A Blitzerbug rattled in a nearby alley and rifle fire backed it up. Another Blitzer lit up a room behind one of the hanging flags. “Tell our guys to rip those flaags down outa every joint we clear.”
“Won’t the enemy caatch on to thaat an’ tear flaags down themselves?” Koratin asked. A musket ball blew up a dust cloud at his feet, but the gunsmoke betrayed the shooter and a dozen bullets flailed the edge of a nearby rooftop.
“Maybe. But whaat else caan we do?” Her eye caught a battery of much smaller guns rattling past, hooked to smaller limbers, all pulled by crews of six to eight ’Cats. “Cap-i-taan Aakon,” Blas called to the Lemurian officer in charge as she quickly strode over. He didn’t salute, of course. Not here.
“Hold up!” Aakon shouted at his battery then turned to Blas. “Ay, sur?”
Blas waved around. “Those little mountain howitzers,” she began, but when Aakon started to bristle, she grinned. Cannoneers on the little guns were ribbed unmercifully by “real” artillerymen and gun-’Cats. Blas raised a calming hand. “Maay just save our aasses,” she continued, watching Aakon’s rising resentment subside. She waved around again, particularly at the rooftops. “You caan get them up there, caan’t you?”
A returning grin split Aakon’s white-and-tan-striped face. “Ay, sur. Two guys pull the tube, three get the aaxle an’ trail, one each carries a wheel.”
“Aammo?”
“I’ll need more guys—for thaat, an’ to cover us.” Aakon had already figured out exactly what Blas wanted and knew his gunners’ carbines would be useless if they got jumped with their hands full.
“You got ’em. Graab whoever you need.” Blas turned back to the others just as a line of infantry in white and yellow—regulars—rushed out of an alley to try to form a line across the main avenue a couple of hundred yards ahead. They were right on top of the farthest advance of the 2nd Marines and Allin-Silvas started tearing into them before they could even dress their ranks. It was a slaughter. Still, it was only a taste of the bloodbath to come, and it wouldn’t be long before every step was contested.
“Every little gun we get goes up on the roofs.” She looked at Ixtli. “Ask Shinyaa for all of them.” She faced Audry and Garcia. “We’ll leapfrog them along as we secure the buildings. Get mortar teams above as well, where they caan see stuff. We’ll still haave to slog through the streets, but maybe thaat’ll keep the snipers down. An’ the guns an’ mortars can help clear streets ahead of us too.” She glanced at the sky. “’Specially since there ain’t near as much air support as I hoped. Wonder whaat’s up with thaat?”
CHAPTER 20
////// Above El Corazon
Orrin Reddy felt sick to his stomach. Not because of the wild acrobatics the Grikbirds forced him and his five Nancys from Maaka-Kakja’s 12th Bomb Squadron to perform, but because of what looked for all the world to be a disaster in the making. This was his second sortie of the day—his first leading elements of the 12th—and his and Seepy’s Nancy carried four incendiaries, basically egg-shaped drums with stabilizing fins, filled with a mixture of gasoline and gimpra sap. But what had started to appear a little troubling on his first run looked positively awful now. Despite a heavier artillery barrage than anything Orrin had witnessed on this world, the ground assault against the south wall of the city was being churned to pulp. Worse, it looked like Shinya was just throwing more troops at the same meat grinder. He didn’t get that. Shinya could be an asshole, but he wasn’t an idiot.
On the water, Hibbs’s battle line had disintegrated and not a single one of his ships of the line remained underway. A couple were burning. The only consolation was they were burning alongside Dom liners and appeared to be grappled tight. Those Doms might be ironclads, Orrin thought, but there’s wood underneath. They’ll still burn. All of Hibbs’s liners seemed to have latched on to an enemy ship, in fact, pretty much taking them out of the fight one way or another. Only one Dom liner was still maneuvering and it seemed more concerned with dodging Nancys than anything else.
But the Nancys were busy dodging Grikbirds. Fleashooters were killing the hell out of them, running interference, but there were just so many. And they’d lost a lot of Fleashooters too.
“Two on your tail, Daakr,” Orrin shouted in his mic at Raan-Goon’s COFO, who’d just nailed a Grikbird with his Fleashooter and was starting to pull up. His wingman was nowhere in sight. “They’re dropping on you out of the sun! Break left!” It was too late. The flying reptiles had the angle and nobody’d seen them in time. Daakr made a heroic effort to twist away, but a stooping Grikbird snagged his starboard aileron and tore the whole thing off. The plane went into a corkscrew spin and Orrin watched it all the way down until a greasy ball of flame rolled up near a stepped pyramid at the center of El Corazon.
“You lousy sons of bitches!” Orrin seethed at a flock of half a dozen Grikbirds that suddenly appeared in front of his flight, swanning along like their only concern was avoiding the rising smoke. “Let’s get ’em, Twelfth!” he shouted on his flight’s frequency. Pointing his plane at the Grikbirds, he unleashed his pair of .30 cals, chasing tracers with his stick. Four of the things, flying in a line, were torn apart in a chaotic explosion of feathers and flailing wings before the others got the hint and peeled away. One took late hits from another plane and tumbled out of the sky.
“Okaay, you haad your fun. Now whaat we gonna bomb?” Seepy demanded testily. Orrin looked around. There were more Grikbirds and he was tempted to go after them, but Nancys weren’t pursuit ships and plenty of people on the ground needed their bombs right now. The trouble was, he wasn’t sure who needed them most. And as he got a better grasp of the overall situation, he realized it wasn’t all bad.
Not only did Hibbs have the Dom liners in a death grip, the frigates out in the middle of the pass were holding their own. Even Jenks’s old Achilles, now commanded by Captain Grimsley and probably the oldest frigate in the fleet, was tearing the hell out of an opponent. Apparently, the Doms hadn’t armored their lighter ships. Looking east, Orrin saw XI Corps hitting El Corazon hard from that direction, its artillery fire and a blizzard of mortars setting much of that side of the city alight even as the assault was grinding against the wall. And some XI Corps troops were lapping around the southeast bastion to join Shinya’s stalled spearhead.
On the northwest corner of the city, where it touched a dormant volcano and the sea, he saw that the heavy guns in the fort had sunk one transport a couple of hundred yards offshore, its masts sticking up, but the rest of the ships had made it in—sort of. All appeared damaged to varying degrees and Grikbirds still plagued them, but they were now hard aground in the gravelly shallows. That made them easy targets for serious punishment, but most of the Marines of XV Corps were streaming ashore, either wading (which gave Orrin the creeps) or motoring in aboard shoals of stackable dories. They were taking withering fire, but hundreds were already at the seaward wall, fighting through some rubbly breaches Hibbs’s liners must’ve blasted with their heavy guns. Best of all, as far as he could see, all those things had drawn a lot of Doms from another attack already through a different section of the south wall. “Didn’t think Shinya was stupid,” he told himself out loud.
“Whaat?” Seepy shouted.
“I said ‘Don’t be stupid,’” he yelled back. “I haven’t had any fun since the early hours of December seventh—eighth, where I was—1941!” He flipped the Mic switch. “Twelfth, we’re gonna lay all our bombs on those Doms converging opposite the breach in the wall where the Marines from the transports are trying to get in. Follow me!” Orrin banked hard left and kicked the rudder over, starting a sharp, turning dive.
The ground came up fast, the brilliant white coastal city now charred and battered, writhing under exploding shells that left some sections smoldering and others burning out of control. Smoke was everywhere, piling high in the air and leaning toward the east, but that left his target—and the tiny ye
llow-coated specks converging on it—easy to spot. He felt a twinge, knowing there were civilians down there too: women, old folks, even little kids. . . . He shook his head violently. By all accounts, not just what Blas and Blair reported, there were no noncombatants. He didn’t believe that, but what could they do? Gritting his teeth, he stared through the same crosshair sight that aimed his guns, centering it a little beyond where he wanted his bombs to go. Caressing the release at his side, he waited until he could almost see the horror on the upturned faces, then he pulled the lever. The plane bounced in the air as bombs fell away, and he immediately pulled back on the stick. Blasting through the tower of smoke in front of him, he started a climbing turn that would take him east to west over the water, paralleling the city docks facing the pass. Rising up through two thousand feet he saw mighty orange and black toadstools climbing over his target, reinforced every few seconds by more sprouting beside them.
“Maker!” Seepy snapped, and Orrin thought he was reacting to what they’d done. But the ’Cat quickly shouted, “Look up, two o’clock high, ’bout five thousaands!” Orrin did—and couldn’t believe what he saw. There, at last, were the “greater dragons” they’d been worried about, and “dragons” was the only word for them. There were probably twenty-five or thirty, easily as big as his Nancy, their great wings flapping almost leisurely but propelling them swiftly west. Another twenty or thirty Grikbirds swarmed around them. Orrin doubted the little escorts could make it all the way to the carriers and back, but suspected the big dragons could—and that was clearly where they were headed. Bitterly, he realized that if they were going out now, range had never been a problem for them, day or night, and a lot of guys on the ground were probably dying for nothing. No, they probably could’ve attacked at any time and only waited till the height of the Allied assault—thinking all their planes would be here and their carriers helpless.
Well, if that’s the case, they’re gonna be in for a helluva surprise, Orrin consoled himself, twisting the knob by his Talk switch and opening the frequency direct to Maaka-Kakja. As long as our guys aren’t too surprised by them, he added to himself. “Makky-Kat, Makky-Kat, this is COFO Reddy, over.” He took a breath as he plowed through smoke rising from the sea battle below and started to cough.
“COFO Reddy, this is Maaka-Kakja, over,” came the quick reply, but just as they cleared the smoke and Orrin took a deep, clean breath, he heard Seepy screech, “Grikbirds! Grikbirds! Right daamn there!” The Lemurian’s Blitzerbug stuttered for an instant, and something slammed hard into the plane.
There was a terrible, tearing, crunching sound, then a jolting whack! whack! that made the engine skip a beat and somehow sprayed blood all over Orrin. It completely coated his goggles and made his suddenly frantic battle to keep the plane out of a flat spin seem even more impossible. Heart pounding, he tore his goggles off and threw them away, centered the stick, and jammed the throttle to the stop. The engine roared with a terrible new vibration—and it didn’t make any difference. No matter what he did with the stick or rudder, the wounded Nancy slid into spin like a flung saucer, out of control, skidding toward the city. He thought he saw the Grikbird that hit them, plummeting to earth, but also saw more coming. “We may have to jump for it, Seepy!” he shouted. If the ’Cat responded, he didn’t hear, and he wasn’t sure they should bail out over a Dom city in the middle of a battle. The voracious flashies in the sea might’ve given them a kinder end, but that wasn’t an option now. Probably better just to ride the wreck down . . .
Increasingly desperate and still moving the stick in all directions as the altimeter spun down under a thousand feet, he fought against the forces pinning him to the left side of the cockpit and tried idling the engine. The vibration lessened, but nothing else.
Orrin was just a pilot, not an aeronautical engineer like Ben Mallory, but he thought the physics that essentially nullified control surfaces in a flat spin had still been mostly theoretical, even after the problem got more attention due to rumored issues with Bell’s Airacobras. But Orrin never flew one of those, and honestly hadn’t much kept up with how the theories were working out. His instructors had basically always just taught him to “try everything” if ever faced with the dreaded situation. He thought he had.
“Shit! I can’t stop it,” he confessed. “Jump or not, Seepy, it’s your . . .” Another Grikbird hit them, tearing the port wingfloat off and flipping them into a crazy, nose-down barrel roll. Suddenly, though, with rising exhilaration, Orrin felt the stick stiffen and he arrested their roll. They were falling fairly straight. Whooping, he opened the throttle and pulled back on the stick. The engine bellowed and the vibration returned, but they were flying again—just as Doms on the ground started shooting muskets at them. “Hang on, Seepy! I’m heading back over the water. That last Grikbird must’ve stabilized us, tryin’ to kill us.” He paused. The vibration was getting worse. “What happened? We lose part of the prop?” Still no answer. Worried, he wrenched himself around to look aft.
Seepy was gone. Orrin’s first suspicion was that his observer-copilot jumped after all, until he saw the bloody, shredded, fluttering fabric all around the aft cockpit.
“Oh, Jeez, Seepy,” he murmured sadly, “I’m so sorry.”
Turning back out to sea, he nursed his Nancy higher—head constantly in motion, watching for more attackers—while trying to get Maaka-Kakja back on the horn. It was no use; the antenna aerial stretching from both wingtips to the vertical stabilizer was gone and his radio was out. Just as bad, by the time three other Nancys from the 12th Bomb Squadron found him and clustered protectively around, the frightening flight of dragons had disappeared in the west. He couldn’t even point them out to his comrades. Hopefully, somebody else saw the damn things. Suddenly inspired, he caught the eye of the closest pilot, a human Impie staring with amazement at his battered plane, and gestured in the direction of the carriers. He also pointed to his eyes, made the hand signal for Grikbirds (they didn’t have a signal for “giant dragons”), and made a slashing gesture toward the carriers again. Finally, he shook his mic. The other pilot made an exaggerated nod.
Realizing he’d done all he could and really starting to feel Seepy’s loss, Orrin concentrated on keeping his savaged, rattling Nancy in the air. About halfway back to Maaka-Kakja, about when he should glimpse the ships on the horizon, he noticed two dark gray columns of smoke rising in the sky. No way the dragons I saw could’ve gotten there already, he protested to himself, and that’s when he knew, with a twisting gut, he must’ve only seen part of the attack force. More dragons had gotten past them, or taken off from somewhere else.
He glanced down at the water, surprised to see a much larger concentration of mountain fish basking below than they’d ever noted this far out. The gathering looked like a tight pod of whales, only these whales were the size of cruisers, even battleships, and they stretched for miles to the north and south. Things probably got too noisy for ’em up close to the pass, he supposed, then looked bleakly back at the distant smoke. Wonder if there’ll be any carriers left to set this heap down beside? Boy, what a mess this has turned out to be!
CHAPTER 21
////// El Corazon
Goddaamn draagons, big ones, hit the fleet and tore up our caarriers,” Blas grouched at Sister Audry and Arano Garcia after jumping down behind some blasted rubble to join them. Musket balls kicked up dust and ricocheted, warbling away down the street or whocking against something solid. A little howitzer thumped a case shot through a top-story balcony doorway to the front, and the whole floor blew out and collapsed, making and stifling a chorus of screams. “Just got the word from the Ninth Impies baack at the gate,” Blas continued. “They got the raadio up.” She blinked quizzically at Garcia. “You ever hear of draagons—Grikbirds—big as a plane?”
Garcia looked uncomfortable. “Rumors only. Legends. Tales to frighten children. I never believed them.”
“Well, they’re real,” Bla
s stated flatly, taking a gulp from her water bottle, “an’ they’re baad news. Thaank the Maker they ain’t got enough to pester us with.” She looked at the billowing smoke overhead. “Or maybe they don’t like smoke any more thaan regular Grikbirds.” She blinked disgust. “Anywaay, thaat explains what happened to our air support. Whaat’s left’ll be runnin’ baack an’ forth all the way to Nicoya, an’ poundin’ Doms in front o’ Fifteenth Corps thaat way.” She nodded north. “They’re in, by the way, an’ headin’ for us. We’re s’posed to link up at the temple. We’ll haave haaf the city then, if we make it.” Her tail whipped behind her. “’Leventh Corps still ain’t in to the east, though they got a foot in the gate the Pegaa-dores died for. Don’t know whaat good thaat does.”
“It keeps more enemies away from us, Major Blas,” Sister Audry chided gently. “Many men are dying elsewhere so we can continue our advance.”
Blas took another gulp of water, knowing Audry was right. They were waiting, hunkered down, while elements of 12th Division moved up on several narrower parallel streets, clearing buildings as they went. The fighting was intense and there was a constant rattle of rifle and musket fire, punctuated by grenades and frequent blasts of canister scything down alleys. Mortars and mountain howitzers on the rooftops were doing terrible destruction as well, sometimes close, sometimes pretty far when they caught sight of tempting targets. The rubble they used for cover now had once been a three-story shop of some sort until a case shot went in a window and blew the whole thing down in a gust of shattered rock, roiling dust, and gobbets of flesh. Apparently, the Doms had been using it as an armory or reserve magazine.
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