Hope Renewed

by S. M. Stirling

  “Anyone who wants to can get out and take cover,” John said in a conversational tone.

  Nobody did, although they squatted down. The dirigibles were over the river now, moving into the railyards and the residential sections of Ciano. Their shadows ghosted ahead of them, black whale-shapes over the whitewashed buildings and tile roofs.

  “Hey,” one of the Marines said. “Why aren’t they bombing south? That’s where the factories and stuff are.”

  Smiths hands were tight on the wheel. “Because, asshole, they don’t want to damage their own stuff—they’ll have it all in couple of days. Shit!”

  Crump. Crump. Crump . . .

  The bombs were falling in steady streams from the airships; the massive craft bounced higher as the weight was removed.

  “Fifty tons load,” John whispered, bracing his hand on the roof-strut of the car and looking up. “Fifty tons each, thirty-five ships . . . seventeen hundred tons all up.”

  “Mother,” someone said.

  “Won’t kill y’any deader here than back at the embassy.”

  “They wouldn’t bomb the embassy.”

  “Yeah, sure. They’re gonna be real careful about that.”

  “Can it,” the corporal said. “For what we are about to receive . . .”

  The sound grew louder, the drone of the engines rasping down through the air. John could see the Land sunburst flag painted on their sides, and then the horseshoe-shaped glass windows of the control gondolas. A few black puffs of smoke appeared beneath and around the airships; some Imperial gunners were still sticking to their improvised antiairship weapons, showing more courage than sense. The pavement beneath the car shook with the impact of the explosions. Dust began to smoke out of the trembling walls of the tenements on either side. The crashing continued, an endless roar of impacts and falling masonry.

  “Here—” someone began.

  The shadow of a dirigible passed over them, throwing a chill that rippled down his spine. There was a moment of white light—

  —and someone was screaming.

  John tried to turn, and realized he was lying prone. Prone on rubble that was digging into his chest and belly and face. He pushed at the stone with his hands, spitting out dust and blood in a thick reddish-brown clot; more blood was running into his left eye from a cut on his forehead, but everything else seemed to be functional. And someone was still shouting.

  One of the Marines, lying and clutching his arm. John came erect and staggered over to the car, which was lying canted at a three-quarter angle. The intersecting walls of the nook they’d stopped in still stood, but the buildings they’d been attached to were gone, spread in a pile of broken blocks across what had been the street.

  the angle of the walls acted to deflect the blast, Center said. chaotic effect, and not predictable.

  Good thing for the plan it did what it did, John thought as he rummaged for the first-aid kit.

  your death at this point would decrease the probability of an optimum outcome from 57% ±3 to 41% ±4, Center said obligingly.

  “Nice to know you’re needed,” John said.

  The ringing in his ears was less, and he could see properly. Good, no severe concussion; he squatted beside the wounded Marine.

  “Hold him,” he said to the others. “Let’s take a look at this.”

  Two men held the shoulders down. The arm was not broken, but it was bleeding freely, a steady drip rather than an arterial pulse. He slipped the punch-dagger out of his collar and used it to cut off the sleeve of the uniform jacket; not the ideal tool—it was designed as a weapon—but it would do. The flesh of the man’s forearm was torn, and something was sticking out if it. John closed his fingers on it. A splinter of wood, probably oak, from a structural beam. Longer than a handspan, and driven in deep.

  “This is going to hurt,” John said.

  “Do it,” the Marine gasped, gray-faced.

  One of the others put a rifle sling between his teeth. John gripped firmly, put his weight on the hand that held the man’s wrist to the ground, and pulled. The Marine convulsed, arching, his teeth sinking into the tough leather.

  The finger-thick dagger of oak slid free. John held it up; no ragged edges, so there probably wasn’t much left in the wound—hopefully not too much dirty cloth, either, since there was no time to debride it.

  “Let it bleed for a second,” he said. “It’ll wash it clean.”

  There was medicinal alcohol and iodine powder in the kit. John waited, then swabbed the wound clear with cotton wool and poured in both. This time the Marine simply swore, and John grinned.

  “You must be recovering.” He packed the wound, bandaged it, and rigged a sling. “Try not to put too much strain on this, trooper.”

  “Yessir. Ah . . . what the hell do we do now, sir?”

  They all looked at him, battered, bruised, a few bleeding from superficial cuts, but all functional. He looked down the street; there was a breastwork of stones four feet high in front of them, and more behind, but the road downslope looked fairly clear. Smoke was mounting up rapidly, though; the fires were out of control; the waterworks were probably hit and the mains out of operation. It lay thick on the air, thick between him and Pia.

  “First we’ll get this road cleared,” he said briskly, spitting again. “Goms”—who looked worst injured—”there’s some water in the boot of the car, see to it. Smith, check the car and see what it needs. Wilton, Sinders, Barrjen, Maken, you come with me.”

  He studied the way the rocks interlocked in the barrier ahead of them. “We’ll shift this one first.”

  “Sir? Prybar?” corporal Wilton said. The crusted block probably weighed twice what John did, and he was the heaviest man there.

  “No time. Barrjen, you on the other side, there’s room for two.”

  Barrjen was three inches shorter than John, but just as broad across the shoulders, and thick through the belly and hips as well; his arms were massive, and the backs of his hands covered in reddish hair. He grinned, showing broad square teeth.

  “If’n you say so, sor,” he said, and bent his knees, working his fingers under the edges of the block.

  John did likewise and took a deep, careful breath. “Now.”

  He lifted, taking the strain on back and legs, exhaling with the effort until red lights swam before his eyes and something in his gut was just on the edge of tearing. His coat did tear across the back, the tough seam parting with a long ripping sound. The stone resisted, and then he felt it shift. Shift again, his feet straining to keep their balance in the loose rubble, and then it was tumbling away down the other side like a dice from the box of a god, hammering into the pavement and falling into the gutter with a final tock sound.

  Barrjen staggered backward, still grinning as he panted. “You diplomats is tougher’n you looks, sor,” he said, in a thick eastern accent.

  John spat on his hands. Center traced a glowing network of stress lines across the rockfall, showing the path of least resistance for clearing it.

  “Let’s get to work.”

  “I want to go home,” Lola said—whimpered, really.

  Pia fought an urge to slap her. The other woman’s eyes were still round with shock; understandable, and she was less than twenty, but . . .

  “Up here.”

  The staircase was empty; it filled the interior of the square tower, with a switchback every story and narrow windows in the cream-colored limestone. Smoke was drifting through them, enough to haze the air a little. The light poured in, scattering on the dust and smoke, incongruously beautiful shafts of gold bringing out the highlights and fossil shells in the stone. Pia labored upward, feeling the sweat running down her face and soaking the nurse’s headdress she wore, thanking God that skirts had gone so high this year—barely ankle-length.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’ll be safe up here.”

  “Safe for a little while,” Lola said. Then: “Mother of God,” as they came out onto the flat roof of the tower.

/>   Ciano was burning. The pillars of fire had merged into columns that covered half the area they could see. Heavy and black, smoke drifted down from the hillsides, covering the highways that wound through the valleys running down to the Pada. The warehouse districts along the river were fully involved, the great storage tanks of olive oil and brandy bellowing upward in ruddy flame like so many giant torches.

  “Nobody’s fighting the fires at all,” Pia whispered to herself. The waterworks must have been finally destroyed. And the streets by the docks, they were stuffed with timber, coal, cotton, so much tinder. She could feel the heat on her face, worse even in the few moments since they had come out onto the flat rooftop.

  Lola looked around. “What can we do?”

  “Wait,” Pia said. “Wait and pray.”

  Thunder rumbled from the eastward. Pia’s head came around slowly. The sky was summer blue, save for the great pillars of black smoke. Rain would be a mercy, but God had withheld His mercy from the people of the Empire. The sound rumbled again, then again—too regularly spaced for thunder, in any case.

  The rain was not coming. The Chosen were, and those were their guns. She slipped to her knees and crossed herself, bringing the rosary to her lips.

  Come to me, John, she thought. Come quickly, my love.

  Then she began to plan.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Ciano’s burning,” Jeffrey Farr said, opening his eyes.

  Get out of there, he added silently to his brother. Afterimages of buildings sliding into streets in sheets of fiery rubble washed across his vision as the link through Center faded.

  “Ya,” Heinrich Hosten said cheerfully. “Maybe we shouldn’t have bombed it quite so heavy.”

  He looked eastward, toward the smoke that hazed the horizon. The distant thump . . . thump . . . of artillery sounded, slow and regular.

  “Street fighting,” the Chosen officer went on. “We may have trapped them too well—there are a quarter of a million troops in there, less what’s getting out, the net’s not watertight.”

  “Why not just let it burn?” Jeffrey asked.

  “The High Command may do that for a while. Praise the Powers That Be, we won’t be pitchforked into it right away.”

  The survivors of Heinrich’s regiment had been pulled into reserve, not completely out of action, but things would have to take a decided turn for the worse before they were put back into the line any time soon. More than a third of the roster had died blocking the Imperial breakout for those crucial hours, and as many again were wounded. The survivors were billeted now in the grounds of a nobleman’s country estate; they could see the smoke-shadowed buildings of Ciano in the distance to the east. Heinrich had spent the last couple of days rounding up supplies for the celebration that bellowed and sprawled across the gardens: oxen and whole pigs roasted on spits, barrels stood at the ends of tables heaped with food. A roar went up from the troops—the male majority, at least—as a crowd of women were herded through the gates.

  Jeffrey averted his eyes and ignored the screams. Nothing he could do, nothing at all . . . for now. Heinrich beamed indulgently down at the scene below the terrace and bit the last meat off the turkey drumstick in his hand.

  “They’ve earned a little rest,” he said, idly stroking the hip of the naked girl who poured his glass full again. “Did damned well.”

  The rest of the surviving officers were grouped around the tables on the balustraded terrace, paying serious attention to the feast the villa’s staff had prepared for the new overlords. Most Chosen ate rather sparingly at home; in the food-poor Land red meat was a luxury except for the wealthiest among the upper caste. Jeffrey remembered John telling him how the Friday pork roast was the high point of the week, and that was for an up-and-coming general’s family. Now that they had the biggest area of rich farmland on Visager under their control, the Chosen were making up for lost time.

  The thought made the food taste a little better. Maybe they’ll get soft.

  probability 87% ±3, defining “soft” as significantly reduced militechnic functionality, Center supplied.

  After more than a decade, Jeffrey could sense overtones of meaning in the words, even though they seemed machined out of thought the way engine parts were lathed from bar stock.

  But? he supplied.

  significant reduction would require 7 generations, plus or minus—

  Never mind.

  Heinrich tore off another drumstick and pulled the girl into his lap. “Victory, it is wonderful!” he said.

  “Yeah,” Jeffrey Farr replied. It will be.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Lola asked, ripping up the last of her petticoat.

  “No,” Pia said. “But the only other thing I can think of is to wait here for the Chosen. My Giovanni will come—but look at that out there!”

  Ciano was the largest city in the world; for centuries, it had been the capital of the world, when the Universal Empire had been what its name claimed for it, leading humanity on Visager back from the Fall. Now it was dying, and mostly by its own hand.

  “We’ve gotta find some broad in this?” Goms said.

  Probably more crowded a couple of hours ago, John thought.

  “Jesus,” the marine finished, coughing in the thick air, a compound of smoke and explosion-powdered brick and stone.

  “Back! Back!” the driver shouted, as half a dozen men in Imperial uniforms rushed towards the car.

  They ignored him, if they heard at all; their faces had the fixed, carved-wood look of utter desperation sighting a chance of survival. A marine raised his rifle, cursed, lowered it again.

  “If they get to the car, we’re all dead,” John said.

  “He’s right,” Harry said. “Shit . . .”

  The rifle blasted uncomfortably close to John’s ear. He stood motionless, his hand resting on the top of the windscreen. It had been a warning shot; he could hear the sick whine of the ricochet, see the bright momentary spark where jacketed metal hit the cobblestones. The Imperials ignored it. More from the milling crowd were following; none of them looked to be armed—the Imperial army had regarded this as the ultimate rear area until a day or two ago—but there were a lot of them, all convinced that the car represented their chance to get out. They probably weren’t thinking much beyond that.

  “Damn,” the marine said softly, and worked the bolt.

  “Five rounds rapid!” Corporal Wilton said.

  The marines had been waiting with their second finger on the trigger and their index lying under the bolt. BAM and five rounds blasted out. Click and the index finger flipped up the rear-mounted bolt handle of the rifles. Spring tension shot the bolt back halfway through its cycle as soon as the turning bolt released the locking lugs; a quick pull back and the shell was ejected; a slap with the palm of the hand and chick-Chack! the next round was in. Well-trained men could fire twelve aimed rounds a minute that way, and all the marines had “marksman” flashes on their shoulders.

  Face frozen, John watched the first Imperial double over like a man punched in the belly—even at point-blank range the marines were aiming for the center of mass, as they’d been taught. The Imperial slumped forward and slid facedown, blood flowing over the cobbles. The shots cracked, quick careful firing with a half-second pause to aim. He didn’t have to order cease-fire when the survivors turned and ran.

  Wilton pulled the bolt of his rifle back and pushed a five-round stripper clip into the magazine with his thumb. The zinc strip that had held the cartridges tinkled against the side of the car. The crowd surged away from the car, milling aimlessly.

  John didn’t think anyone else would try to steal it for a while. It stood in one of the narrower laneways leading into the big plaza that stood before the train station; the station building itself wasn’t burning . . . yet . . . but a stick of bombs had left a series of craters across the plaza, leading towards the twenty-meter high columns of the facade like an arrow on a map. The plaza had been crowded with mule- a
nd horse-drawn wagons and ambulances, supply vehicles, even a few powered staff cars.

  Most of the vehicles were abandoned, some burning or overturned. Wounded animals screamed, their voices shrill over the calling of hundreds—thousands—from within the great building, adding the last touch of hell. Wounded men were pouring out of the tall blushwood portals and out into the square, all of them who could move. Or could stagger along grasping at the walls, or support each other, or crawl. The stink of death and gangrene came with them in waves, strong enough that even a few of the marines gagged at it.

  “Sir,” Henry said, “we’d never have made it down if we’d left half an hour later. And there’s no way in hell we’re going to drive back to the embassy.”

  “No,” John said, smiling slightly as he checked his pistol and then slid it back into the shoulder-holster under his frock coat. “But I don’t think we’ll have much of a problem finding my wife.”

  He nodded towards the left-hand tower. Someone on top had strung two strips of brightly colored cloth from corner windows to the middle of the front facing, and another straight down from the point at which they met. Together they formed an arrow—>, pointing upward at the tower-top. He took his binoculars out of the dashboard compartment and focused on the tiny figure waving at the apex of the signal.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  The driver cleared his throat. John released Pia and stepped back; even then, in that charnel house of a place, the marines were grinning. Pia blushed and tucked strands of hair back under her snood.

  “Sir,” Harry said, “We’re not going to get back to the embassy.”

  “No, we have to get out of the city entirely,” John said thoughtfully.

  They were in one of the loading bays of the station; fewer bodies here, fewer of the moaning, fevered wounded. None of the marines was what you’d call squeamish—they’d all seen action in the Southern Islands—but several of them were looking pale. So did Pia’s friend; a couple of the troopers were courteously handing her safety pins to help fasten up her ripped dress.