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Page 86
Chapter 86
Peter: “Those who walk in darkness”
By mid-November they were finally ready. The tanks were gassed up, the refueling trucks were topped off, the last rounds of new ammunition loaded, and the crews assembled. There was no ceremony that spies might have observed. They all climbed in and on the vehicles and set out at dawn.
Brutus tried to talk him out of going, of course, but Martinez had overruled him. “I want to see it happen,” he'd told Glock, as he climbed aboard the leading tank. “You can't expect me to set this all up and then just sit back in Dallas waiting for a report.”
Ludlow was on the tank already in his new uniform. Peter had to smile at that. The crossed wrenches on the man's shoulder patches identified him as belonging to the new Corps of Engineers, a cover story they'd agreed upon for the wizard. He was sitting just forward of the turret, cradling in his arms the lie they'd built for him: a metal box covered with gemstones that seems to glow in the early morning sunlight, and enough dials and switches set in the top of it to make it look like some ancient piece of arcane technology.
Some of the men had been a little nervous about being spotted on the move, even in the heavily armored vehicles. They'd been told that Ludlow had found and fixed up an ancient cloaking device that would hide them from observers long enough to get them into striking distance. As far as he knew, they'd believed it. They must have, since no complaints had reached him from the Pope about using a 'demon-trafficking' wizard in his little army. 'Captain Ludlow' had been presented to the troops as a tireless researcher whom they'd had no need to know of, until now.
“Ready when you are, sir,” said Glock.
Peter settled himself with his back against the steel of the turret and look at Brutus. A quote from Shakespeare came to him, from Julius Caesar, written using The Life of Marcus Brutus from Plutarch's Lives. A smile came to his lips. “Cry 'Havoc!',” he said, “and let slip the dogs of war.'”
“Forward!” Brutus called down to the driver, who threw the already-humming motor into gear and the ancient weapon surged forward, treads grinding the dust of the road.
Once the convoy was underway, he thought back to the conversation earlier regarding the Governor's stronghold. Perhaps he should reconsider his decision to spare the old skyscraper. Did he have enough men to mount a thorough sweep of all the floors and rooms in so massive a structure? He could do no less, he knew, because even a small force hidden on one of the floors could undermine his establishing a regional overseer. It would never do to have gone to all this trouble only to have the building, once it was under new management, fall to assault from within.
The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that his original idea was the better one. Bringing down Kristana's symbol of power and authority would go a long way toward convincing the citizens of Rado that they belonged to the Lone Star Empire now. Surely there were plenty of other abandoned buildings in downtown Denver. It would be far easier for his mis soldiers to empty one of any squatters than to root our determined fighters in the Governor's fortress.
His breath fogged in the chilly morning air. winter was here. Doubtless it was even colder in Denver. Would there be any problems operating their vehicles in the colder air there? He recalled his chief engineer shaking his head. These ancient engines, according to what the man had read in the old manuals, could operate almost anywhere on the planet. The only significant difference between Abilene and Denver, he'd been told, was the elevation. In Denver, the air would be a little thinner, which could affect the fuel-air mixture exploding in then cylinders that drove these eldritch machines. But according to the manuals the ancient designers had planned for even such situations as this. The mechanisms in the engines were built to compensate automatically for differences in air pressure to ensure that there was enough oxygen in the mixture the cylinders received. That is, provided those systems still worked.
He was second-guessing himself, he knew, but it was hard not to keep going over the plan of attack in his mind, looking for things that could go wrong. One real problem was the inability to bring as many troops as he would have liked. Without stationing groups of fresh mounts, there was no way mounted men and their horses could hope to keep up with the motor-driven vehicles. That would have been too hard to hide from spies, and would have cost him the element of surprise.
He could, of course, had ordered that they move at a more sedate pace, to allow the cavalry to keep up without exhausting the animals. But that would have slowed his invasion to a crawl. What was the point of having tanks that could sweep northward at upwards of fifty miles per hour, if he held them to a mere five so that horses could trot alongside mile after mile? And moving that slowly would, itself, have cost him the element of surprise.
Denver was, by the old maps, over seven hundred miles away. At a mere five miles per hour that would have taken him 140 hours – nearly a week! At their current speed, however, they would be there in lest than a day. Perhaps a little more, if they had to refuel en route. He grinned to himself, envisioning Kristana's astonishment when his forces just appeared outside her door.
That reminded him. He leaned over to Ludlow, who was still cradling his piece of make-believe equipment. “Are you going to be able to hold the invisibility shield all the way to Denver?” He knew he had asked this question before, but now that they were on their way, he couldn't stop wondering about that.
Ludlow peered at him from beneath his Stetson, still looking uncomfortable in the blue-and red uniform they'd provided him with. “Not if I fall asleep for too long. I've been practicing, and the spell should hold for up to an hour or two, but no more, before it will need refreshing. I'll need to rest sometime, but I guess I'll have to do that in short naps rather than a decent night's sleep.”
The drivers would have the same problem, but whereas they'd set up a rotation to ensure someone rested was always at the wheel while other snoozed (or as well as they could given the noise and vibration of the motors), there was no one to relieve Ludlow at his post as the maintainer of their invisibility. He'd just have to catnap as best he could until this was over.
They continued on. In a few minutes they'd be turning from the old 84 W onto 87 N, which would take the most of the way until they joined what was left of 25 N just below the border of Rado. A couple of his advisers had wondered whether the weight of the tanks bearing down on the road surface with metal treads would do irreparable damage to the ancient surfaces. But other advisers had disagreed. According to their research, older and smaller roads would have suffered, but the main highways had been resurfaced with composite materials that could easily handle the loads involved. You could even tell the difference by sight, they had argued. The older, smaller roads had faded to light gray and succumbed to innumerable cracks and potholes from subsidence of the underlying ground, they maintained, whereas the more modern roads were still a uniform dark gray and had held up might better than the simple asphalt-and-grit surfaces they had replaced. Apparently the newer roads had cost more but were built to last.
Peter studied the road ahead of them and saw the yea-sayers had been right. The road was dark and smooth. Only the occasional crack betrayed its antiquity. He was glad he had listened to the second group of advisers and not the worriers. Sure, he could have directed the convoy to drive on the shoulder of the road . . . but they would have kicked up a lot of dust, and that would have attracted the attention of observers even if 'Captain' Ludlow's magicking was successful in blocking sight and sound of the actual vehicles.
So far, everything was going according to plan. Part of him was not happy with the idea of using a wizard. Not because of the Church; he wasn't worried about so-called demons. It was, rather, the inconsistency in policy that Ludlow's presence implied.
Hell, if he was going to worry about that, all he had to do was remember where his fuel came from. Here he was trying to build a new civilization without magic, without the “Gifts” of the Tourists . . . but to do that he was using fuel sucked ou
t of the ground with swizzles and cooked with everflames.
He wasn't troubled by it. The old quote from Emerson came to him: “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” We deal with such wise inconsistencies all the time, he thought. We know fire is deadly. It destroys forests, eats houses and roasts the incautious. But we heat our homes with it and survive the winter.
So too with magic. I won't have a civilization based on it, but when there is no other way, not in the short term, I'll use whatever works.
Speaking of magic, that wizard of Kristana's would undoubtedly be at the battle. Should he be worried about that? He might be pulling the same invisibility trick. But my invisible tanks beat your invisible horses or archers, he thought.
He was actually more worried about the wizard or his apprentice escaping. Or Ludlow! He glanced at the man beside him out of the corner of his eye. The thought of someone who could walk up to you unseen, with a knife or even a big stick, was enough to make his skin crawl. Kristana's wizards had to die, and he was going to have to dispose with Ludlow himself soon. Just how soon was a tricky decision. If Ludlow thought it was going to happen soon he might try to slip away in the confusion of a battle.