Perdition

by Scott McKay

  “Whoa,” said Bill. “If he’s got the Blue Pox, then…”

  “Holy tuna,” whistled Ted. “We just watched him screw two hundred people and he probably infected every one of ‘em. And then they all went off and screwed somebody else.”

  “Ohhhh, shit,” Bill said. “Should we be here?”

  “Yeah,” said Butch. “Definitely yeah. We’re going to make a report about this to the Army, or the OSW, or somebody. This is gonna be disgusting, but we’re exactly where we need to be.”

  …

  SEVENTEEN

  Turnerston, Tenthmonth Sixteenth, 1843rd Year Supernal

  The morning mission, which had been the third of the First Airfighter Squadron, had been the best yet. Not that Mark had recovered much confidence that they were making a difference in what was about to happen to Trenory.

  They were hitting the three columns of Udar advancing on the city, and while they were undoubtedly learning how best to inflict casualties on the enemy, it was simply a numbers problem. They’d kill several hundred Udar every time they’d head out, but that was barely a scratch against the mass of soldiers, warriors and horsemen rapidly closing in on Trenory.

  With hundreds of planes and crews, they could make a difference. But they would have neither for the foreseeable future.

  That said, new pilots and navigators, fresh from very basic training at Thorne Technology Group’s proving grounds just east of Alvedorne, were streaming to Carmody Farm. There were three standing around in the farmhouse after the first mission two days ago, and two more yesterday, and as Mark taxied his plane from the hilly runway up to the barn, he could see four people waiting outside who weren’t part of the air base’s duty roster.

  One of them was clearly not a trainee pilot, though. Mark recognized him, and the first smile he could remember having in the past couple of weeks broke across his face.

  As he climbed out of Abigail’s cockpit Mark gave a wave before hopping down to the grassy turf in front of the barn. “Sam! Good to see you,” he said.

  “Captain Bradbury,” Samuel Thorne said with a nod, before advancing to shake his hand. “I came down because I wanted to see how the great adventure was going. Congratulations on the promotion, by the way.”

  Mark had found out about his bump in rank the previous day. Cross had given him the good news over the teletext. It was a reward, he said, for the outstanding bravery and tenacity Mark and his pilots had shown. Several of the others also were being promoted.

  “Well,” Mark said, “we’re learning some expensive lessons. And we’re not winning yet.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard,” Thorne said. “We’ve got some equipment with us we think might help make your lives easier, but if you’ve got time, what we really need is feedback on the hardware and how it’s working.”

  “That’ll take a while,” Mark said, “and we’re supposed to head back out for another run at the Udar after our guys have had a chance to eat some lunch and get the planes refueled and reloaded with ammunition.”

  “I understand,” Samuel said, “which is why we’ll be here overnight.”

  He then introduced Mark to a pair of engineers from Thorne Tech, Rodney Cherry and William Dale, and another man.

  “This is Marcus Reeves,” Samuel said. “The engine in your planes is his design.”

  “Yours is the best piece of the plane,” Mark said, shaking his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Thanks,” Reeves said, “but it sounds like you had some trouble that almost cost you an air crew a couple of days ago.”

  “You’re going to want to talk to Adam and Steven,” Mark said. “It was their plane which had the engine trouble. I will say this, though. These monsters do have power to them, and for the most part we’re happy with how they fly.”

  “Thanks,” Reeves said. “That feels pretty good given the fact we’ve had very little frame of reference for how heavier-than-air flight is supposed to work.”

  They watched as six other planes taxied up to the barn, and then Mark introduced the pilots and seconds to Samuel and the engineers as the ground crews came out to survey the nicks, cuts, bumps and bruises the morning’s strafing and bombing runs inflicted on the First Airfighter Squadron’s planes.

  They made their way into the farmhouse and into the dining room, while twenty-four men sat down for a lunch of sandwiches and beer. The number included the fourteen who’d taken part in the morning mission, the four reserve pilots and seconds who would rotate into the afternoon mission, Samuel and his three engineers, and two others from the base’s operations team.

  There was a podium set up on the far side of the dining room, and after scarfing down a quick meal, Mark took to it.

  “I’m not going to make too much of this,” he said, “because we’re on a tight schedule as everybody knows, but today we have some visitors whom you guys will find pretty significant. With us is Samuel Thorne, whose company built our little airfighter squadron.”

  He then turned the podium over to Thorne, who picked up a small round of applause as he stepped to the front of the room.

  “Fellas,” Thorne said, “I can’t express to you the level of gratitude the folks at Thorne Tech, and really the whole country, have for what you’re doing here. You’re almost literally the tip of the spear, and you’re doing something nobody in the history of man has done. We’re giving you experimental equipment we’re still learning how to produce, and we’re asking you to take your lives into your hands a couple of times a day in those machines up against incredible odds. Your bravery is mind-blowing.”

  The men gave knocks on the table in appreciation for his words.

  “I’m here with three engineers who have helped build the planes you’re flying. Marcus Reeves was the designer of the engine, while Rodney Cherry built the flaps and ailerons and steering systems, and William Dale did the guns and bomb-drop assembly. What we want is to get feedback from you that we can use in making your lives a little easier.”

  “Where are we on the wheel assembly?” asked Thornton Cray, the pilot of Daisy. “That’s the single biggest issue we run into. Wheels can’t seem to hold the stress of the landing, and we break them all the time. We’ve been trying to jury-rig fixes to it, but weight is an issue.”

  “We’ve heard about that,” Cherry said, “and we have an idea on how to address it. But it involves building the landing gear into the superstructure of the plane rather than just screwing an assembly into the bottom of the skeleton of the fuselage. The short answer is not yet, at least while you’re using the Model 1-A.”

  “Should we take that to mean you have a second model you can give us soon?” asked Adam.

  “It’s definitely coming,” Samuel said. “But it isn’t ready to put into action yet.”

  “We need to talk about guns,” Mark said. The pilots and navigators murmured their agreement. “There are two problems we would want to address. First, we all think they’re mounted a bit too far down the wings to get off shots with the kind of accuracy we’d hope for. I don’t know if that’s possible without shooting the propeller.

  “The second problem is the interface with the guns, because none of us have three hands. One hand holds the control stick, and that means we can only depress the lever on one gun at a time. How that works is we’ll shoot the gun on the right wing until it’s empty, then switch to the left.”

  “Would one larger gun with a much bigger ammo load, mounted on the fuselage, work better?” Dale asked. All the crewmen nodded heartily.

  “Can that be done, though?” Cousins asked.

  “The key is the timing between the firing of the chain gun and the interval of the propeller,” Dale said. “If you master that, then yes, it can be done.”

  “You’re talking about firing the chain gun through the propeller,” Mark said. “That’s what we’re talking about?”

  “Correct,” Dale said. “The technology is gun synchronization, and we’re developing it back in Alvedorne. It
’s coming along. When we do get it perfected, you’ll see it in a future design.”

  For a few minutes more, the pilots and navigators peppered the engineers with questions and observations about the planes, and then Mark took Samuel into his office, which had been the master bedroom of the farmhouse. Mark had a foldaway cot leaning in a corner to sleep on when he could.

  “So how are we doing?” Samuel said. “Don’t hold anything back.”

  “Honestly?” Mark said. “We’re almost a waste of time. We’d be better off lining up artillery pieces and just shooting rounds at the Udar for all the good we do.”

  “Bombing doesn’t work?”

  “All of it works,” Mark said. “But there isn’t enough of it. We’re flying for thirty minutes before we’re even over Trenory, and then we’re over the enemy for maybe fifteen minutes tops before we’ve emptied the guns and dropped a couple of small bombs that don’t affect the enemy much, then we’re thirty minutes back to the base.”

  “How do the Udar react?” Samuel asked.

  “They keep coming, Sam.”

  “Well, we’re just not there yet. Someday soon it’ll be dozens or hundreds of aircraft on a mission and the enemy won’t keep coming.”

  “I hope I’m around to see that,” Mark said. “I can believe it’ll happen. But this…well, we’re doing our best and it’s just not enough.”

  “Trenory isn’t going to make it.”

  “No,” Mark said. “It’s lost. They’re evacuating most of the people, and we’re going to hire a lot of the ones who make it this way to build up the base. But the enemy is just too many.”

  “We’ll take it back then,” Samuel said.

  “We need bigger planes, bigger bombs, more planes, more pilots, more speed, more altitude,” Mark said. “Even so, we can’t win this from the air. It’s still going to be a ground battle.”

  “Look, what we’re here for is to get you equipment,” Samuel said. “I’m not Air Force or Army or anything. I’m not even a war contractor, at least not yet. I’m a donor, and that’s it.”

  “You’re more than that.”

  “Whatever,” Samuel said. “What I can tell you is things are going to change, and they’re going to change soon. You have better planes coming, and we didn’t come empty-handed today.”

  “Meaning what?” Mark asked.

  “Meaning we may have solved your communications problem,” Samuel said. “Come see.”

  They adjourned from the farmhouse to the barn, where the ground crews were running an assembly line mounting metal boxes to the instrument panel of the second cockpit.

  “What’s that?” Mark said.

  “Put this on,” Samuel said, giving him a futuristic-looking helmet with a glass visor and a copper dome. Mark did, and Samuel donned a similar one. He produced two wires, plugging both into a box mounted to Abigail’s second cockpit panel, then plugged them into his helmet and then Mark’s. One of the engineers turned the plane’s engine and flipped a lever on the box. It got very loud in the barn with the engine firing, and Mark didn’t expect he’d hear much.

  “Okay,” he shouted, not expecting an answer, “so what?”

  “So this is going to help the communications problem, like I said,” Samuel told him in a calm voice.

  “Wow!” Mark said. “I can actually hear you.”

  “It’s better than that,” Samuel said. He motioned to one of the engineers, who donned a helmet and plugged a wire into a box on Paulina, whose engine they’d also cranked. “Wally,” he said. “How am I coming in?”

  “Loud and clear,” the engineer said.

  “So this system means we can all talk to each other?” Mark asked.

  “And to the base,” Samuel said.

  “Well, that is impressive,” he said. “And damned useful.”

  “As I said,” Samuel chirped, “I didn’t come empty-handed.”

  “What do you call this gadget?” Mark asked.

  “It’s an electrocommunications transmitter,” Wally the engineer responded.

  “That’s a mouthful,” said Mark.

  “ECT for short,” Wally said. “Unless you’ve got a better idea.”

  “Yeah,” Mark said. “I do. Call it ‘Ecter.’ That, we can all remember.”

  “Ecter, huh?” said Samuel. “That catches on and when the war’s over we’ll have to hire you in the marketing department.”

  The pilots started making their way into the barn for the afternoon mission, which would be to hit the main Udar column again. The Thorne Tech engineers educated them, one by one, on how the new communications machines worked, and the reaction was a positive one.

  And then, patched up, refueled and reloaded with ordnance, the seven planes of the First Airfighter Squadron taxied back to the hillside runway and took to the air on their way south.

  As they reached Trenory, flying more or less over the Tweade, Mark noted that the Udar had begun setting up a camp on the east side of the big river opposite the Ardenian Twenty-Fourth Infantry, which had taken up positions in the buildings and wharves along the west side of the river. The Twenty-Fourth was firing artillery across the river, attempting to disrupt the Udar formation.

  “We ought to join in,” Mark said into the ecter microphone in his new helmet. “Form up in a staggered column behind me and let’s head down there.” He banked left and headed straight for the Udar, the chain gun on his right wing blazing away.

  “Two, aye,” came the response from Adam. “Going in.”

  “Three, aye.” Then “four, aye.”

  “Five, going in.”

  “Six, aye.”

  “Seven, bringin’ up the rear.”

  As Mark reached the three-hundred-foot flight deck established for strafing runs, he noted he and the group were being fired upon by rifles, and lots of them. “Look out, boys. It’s hairy down here,” he said, as two bullets ripped through the canvas of the left wing.

  “Dammit!” he heard Cousins say behind him.

  “What happened, Brant?” Mark said.

  “Ahhhh, I just got hit,” Cousins said.

  “Bad?”

  “Right leg,” he groused. “Just below the knee. Bullet came up through the fuselage.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Mark said. “Can you wrap your scarf as a tourniquet?”

  “I’ll try,” said Cousins. “Lord-dammit, this hurts.”

  “How’s the bleeding?” Mark asked. He was getting concerned his navigator could be in some serious trouble.

  “Not real good, Major. I’m not gonna lie.”

  It was time to break off, or he was going to lose his second. “One to squadron,” he said over the ecter, “I’ve got a man hit here, and I need to high-tail it back to base to get him some medical attention. I’m going to leave Two in command, and I’ll see you all back at the Farm.”

  “Aye, One,” said Adam. “We’ll get some payback for you.”

  Mark climbed to a thousand feet as he passed over a column of mounted Udar, and then pushed the control stick forward to start a descent. The Udar were concentrating fire on Abigail, but it didn’t stop him from releasing a barrel-bomb into their midst. He banked left away from the explosion, and then made a beeline north for home.

  It was a thirty-minute ride, and he kept up a conversation with Cousins the whole way. The copilot was beginning to show signs of blood loss in his utterances; it was clear he was going into shock, and he wasn’t making much sense. Ten minutes out, Mark picked up the Farm on the ecter, and called ahead for medical assistance to await their arrival.

  He made a fast taxi from the hillside runway to the barn, and Abigail rolled right up to the stretcher a pair of the ground crew had readied for Cousins. They scrambled to the second cockpit and dragged him out. Mark didn’t like what he saw when they unbuckled his helmet. Cousins had turned quite pale.

  He jumped down from Abigail and ran with the stretcher-bearers carrying his second into the hospital tent they’d set up next to
the farmhouse. Samuel, who was still at Carmody Farm, ran out to meet them.

  “Is he going to be alright?” Samuel asked Mark.

  “I don’t know,” came a worried response.

  Inside the hospital tent, Dr. Elisa Getty, the First’s flight surgeon on loan from Alvedorne Medical Center, and one of the best trauma surgeons in western Ardenia, was ready for Cousins as they dumped him onto an operating table. Dr. Getty began cutting away his trousers to get a look at his wound.

  “Bullet’s still in there,” she said. “It might be lodged in the femur.”

  “Do you need us?” said Samuel, looking Mark over and seeing abject terror on his face.

  She looked up. “No,” she said. “Get out of here. I’ll let you know as soon as I have some information for you.”

  “Come on, Mark,” Samuel said. “Let’s go. He’ll be fine.”

  Saying nothing, Mark allowed Samuel to drag him out of the hospital tent. The look of terror never left his face.

  Samuel led Mark to the front steps of the farmhouse, where a cooler was filled with fresh ice and bottles of beer. He gave one to the pilot, who took a hearty swig.

  “Are you going to be okay, Mark?” Samuel asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Brantley might not make it.”

  “Nah,” Samuel said. “He’s going to be fine. He’s in the best of hands. You’ll see.”

  Mark looked at Samuel. “He might not walk again.”

  “He’s going to be okay, Mark. I just know it.”

  Mark took another swig. Then he looked to the south. “The Udar crossed the Tweade downriver from Trenory. They’re on the east bank setting up positions on the other side of the river from the Twenty-Fourth. Looks like there’s a hundred thousand of them at least.”

  “That isn’t good.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Mark said. “They’re on our side of the river less than fifty miles away, and they’re mounted. There is nothing between them and us but level ground, Sam.”

  “There’s you guys. You’ll give ‘em hell from the air.”