“And what happens when that burst of speed we just had wears off?” Dag asked.
“I’ve got the repulsor turbines on the port side operating at fifty percent now,” Markov reported. “We should be able to maintain our balance and keep up in the air long enough for me to make some repairs to the damaged turbines.” Markov unbuckled his safety harness and stood up. “I’ve got her on auto pilot for the moment. Should keep us going until I can make repairs.” He grabbed a tool kit from the wall and headed aft toward the engineering section.
“All right,” Dag said as he disconnected his safety harness and walked back to the radio. “Aria, come in. Everyone okay down there.”
“Tossed around a bit, lieutenant, but we’re all okay,” Aria replied after a tense moment of silence. “Are we clear?”
Dag checked the radar scope and saw that it was completely clear. The Imperator had indeed gone down with the explosion. “We’re all clear,” he replied. “Lock everything down on the bombard deck and then make your way to the conn.”
Thirty minutes later, the Intrepid was rising once more, and while still partially damaged, Markov had proved himself a virtual wizard when it came to repairing the turbines. As soon as they had attained four thousand feet, Dag grabbed hold of the radio and keyed in the frequency that Captain Beaurigar had given him. After giving the appropriate code information and asking for a response, Dag heard his brother’s voice on the radio.
“Wasn’t expecting to hear from you, Dag,” he said, his voice filled with anxiety. “Over.”
“Alex, you’ve got a large Dominion infantry column coming up through the Rock Maze and into the Crest,” he said. “They could be there any moment. Over.”
There was a pause for a moment before Alex answered, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
27
Alex had been asleep in a small tent with a half dozen other exhausted militiamen for what only felt like a few hours before he felt a rough hand shaking him awake. He opened his eyes groggily and found himself staring up at the scarred face of Tangrit.
“What’s goin’ on?” he managed, exhaustion causing his speech to slur slightly.
“New problem,” Tangrit muttered as he vanished from the tent.
Pulling himself out of a sleeping bag first, Alex shoved his feet into his boots and threw on his uniform quickly before stepping out into the night. The moon was low on the western sky, so it had to be about four or five o’clock in the morning, which meant he had managed to get about three hours of sleep. With a sigh, he spotted Tangrit and Captain Beaurigar’s silhouette around a large campfire, and they appeared to be talking animatedly to several people he did not recognize.
“Captain,” he said as he approached.
Beaurigar turned to look at him, large dark circles under his eyes indicating the captain’s own level of exhaustion. “Filo Milliner here just got back from his sentry assignment with these militiamen from Craven Bluffs,” he indicated eight men who looked like they had been running for hours.
“I apologize, captain,” Alex said. “I simply thought it prudent-”
“Never mind that,” Beaurigar said irritably. “Craven Bluffs fell to the Dominion late last night.”
“There were hundreds of them coming out from the Rock Maze,” one of the militiamen offered. “We held them off for only a few minutes before we were forced to fall back. They captured the town and most of the miners who remained. All of the militia except for us were killed.”
“If they came through the Rock Maze…” Alex led, looking to Beaurigar.
The captain swallowed noticeably, choking back some emotion, but he said nothing. If the Dommies were through the Rock Maze, then it almost certainly meant that Aria Beaurigar was dead, as was Alex’s brother. He could not even think for a moment, the idea that his brother was dead seemed so impossible to him.
“We don’t have time to mourn the dead at present,” Beaurigar said at last. “We’ve got a large enemy force behind our lines that has an open road right now to any of the towns in the Crest. We’ve got a large civilian population in danger to say nothing about the risk of leaving the rear of our formation open to attack.”
“They’ll stick to the road,” Alex said as everything that the Dominion forces had done suddenly made sense. “They’ll come straight for us.”
Beaurigar looked disbelievingly at Alex. “You can’t know that for certain,” he said.
“It explains their tactics the past few days,” he said. “They have superior numbers in the ravine and they could have tried to storm our lines if they wanted to. But they didn’t have to, because they had more forces coming. The frontal assaults have been a feint, a delaying tactic until they could get us on both sides.”
“Makes sense,” Tangrit said.
“Even so,” Beaurigar said. “There’s nothing to stop that army from laying waste to the entire region.”
“The area around Craven Bluffs is difficult to navigate,” the same militiaman volunteered. “Rocky hills, heavy woods. It’s difficult for people to make their way through, let alone an entire army. Even if they want to get to the rest of the Crest, they’ll need to come down the Bluffs Road first.”
“We set up a defensive position where the Bluffs Road meets the main road here,” Alex said. “Keep them from getting further into the Crest without going through us.”
“That’s five miles down the road,” Beaurigar protested. “What if they go into the woods in between here and there?”
“We’ll have to put sentries in the woods,” Alex said. “Keep what vehicles we have patrolling the road.”
“We’ll be stretched too thin,” Beaurigar said.
“Do we have another choice?” Alex asked.
The captain grimaced and said, “Find Torrace and get him to transport you and fifty men to that intersection. Have him start running the jeep on patrols down the road too. I’ll see to finding sentries for the woods. Tangrit, find the Commodore and get whatever explosives they have left. We’ll mine the Western Road and I want you to take one of the tanks to that intersection as well.”
“Aye, sir,” Tangrit said.
“Get everyone up,” Beaurigar ordered. “We need every warm body up and at ‘em.” The meeting started to break up, but the captain had Alex hold up for a moment. “Take a radio with you,” he said. “I want to know the second you have contact with the enemy.”
The next few hours, well into mid-morning, had Alex trying to get a small force organized and moved five miles down the road. Under the moonlight, he had his men start digging fortifications and filling sand bags to form a defensive wedge in the center of the road, but it was not the best place to form a defense. Any force on the Bluffs Road would hold the high ground against their position. A couple of the Craven Bluffs militiamen who accompanied him advised him that the Dommies did have some mortars, but thankfully had no tanks. All the same, the mortars would allow the Dommies to shell their position easily. As the sun started to come out, he ordered earthworks to be constructed to offer some protection. When Tangrit arrived in the smaller of the two tanks, Alex positioned it so its main cannon could hopefully provide the entrenched force some cover.
Tangrit left the tank in the command of his nephew Balfry and appropriated several of Alex’s men to help him dig holes and plant explosives with pressure caps they had found on board one of the tanks. Every fifteen minutes, Torrace arrived in the jeep with two men manning the weapons on board. Beaurigar was right, Alex thought to himself as he looked to the vast swath of forest to his left. Even with the sentries that the captain had put into the woods, Alex had the feeling that an entire infantry column could be marched in between his current position and the militia concentrated at the ravine exit.
The tank cannon suddenly roared and there was an explosion up the hill on the road, followed by a sudden flurry of activity from atop the hill as black and gray uniformed Dommies started returning sporadic fire. Sharpshooting members of the militia, many of t
hem armed with hunting rifles, attempted to snipe the approaching Dominion scouts. Alex raced over to the trench his men had dug out behind the fortifications and slid into it. Hastily, he made for where he had left the radio pack and grabbed the transmitter.
Before he could reach out to Captain Beaurigar, a familiar voice came on over the radio and said, “Curio Waltz One-Eight-One, this is Delito Agave Seven-Seven. Come in, over.”
Despite the fact that his position was now taking enemy fire, Alex could not help but feel a smile cross his face for a moment. A sandbag exploded in front of him, and he felt the whoosh of a bullet fly just past his face. He tapped his cheek repeatedly to make sure he had not been shot, and then dug down deeper into the cover.
“Wasn’t expecting to hear from you, Dag,” he said. “Over.”
“Alex, you’ve got a large Dominion infantry column coming up through the Rock Maze and into the Crest,” Dag said, completely forgetting to use the code phrase they had discussed. “They could be there any moment. Over.”
An explosion rocked the fortifications and the tank answered in response. “Tell me something I don’t know,” he said into the transmitter.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” Dag said. “There were too many of them.”
“The same could be said here,” Alex replied. “Look, stand-by one, I need to speak to the Captain.”
“He’ll want to know my betrothed says hello,” Dag said.
Knowing what that meant, Alex said, “Roger. Position Berlio to Position Alethia, over.”
Captain Beaurigar’s voice came through clearly, “Position Alethia, go ahead.”
“The enemy’s upon us, over,” he replied.
“They are here as well,” Beaurigar responded.
28
Fifteen minutes before, Captain Beaurigar had watched as the Dominion forces began a surge up the ravine against his forward lines. During the night, they had managed to repair all but the last of the bridges across the meandering New River and had gotten their tanks into a position where their cannon fire could at least cover the advancing infantry. Beaurigar’s lone remaining tank on the lines, bombardiers armed with grenade launchers and a single mortar cannon had poured fire onto the tanks, while the militia machine gun nests and snipers assaulted the advancing infantry.
The Dominion casualties in the first assault were immense and the stretch of road in between the enemy tanks and the Miravallian fortifications became an abattoir of carnage. Although the militia was keeping the Dommies from advancing all the way up to the defensive line, tank fire had put massive craters into their fortifications and several dozen militiamen had been killed or been forced off the lines with injuries. He had already lost seventy five of the five hundred militiamen under his command to Alex’s command and the woods, and his soldiers were burning through ammunition at a frightening clip. At the present rate of firing, the weapons captured from the Dominion would be spent soon, and then they were down to a few Miravallian National Guard weapons, hunting rifles, and pistols.
Now, Alex was telling him that the Dominion had made it to his checkpoint on the Bluffs Road. If he did not want an enemy coming up on his position’s rear, he would have to deploy more soldiers into the woods to join the picket lines there. Looking down on the Dommies still attempting to advance through the hail of defensive fire, Beaurigar did not know what to do.
“Sir, there was another thing,” Alex’s voice came through his radio. “The betrothed couple is still alive, over.”
“Are you certain?” Beaurigar replied.
“Spoke to the man myself and got his assurances,” Alex said.
Aria was still alive. Taking a deep breath and saying a silent prayer to all the gods who had watched out over his daughter, he felt a new feeling of resolve surge through him. “Understood, Lieutenant,” he said. “Continue to hold. I’m sending more men into the woods to reinforce the sentries. We will continue to hold here. We have to. Over.”
29
Dag set down the transmitter as Aria and the others joined him in the conn. Alex had advised him of the full situation, which sounded utterly hopeless. Not wanting to advertise the fact that they had stolen a Dominion airship, he did not advise his brother many details of their recent adventures. Of course, all of that had been done so that they could warn Alex and Captain Beaurigar in time, and they had failed spectacularly in that regard.
“They’re already under attack,” he said to Aria disconsolately as she sat down next to him. “We were too late.”
“You sound like you’re giving up,” Aria said.
Markov muttered a curse under his breath. “We can’t follow the Dominion soldiers’ path up the Rock Maze,” he said. “Even an airship like this can’t get the altitude necessary to get to Craven Bluffs.”
“No,” Dag agreed, the beginnings of a plan forming in his mind. “But what about Rainier Ravine?”
“I don’t know,” Markov answered as he walked over to the map, with Dag, Aria and Logan joining him.
“Those refugees,” Logan spoke up as he pointed to Rainier Ravine on the map. “They said the Dommies attacking their home had airships- steel ones.”
“We might not be able to get to Craven Bluffs, but if we get to Rainier Ravine, we can take out the Dommies in the ravine with the airship’s weapons, assuming your father can hold the line until we get there,” Dag said to Aria.
“And if we can clean up the Dommies there, Dad, I mean the captain, can turn around and reinforce Alex,” she said. “It would give them a fighting chance.”
“Those airships the refugees saw are probably still going to be there supporting the attack,” Logan pointed out.
“Well, as far as they know, we’re all part of the same happy Dommie family,” Dag replied, before turning to Markov and ordering, “Get us on a best speed course to Rainer Ravine.”
Markov picked up one of the grease pencils and traced a line on the map from where their current position was marked to the south of the Crest, avoiding any areas with too high an elevation, before turning their path back to the north and Rainer Ravine. “It will take a few hours, plus it will take us awfully close to Stonewater,” he said.
“Good,” Dag responded. “I was hoping that you would say that.”
After giving them a few minutes to rest, Dag sent Logan to make sure the prisoners were still secure, and once he returned, he had Kryski lead the militia up to the air-to-air combat deck. Aria would command the weapons on the bombard deck, but there was a good chance they would need to divide what was left of their militia between the two battle decks once they got to the Crest, and Kryski would need to assume command there. The looks on the faces of the Craven Bluffs militiamen was uniformly crestfallen since they had found out that their home had fallen. Dag thought giving them something to do might help them take their minds off it until they got the opportunity to extract some vengeance.
Markov was sitting at the pilot’s station, occasionally walking over to the map to update their position, while Dag sat in the captain’s chair. Aria was leaning against the terrascope column, snapping her fingers nervously and then clapping her hands together before repeating the motion. Markov looked in annoyance over to Aria, which prompted Dag to stand up.
“Aria, come with me,” he said as he walked over to a ladder and started climbing up.
Aria followed him and they made their way up through the air-to-air weapons deck before arriving at a portal covered with a hatch. Dag turned the circular handle and then unlocked the hatch, before pushing it up and out. Bright sunlight suddenly streamed through into the ladder well as Dag stepped through the portal. Once he was clear, he reached down and helped pull Aria up.
“What are we doing, Dag?” she asked as he shut the hatch.
They were on the ship’s bridge, which seemed rather small for the vast size of the airship. Surrounded by black iron rails, the bridge had no stations, but was merely an observation point like a crow’s nest on an old sailing vessel. To the fore, they
could see the air-to-air missile batteries, mortar cannons, and phalanx machine guns mounted around the armored sections of the hull. On each side, there was a large wing with four spinning turbines of different sizes. One of the starboard side turbines was still moving rather slowly compared to the others, although Markov had said he should be able to get it fully functional if they could land to repair it.
“You can hardly see any damage from up here,” Aria observed.
“According to Markov, the armor took the brunt of the blasts,” Dag reported. “And it’s the underside of the airship that took the hits.”
“So, it’s probably battered all to hell,” Aria laughed as she walked over to the rail and looked over to the west first.
Joining her and placing an arm around her waist, Dag said, “I wanted to look at it. Miraval. I’ve never seen it like this before. It’s a beautiful country.”
They could see the rolling grasslands bisected by the Godly River, the Goldtop Mountains far in the distance, and the entrance into the Bolero Valley. He was not certain, but if he squinted he thought he could see what looked like a city to the southwest- Philatheos. Philatheos was home to the Holy See, the Grand Pantheon, and was officially ruled by the Holy Pontiff, even though de facto rule of the city belonged to Miraval. Dag smiled; if the gods truly resided in the stars as the abbots always claimed, this was the view they had of Miraval.
“It’s gorgeous,” Aria said as she turned around and walked across the bridge so that she could stare to the foothills and mountains close to their position on the east. “But it’s not the Crest.”
“Maybe not,” Dag said. “But you miss my point.”
“And what was that?” she asked as she came about to face him.
He sighed and looked away from her for a moment. “If the Dommies get across the Godly River, this land will be destroyed. Cities will be razed, fields will be burned, and our people will be killed. Miraval will become just another subjugated part of the Dominion, forgotten to history.” He looked back to her and met her eyes. “It’s worth saving,” he said after a moment. “It’s worth protecting and…”
Guerrilla (The Invasion of Miraval Book 2) Page 15
