by Brent Reilly
CHAPTER 40
Billy dropped buck naked from the sky in front of several thousand startled Mongols. Under less lethal circumstances, it’d have looked hilarious. He flashed his four wands and gave his signature scream to make sure he had their attention.
Ten squads broke off to intercept him. He let them come, before sprinting over them in an arc, which gave him a controlled freefall to fire four-wand volleys into the mass of enemies below him. As expected, more squads broke off to drive him away. He made the most of every second: fire, adjust position, fire, pop laterally or vertically, fire. He tore big holes in their top layer as he avoided a few dozen squads chasing him.
A company leader broke off from his battalion and positioned his hundred fliers to fire down on him. As they fired, he dove between the top battalion and the one below it so their fireballs consumed a hundred-square-meter hole in the stacked formation. Blasts that missed one battalion struck the one below.
Someone had to later point it out to Billy, but no one had ever dived between two battalions before. Because it was insane.
Several hundred quads, flying horizontally just above him, shot at him. Expecting their fire, he popped laterally every heartbeat while slicing enemies just below him. The top battalion thus shot up the battalion below them. He did this for as long as he could, which turned out to be only six heartbeats, but it felt like a lifetime. It was like dancing on hot coals. But he had to get out before the battalion above fell on him.
His distraction worked beautifully. Red Company #1 flew straight down fast and fired their first volley while the top battalion focused on the Baron. His team not only surprised the Mongols, but the second battalion was in no shape to assist the top battalion. And probably not highly motivated after they killed their teammates.
Billy flew out the opposite side of where he entered and helped his team shoot up the top battalion, who broke formation to deal with the threat. Team Red turned Mongols into flaming balls that smashed into those beneath them like fiery meteors.
Ox got hurt in an earlier fight and could barely fly, so he found an ideal location to record the battle for the publicity value. The video swayed the public so much that Billy assigned people to record all their battles. Billy didn’t expect to live long, so he wanted to fully document it for posterity.
The next two battalions, in the middle of the stack, exited on either side and pulled up to confront them. Billy’s company would soon face four battalions. Or what was left of them.
Company #10 now flew up from the trees at the bombers in the lowest level. The problem with attacking someone from below is that their hand wands already point down. Sure, alternating between propulsion and shooting messes up the formation, but that’s a small price to pay for killing enemies who fly in front of a wand. If the best place to attack someone is from behind, the worst is from the front. Which is what Company #10 did now.
The other two battalions carrying bombs then banked to position themselves on either side of the lowest to triple their firepower and because they’d soon over-fly their target anyways. Usually, they would not spread out until just before dropping their bombs, but the enemies below looked like such easy targets.
Which was the whole point.
Company #10 spread out and stayed two hundred meters below them, dodging incoming blasts like target practice. The textbook counter-move was for the three battalions to drop fast, enveloping the enemy below, but that’d ruin their bombing run. They’d wipe out the brave fools below them once they dropped their load.
But the other super-quads now dived out of the clouds. Four companies attacked the upper Mongols from four directions, while the other four companies surprised the bombers below.
Billy’s gamble paid off. How he used several hundred to destroy seven thousand would soon appear in battle textbooks around the world, thanks to Ox’s video.
The three bombing battalions were getting massacred. No one protected them from above, which was the whole point of a stacked formation, and they couldn’t even defend themselves. The middle battalion commander signaled “bomb release” and “dive” to fall upon the quads below them. The units on either side quickly followed. They had to rid themselves of their bombs to defend themselves, which meant going into a controlled freefall, so they may as well destroy the enemy below them in the same drop.
Waiting for this moment, Company #10 lured them down while shrieking a warning. Several thousand militia fell out of a cloud upon the bombers, who already had four super-quad companies on their backs. It was like the Mongols flew into a box canyon in the sky filled with locusts.
The whole point of training bombers to fly really high is so they can drop bombs with impunity. Billy lured the bastards low enough for militia to reach them. After destroying those three battalions, everyone rose to wipe out the remaining Mongols.
Like his father, Billy punished the punitive expedition.
