by Thomas Webb
One of the guards stopped near a small entrance, cut from the barn’s much larger outer door. Abe knew from experience there was usually a smaller door cut into the barn’s outer door, so farmers and hired hands could come and go without having to move something two or three times their height.
Abe watched as a flame sprang to life inside the guard’s cupped hands, briefly lighting up the face of the Confederate soldier. The soldier puffed his cheeks, and a cloud of smoke appeared. He shook his match, and everything went black again, allowing a dark shape to slip from the trees unnoticed.
Before Abe could count to three, the dark shape covered the distance from the woods to the guard’s back. There was one quick, precise movement, and a flash of light like the reflection off polished metal. The smoking guard crumpled to the ground.
Abe had never witnessed a man’s killing before. He would have thought killing harder than what he’d just seen. In the space of a few seconds, the soldier had appeared out of the forest and cut the other man’s throat, quieter than a graveyard wraith and with less effort than it took Abe to get out of bed in the morning. Abe thought he should feel some sort of shock or revulsion, but he didn’t feel either. He didn’t feel anything.
The barn’s inner door swung open. What only seconds ago had been a dark shape stood revealed as one of Major Gregory’s men, his bowie knife bloodied, and his eyes blinded by the light from the barn.
Before Abe knew it, he was on his feet with revolver in hand. Copperhead grabbed him by the collar and snatched him down so hard his teeth rattled.
Then, all hell broke loose.
19 Outside Greenville North Carolina, Barn Firefight, July 1864
“Damnation!” Montclair swore as he watched Greg’s corporal go down in a hail of gunfire.
His adrenaline surging, Montclair broke cover and dashed toward the fallen Marine. Something grabbed ahold of Montclair and yanked him back. Breath flew from his lungs as he impacted the earth just before a storm of lead ripped through the space he’d occupied only seconds ago.
“No use, colonel!” the soldier who’d just saved his life shouted. “He’s gone!”
His soldier was right. There was nothing they could do.
Montclair shoved the young troop behind him. “Fan out!” Montclair yelled. Then, he dropped to a knee, sighted in, and returned fire.
Montclair heard repeaters opening up from his left flank. Greg and his Marines, now wanting vengeance for their fallen brother, had joined the fight. Under covering fire, one of them ran to the barn’s entrance and dragged his comrade’s body back to the tree line.
Montclair scrambled to the cover of the trees, shouldered his rifle, and squeezed the trigger. The plan had been to quietly remove the sentries and breach the barn door. Thirty seconds in and the whole thing had already gone to shit.
“Moving!” Montclair shouted as he crouched low and sighted in on the barn.
“Move!” someone yelled in response, letting Montclair know he was covered.
Montclair sprinted left, sliding in behind a thick maple and getting back up to a knee. Heavy fire poured from inside the barn. Repeating rifles only, judging by the sound. From his new angle, Montclair saw the enemy shooting from covered positions inside the barn. He let loose a string of curses. A few of the enemy wore Confederate gray, but most were dressed in faded black.
“We got Shadow Army!” Montclair shouted. Confederate regulars were one thing, but elite Shadow Army soldiers meant they had a fight on their hands.
Montclair leveled his rifle and fired. Three quick shots, three enemies down. He pulled the trigger again, and a Confederate dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Greg and his revenge-hungry Marines took several more. Suddenly, the guns in the barn went silent, and the massive outer doors swung shut.
Montclair moved ahead in a cautious crouch. With eyes forward above the sights, rifle in his shoulder and finger near the trigger, he signaled his troops to move. Behind him, they slipped from the relative safety of the trees into the open terrain surrounding the barn.
Montclair gestured right and then left. Without a sound, his soldiers split evenly, half to one side and half to the other. They’d almost reached the sides of the barn when the wooden doors began to creak open.
Light flooded the clearing. For a split second, Montclair was blind, but his eyes adjusted quickly, and he glimpsed inside the barn.
The airship was twice as sleek and looked three times as deadly as any he’d ever seen. The engine design was unfamiliar, but it took only a second for the airship commander to recognize the genius in the engineering. The ship’s most striking feature, though, was its color. From stem to stern, she was completely black.
That was when Montclair noticed something else, the twin Gatlings mounted on the airship’s forward deck. Two Shadow Army soldiers leapt into position behind the guns’ black-plated shielding.
“Get to cover!” Montclair roared. “They’re spinning up Gatlings!”
The black airship’s twin guns buzzed like a swarm of angry wasps as they spat nine-hundred rounds a minute at Montclair and his troops. Soldiers dove left and right, hitting the ground and clawing at the dirt to get clear.
Montclair pointed his rifle skyward and ran. He rounded the barn’s corner and skidded to a stop, nearly tumbling forward but bracing himself with his clockwerk hand at the last second. He thrust his back against the wall and flattened out. Montclair’s heart raced. Sweat ran from every pore, and his chest heaved like a bellows. Four of his troops had beaten him to cover, and a wave of relief washed over him at the sight of them.
Montclair dropped the magazine from his repeater, checking his ammunition. Empty. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a fresh magazine, and slammed it home, the action as practiced and natural as a handshake.
“Anyone hurt?” he asked the soldier next to him.
“No, sir,” she replied, breathing heavily. “But those Gatlings got us pinned down. What’s your orders, colonel?”
The airship’s deadly stream of fire poured from the barn. If Montclair was pinned down, Greg and his Marines were too. They’d brought along the modified steam carriages and mechanized cavalry for exactly this reason. Where the hell were they? Montclair listened for the sound of the carriages and the thunder of mechanical hooves, but all he heard was the buzzing of the black ship’s guns and the clatter of empty shells falling like rain onto her deck.
Two streaks of bright blue screamed from the forest in quick succession. A whir and a crack split the night, not once but twice. Montclair knew exactly what it was. Somewhere in the dark woods above them, two aether rounds had left the barrel of a precision French Chassepot.
A smile spread across Montclair’s face. God bless that girl. The black ship’s Gatlings fell silent, their operators taken out by the DSI agent with the fiery red hair.
With a roar of its engines, the first of the two armored carriages burst over the hill, taking to the air as it crested the old dirt road. The second followed hot on its heels, with the armored brutes right behind.
Montclair breathed a sigh of relief.
The carriages hit the clearing and slid to a halt, spitting dirt and rocks and raising a cloud of dust. The armored vehicles opened up on the barn with every bullet and rocket in their arsenals. The brutes came behind them with guns wide open, forming up and marching in line toward the huge barn. Montclair’s troops cheered as they broke from cover and advanced. Montclair could feel it. The tide of the battle had turned.
“On me!” Montclair shouted.
Using the cloud of dust as cover, he sprinted from the side of the barn and lined up behind the closest steam carriage. Montclair sighted in and fired from behind the armored vehicle, dropping enemy soldiers as fast as he could pull the trigger.
Then, he heard something odd. The sound was strange but at the same time familiar. It reminded him of something he knew, something he’d heard many times before. Then, it hit him—the hum and whir of Vindication as her en
gines spooled up before a flight.
“Oh, no,” he said.
To their credit, the steam carriages and brutes kept up their rate of fire. Rounds ripped into the walls of the barn and the dark airship’s hull as it rose. Montclair’s eyes grew wide as the black airship pivoted. He counted no less than four heavy cannon.
“Get clear!” he shouted, grabbing the collar of the nearest soldier.
They rushed from behind the steam carriage, diving just in the nick of time. The aether shells exploded on impact, decimating Montclair’s mechanized cavalry and lifting the armored carriage in a ball of blue-orange flame. Thrown by the force of the explosion, Montclair tucked into a ball and rolled. He gasped in pain as a large rock, unseen in the darkness, banged into his shoulder. He lost control and crashed to a halt inches from the base of an old loblolly pine.
Montclair struggled to get up, the heat from the flames hot on his neck as the vehicle behind him and the soldiers who’d crewed it burned. He got to his hands and knees and crawled behind the tree. Using his rifle as a prop, he braced himself against the rough bark and stood.
The trees of the forest cast flickering shadows as the remains of the brutes and the steam carriage burned. Montclair looked to his left and saw the soldier he’d grabbed was bruised but would live, which was more than he could say for the ones who’d been inside the carriage.
Like an angel of death taking flight, the black airship surged forward. The great barn doors, still only partway open, burst in a spray of wood and debris as the vessel crunched its way through.
Montclair pushed off from the tree. He spread his feet wide and dropped his center of gravity. Then, he snapped his rifle up and sighted in. He stood square with the rising vessel, his body exposed to the enemy’s fire.
“Stop that airship!” he shouted at anyone who could still hear him as he squeezed off round after round.
What remained of the barn’s colossal double doors fell to either side, the hinges giving way, the beams snapping like twigs. Montclair kept firing.
The black airship, now clear of the confines of the barn, took to the sky. Purple waves of energy, pulsating with dark power, emanated from its engines as it rose. Then, standing on the deck near the bridge, Montclair spotted Horton. The general strolled to the edge of the deck, a rifle cradled in his arm. He caught sight of Montclair, smiled, threw his head back, and laughed.
Montclair’s rifle was up again in an instant, the sights over Horton’s chest, but too late. The black ship turned and brought her port guns to bear. Montclair’s heart leapt into his throat as he realized where they were aiming.
“Get back!” he shouted.
Having seen firsthand what the black ship was capable of, the second steam carriage reversed engine and tore backward toward the tree line. The black ship’s shells hit and exploded, leaving a wagon-sized crater where the steam carriage had been. With nothing to stop it, the ship turned and headed north.
Montclair refused to accept Horton’s escape, firing even as the black ship increased its altitude. Montclair continued to pull the trigger long after the last round was spent until the click click click of the hammer on an empty chamber brought him back to his senses. He felt a hand on his shoulder and jerked away angrily.
“Julius,” Greg said. He and his Marines had left the cover of the forest to join Montclair in the clearing. Greg pointed at the barn. A sea of gray uniforms poured from the smashed doors and encircled what was left of Montclair’s troops.
One of the Confederates, a sergeant by the stripes on his jacket, stepped forward. “Ya’ll are done for,” he said. “Whoever’s in charge, have the rest of your men come out a’ them trees and lay down their arms. All that cooperate’ll be spared.”
Greg leaned in close to Montclair’s ear. “Better to die on our feet than on our knees,” he said.
Greg was right. No way were the Confederates were going to just let them walk out of there. There would be no surrendering this night.
“It’s been an honor, my friend,” he said.
Montclair gripped his rifle. Just as he was about to give the order to attack, he heard the faint thrum of engines and the sound of one-hundred war cries.
20 Outside Greenville North Carolina, Barn Firefight, July 1864
A wave of Croatan braves and their Freedmen allies burst over the crest of the hill, battle cries ringing in their throats and a cloud of dust behind them. The Native warriors and former slaves galloped into the clearing and formed a moving circle, surrounding the same Confederates who’d surrounded Montclair and what remained of his troops.
The circling fighters reined their mounts to a stop. Their rifles leveled, they walked their horses forward and closed the rebels in. No one spoke. The only sounds were the clinking of bridles and the snorting of restless horses. A group of Croatan warriors parted and allowed someone to pass. Montclair’s heart began to race as the daughter of the Croatan war chief rode triumphantly into the clearing. The engine hum Montclair heard earlier grew louder. He was barely able to contain himself when Vindication appeared in the night sky over Ayita's shoulder. When his soldiers recognized their ship and began to cheer, Montclair thought his heart might burst.
“Well, that is just about the welcomest damned sight I’ve ever seen,” Greg said.
The airship passed above the barn, flared, and began its descent. Montclair smiled as he shielded his eyes against the dust and debris her engines kicked up. Vindication pivoted, graceful as a dancer, above the open field before coming to rest just above the grass.
As Montclair’s airship lowered its gangplank, Ayita, her bearing every inch that of the royalty she was, walked her stallion up to the Confederate sergeant. “Lower your weapons, graycoats,” she commanded. “If you do, you have my word your lives will be spared.”
Left with no choice, the Confederate soldiers put their rifles on the ground and their hands in the air.
Montclair let his rifle hang from its sling and helped Ayita from her horse. Before her feet touched the earth, he’d swept her into an embrace and put his lips to hers.
Copperhead raised an eyebrow. “So you and War Chief Tooantuh’s daughter have met, colonel?”
“We are somewhat acquainted,” Montclair said, still holding her, his eyes still locked with hers.
“I see.” Copperhead turned toward Ayita. “I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t make it on time.”
The Croatan princess extricated herself from Montclair’s embrace. “We almost did not. We were delayed in meeting our Freedmen allies. Then, the darkness caught us, but we rode on into the night.” She smiled at Greg. “Good to see you again, Major Gregory.”
Greg kissed her hand. “Good to be seen again, princess.”
Ayita looked up at Montclair. “We caught sight of your ship just as we rode past Greenville. Thanks be to the spirits that all the spymaster’s messages got through.”
Montclair looked at Copperhead. “Messages?”
The DSI agent shrugged. “Given all we didn’t know, I thought some backup was in order.”
Montclair nodded his thanks. “We haven’t much time. We need to alert Washington immediately. How quickly can we seize the telegraph office in Greenville?”
Sometime during the commotion, Scarlet had appeared at her minder’s side. She shook her head. “They’ve cut every telegraph line within a hundred miles, Colonel. I saw towns marked with red X’s on maps in Smythe’s office. Didn’t make any sense at the time, but now I understand. The X’s were telegraph locations. I’m sorry I didn’t catch it sooner.”
Copperhead waved away his protégé’s apology. “No way you could have known. Colonel, is Vindication fast enough to catch the black ship?”
Montclair thought for a second. “Vindication can be in the skies over Washington in three and a half hours. From the looks of her engines, I’d wager the black airship could do it at least as fast, if not faster.”
“We have to try!” Fortenberry said, his voice cracking with emot
ion.
Montclair had forgotten about the young agent. He envied him his optimism. Montclair could remember a time when he too felt things would always work out simply because they should.
“You’re right, Mr. Fortenberry. We are going to try. Ayita, we need every mounted brave and Freedman you can spare riding for the closest towns. We’ll need them to secure any telegraph they can and wire the capital. Are you able to help us?”
Ayita nodded. “We’ll see it done.”
She spoke a few words of Croatan to one of her nearby braves, a young woman with braided hair and the same golden eyes as her Chieftain’s daughter. The Native woman took off at once, relaying Ayita’s message to Croatan and Freedmen alike. Knowing their own fates and that of the Union were intertwined, the Native warriors and Freed-men and women mounted up. Within minutes, they were thundering away, riding hell for leather and hoping against hope to make it to a working telegraph in time.
Members of the Order of the Healer began filing down Vindication’s gangplank.
Montclair turned to the Marine major. “Greg, let’s get these wounded onboard and have the members of the Order see to our dead.”
“Consider it done,” Greg said. “I’ll have the rest of the troops prep for immediate takeoff.”
A gathering of Croatan and Freedmen had remained behind to serve as Ayita’s personal guard.
“Chieftain’s daughter,” a brave with steel-gray hair and weathered skin said, “we must go.”
Ayita acknowledged the brave and mounted her stallion. “It seems I must leave you again,” she said to Montclair.
Montclair took her hand. “Thank you for bringing me my ship.”
“Hmph. Don’t suppose I had anything to do with that?” Copperhead said as he and the other two DSI agents walked past.
Ayita leaned down from the saddle.
Montclair pulled her in and kissed her. “Someone once said to me, ‘if it is meant to be, our paths will cross again.’”