Shadows of Annihilation

by S. M. Stirling

  “We didn’t get one of these assault rifles, or even identifiable bits of it, just the cases, ma’am,” Henrietta pointed out. “I think we better assume that if there were Germans there, and not just weapons they’re supplyin’ to the bandits, one of them got away, carrying it.”

  Julie sighed again. “Or it could be a Mexican with an assault rifle carrying it away, but you’re right, Henrietta, we should assume the worst. We do know they land agents and weapons, occasionally. Too much coast to prevent calls from U-boats if they only surface after dark, and some of their new cargo-resupply models can carry quite a lot, multiple tons.”

  “We . . . may have a handle on that soon,” Ciara said. She glanced at Luz, and went on after a slight sideways flick of her index finger: “A method of detecting ships at night and at great distances. It hasn’t been widely deployed yet, but it will be soon.”

  A quick nod convinced Luz that Julie had been briefed about the American version of the Telemobiloscope, but that wasn’t directly relevant.

  “The survivors ran and ran fast,” Luz judged.

  “Right. Whoever it was were probably moving through; we haven’t had any actual attacks near there for over a year,” Julie said.

  “That’s what we hope,” Henrietta said stubbornly. “The Rangers say that-there was just too rocky to be sure, but they think there were some who lived. And there were the mules and supplies, that means a lot of mouths, I’d say. Twice the count of bodies, the stepped-on count, maybe more.”

  She had an educated woman’s vocabulary and grammar in both languages and a moderately strong low-country southern accent, which was something Luz had always found rather pleasing. But from hints on her vowels and diphthongs Luz thought that she’d grown up around someone . . . perhaps a grandmother . . . who spoke Gullah dialect. In Spanish she was slow and careful, and the accent was stronger, but it was very creditable and showed a quick learner. She switched back to English for:

  “Wishin’ don’t make it so, Lord knows. Not with that, ma’am, not with anythin’.”

  Julie sighed. “You have a point, Henrietta. And evidently someone was feeding them, whether they are actual Germans or just the recipients of their damned U-boat-born largesse. We can’t have that.”

  To Luz she went on: “The Rangers are looking for tracks, though it’s nightmare country, all up and down, not much surface water and a lot of cliffs and bare rock. And I’m pushing my sources in the area. I turned a couple of PNR types early this year, a warehouse manager and a barber in Jerez . . .”

  “Ah, good,” Luz said.

  A barbershop was a perfect cover for clandestine work, as good as a cantina or pulqueria; people came and went, and hung around to gossip. Ordinary shops weren’t quite as good, but a warehouse did give you the chance to move goods around and make deliveries and have people working and visiting at all hours.

  “Right, I’m using them as ant-lion traps, but very carefully to stretch out the time before they’re detected. I don’t think either has been blown on yet. I’ll drop in on our ranch—lay on a dinner party for the new divisional commander, say, I was going to do that eventually anyway—and on the way make contact and in a just sort of mildly, more-in-sorrow-than-anger way ask why they didn’t tell me about someone smuggling food to holdouts in the Sierra. That’ll sweat them into finding out even if they don’t know, because they really, really don’t want to be identified as working for us.”

  “That’s good craft,” Luz said approvingly.

  When you were running hostile informants controlled by threats—blackmail, for instance—appearing to already know everything was demoralizingly effective. And Julie’s sources would be suspended between the entirely realistic horror of what their former friends would do to them if they found out they’d been turned and an equally rational terror of the Chamber, so they’d be doubly zealous to keep Julie’s protection. She’d probably promised them and their families comfortable new identities somewhere up north eventually, which they would really get . . . eventually . . . if they survived long enough. The Black Chamber always honored that sort of promise, just as they always carried out their threats; it was policy to be as remorseless as a machine about both.

  “I’d send a surveillance airship to work with the Rangers if I could pry one loose from the Navy, and the Ranger battalion commander concurs,” Julie added a little wistfully. “Strongly concurs. Two would be ideal. Fat chance, as they say. Antisubmarine work has priority over internal security, since we already had things well in hand here before the declaration of war. We only have the Falcons because they’re not useful for anything but shooting down other aeroplanes or attacking ground targets.”

  “Are there airship support facilities at the Jerez Air Corps base?” Luz said, drawing maps in her head.

  “Just the basics, a docking tower and an electrolysis setup for lifting-gas, and patches for the cells. Fuel and engine maintenance and general repair are the same as for heavier-than-air. No sheds closer than the American National Airways fields in Mexico City, though.”

  Airship sheds were enormous, and would be costly enough even for the smaller semirigids that Air Corps bases wouldn’t have them without regular need.

  “The basics are good enough. I’ve got a code you can send to the Director and he’ll get two of the latest Constitution-class patrol semirigids sent up from Tampico and you’ll get them muy pronto.”

  Both Henrietta and Julie reacted to the promise; the Negro woman’s eyes went a little wider, while the more experienced station chief merely blinked. Luz had just revealed that her tasking’s priority was high enough to let her simply skip all the usual channels, forms, requests, and interservice bun-fighting. Authority like that came only from the very top.

  The very top; even Director Wilkie couldn’t override the admirals just on his say-so, not that fast.

  Luz went on: “You’d better see that the Army puts observer teams from the Rangers on the airboats. The Constitutions can stay up a hundred hours at a time, longer if they drift occasionally with their engines off.”

  The local Chamber operatives looked puzzled, and Ciara explained:

  “They have onboard pneumatic starters so they don’t need to be spun up by ground crews.”

  “Ah! Silence is golden,” Julie said with a broadly delighted predatory smile, immediately picking up on the implications.

  Heavier-than-air craft had to loudly advertise their coming, and guerillas all knew to dive for cover at the first sound of engines. If an airship could restart its engines at will, it could get upwind of the area it wanted to cover and then go free-ballooning across it without letting anyone know it was around, like an aircraft gliding . . . except that it stayed up by inherent lift, not aerodynamics. A quiet approach would be much more likely to catch targets on the ground unawares.

  Luz nodded. “And they’re steady enough to use high-powered telescopes. But the crews are used to looking for periscopes and snort-tubes from submerged U-boats, not naughty little boys leaping and gamboling through the woods where they shouldn’t. And check the communications. I wouldn’t put it past the Navy to have different wireless frequencies just so they don’t have to lower themselves socially by actually talking to grubby uncouth nouveau riche soldiers standing on dry dirty dirt.”

  “What about muddy dirt?” Henrietta asked, and Ciara chortled.

  “Mud? That’s why they have Marines,” Luz said . . . dryly.

  “In the Navy, they think soldiers on dry land evolve into Marines wading in mud, and Marines evolve into fully aquatic sailors . . . which is to say, into human beings. It’s the Annapolis version of Darwinism,” Luz said.

  The two younger Chamber members laughed, but Julie only smiled wryly.

  “You’d be surprised how close that is to reality, youngsters!” she said.

  Luz went on: “You won’t need me to put the brute on the captains of
the semirigids, they’ll be fully briefed on priorities before they get here.”

  Julie’s eyebrows went up. “Many thanks, Luz! The Navy hates risking them where there might be a combination of thunderstorms and sharp pointy mountains, especially in high country like this.”

  “War is risky,” Luz said. “Things wear out and break and people die.”

  Henrietta was making notes on a pad. Luz added: “And Miss Colmer, add that we’ve positively identified recent German equipment in conjunction with a bandit incident here; give the date on that just to be specific. It’ll be in the situation reports at HQ and the usual incident reports circulated down here, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure the right eyes back home run over it.”

  Julie leaned over to check what her secretary had written, made an approving cluck, and pushed it over to Luz to have the appropriate one-day code appended from the list in her head. A trained memory was indispensable for spies and, to the limited extent there was a difference, to the secret police.

  “I’ll get this encrypted for the eleven-hundred return to HQ,” Colmer said; she’d do that and burn the original before she left the room, that went without saying. “If the orders are cut fast, we should have the airships within . . . oh, two days if we’re lucky, three if we’re not, dependin’ on their readiness rate and how long it takes the Navy to reschedule things. I’ll alert the Air Corps to expect them too, of course.”

  I thought she was bright, Luz thought. And bold, not afraid to argue with Julie. That’s a very good estimate, both on distance and the time it’ll take the wheels to grind, considering how new to all this she is; not many secretaries would have picked up the background this quickly. Julie should see about getting her transferred to the Operations Section if she wants it—there are circumstances where someone with her looks could be very useful, though she’d need a mentor to look after her. Really good clerical work is valuable too, but it might be a bit selfish to keep her just for that.

  “That ought to make life an ordeal for some deserving candidates,” Julie said with satisfaction, blotting up the last of her asado de boda with a tortilla. “I can feel their pain . . . and that feels so very, very good.”

  “The airships and the Rangers between them should take care of this incident in the mountains,” Luz agreed. “I’d like to go over and do some interviews in a few days when they’ve had a chance to comb the Sierra and possibly make more contact. Interviews with the Ranger officer and with the pilots, for starters.”

  “We can combine it with introducing you to the new garrison commander and his intelligence chief at my little soiree. Plausible cover all ’round. And nobody local is going to spot you at the air base, probably.”

  Luz nodded. “Good thought, thanks. I’ll hunt around to get more of a feel for the situation here in the interim. A prisoner we could sweat would be ideal, of course, but . . .”

  The reputation of the Bugkalot and their cousins was usually a considerable asset to the Protectorate government, but it did make people very reluctant to surrender to them. Though the rumors about ripping out the livers of prisoners and eating them before their eyes were, as far as she knew, grossly exaggerated.

  Or at least somewhat exaggerated.

  “The security for the Dakota Project is supposed to be impenetrable, but—”

  “. . . but the Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable and we all remember how that went,” Julie said to complete the sentence.

  FIVE

  Sierra de Cardos

  State of Zacatecas

  United States Protectorate of México

  JUNE 18TH, 1917, 1917(B)

  Pablo may be hasty, but he’s determined enough for two, Horst thought.

  Pablo was breathing through his mouth as silently as he could while they moved in single file through what passed for dense forest here, moderate stands of a pine called ocote averaging about eighty feet high filling the air with the spicy-sweet scent of their sap, and with the soft warm sough of the breeze through their branches and needles. It was beautiful upland country if you viewed it objectively, steep blue slopes fading into the distance all around, interrupted by streaks of bare cliff that were often pink . . . and though objectivity was rather hard when you were being hunted and were half-starved, Horst still tried. Not least, it gave him something to think about besides the hunger; the cargo those mules had brought had been badly needed and they’d left it behind at high speed three days ago.

  He was impressed with Pablo’s willpower; the nose had to be hurting badly under the improvised splint, and it was still too swollen and full of blood clots to pass much air, but the Mexican hadn’t let it slow him down. The path beneath them was narrow, winding across the steep hillside with that exact attention to the slope that only careful surveying or the instincts of wild animals could produce. He was also impressed by the Mexican’s endurance in this thin air and up-and-down landscape, which had Horst’s lungs and legs aching a little even now. The four of them had been moving over rough country since dawn, with nothing but a few stale tortillas and some pine nuts, though at least they had plenty of good water.

  His own belly growled, and it was getting harder not to daydream about things like Schlesisches Himmelreich, a particular favorite of his that his family always had on his birthdays as a boy—smoked pork belly cooked slowly with dried pears, plums, and apples, spiced with cinnamon and served with sour red cabbage and bread dumplings. Horst swallowed the rush of spit at the memory and was about to suggest that they stop to wait out the hottest part of the day and eat some of their meager hoard. It would be the same vile mess, since they’d been too hard-pressed to stop for much hunting or foraging, but as the old soldiers’ saying went:

  Altes Brot ist nicht hart. Kein Brot, das ist hart.

  Old bread isn’t hard. No bread, that is hard.

  Pablo’s head came up as Horst drew breath to speak. The guerilla knocked back his sombrero with the back of one wrist and looked up, sweat running down his brown face and making his mustache limp. The other ex-muleteer—he went by Chango, evidently something to do with his ears, which were juglike—nearly ran up on his heels.

  Horst and Röhm silently went to one knee on either side of the trail; Horst lowered the rolled blanket that carried his camping gear and share of the food to the ground and carefully switched off the safety of his rifle. He was still carrying the R-13; he preferred it, and had passed on the second assault rifle to Pablo. That had been a case of love at first sight, and had slightly decreased the Mexican’s hostility to Horst.

  Chango started to complain, and Pablo silenced him with a thick hissed:

  “Bájate, simplón!”

  Which meant Take cover, fool! and had Horst’s entire approval.

  They all waited, while birds chirped and warbled and insects buzzed . . . and sometimes stung as they went after the salt-rich water of the humans’ sweat. Pablo’s injured face twisted in frustration, ignoring the pain the expression must cost him to pay attention to instincts that had kept him alive through years at the focus of a clever, unceasing, and utterly merciless hunt.

  “There is something wrong,” he said softly. “I thought I heard engines, very faint and then a very little bit louder, but now there aren’t any. I do not know what’s wrong, but they should have been getting fainter before I lost them.”

  Just then Röhm’s face turned westward, toward the narrow cleft in the mountain wall they were heading for, and he swore . . . also softly. The others all followed his eyes. A finned orca shape was drifting forward there, just clearing the pass and then rapidly gaining altitude by virtue of the way the ground dropped steeply away beneath it to the east. The airship was a hundred meters long . . . a hundred American yards, or near enough . . . and a quarter that at its broadest point, and a few minutes put it nearly at a level with their position high on the mountainside. The long aluminum-and-glass gondola slung below was a third o
f the length, suspended from the interior bracing keel that gave semirigids their name, and it had a ball turret at each end with twin machine-guns.

  Horst knew the type well, since the German Navy had outright copied it—both sides had been doing that with various gadgets since the war started or even before—and it should have been accompanied by a continuous racking snarl from the two big radial engines that stuck out from the gondola on stubby winglike projections on either side. They were silent, and the very modern three-bladed aluminum propellers—most aircraft still used wooden ones—were visible and motionless.

  “It must have been disabled,” Röhm said quietly in German. “Yankees put off fixing things.”

  Horst grunted; that didn’t feel right, and it was too much of a coincidence for it to be right over their heads. Americans were sloppy at maintenance by his meticulous Prussian standards, but you had to admit they were good with machinery in their own way. Yet what other explanation could there be? Aircraft engines were started by spinning the propeller, and that had to be done by hand or by truck-mounted engines before takeoff, very much like cranking an auto.

  Except for the very largest airships, von Dückler, you dumb-head! Horst told himself, mentally slapping his own skull. And more autos have self-starters all the time, and the principle is the same!

  The newest, biggest zeppelins were much larger than the one he was looking at; three times as long as this semirigid, truss-framed goliaths with up to ten engines each. They could stop and start their own engines using compressed-air motors, and some could bring them inboard for repairs. There was no reason the starter mechanism couldn’t be built small enough for lesser craft.

  Don’t expect things to stay the same in fields that didn’t even exist when you were a youngster! Keep up with the pace of change or die!

  He unslung his R-13 and slowly brought it to his shoulder, resting the forestock in the crutch of a twisted pine and holding his left hand to shadow the end of the telescopic sight so that there would be no chance of a reflected flash of light from the lens to catch the eye of the crew of the airship. The semirigid sprang closer. It was mostly painted in a light blue-gray so it wouldn’t stand out from the sky to a surface observer at sea; for the rest it bore U.S. Navy markings, a white five-pointed star on the tail fins and an identification number, ZNMP-22.