Men of War

by William R. Forstchen

  They passed the airfield on their left and a quarter mile in from the coast, Jack looking over at it, then at the ocean below.

  “Bit tricky, crosswind coming off the sea, about ten knots or so. Keep both your hands on the throttles. Remember the two to the left are for port engines, the two on the right for the starboard. It takes several seconds for them actually to change anything, so be damn quick.”

  Hans shifted uncomfortably, doing as ordered. Jack started into a shallow banking turn to port, altitude still dropping. As they got halfway through Hans looked up through the topside windows, which were now angled down toward the horizon, and saw the other aerosteamers bobbing along like moths, following in a ragged line stretching ba£kT half a dozen miles or more.

  Jack gradually started to straighten out, having drifted past the airfield, turning slightly to port to compensate for the crosswind. Hundreds of antlike figures ran about along either side of the field—the ground crews. It was going to be a tricky balancing act.

  They had started out heavy, but after close to fifteen hours of flying they had burned off hundreds of gallons of fuel. They could have dumped some of their hydrogen to compensate, but orders were not to do that since it would be impossible to cap off all the hydrogen needed if the ships were to be turned around quickly. The center air bag was filled with hot air, drawn off the exhaust of the four engines. On the way down Jack had dumped all of it. In the fine balancing act between hydrogen bags, hot air, and the lift provided by the bi-level wings, the ship should have a stall speed of only ten knots or so, about the same as the crosswind. That meant they would touch down almost standing still, then ground crews would have to snag lines and secure tie-downs. If not, the ship would start drifting backwards, drag a wing, and within seconds be destroyed.

  Jack kept the ship nose low, coming in over the edge of the field, then continuing down most of its length to leave plenty of room behind for all the other airships to touch down. Hans, nervous, kept both hands tight on the throttles, never quite matching up to what Jack wanted as he shouted commands to throttle up on one side, then the other, ease back, then throttle up again.

  The airship bounced down once, gently, soared back up, Jack cursing sharply, quickly slapping Hans’s death grip on the throttles, knocking all four of them back. The ship hung in the air for a moment, then settled back down, harder this time, as Jack spun the crank to his left, which opened and closed the vent to the top of the hot-air bag.

  Hans saw someone darting up toward their cab, disappearing underneath to grab the forward hold-down line; a dozen others swarmed in to either side. Jack seemed to have three arms and four hands all at once, making sure the throttles were back, but not all the way, so that if the ground crew lost grip, he could slap them forward and try to claw back up into the sky. The hot-air vent was opened again. The machine lurched, ground crew under them becoming visible again as they spliced on a long pull line and a dozen men took hold, allowing the ship to weather-vane into the wind, and then pulled it off the field.

  A pop that sounded more like a dull whoosh than an explosion startled Hans. Jack looking back out the port-side window, cursed softly, then settled back into his seat.

  “Looks like number twenty-eight; I knew the boy was too green.”

  “What?”

  “Burning, what’s left of it. Most likely jammed a wing into the ground, snapped it, fuel line sprays, then the fire hits the hydrogen bags.”

  He said it matter-of-factly, but there was a deep, infinite weariness in the tone.

  The crew chief in front of their machine held up a red flag, spun it in a tight circle several times, then slapped it down to his side.

  “Throttles off,” Jack announced even as he pushed them all the way back. “Fuel valves off, controls neutral . .

  He continued down the list, announcing each step as he did it, leaning over to Hans’s side to perform several of the tasks.

  “Fine, that’s it. Open the hatch.”

  Hans opened the bottom hatch, dropped the ladder, and, feeling very stiff and old, slowly went down the dozen feet to the ground. The air felt different, the memory of the long months in Tyre triggered by the scent of the ocean mingling with the dry musky sage. As he stepped away from under the ship he looked back and saw the flaming wreck of one of the airships. A wagon was drawn up, a crew working the pumps, laying down a feeble spray of water. More airships came in, pilots wisely swinging to windward so no errant sparks caught them.

  Some of the ships came in easily, touched down as gently as hummingbirds; others plodded in, slamming down hard, bouncing. A few came in without enough speed, hung motionless, and started to drift backwards, one of them digging its tail in. Jack cursed soundly as the machine just hung there, ground crews frantically jumping up and down, trying to grab the hold-down lines. The pilot threw on full throttles, the machine started back up, hung in the air, finally stalled, and this time the nose dropped, most likely from his having opened the forward hydrogen bag. The machine slammed down hard, undercarriage wheels snapping, driving up into the wings, while the cargo compartment seemed to disappear. Even though they were upwind, Hans could hear the screams of the men trapped within.

  As the ground crew around him secured the tie-down ropes to bolts fastened into heavy concrete blocks, the crew chief finally gave permission for the top gunner and the men in the cargo compartment to dismount. One by one they came down the ladder and were a pitiful sight, obviously half-frozen, covered in vomit, disgusted with themselves and the world in general. The last two had to be helped down and laid out on the grass. Hans realized he most likely didn’t smell too good himself.

  He was relieved to see Ketswana coming up with Vincent right behind him, and together, as the shadows lengthened, the last of the airships from Suzdal landed. Then several minutes later the first of twenty-eight more ships, Eagles all of them veterans from the Roum Front, came in, the more experienced pilots having no problems with the cross-wind landing. Several of them simply bypassed the landing strip and, ignoring the shouted protests of ground crews, picked out a tie-down location, slowed to a hover, then gently floated in to a touchdown.

  Last of all were the twenty-five Hornets from Suzdal and Roum, buzzing in like tiny insects after the heavy cumbersome four-engine machines. Mingled in were half a dozen more Hornets that had been fighting throughout the day in front of Tyre. Powder-smoke stains from the forward Gatling gun blackened the undersides. One of the ships was badly shot up, streamers of fabric fluttering from a starboard wing.

  The display made Hans’s pulse quicken. Here, obviously, was one of the most remarkable sights in history. Over seventy flying machines, all of them gathered together in this one place. And though it was a wild, mad scheme, it gave him hope for the moment. Nature seemed to be adding to the display, the long shadows of late afternoon lengthened, exaggerating the size of the machines so that they looked like giants skimming over the ground. The bloodred sun hung heavy in the western sky, while to the north the towering thunderstorm, which everyone had been eyeing nervously, marched on in stately pageantry to the east.

  The last of the Hornets, stripped-down versions with no forward gun, replaced by a small compartment underneath which could hold one man, came in and landed. There was barely any room left on the open field as the last ship rolled to a stop.

  A young major came up to the group, and in the shadows Hans recognized the sky-blue jacket and silver trim of an officer in the air corps.

  “Welcome sirs. Sorry I couldn’t come over earlier but I was kind of busy,” the boy announced, obviously from Roum and struggling to speak in Rus.

  Jack clapped him pn the shoulder.

  “Varro. Good job, son, your people did a damn fine job.”

  “Thank you, sir. It helped to have those extra ground crews brought down by transport from Roum but still all the hold-down crews were infantrymen yesterday. I’ll pass the word along.”

  “The Hornets that flew down from Roum yesterday”�
� he nodded to the half dozen machines that had the unusual baskets underneath—“started out this morning as ordered. Two haven’t come back, but the first reports are that they’ve cut the telegraph lines at twenty or more places from here all the way up to the Green Mountains.”

  “Damn good news,” Vincent announced.

  Hans nodded in agreement. Yet another idea of Varinna’s. One of the first objections he had raised when the plan was presented was that the moment they touched down with so many airships in Tyre, Jurak might surmise the real target. She immediately countered with the sketch of how to convert the light fighting airships into a two-man unit. Strip out the Gatling gun, put in a small crew compartment. The ship touches down along some isolated stretch of the telegraph line, the crew member hops out, climbs the pole, cuts the line, and if there’s enough time rolls up jLCouple of hundred feet of wire and takes it with them while a second Hornet, this one fully armed, circles to keep back any riders posted to patrol the wire.

  Hans was delighted with the simple ingenuity of the proposal. Telegraph lines had always been so damn vulnerable. Back in the old war on Earth a couple of dozen cavalry men could play hell with a line, and it took regiments of men, posted damn near at every pole to keep a crucial line up and running. The Bantag umens at Tyre were now completely out of touch with Jurak, and it’d take at least a couple of days for word to be carried by horse. The trick, of course, was in the timing. To let Jurak get word of the ironclads’ landing in order to draw his attention to Tyre, but not the entire air fleet.

  “Are General Timokin and Stan Bamberg here?” Vincent asked.

  “Follow me, sirs; they’re waiting over at headquarters.”

  Hans fell in with the group as they strode across the field. The passengers from the airships were out, nearly all of them a sorry-looking lot.

  “Major, are copies of Gates’s Weekly making it down here?”

  “Ah, yes sir, we just got the issue about what happened up at Capua. They came in on the transport carrying the ironclads.”

  “Well detail off some men. I want every copy you can find rounded up. Then find some glue, if need be take some flour and mix it into a paste. Then paper it on the outside of those wicker troop carriers.”

  The major looked at him confused, then called to a sergeant who had been tailing along and detailed him off.

  “In all the rush we never thought of it,” Jack said. “Damn foolish mistake, type of thing that can lose a war.”

  As they passed the line of Hornets Hans slowed to inspect the machines. More than one was holed, a couple had hydrogen bags that were completely deflated, a patching crew was working by feel since no lighting of any kind was allowed near a ship that could be leaking hydrogen.

  Several of the Hornet pilots came up to Jack, saluting.

  “We really grabbed their tails out there,” one of them announced excitedly. “I came over a low rise, must have caught a hundred of them camped out in the open, about fifty miles back from the front. Damn did I tear them up.”

  “The landings, did they work?” Vincent asked.

  The pilot was startled to see the chief of staff of the army standing in the shadows and snapped to attention and saluted.

  “Ah, yes sir. The Hornet I was escorting, he landed three times along a ten-mile stretch of the wire and tore out a good long piece at each.” The pilot nodded to a slight boy standing beside him.

  “Tell him, Nicholas.”

  “Like he said, sir. We took down wire between two poles at three different places.”

  Hans could see that the boy was shaken, left hand clasping his right arm in the evening twilight, the black stain on the arm obviously blood.

  “Your crewman?” Jack asked.

  The boy shook his head.

  “I lost him on the third landing. Some of them bastards were hiding in a gully, no horses. They shot Petra as he was up on a pole, then came rushing out. I got hit, too, but managed to get off.”

  He lowered his head.

  “I think Petra was still alive when I left him,” the boy whispered.

  Jack patted him lightly on his left shoulder.

  “You did the right thing. You had to save your Hornet.”

  “No sir, I was scared. I might have been able to get him in.”

  “No you couldn’t,” the other pilot interjected. “I had no more ammunition, so all I could do was try and scare them by flying low. That’s when they shot up my ship as well.”

  “I was scared and ran.”

  “We’re all scared,” Jack replied softly. “Now get some rest. I want both of you back up tomorrow at first light, wounded or not. Anyone who can fly has to be in the air tomorrow. You saved your ship, so don’t think about anything else now.”

  They continued on, Hans catching a glimpse of a bottle being passed around as soon as they had passed.

  The headquarters hut for the airfield was nothing more than a-hrown-walled adobe shack, typical of Tyre, where lumber was in such short supply. It was the only light on the field as the men labored under the glow of the twin moons that were breaking the eastern horizon.

  As they stepped in Hans was startled to see Gregory Timokin. His face was still puffy, pink, blistered. Hands were wrapped in bandages, and it reinforced yet again just how desperate this venture was. Stan stood beside him, grinning, obviously eager for the operation to begin.

  Though his stomach was still in rebellion over the flight he quickly took up the bottle of vodka sitting on a rough-hewn table, uncorked it, and took a long drink.

  “All right. What’s the bad news first?”

  Gregory snickered.

  “You want the long or the short version?”

  “Go on.”

  “Fuel first of all. If we were burning coal, there’d be more than enough. Fifty-two ironclads. I’ll need twenty-five thousand gallons if you want them to get to Carnagan.”

  “I have first priority,” Jack interjected.

  “And that’s at least another forty thousand gallons for one way.”

  “We supposedly had it stockpiled,” Hans said, rubbing his forehead as the vodka hit him.

  “The oil field is lost. We had enough stockpiled through our coking of coal and getting the coal oil,” Vincent said. “What’s the problem? And what do you mean ‘fifty-two ironclads’?”

  Gregory sighed, staring at the ceiling. “One of the ships carrying more coal oil and ten land ironclads hasn’t docked.”

  “What the hell? There was supposed to be a monitor escort for you people.”

  “Fog. Yesterday and the day before. We came out of it, near Tigranus Point, and the ship was missing. I asked a Hornet to go up the coast, and the pilot thinks he found the wreck. It went straight into a shoal and foundered.”

  “Damn all,” Hans snapped. “So we’re short how much?”

  “Fifteen thousand gallons.”

  Hans looked over at Vincent, who shook his head.

  “We could make that up in a week from the coking plants at Roum and Suzdal. It’s getting it here, though.” An argument broke out between Jack and Gregory over who got priority on the fuel; Hans just sat woodenly, staring at the bottle for a moment, while meditatively munching on a piece of hardtack to put something back into his stomach.

  “Ground the Hornets that got shot up. Pull off the Eagle that cracked its undercarriage, then detail off four more Eagles to stay behind.”

  “What?” Jack snapped. “That’s ten percent of my remaining force.”

  “Our force, Jack, our force. We need fuel for the ironclads. The Eagles can be used locally for support. Once more fuel comes in they can be used to haul what, a couple of hundred gallons each out to the column to keep it supplied. Gregory, I’m taking five thousand gallons from you for our remaining airships.”

  Now both Gregory and Jack were^on him, but he sat silent, his icy stare finally causing them to fall silent.

  “I know that won’t give you enough fuel to reach your objective with any margi
n to spare. Figure this though. Half your machines will break down before you even get there. Do like we did on the Ebro. Drain off the remaining fuel, load it into the ironclads still running, then move on.”

  The two started to object again, and Vincent slammed the table with his fist.

  “Damn all. There’s no time to argue now. This operation is supposed to kick off tomorrow morning. The argument’s over. Gregory, your machines, are they ready?”

  “If you mean off-loaded, yes sir. Like I said, we’re down to fifty-two.”

  “And did the Bantag see them before the lines got cut?”

  “Certain of it.”

  Hans smiled. “Good. That’s what we wanted.”

  “I don’t get it,” Gregory replied sharply. “Why didn’t you cut the telegraph wires first before we brought the ironclads down here. Now they’ll know and be on us.”

  “That’s what I wanted,” Vincent replied. “We’re the bait.”

  “The what?” Stan asked. “And what do you mean ‘we’?”

  “Because I’m going with you, Stan.”

  “Fine, but what the hell is this about bait?”

  “We had to cut the lines before we flew all the airships in here to Tyre. The moment we did I assumed Jurak would figure what the real target is. I didn’t want him to guess the true intent, so I wanted him to get word that all our ironclads had been moved down here. He’ll assume that we are trying to break out of Tyre and take Camagan. After all, it is a logical move. We take Carnagan even briefly and we could threaten his supplies moving over the Great Sea. Beyond that we could tear up that rail line they’re building from there over to here. I want him to focus on here while Hans presses the main attack.”

  Both Stan and Gregory nodded, but it was obvious that they were less pleased with this role, and the definition that they were to be a diversion rather than the main attack.