by Leo Champion
From one temporarily-assembled field heliograph station to another, Kennedy’s message flashed north until it reached a field command post about seventy-five miles away, on the Kansas plains. There, nine combat airships and a bobbing flotilla of three dozen pirate ships sat low, amidst heliographs pointed north and south, east and west.
Joseph Kennedy, Junior was in command on the ground. With him were Bill Colby and Joseph’s youngest sibling, Ed.
“Mr. Kennedy, sir” said the senior flash officer – a uniformed Lakota lieutenant. “Looks like you got a reply. Blue four, sir, he says. Hugoton.”
Blue four. That was Jack’s prearranged code for ‘we have made an acceptable deal.’
Joseph fought to restrain the euphoria that rose in him.
Legitimacy! My God, legitimacy!
“Very good, Grey Eagle,” he replied, hoping he could stay calm.
Legitimacy at last, if we can win this thing!
He and the family had taken on ridiculous odds before. And won.
“Reply,” Joseph Junior ordered. “Acknowledge. Your other flashers can spread the word. We have some new Imperial friends.”
“My God,” Colby said. “Jackie fucking did it. I owe that fucker a grand.”
Ed Kennedy produced a flask.
“Wouldn’t you say this calls for a drink?”
“New message, sir,” said the Army signals corporal. “Says, ‘Acknowledged Joseph. Relaying and lifting.’”
John Kennedy nodded.
“So they’re coming?” the Air Service officer asked.
“They’re on the way,” Kennedy said.
Captain Shirley Meier of the purple Pith and Vinegar, with Captain Peggey Rowland of the sky-blue Five Speed, had arrived over Dodge City about forty minutes earlier. Challenging them on station had been a Federal, United States Air Force, wing of four large escort-class airships, presumably – Meier had thought – hastily deployed out of Amarillo.
One of them had bolted upon seeing the two Armadillo ships arrive. Meier’s second signalwoman had reported flasher communications between the largest of the Federal airships and that one – ‘Come back, you coward!’
The coward, at least, had lived.
The Pith and Vinegar and the Five Speed had split wide over downtown Dodge as the remaining three Federals had turned to engage.
Cannon chewed back and forth across the four miles of intervening sky. Neither really, among the wind-blown, slightly bobbing, airships, got lucky. Four miles became three. Two and a half. Two.
The Federals came on in a close trio, only a few hundred yards apart. Below them were the Dodge railyards and industrial district – targets of convenience anyway, although the SS would be coming soon enough. Smokestacks reached toward the sky; cracking towers and storage silos.
One and a half miles.
“Turn,” Meier ordered. “And broadside.”
Eight nine-inch missiles blasted across the sky at the Federal formation, which itself was beginning to turn in response, to show a broadside to the mercenaries.
Rowland had thought the same thing. Another broadside followed – twelve six-inch missiles, as Meier knew full well.
Two of them scored hits, one on the nose of a Federal airship, another amidships. Flaming bags were jettisoned into the sky, riggers sprayed foam, ballast was ditched. The airships survived easily. Another bag was jettisoned as a tracer from one of Meier’s pressure-guns went home.
Angling toward one another, the two Armadillos and what remained of the Federal wing had met over industrial Dodge City at the range of a mile and a quarter.
Missile volleys blasted back and forth.
Meier felt her ship hit, didn’t need the rig officer’s report – the falling as burning hydrogen bags were unleashed, the recovery as inert lead bags were correspondly released.
One of the Federal ships began to burn. She fought as she fell, a final ragged volley going out as she descended in flames toward the cracking towers and smokestacks of the Dodge industrial district.
A mile.
Meier could see that she was scoring hits, but the other two weren’t catching fire. Helium birds, then. She’d heard of those – fought one, once, over Chile. You had to expect helium from an Imperial ally.
There were ways to deal with helium.
“Missiles, aim for the cabin,” she directed her weapons officer. “Guns, pound away. They don’t have an indefinite supply.”
The weapons officer looked at his captain as though her brains were granite.
“Duh,” he pointed out. “Our missileers have already figured that out. Aiming for cabin. Is free fire authorized?”
Duh herself. That meant, could each battery fire as soon as they were loaded without waiting for the others.
“Free fire authorized,” Meier said. “Just bring those Federal impediments down.”
“There’s a fight going on!” ten-year-old Ernest Perry exalted from the window of the hotel room. “Those two Armadillos – it’s the real Cordova’s Armadillos, Mother! I can see the purple and blue ones – are attacking the Feds right above us!”
“Get away from the window,” Annabelle Perry ordered. “I told you this before, Ernest! No, Jeremiah! You are not to join him!”
“No, you are not to!” snapped Christine Dorsett, the wife of Thirty-Second Squadron’s commander, Vice-Commodore Jody Dorsett. “Tripp, get away from that window right now!”
They were in a top-floor, executive-grade, hotel room on the edge of Dodge City’s industrial and business districts; some perhaps-foresighted entrepreneur had built a six-storey hotel on the edge of the two neighborhoods.
Some idiot, Annabelle thought – not for the first time – had assigned the higher-ranking Imperial officers’ partners the ‘better’, top-floor rooms of the place. Lieutenants’ partners and children occupied the safer, lower-storey rooms.
Tripp Dorsett moved away from the window. Ernest, being the brat he was, refused to. “Holy crap, Mother! They just scored a hit on the Five Speed! Fires – no, they jettisoned a sac! And one of the Feds is going down! And the other’s turning to – oh, no he just got hit, he’s descending – scored another good hit on the Five Speed as he’s down, now he’s leveled – no, cannon fire is cutting him up! He’s going down!”
“Get away from the window, I said,” Annabelle repeated, moving to physically wrench her son from where he stood exalting.
At the enemy’s victory. Didn’t he realize that the colorful, photogenic Armadillos were working against Imperial interests this time? Were fighting the allies of their father’s Service?
“So we’ve lost,” said Christine from one of the luxury suite’s two king-sized beds. “They own the skies over Dodge now.”
“The Armadillos never lose, Mom,” said Tripp.
“They’re the bad guys,” said Ernest. “They better lose. Or Father will shoot `em to shreds when he’s back!”
“Your father,” the wife of Thirty-Second’s commander said slowly, “might not be coming back.”
A glare from Annabelle kept her from going further. But for a mutter: “I wouldn’t get my hopes up, is all.”
“Dodge City is ours,” came across the flasher from Meier to Rowland, as the last Federal ship crashed flamelessly somewhere amongst the corrals and abbatoirs of the eastern cattle district.
“Shall we begin trashing the place?” Rowland flashed back.
“Shall we?” Meier had replied, as the Pith and Vinegar’s missiles lashed at a petroleum refinery.
Perry relaxed in the command chair of 4-106.
“Preparing lift,” he said into his command mike. “Final check, confirm.”
“XO confirms,” said Martindale. “Checks?”
“Engineering and rigs, fully crewed, sir,” came Lieutenant Vescard’s voice over the bridge loudspeakers. “Boilers hot and check.”
“Weapons, fully manned, sir,” said Lieutenant Swarovski. “All twelve missile batteries. All guns loaded and check.”
“Helm is check,” said Ahle from that station. “But you knew that already, Perry.”
“Communications?”
“Communications are check,” said Nolan, from the station that would have properly belonged to the deceased Sub-Lieutenant Ross. Two specialist-grade enlisteds sat to his right. “Ready as according to your protocol, Mr. Imperial, sir.”
“And it looks like we have ground clearance,” said Ahle.
“Very well,” said Perry. “Lift and turn for Dodge. It’s time for Trotsky’s mercenaries to learn some Imperial discipline.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
One by one, starting in Canada, the capitals of the Imperial colonies - except for India,which had become hopelessly fragmented - re-pledged their allegiance to Parliament, Crown and the Restored Empire.
Retaking the British Isles themselves, expected to be a bitter fight against the populations of the Communes, began in November of 1908 with an unopposed landing in the Hebrides, followed by incursions into North Scotland.
Initial resistance was high and deaths included the commander of one Expeditionary Force, Major-General Douglas Haig, known for his innovative tactics, care for the lives of his men and insistence upon leading them from the front…
From A Young Person’s History of the World, Volume X.
“Commander SS, respond and confirm,” Commodore Jason Cordova’s communications officer flashed the vicinity of where the SS command cars would be. Center of the broad phalnax as it advanced. A small, built-for-speed escort-class ship was already hovering high over the general vicinity; Captain Judd and a couple of Russian agents. He’d met them earlier; the observers.
“Commander SS here,” the command car’s communications officer flashed back.
“Thirty minutes from Dodge; two hours from Hugoton,” said Cordova’s ship. “Let’s do our jobs, shall we?”
“Let’s kill some things,” Himmler responded as they approached Dodge City.
Dodge was burning. Or at least, that was how it appeared to Perry, as 4-106 came in on the industrial cowtown from the west-southwest.
No, not completely burning. Just the northern industrial parts, although the fires were spreading. Somebody – and, with a glance at the bright-purple and sky-blue shapes hovering above what had been an airship park, it wasn’t hard to guess who – had done a proper job on the place. They’d laid waste to the easy targets across the northern industrial district, blowing distillation and cracking plants into red pyres that spewed thick black smoke up into the cloud-laden sky.
They’d gone over the airship park and smashed a dozen freighters, whose captains had been too dumb, faithful or stubborn to flee, into skeletal wreckage. More black smoke roiled into the sky as those ships burned. A couple of other wrecked ships lay – not burning, must have been Federal helium birds – in the south, having crashed among what Perry knew to be a residential district. The flickering remains of another ship had fallen onto some slums abutting the Boot District.
So you killed a few Feds, Perry thought. Big deal. By his understanding, none of the Federal squadron based out of Amarillo was bigger than escort-class. The two enemies were light line-classes, as opposed to 4-106’s little-above-medium size for the type.
And now I’m coming for you, Perry thought. Before you can do any more damage. Before you make another run over whatever might be left of the industrial district. Before you can kill any more innocent people.
His wife and children were somewhere down there, damnit! Although probably in a business district hotel, an area that didn’t look like it had taken much damage. But if the wind changed and the fires spread in that direction…
There were two of the bastards. Blue and Purple. He outweighed them, although not by very much. The Armadillos, Perry thought, were merely legendary.
I, on the other hand, am good.
“Wonder if we can authorize colored kill-marks,” Swarovski said.
“Two down, two more going down,” said Martindale.
“Engage,” said Perry.
“Says they’re Theron Marko with urgent information,” Captain Meier’s communications officer reported as the big line-class drew closer to Meier’s purple Pith and Vinegar. “They request permission to come within loudhailer distance.”
Meier shook her head.
“I know they told us to expect that ship, but that Marko guy’s aboard another one. This guy should have an identification code. Ask them for it.”
“Tell them ‘password’,” Ahle suggested.
“That captain should have coughed it up,” Perry growled. “He was spilling his guts once he realized who Kennedy was.”
“Maybe he didn’t know. He said the dead guy in buckskins was the boss.”
“Any other guesses?” Perry asked the bridge.
“Yo ho ho, sir?” Swarovski suggested.
“Surrender and you might live?” Martindale put in.
“I’m with ‘password’,Vice” said Nolan.
“As long as we keep them talking,” said Perry. “Actually – tell them we’ve got it, but it’s not for flasher communication. It’ll be the first thing we say by voice.”
“Nice try,” said Meier. “Comms two, tell Rowland ‘engage wide’. That thing’s back under Imperial control.”
“Imperial?” asked her helmswoman.
Meier shrugged. “Could be Federal. Maybe another firm. Hostile anyway.”
“Tell `em anything?” the senior comms officer asked.
“Yeah,” said Meier. “My first response.”
“‘Nice try’,” Nolan reported. “And it looks like they’re splitting apart.”
“To engage,” said Martindale.
Right now the two enemy airships were about four miles away, perhaps half a mile apart and a mile up. The wind was behind Perry at about twenty miles per hour, but smoke patterns from the burning city indicated that that might not be a constant. There was a maelstrom down there, and it’d be doing all kinds of things to the air currents.
Splitting was 101-level tactics; maneuver to engage at right angles so that one of your ships would be crossing the enemy’s tail or nose.
There was a 201-level counter to that. Perry had a postgraduate degree.
Ahle was already lifting the ship. She glanced at Perry with one eyebrow raised.
She has at least a bachelor’s herself, Perry remembered. The Sonoran Aerospace Academy was supposed to be pretty good, and she’d had legitimate combat experience before going pirate.
“The purple one,” Perry said.
“Si, capitan.”
As 4-106 steadily rose – you wanted to gain height in an engagement like this, because it was easier to fire down than up – Ahle turned the wheel to starboard, in the direction of the purple Dread Wyvern. With considerably more speed than a 450-yard line-class was supposed to be capable of, she handled the thirty-degree turn.
“Anything more you want said to `em?” Nolan asked.
Inappropriately – a Signals officer wasn’t expected to initiate bridge communication unless reporting an incoming. And there was a console button for that. Speak when you’re spoken to, rose in Perry’s mind.
Not very hard, or harshly. Nolan as a civilian volunteer couldn’t be expected to know Imperial bridge protocols. And besides, there was something.
Annabelle’s somewhere down there, Perry thought. With the children. And Ernest knows flasher codes. Maybe they’re watching.
“Yes. Flash this slowly, understand? Tell them ‘Vice-Commodore Perry sends his regards’. Slowly, as I said.”
“I said to get away from the window!” Annabelle Perry snapped at ten-year-old Ernest.
“Mother! The big ship the pirates stole from Father, it’s definitely hostile to the Armadillos! Looks like she’s moving to fight them.”
“And what if a stray shot lands here?” Annabelle demanded, getting ready to pull her son physically away from the open window he’d planted himself against.
“Mother
– our ship’s flashing them again. Just let me see what he’s saying, please?”
“You have ten seconds to get away from that window,” Annabelle said.
“‘Vice – Commodore – Perry – Sends – His – Regards’, Mother!” Ernest shouted. “It’s Father!”
“It’s Marcus?” Annabelle demanded. And ran to the window herself.
“Vice-Commodore Perry,” said Captain Rowland to her bridge. “That a name we should know?” Vaguely she remembered an intelligence meeting, one of the senior Imperial officers. Supposed to be meticulous, careful and detail-oriented.
“If he’s messing with us,” said the weapons control officer, “we’ll know it from the obituaries tomorrow.”
Rowland brought back her memory of the briefing. For now, she’d assume they were facing a careful guy. Thinking about how best to use that.
“Just some Imperial,” the weapons officer repeated.
“And Imperials don’t deserve respect,” Rowland agreed. Too much like Sonorans in their focus on technology rather than spirit, when sprit was what won fights. “So we won’t send those.”
“Aye,” said Comms.
“But we ought to say something,” Rowland went on. “Condolences, I think. Advance condolences to his family.”
“Cute,” said Perry coldly. Because his family probably were down there, quite likely watching from an upper floor of some hotel when they needed to be in a fireproof basement. Maria was the sensitive kind and probably scared - viscerally he wanted to comfort her; intellectually he knew perfectly well that the appropriate reaction was to destroy the source of the threat.
But Ernest, too curious for his own good, would likely be glued to the window, and Annabelle paralyzed with trying to stop him.