Firemask

by Chris Bunch

  And believe it he had, Wlencing thought in fury. He'd thought the Confederation were passively kneeling under his whip, whereas it was obvious they were waiting for the right time to react. Perhaps they'd lost the initiative at the beginning, but now it appeared they might have been calling the shots for some time.

  The first question was: How long?

  Wlencing growled aloud, wanted to hurt something, anything, anyone. But he found control. A new thought came, and he almost wanted blind rage to return: What else had the Confederation managed to conceal from him?

  He had no answers… and needed some, badly and quickly.

  More than a thousand kilometers away, on Seya Island, men and women had trotted out of hasty prefabs in and around the massive junkyard the Zhukovs had been abandoned in, just as Force Headquarters reported the first incoming Musth ships. They'd been waiting for some time, after they'd been secretly shuttled back to their ACVs, with nothing to do but practice on sims and be bored.

  The Zhukovs, already fueled and armed, were airborne within a dozen minutes, and, in three-ship combat elements, sped toward Chance Island.

  Two hundred kilometers from Dharma Island, they climbed into the low ionosphere.

  Haiti Chaka, CO of Golan Flight, opened his mike and reminded his flight:

  "Golan Element, we'll go straight down on 'em. Try for the mother ships, then the transports. Don't play glory girl yet, leave the aksai alone. Straight through, then climb, and we'll go back through 'em again."

  Other commanders gave like orders as the Zhukovs closed on Chance Island.

  A fisherman, far below and out at sea who'd been staring at the turmoil above Chance Island saw, distant in the sky, gleaming in the last light of the dying sun, flashing reflections. He wondered what they were, went back to gaping at the whatever-the-billy-blue-hell was going on over at the soldiers' camp.

  The Zhukovs weren't the most maneuverable combat vehicles ever built, but were among the most heavily armed.

  As they dived, their gunners launched ship-killing Goddards. Most of these were taken out by Musth countermissiles, but two hit a mother ship and sent it spinning out of the fight, and four more homed on velv , destroying two of them.

  Then the aksai were in the fight, slashing into the Zhu-kovs as the heavier craft bucked and swayed, trying to evade combat and go for the soft-skinned troop carriers.

  Now it was the Force's turn to take casualties, and Zhukovs blew up, rolled, dived, smoking toward the far-below ground. But more than enough were beyond aksai range, covered by Force antiaircraft, and they swept over the landing grounds, missiles hissing out, 150mm auto-cannon thundering, chainguns chattering. Wynt blew up, and the third wave of attacking Musth was shattered.

  The aksai and velv , on Wlencing's orders, screamed down, heedless of AA fire, intent on smashing the Zhukovs.

  Then the secret ships from Mullion Island struck, everything from yachts and speedsters with improvised missile racks to close-system patrol craft to the three lovingly restored aksai .

  The skies were swirling madness, and not even the best of the gunners in RaoForce could hold a target long enough to make a launch, nor be sure they'd be able to guide a missile in without a friendly getting in the way.

  Ben Dill put two missiles into a velv and took his aksai in a tight loop, almost through the wreckage of the ship he'd brought down.

  "This is Scythe Six," he said. "Scythe Flight, are you still with me?"

  "That's affirm," a rather breathless voice came. "This is Three. Two's back up there going after a mother ship."

  "This is Two," a calm voice came. "Have a mother ship acquired, two seconds to launch, one… SHIT!"

  The air went dead, and Dill saw a flash of red in the darkness.

  "Aw, giptel-doots ," he swore, forgetting his mike was open, climbed toward where his flightmate had died, saw two aksai diving.

  "Now let's see who blinks," he mumbled, sliding to full drive. "Come on, come on…

  The two aksai banked sharply, exposing their bellies.

  " Thought you'd back off first…"

  Dill launched two missiles. Both homed on the rear Musth ship, and blew it in half.

  He and his wingman were hard on the tail of the first Musth ship, but it was pulling away fast, in better and newer shape than the two remaining Force attack ships.

  An all-ships signal blasted into Dill's speakers: "Recall, recall, recall." Most of the Force's ships broke contact and fled, dumping antiradar cheff and 'casting every electronic spoofery they could, for previously assigned fields, some on Mullion, others in equally secluded parts of Cumbre, some with little more than stacked fuel supplies, two or three mechanics, and an officer or noncom with a communicator. The Musth ships, shocked by the unexpected battle and the tenacity of a defeated enemy, were reluctant to track the Force craft too closely, and so all but a handful were able to break away.

  But Ben Dill was intent on his own battle, after the fleeing aksai .

  "Oh no, oh no, I need you, I want you," Dill growled, lifted his ship's nose, and launched three missiles, howitzer-arcing them over the fleeing Musth ship, into its projected flight pattern.

  The aksai climbed straight into Dill's first missile, and part of its wing came off. It whipped into a spin, then lazily flip-flopped down toward the planet below.

  "And aren't I Mrs. Dill's favorite son, all gifted and—"

  A wandering missile that should've self-destructed but hadn't, rather tardily sensed a possibility and exploded about ten meters behind Dill's aksai . The ship bucked, and its drive abruptly quit.

  "Oh come on," Dill pleaded. "I really don't want to go swimming tonight."

  The aksai wasn't listening. It lurched, flopped onto its back, and started down. Dill sawed at the controls, felt nothing but mush.

  "Scythe Three, Scythe Three, this is Scythe Six. I'm in a Mayday condition."

  Nothing came back at him, and he noted all the indicator lights on his com were out.

  "Dunno if I'm broadcasting," he said into the mike. "But this is Ben Dill, punching out. Somebody be good and come get me. Out."

  He pushed a small overhead bar to one side, and the aksai's canopy blew off. Wind roared into the cockpit at him, more than 180kph, pulling his cheeks back until he slammed his helmet visor shut. Dill hit the button that seared away his safety straps. Now the only thing that was holding him was the hurricane into the open pod.

  His aksal spun on its axis once, dumping Ben Dill out into the night sky, the dropper that'd been stuffed between his ankles behind him.

  He fell about five seconds, tumbling, long enough to decide he really was going to be dead. Then the dropper cut in, and he realized he was slowing as the antigrav lowered him at walking speed toward the ground.

  Dill was hanging half-in, half-out of the dropper harness, and he managed to pull the straps together, fasten them. Now the small box was above him, like an old-fashioned parachute, and he was dropping toward… toward what?

  He looked down, saw blackness.

  At a distance, there were lights. He guessed that would be Dharma Island.

  That meant the blackness below was ocean.

  "Crap in my hat," he muttered. "And I never made the swim team, either."

  Then lights came at him, blinding him, and an aircraft slashed by and Dill had a moment to see it was an aksai .

  "I'd just as soon not be gunned down when I'm out of the fight," he muttered, and the aksai banked past again and he thought, hoped, it was his wingman or maybe just a chivalrous Musth.

  He held out his hands in perplexed helplessness, pointed down, made swimming motions.

  The aksai slowed almost to its stall speed, came past again. He couldn't see inside the cockpit pod, make out the pilot.

  Dill looked down again, saw greater darkness in front of him and what might have been a dim line demark-ing it.

  Breakers? An island? If it's a mass as big as I want it to be, Mullion Island?

  Who knew?
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  Especially about Mullion Island. Good legends— aquatic monsters, amphibious monsters, land-dwelling monsters, everything except cannibals. All that was known for sure was the area around the secret base, which, if he was triangulating himself right, would be somewhere over there. Quite a ways over there.

  Then he saw a flicker of some kind of light.

  The moons are obscured, so what am I staring at? A fishing boat? A village? A hopeful thought?

  He found the dropper's tiny control box on the harness, pried its cover open, breaking a nail in the process, and touched sensors, steering the dropper toward the light.

  The aksai came past again, then dived away, went back to speed, was gone.

  Ben Dill saw darker blackness below, hoped he was coming in for a nice soft landing in some trees or in beach sand. The light he was steering for was not far distant, almost level with him.

  Come on, be nice, be land , he thought, looked at where the horizon should be, kept his boots together, let his legs go limp, grabbed the dropper harness high, tried to remember a prayer, and struck water, salt water, his arms coming down to cover his face, and then he was underwater, roiled by the current, drowning.

  Chapter 13

  "Son of a bitch," Garvin said devoutly. "I always thought ol' Ben was immortal."

  "So did he," Njangu said. "Guess you were both wrong."

  "I suppose the Musth ain't gonna stop shooting long enough to let us drink him under," Monique Lir said.

  "Not likely," Njangu agreed. "But when they do stop, there'll be a bunch of other crunchies with him for the wake, so we can really toast our brains."

  "What a joy and a comfort you are," Garvin said, as an alarm on the bunker's concrete wall blared and the three ran toward their alert stations.

  This time the Musth came in by sea, sending their wynt skidding low over the water, using Leggett City as a shield to keep Force gunners from opening up on them.

  Velv and aksai flashed overhead, looking for targets, but found few in the smoking rubble.

  "All missile stations," Caud Rao ordered. "Make your launches count. Gun stations, aim low. A splash is as good as a direct hit."

  They were. Wynt slammed into water bursts that flowered up, the sea as solid as concrete when a ship smashed into it. Other wynt pilots' nerves broke, and they climbed for a bit of altitude, exposing vulnerable undersides.

  Force missile launchers popped up, launched, vanished back underground before counterstrikes could be made.

  Only a scattering of wynt made it to the beach and disgorged their warriors, some of whom found shelter with their pinned-down brothers.

  Force snipers and two-man SSW teams crawled out of spider holes and opened fire. The Musth shot back—but they were on the Force's home grounds, and generally found few targets.

  Frustration begat anger begat rage, and Musth got careless—and more joined their fellows in death.

  Yet another Musth attack was stopped before it had begun.

  "You have our concern," Wlencing's chief aide, Rahfer said.

  Wlencing glanced from the screen he was studying to Rahfer and another aide, Daaf.

  "There is a gap in the continuity without him," he admitted. "But Alikhan is not the first cub of mine to die in battle, and we all die in our time. It is mdre important that he died well, and coming from my loins, I know he did."

  Rahfer moved a paw in agreement.

  "Now he is of the past, and not part of any equation," Wlencing said. "We should be devoting ourselves to ending this absurd situation.

  "I do not believe these men can fight this handily. Certainly we saw nothing of this before, when they fought against the worms who called themselves 'Raum."

  "Perhaps that is the answer," Daaf said. "Perhaps they fight well with a worthier foe."

  "That is the rankest sentimentality," Wlencing scoffed. "And not worth discussing. What is important is that they have caused great losses among our warriors."

  "Almost a quarter of our fighters," agreed Rahfer.

  "We could deploy nuclear devices," Daaf suggested.

  "Not to be considered," Wlencing said scornfully. "What are the chances of radiation striking any of the cities they fight close to? Even Leggett could be easily contaminated by winds from a strike against their base island. And I am not sure, as well entrenched as they are, such devices would have significant effect.

  "Remember, we need these men for when the fighting is over, to work the mines, and other services."

  "Why don't they come out and fight, as warriors should?" Daaf grumbled. Rahfer was about to show agreement when Wlencing's ears cocked, and his eyes reddened.

  "You do not serve me by serving or speaking foolishly! Why should you expect anyone to fight on your terms, under your conditions, if he is capable of doing damage in other ways?"

  "Still," Daaf said, unconvinced, "this is not honorable."

  "I will admit to that," Wlencing said. He looked back at the screen, showing the swirling destruction on Chance Island. Other screens showed the battles around Aire, Taman City, Kerrier. "It is also primitive, the way groundworms fight to keep from being pulled from their burrows. It is time for a change in our strategy.

  "We have two choices, I think. We can wait them out, in this battle they call, in their language, a "sssiege,' keeping a constant pressure on them. I do not like this, because it assumes a probable continuation of the casualty rate we have been taking.

  "But I have been studying some of their histories. There is another way to fight this war, and if it lacks honor, so does their fighting, as we have agreed.

  "And after all, these men cannot understand real honor, can they?"

  "I cannot believe this," Jasith said.

  "Darling, you're being utterly naive," Loy said. "They're aliens, animals. So of course that's the way they fight."

  "I'm not talking about the Musth," Jasith snapped. "I believe they're capable of anything, so nothing from them surprises me. What I don't believe is the way you're jumping in bed with them so happily, like you can't wait to do whatever they want next."

  "I'll tell you this again," Kouro said. "We don't have any choice. Our stupid soldiers are over there on their island, bottled up, so they're no good to us. What am I supposed to do? Tell the Musth to shove it? How long after I did that do you think it'd be before they shut my holo down and put all my people out of work?"

  "Isn't it strange," Jasith said, not looking at her husband. "Rich people always seem to have the same way of talking. Something they don't like isn't bad for them, but for their employees. You'd think we got the way we are by bleeding anytime somebody said widows and orphans."

  "What do you think we're supposed to do?" Loy demanded. "What would you do, if you were me?"

  Jasith considered an answer, discarded it, found another.

  "I'd let them close me down rather than give them the cameras and crews so everybody in the .system is forced to look at what they're going to do next."

  Kouro shook his head.

  "Your father wouldn't believe you're talking like this. He built an empire, and damned well would've died before surrendering one millimeter of it."

  "I think you can leave my father well out of this," Jasith said. "If he were alive, I think he'd be over there, with the quote stupid end quote soldiers. Or at any rate, trying to figure out some way to help them."

  "Well, aren't you Miss Resistance herself," Kouro sneered. "And what are you doing, I might ask? Besides sitting up here in your mansion?" Perhaps you'd like to throw a benefit tea for the Force? Or maybe roll bandages, like I read they did in olden times?"

  Jasith stared out the window, across the bay at the murk around Chance Island. She could see diving Musth aircraft and, every now and then, hear the dull blast of a distant explosion.

  "I don't know," she said. "I don't know. But I'm going to do something."

  "That'll be very bright," Kouro said. "I can't wait to see my wife's name on the Musth Enemy List."

 
; "They're taking hostages," Mil Rees, CO of First Regiment said grimly. The tight beam between Aire and the Force's base blurred, then refirmed. "They took thirty in Aire, they've announced, and said there'd be others taken in other cities. I'm surprised it hasn't hit Leggett yet."

  "Have they announced any intents?" Caud Rao asked. Rees shook her head.

  "Nothing, sir. But all the holos say there'll be a broadcast tomorrow at midday."

  Rao looked at Angara, Hedley, soliciting opinions.

  "Keep the troops away from the holo sets," Hedley said. "Whatever it is, it won't be good."

  It wasn't.

  "This is Matin's Aire Bureau, broadcasting live," the toneless, off-screen voice said. "We are 'casting on the direct orders of the Musth."

  The screen showed a high, blank concrete wall. After a moment, there was an off-screen thud of a steel door slamming open. Fifteen men and women moved onscreen. They looked frightened, confused, and were staring about.

  "These fifteen," the voice continued, "are hostages seized by the Musth, and are considered by them leaders of Cumbre."

  A mike clicked closed, and another voice, this one Musth, came on.

  "Becaussse of the continuing fighting, it hasss been decccided that all humansss in the sssytem onccce known asss Cumbre are to be held resssponsssive, in other wordsss, to be consssidered criminalsss.

  "The fighting mussst end immediately.

  "If it doesss not, all humansss held by usss will meet the end decccided by our leadersss."

  The people on-screen had a moment to show fear, and then devourer-weapons opened fire. Blood gouted, bodies contorted, and then the crawling worms began their final destruction.

  The camera held steady until the last body stopped moving.

  Garvin looked away from the screen, saw Njangu's face, trying hard to hold the same dispassion.

  "Within a ssshort time," the voice continued, "if the fighting isss not ended, othersss will die, asss we promis-ssed. Further prisssonersss will then be taken."