him with threats, if reason did not work.
It had been no surprise that he had been singled out for a position with the local family. He felt a calm come over him as his recent doubts began to recede back to the quiet corner he had prepared for them He was never quite capable of dispelling them entirely but had long ago learned to live with dealing with their infrequent resurfacing before he was able to force them away again until the next time. Once he had made his decision the thump of his heart began to subside. He could hear faint noises around him as the men surrounding him fidgeted while they waited for their orders. His fear began to subside and the darkness seemed to lift from his shoulders and the details of the plan began to flood back into his brain.
“Okay, men.” When he spoke he did so with a confidence he did not really feel, but he began to imagine the pleasures that would be his when he completed this mission and his confidence grew. “Two teams, move out to your positions. If anyone makes any noise before we’re ready to go I’ll rip them to pieces myself.”
The press of the bodies around him gave him confidence and he moved out with his thoughts full of the carnal pleasures that would be his in a very short time.
At three o’clock in the morning most of the fires had burned low and only their smoldering embers marked the positions of the camps along the border. The night was cold and thralls lay shivering, wrapped tightly in blankets, tarpaulins and anything that might keep the chill from their bones. The previous hours’ confidence and grandstanding had degenerated to a cold huddle as the heat of their overconfidence had long ago surrendered to the night’s icy fingers. The previous day’s storm had left the ground packed hard with ice, and the clever ones slept off the ground on vehicles or boxes, anywhere to avoid the bone-sapping chill that, even now, had many of the thralls tossing fitfully in their sleep.
Falconi looked through his night binoculars and could see the occasional flare of heat walking through the camp that denoted those on guard duty. The guards did not stray too far from the waning heat provided by the dying fires so they were easily identified and marked. Falconi had two hundred thralls with him. He had sent half of his force to the next camp a mile or so along the trail. Once the fighting started the other camps would react to the noise of the attack and come to re-enforce their colleagues so, rather than stick to the original plan developed by Wentworth and his generals, Falconi had added a few tweaks that he thought would increase his own odds of surviving.
The original plan called for him to attack the two camps, disable as many of the heavy armor as they could, kill as many as was prudent, and then run back towards their own lines where they would be covered by friendly fire. While this was a fine plan overall for the Wentworth cabal, it did not fill Falconi with much confidence for his own survival. Ralph Falconi may have only been a low-level criminal but he had always been blessed with a higher than average intelligence that had kept him alive up until now.
As he looked into the quiet camp he began to see the flaws of the original plan that would most likely get him killed. The camps were far too close for him to achieve his goals and get out before the other camps arrived and cut them to pieces. The problem was that it would be obvious where the attack was coming from as soon as the first shot or scream announced their position. The other camps would rally quickly and he and his men would be torn apart. Wentworth and his generals would still have a major victory if they destroyed the tanks but Falconi wanted to be alive to enjoy his promised rewards. On the other hand, he could not return without destroying all the armor in the two camps assigned to him either.
He decided to compromise a little and split his forces further. There was no time to pass on his improvements to the plan to the other group so they would just have to make do. He turned from the camp and issued orders to the squad leaders that squatted beside him. He sent the three smaller groups along the chain of camps with instructions to take out as much of the armor as they could and make as much noise as they could before returning to camp.
He promised each squad leader many more rewards than he was capable of delivering but was certain that few of them would survive the night’s events anyway. He watched the men disappear into the darkness and settled down to wait for them to get into position. If the enemy were not sure where they were being attacked from then they would not be able to organize a strong counter attack but would also have to split their forces. The camps on the periphery of the attack would rally around those camps nearest them and, with his own assigned camp being in the middle, he should have plenty of time to get his job done and get back across the border before the enemy forces managed to get to him.
If all went well he might even survive the night.
The first explosion of the night made everyone jump. There was an intense white flare about a mile in the distance that briefly illuminated the area surrounding the explosion, and then it seemed to implode and disappear before a reddish orange glow appeared and cast eerie shapes around the illuminated area. Falconi cursed, the attack was not meant to begin for another ten minutes so something had gone wrong somewhere. He raised the binoculars but the light from the fire was far too bright and ruined the night vision.
“Right,” he shouted to his own men, “get into the camp; destroy everything that has an engine.” They had spent the last thirty minutes placing charges and taking out any guards on the periphery of the camp. These were set to detonate on a timer so there was still nine minutes before those charges would blow. They had not been able to get at the majority of the tanks, though, as most had been parked close to the fires and were draped with the sleeping bodies of the enemy thralls. The plan had been to enter the camp under the confusion of the destroyed outer vehicles, plant more explosives and then get out.
Now that plan was shot to hell.
He launched himself from their position and aimed a long burst at the sleeping figures on the nearest tank. His men fanned out to either side of him and the noise of gunfire filled the night. Thralls died as they struggled from sleeping bags or tightly packed blankets, many of them did not even have the time to free their arms, let alone grab their weapons. Falconi felt no pity for them as he watched them die. In this world only the strong and intelligent survived.
He had twenty men with him but they slaughtered many times that as they swept through the camp. Deep booms of explosions filled the night as his other teams set about their own slaughter. The armor surrounding the camp suddenly began to blow, had nine minutes really passed already, and then the tanks on the inner circle began to go up as well. Bodies, still wrap
ped in their blankets, fell on to the campfires and the smoldering embers engulfed the material greedily. Soon flames licked upwards, tentative at first and then growing stronger as the awakened pyre devoured clothes and flesh. Shadows danced around the camp as the flame’s ochre incandescence cast an eerie glow on the carnage.
In the distance Falconi could hear the roar of engines and the deep thump of shells as the surviving tanks fired them. The high-pitched chatter of .50 millimeter guns from the enemy armor filled the night, and Falconi knew that the other camps had already begun to fight back. The level of noise on either side of him as the enemy rallied and poured their fire into his men was frightening and he was glad he had created a buffer between himself and the hell that poured over his men in the other camps.
He called to his own patrol, only twelve left he saw in the undulating light from the fire, and signaled for them to return to the border. He looked back briefly on the camp and saw the burning, mangled remains of the mechanized equipment and the many dark mounds that testified to a hard fought victory. He smiled. He felt himself growing aroused as he thought of the rewards that would soon be his. This war could very possibly be the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Bloody War is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, Major William Carter moaned as he shot up out of his sleeping bag and cracked his head against the metal of the tank’s interior console. He had spent an uncomfortable night so far in the command chair. He really had thought that being inside the tank on a cold night would be better than being outside, but now he was not so sure. The metal shell of the tank seemed to intensify the cold. He had opened the hatch earlier and the air outside had seemed far warmer than the icy interior but he had made such a fuss about taking over the tank that he did not have the nerve to move.