CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE ATTACK.
"Halt! Who goes there?"
The challenge rang sharply on the night air, outside a small gate in thebarricade of the Monck Aviation Grounds.
"Liberty!" answered Gabriel, pausing as he gave the password.
"All right, come on," said a vague figure at the gate. The little groupapproached. The gate opened. Silently they entered the enclosure.
Another man stepped from a hangar. In his hand he held an electricflash, which he threw upon the newcomers, one by one.
"Right!" he commented, and took Gabriel by the hand. "This way!"
Ten minutes later, all of them were in the air, save only Gabriel, whoinsisted on staying till his entire squad had made a clean getaway. Thenhe too rose; and now in a long, swift line, the fighting squadronstraightened away to north-eastward, on the twenty-mile run to Niagara.
The night was foggy, chill and dark. All the aviators had instructionsto fly not less than 2,500 feet high, to keep a careful lookout lestthey collide, and to steer by the lights of the great Air Trust plant.For, misty though the heavens were, still Gabriel could see the dim glowof the tremendous aerial search-lights dominating Goat Island--lightsof 5,000,000 candle-power, maintained by current from the Falls,incessantly sweeping the sky on the lookout for just such perils as now,indeed, were drawing near.
Momently, as he flew, Gabriel perceived these huge lights growingbrighter, through the mist, and apprehension won upon him.
"Incredibly strong!" he muttered to himself, as he glanced from hisbarometer to the shining fog ahead. "Even though the mist will bethicker over the Falls than anywhere else, there's a good possibilitythey may pierce it and pick us up--and _then_, look out for their'planes and swift, fighting dirigibles!"
He rotated the rising-plane, and now soared to 2,800 feet. Below and oneither side of him, nothing but tenuous fog. Ahead, theswiftly-approaching fan of radiance, white, dazzling, beautiful, thatseemed to gush from earth so far below and to the eastward. Already thethunders of the Falls were audible.
"Where are the others?" Gabriel wondered, his thoughts seeming to humand roar in his head, in harmony with the shuddering diapason of themuffler-deadened exhaust. "No way of telling, now. Each man forhimself--and each to do his best!"
And then his thoughts reverted to Catherine; and round his heart asudden yearning seemed to strengthen his stern, indomitableresolve--"Victory or death!"
But now there was scant time for thought. The moment of action wasalready close at hand. Far below there, hidden by night and dark andmist, Gabriel knew a hundred thousand comrades, of the FightingSections, were lying hidden, waiting for the signal to advance.
"And it's time, now!" he said aloud, thrilled by a wondrous sense ofvast responsibility--a sense that on this moment hung the fate of theworld. "It's time for the signal. Now then, up and at them!"
Taking the rocket--a powerful affair, capable of casting an intense,calcium light--he touched the fuse to a bit of smouldering punk fastenedin a metal cup at his right hand. Then, as it flared, he launched therocket far into the void.
Below, came a quick spurt of radiance, in a long, vivid streak that shotaway with incredible rapidity. Gabriel followed it a moment, with hisgaze, then smiled.
"The Rubicon is crossed," said he. "The gates of the Temple of Janus areopen wide--and now comes War!"
He rose again, skimming to a still higher altitude as the glare of thegreat Works drew closer and closer underneath. The wind roared in hisears, louder than the whirling propellers. The whole fabric of theaeroplane quivered as it climbed, up, up above the rushing, bellowingcataract.
"Where are the others?" thought he, and reached for a thanatosprojectile, in the rack near the metal cup where the punk stillglowered.
All at once, a glare of light burst upward through the white-glowingmist; and the 'plane reeled with the air-wave, as now a thunderousconcussion boomed across the empty spaces of the sky.
At the same moment, a faint, ripping noise mounted to Gabriel--a soundfor all the world like the tearing of stout canvas. Then followed achattering racket, something like distant mowing-machines at work; andnow all blent to a steady, determined uproar. Gabriel almost thought tohear, as he launched his own projectile, far sounds as of the shouts andcries of men; but of this he could not make sure.
"They're at it, anyhow!" he exulted. "At it, at last! By the way our menhave launched the attack, the first explosion must have breached a wall!God! What wouldn't I give to be down there, in the thick of it, ratherthan here! I--"
_Crash_!
Again a spouting geyser of light and uproar burst into mid-air.
"That was _my_ thanatos speaking!" cried Gabriel. "Now for another!"
Before he could drop it, as he circled round and round, directly overthe great, flailing beams of the Air Trust search-lights, a thirddetonation shattered the heavens, nearly unseating him. Up sprang theroar, with wonderful intensity, reflected from the earth as from a giantsounding-board. And Gabriel noted, with keen satisfaction, that one ofthe huge light-beams had gone dark.
"Put out _one_ of them, anyway, so far!" thought he, and swung again towestward, and once more dropped a messenger of death to tyranny.
Now the bombardment became general. Trust aerial-gun projectiles beganbursting all about. Every second or two, terrible concussions leapedtoward the zenith; and the earth, hidden somewhere down there below thefog-blanket, seemed flaming upward like a huge volcano. One by one thesearch-lights, whipping the sky, went black; and now the glow of themwas fast diminishing, only to be replaced by a ruddier and moreintermittent glare.
"The plant's burning, at last," thought Gabriel. "Heaven grant the firemay spread to the oxygen-tanks! If we can only get _those_--!"
Again he launched a projectile, and again he circled over the doomedplant.
A swift black shape swooped by him. He had just time to exchange a yellof warning, when it was gone. The near peril gripped his heart, but didnot shake it.
"Close call!" said he.
If that machine and his had met, good-bye forever! But after all, thedanger of collision in mid-air, or of being struck by a projectile fromsome other machine, above, was no greater than his comrades on theground were facing. Not so great, perhaps. Many a one would meet hisdeath from the aerial attack. In a war like this, a thousand perilsthreatened. Gabriel only hoped that Hargreaves, down below there, couldhold them back, away, till the walls should have been destroyed.
Circling, ever circling, now hearing some echoes of the earth-battle,some grenade-volleys and rapid-fire clattering, now deafened and all butblinded by the vast, up-belching explosions of the thanatos projectiles,Gabriel flew among the drifting mists and vapors. Still was he guided byone or two search-lights; but most of these were gone, now. Yet theglare of the conflagration, below, was luridly shuddering through thefog, painting it all a dull and awful red.
Red! Suddenly words came into Gabriel's mind--the words of his own poem:
... Red as blood, red as blood! The blood of the shattered miner, Blood of the boy in the rifle pits, blood of the coughing child-slave, Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the Carpenter shed!
"For your sake! For the world's sake, this!" he cried, and hurledanother thanatos. "If ever war of liberation was holy, this is thatwar!"
Suddenly, through all the turmoil of shattering explosions, tossingair-currents and drifting, acrid smoke, he became conscious of a sudden,swift-flying pursuer.
By the light of the burning Plant, down there somewhere in the vapors ofthe thunderous Falls, he saw a hawk-like 'plane that swooped toward himwith incredible velocity, savage and lean and black.
Off to the right, a sudden spattering of shots in mid-air told him thebattle in the sky was likewise being engaged. He saw vague, veiledexplosions, there, then a swift, falling trail of flame. A pang shotthrough his heart. Had one of his companions fallen and been dashed todeath? He could not tell--he had no time to wonder, even,
for alreadythe attacker was upon him, the swift Air Trust _epervier,_ one of thedreaded air-fleet of the world-monopoly!
Gabriel had just time to swerve from the attack, and swoopaloft--dropping his next to last projectile as he did so--when thewhirling shape zoomed past, swung round and once more charged. He saw,vaguely, two men sat in it. One was the pilot, a "Gray" or Cosmosmercenary. The other--could it be? Yes, there was no mistaking! Theother was Slade himself, commander of the hireling army of Plutocracy!
Out from the attacking 'plane jetted sadden spurts of fire. Gabrielheard the zip-zip-zip of bullets; heard a ripping tear, as one of hiscanvas wings was punctured--God help him, had that explosive bulletstruck a wire or a stay!
Then, maddened to despair; and burning with fierce rage against thismonster of the upper air that now was hurling death at him, he once more"banked," brought his machine sharp round, and charged, full drive, atthe attacker!
This tactic for a second must have disconcerted the Air Trustmercenaries. Gabriel's speed was terrific. With stupefying suddenness,the _epervier_ loomed up ahead of him.
"Now!" he shouted. "Take this, from me!"
Half rising from his seat, he hurled his last remaining projectile fullat Slade, then wrenched his own 'plane off sharply to the left.
A thunderous concussion and a dazzling burst of light told him hischance shot had been effective.
He got a second's vision of a shattered black mass, a tangle of girders,wires, collapsed planes, that seemed to hang a moment in midair--ofwhirling bodies--of wreckage indescribable. Then the broken debrisplunged with awful speed and vanished through the red-glowing mist.
Even as he shuddered, sickened at the terrible, though necessary deed,the deed which alone could save him from swift death, an overwhelmingair-wave from the terrible explosion struck his speeding machine, themachine captured in the Great Smokies from the Air Trust itself.
It heeled over like an unballasted yacht under the lash of a hurricane.Vainly Gabriel jerked at wheel and levers; he could not right it.
As it seemed to come under control, a stay snapped. The 'plane swooped,yawned forward and stuck its nose into an air-hole, caused by the vast,uprising smoke and heat of the huge conflagration beneath.
Then, lost and beyond all guidance, it somersaulted, slid away down along drop and, whirling wildly over and over, plunged with Gabriel intothe glowing, smoking, detonating void!
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