The engineer shook his gloved hand and wished him luck.
Icarus thought of his father, watching from some grand command post. Knowing his son was on this Drop. Probably not caring one bat-crap…
– and Icarus’s stomach clenched like a fungee cord knotting under pressure, despite the anti-vertigo pills the Doc had given him. He forced himself to breathe. Then the red light turned to green - and Icarus and a hundred and fifty Shroom Raiders stepped out into the abyss, and dropped…
Air rushing, stale and cool, pulling at clothes and ruffling lips and cheeks… Icarus squinted down, vision swimming, to see the fully extended fungees of the combat engineers, who dropped thirty seconds before the rest: they were already landing and starting to disable Neufundland’s defences – cutting barbed wire, detonating or defusing mines, placing charges to blow fortified positions.
Then – a gentle pulling on the harness as the fungee cord stretched to full extension and began to slow the Raiders’ fall. The pulling increased, the rate of fall slowed, and the Raiders looked down to see the rocks rushing up… For some, their landing spot was clear ground; for others, they were heading for a razor-sharp anti-raider spike, a mine, a booby-trap, a clump of barbed wire – and desperately they yanked at the flaps on the shoulders of their harness to change direction, to try and find some spot to land that wouldn’t skewer or scatter their bodies…
Icarus found the black gaping hole of a chimney beneath him, a chimney spewing poisonous smoke and fumes, with red fires glowing deep inside... Icarus pulled at his flaps, which for a dreadful moment seemed to have no effect – then he was sliding away to one side, coming in to land with a bone-jarring thud on the hard rock, rolling over as he had been trained, then – the single most important thing for a Raider to do – look for an anchor point for his fungee cord. An engineer had partially blown up an anti-raider spike, which gave him a point of purchase to attach the hooks on the end of his fungee. There – it was fixed, good and taut.
2nd Company assembled as best it could, under Enemy fire that, taken by surprise, would only intensify as the Neufundlanders got organised. The Raiders sorted themselves into their Platoons, and Icarus found familiar faces around him, all pale and scared. He gave the thumbs up to Biff, hanging back with the wireless set as Fire Control Officer, and to Arla, keeping a watchful eye on him. Then 2nd Platoon moved forward by squads to assault the radar station. They found cover, crawled on their bellies under heavy Enemy fire, aimed their shroom-shooters and fired – Incendi-Spores to start fires, strangle-spores to snag the Neufundland rock-bots that now began rumbling forward on their mechanical tracks, robotic guns firing. Some rock-bots were tangled, or set on fire, or damaged by shrapnel-spores – but more, and more, kept coming…
The Neufundlander fire was becoming so heavy now that more and more Raiders were sinking behind cover, keeping their heads down. Icarus realised that the most dangerous thing was happening:
“The assault is losing momentum…”
This was death for the attacking force – for once the attack stalled and the attackers were pinned down, the defenders’ attritional fire would wear them down until, burdened with casualties, they would be forced to beat a retreat…
Icarus saw the danger. Every Raider around him was hunkering down under the withering bombardment. He peered ahead and saw an Enemy pillbox, its arc of fire pinning the whole of 2nd Platoon down. If that pillbox could be taken out, 2nd Platoon could move in along a sheltered gulley and swoop like ravenous bats on the radar station itself. But 2nd Platoon’s attack had stalled.
“Somebody has to take that pillbox out…”
Icarus peered out at the pillbox, trying to piece together a plan of attack. He checked his ammo pouches.
“What ammunition should I load? Incendi? Boom? Shrapnel? Tangle? Glue?”
He looked out again. The Platoon needed cover, but there wasn’t any. Then he noticed the chimney that he nearly dropped into, to one side of them. The chimney towered over them, and fifty feet above their heads it was spewing out thick black smoke. Though chokingly toxic, that black smoke would give good cover. But the smoke was up there, and they were down here…
12 – LZ
Icarus had an idea. He communicated his plan by shouts and signals to his comrades –
“Load with Boom. Concentrate your fire at the base of that chimney…”
And 2nd Platoon fired their boom-spores, and blew a gaping hole low down in the side of the chimney – which now vomited forth a cloud of smoke that draped itself over the battlefield. Icarus slid his gas-mask over his face and signalled to attack – and 2nd Platoon rushed up under the cover of smoke, along the gulley, and stormed the pillbox, and the entrance to the radar station beyond…
The command came over the radio –
But Icarus was desperate to prove himself, to his comrades, to Sgt Gus, to his father… and he pressed into the station, with a few determined Raiders following his lead, and managed to seize a sheaf of important-looking schematics and some pieces of electrical circuitry from a workbench. Then they placed explosives and beat a hasty retreat, hearing the satisfying bangs and booms of the radar station going up in flames as they rushed back under the thinning smoke cover, back to the safety of their landing zone. Back to where Biff and Arla would be – and Icarus imagined their relieved faces when they saw he was okay…
But – something was wrong back at the LZ.
“No. No…”
The Neufundlanders had got round behind the Raiders and hit them hard. Hit the Fire Control Officers and their defenders… Icarus and 2nd Platoon found themselves in a firestorm of fear and confusion, and while Icarus desperately searched for Biff and Arla, the order went up –
“All troops to your fungees. Cut loose, repeat, cut loose…”
And the word went round –
“Our FCOs and defenders have been taken prisoner…”
And Icarus ran from Raider to Raider, saying –
“Have you seen Biff and Arla? Have you seen Biff and Arla?”
And there were just shakes of the head, or no answer at all…
And then all around him the fungees were being cut, springing their Raiders up, up, high out of sight to safety – and Icarus called his friends’ names, over and over – but he was aware that he was becoming more and more alone by the second – and at last he knew he had no choice but to run for a fungee, any last remaining fungee, fix it to his harness, cut it free, just as Neufundlander troopers and rock-bots came rushing and rumbling and shooting after him and –
WHOOOOSSSHHHHHHHHHH….
The fungee sprung him up – and the air rushed past him just as it did on the Drop – and up and up he soared, like a bat riding a thermal, until his ascent slowed, and he had the presence of mind to grab onto his fungee – and there he clung, until an unknown passage of time later a hand tapped him on the shoulder, and it was a drop engineer he didn’t know, hanging from a rope, who clipped Icarus into his harness and slowly pulled them the rest of the mile back to New London, and safety…
Icarus sat distraught on his bunk bed. Biff and Arla were gone. Captured? Or worse?
“And it’s my fault.”
Totally, precisely, certainly his fault. It was the very things he did to try and keep them safe – made Biff the FCO so he could hang back, made Arla the FCO’s defender so she could hang back with him – it was those very things that sealed their doom, when the Neufundlanders cut behind the Raiders to counter-attack their landing zone.
“They’re gone.
Fat, slow Biff…
Poor, scared Arla…
I’ve screwed them up as surely as if I were an Enemy spy…”
His shroom-shooter was back on the rack in the Armoury. Disconnecting from your shooter was a we
ird and dizzy business, at least when you weren’t used to it. You coaxed your shooter out of your mind…
That was, you carried your shooter back to its rack in the Armoury – but its psychopalps were still attached to your head, and anchored in your brain.
So you talked to it, with body and mind…
Your body’s language, with the motioning of your arms to place it back on its rack…
Your mind’s language, with the motioning of your mind to say, “Goodbye for now, rest easy my friend. Let go…”
And your shooter felt you, and understood. Somehow it knew not to cling anymore, not for now… And the psychopalps loosened their hold inside your mind, and let go, pulling back, pulling out, leaving that little corner of a foreign brain that was forever fungus. And with the oddest feeling, like having a giant spot whooshingly squeezed, the palps emerged from the side of your head, leaving a little hole that quickly closed up – and the spindly black tendrils shrank back into a gnarly lump on the side of the shooter. And you placed it, gently, like a baby, back on its rack. That was how you said goodnight to your shroom-shooter.
“You did well, Icarus”, whispered Ethan.
“Well? Well? Every single thing I did guaranteed Biff and Arla would be captured!”
13 – 72 Hours
Icarus felt a pang of loss, a tearing disconnection from his shroom-shooter, almost like a bereavement. He had to talk to someone. And, of all people, he wanted to talk to Sgt Gus. Maybe because he hated Sgt Gus more than anyone in the world, maybe therefore he had no fear of upsetting Gus, felt no duty of politeness or pleasantness. He could say anything, anything he liked, to a man who he hated and who hated him…
And Sgt Gus surprised him. Invited him into his quarters, sat him down with a tot of Army rum, and told him –
“It’s not your fault, Icarus. Your actions were exemplary – showing exceptional bravery in the face of the Enemy to break the battlefield stalemate and lead the attack on in, with drive and determination. The diagrams you seized will be of great value, the Intel officers are saying. And the electricals you brought back may be of crucial technological importance, the scientists are saying.”
Gus assured Icarus again –
“Icarus, it wasn’t your fault, what happened to your friends. You performed well, very well – and your actions have not gone unnoticed…”
Biff and Arla were missing, presumed dead. Icarus went to Biff’s house, and paused outside. Biff’s little sister Anne was sitting on the porch, playing with his toy soldiers – an odd sight in her pink chintz dress, playing with little green Raiders and stormtroopers, getting them to have tea together, rather than kill each other. Biff’s mother was ironing his Shroom Raider fatigues, folding them gently, carefully, wrapping them up in a brown paper parcel to post back to him. Biff’s mum was his weekly laundry service. And just before she tied it all up, she put two bars of groundnut chocolate – which Icarus knew must be black-market – into his parcel. Chocolate for her soldier…
And Icarus’s eyes got blurry, and at last he turned and went. He couldn’t tell her. Let somebody else do it. He couldn’t.
In his dreams that night he was assaulting the radar station, crawling through the thick choking smoke – and little Anne was there, right beneath the blazing gun of the pill-box, in her pink dress arranging the toy soldiers for tea – and Icarus found himself boilingly angry that the thick oily smoke was making her dress dirty. And Sgt Gus was there beside him, hurling abuse at the rest of 2nd Platoon, but oddly friendly to Icarus… And they charged inside the radar station, but it was a mass of little toadstools inside, toadstools that suddenly grew with lightning speed, swelling up and forcing the Raiders back out – and Icarus ran from the looming giant toadstools, desperate to find Biff and Arla, stumbling, tripping through a chaos of Raiders and stormtroopers, some of them with the heads of bats – and at last he saw them, waving a cheerful hello to see him coming. But then a huge, hulking stormtrooper loomed out of the smoke and snatched them away – and Icarus saw that the stormtrooper’s face was the face of his father…
Icarus woke in a queasy sweat. It was Alf Tarcrust from his Platoon, shaking his shoulder –
“Icarus, you’ve got to come. They’re saying something on the wireless…”
2nd Platoon gathered round the radio set. It was an Enemy broadcast:
<… and, of course, as every other New London attack before it, this raid was a humiliating failure. Neufundland now holds twenty-seven Raider prisoners, and here is a list of their names…>
The Raiders listened as the names were read out. Some names were unknown to them, but others brought a gasp, a groan, a choked expletive from some corner of the room. Then, at last, Icarus heard the names –
<… Raider Biff Woodwax… Raider Arla Scarletina…>
There was a rush of excited chatter as the Platoon dared hope –
“Are Biff and Arla okay? Or is this some Neufundland trick?”
And Icarus felt a sudden thrill of optimism… until the Enemy said –
< Neufundland is prepared to make a prisoner exchange. These twenty-seven prisoners, in exchange for one:
Raider Icarus D. Earthstar, son of General Willard D. Earthstar.
New London has 72 hours to decide. After that, Neufundland will begin to execute one New London Raider every day until our demands are met –
and we will begin with Raiders Woodwax and Scarletina… >
14 – ‘Protection’
Icarus was ushered to General Headquarters, New London Army, and into a grand conference room, with a great ceiling ribbed like the underside of a vast toadstool, where his father was gathered with the rest of the New London Army Command. Their unanimous view was that the Enemy’s demands could not be met, could not be seriously considered. One General spoke up.
“General, now that Neufundland have made an issue, broadcast to both nations, of Icarus being your son, they have made him too valuable to trade. It would be a humiliating climb-down for New London to offer him up in an exchange, and would made us look weak…”
A Brigadier added, “It would also set a precedent, General – most of us assembled here have children too, and giving in to their demands would be a licence for Neufundland agents to kidnap our children and drop them down below…”
An orderly whispered in General Earthstar’s ear.
“General, there’s something on the wireless...”
General Earthstar turned the radio on, to hear the Neufundland broadcaster:
<… if only we could convey on the radio just how fat this perfect specimen of the New London Army, Raider Biff Woodwax, is! Alas, these words must serve to paint the picture: imagine, dear listener, a perfect sphere of flab, squeezed into an outsized Raider uniform and rolled along like a giant bowling ball to his Drop platform… One can only guess at how many fungee cords would be needed to bear his weight…
And New London imagines that it might win this War! My goodness, he would be knocked into shape before he got anywhere near the Neufundland Army…
Well, dear listener, let the fattest be first: if New London does not accede to our – extremely fair – requests, Biff Woodwax will be the first prisoner to be executed… >
“It could all be a bluff”, said one Colonel. “How do we even know your son’s friends are alive?”
Then the broadcaster continued -
< Let us now hear from this fine figure of a New London Raider. Biff Woodwax, how are you feeling about your impending execution? >
And they heard another voice, a voice stretched thin with exhaustion and fear -
< Icarus, don’t you listen to them! Arla and me, we’ll be fine, we’ll get out of this… >
Everyone turned to Icarus.
“Icarus”, asked his father, “Is that your friend’s voice?”
Icarus sat with his head in his hands. At last, slowly, he nodded.
They put Icarus under ‘protection’, the New London Army did, in a well-appointed villa
with every possible comfort. No need for ration books here, for all was freely available – free bat-steaks, free toad potatoes, free bitter-root coffee, free milk-spore ice cream… Everything in the villa was free, except Icarus. He knew he was being held in a gilded cage. And he had nothing but time to consider –
“It’s my fault that Biff and Arla are in such danger, not to mention the other twenty-five Raider hostages. It’s my fault in every possible way. If I wasn’t the son of the commander of the New London Army…
If I hadn’t always been rebelling against my Dad, running loose with Biff and Arla…
If I hadn’t stolen that Strangleshroom and used it to assault a policeman, landing not only myself but my friends in the Shroom Raiders as punishment…
If I hadn’t arranged for Biff and Arla to stay back in the landing zone, sitting ducks for Enemy capture…
It’s all my fault. All.”
And Icarus realised –
“I, and I alone, must make it right….”
“Father, I must be allowed to go down in exchange for my friends.”
General Earthstar would have none of it.
“Icarus, my hands were tied when you assaulted that Policeman – legally, I had no other option than to send you to prison or the Army. And at the time I didn’t want you to have any other choice, so angry was I with you…
“But I hadn’t yet realised the propaganda value that Neufundland might extract from your identity. And now there is no question, Icarus, none at all, of you being offered in exchange. It would make New London look weak. Set a bargaining precedent. And before you ask, it is also because General Willard D. Earthstar will not surrender his son to the Enemy. His only surviving son. No, Icarus, not like this.”
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