Deadly Wands

by Brent Reilly

CHAPTER 62

  Billy wisely skipped some cities to make tracking him harder. They ended up bombing more divisions and fewer cities as more units showed up. But, as the weeks passed, they surprised fewer enemies and got surprised more often. Time to leave.

  But he needed bombs, so he had his division fireball a city after nightfall and let themselves be driven off, knowing the residents would stay vigilant all night. The Americans returned to their hiding place to sleep and eat. In the morning, they attacked the city again, and whittled the enemy down all day before overwhelming the defenders. Instead of searching for survivors at night in the wreckage, Billy captured the munitions depot, dropped gunpowder bombs on the strongest structures, incendiaries on what had not yet burned, then packed shrapnel bombs to take with them. The Americans surprised the city by leaving before finishing them all off.

  They flew west, away from the main enemy forces, but found no good hiding places when they needed to stop and rest. They didn’t even have time to eat the food they started cooking when a sentry flashed a warning upon seeing a Mongol scout. They were too tired and hungry to fight effectively.

  “Fly as far as you can towards Grandma,” Billy told the division commander. “Keep your bombs, but avoid the enemy. I’ll catch up soon.”

  Billy overtook the fleeing scout, but not before he warned another scout on the horizon, who raced back to his unit.

  Crap. Billy hoped to point them in the wrong direction, but that second scout surely saw his division rising north. After killing the first scout, he overtook the second one. A third scout, however, would reach the unit before him.

  It was only a battalion. If Billy knew the threat was only a thousand Mongols, he’d have his troops leave their bombs on the ground and fight. But now his tired marathoners were already in the air. A rested battalion could cripple his irreplaceable marathoners, so he had to stop them.

  He swapped outer coats in a cloud with the second scout he killed, then raced to the enemy, which rose on an intercept course. Billy knew his division would turn ninety degrees west once they lost their pursuers.

  Billy had to judge their relative positions carefully. Confident of their course, he popped up in an arc that positioned him at the very front of the battalion. He watched the battalion commander turn his head to see what the hell he was doing. Billy sensed disapproval, rather than danger, so he continued until he rose above the battalion, but falling at an angle towards them.

  Now, in a controlled fall, Billy pointed his hands and feet at the battalion leader and fired every wand. The fireballs not only struck the front line, but continued to burn a dozen rows deep. Billy sent his next volley at the nearest company commander, then turned the other way to fire at the second closest.

  Now he fell below a thousand angry quads -- not a safe place to be. He popped sideways to avoid dozens of balls certainly coming at him, then fell to earth, back first, so he could fire even his boot wands at the bastards descending to get him.

  Normally, this is exactly what a lone quad should not do, but Billy needed to give his division time, and costing the enemy altitude did that. Sure enough, dozens of squad leaders broke off to pursue the famous Red Baron and a thousand gold tons.

  They flew down faster than he fell, so he hit more of them as they closed the distance. Billy adjusted his position to evade the inevitable fireballs for as long as he could, before finally popping down to avoid getting swarmed.

  He made them chase him through the terrain -- around hills, between trees, and into gullies. They didn’t tire much until the third hour. Some had to land, while the strongest continued the chase. Billy led the best quads away, only to race them back.

  In his Mongol uniform, they had no idea he was the Baron when he landed. He knelt as if exhausted. After drinking water, he cut down everyone within twenty meters, then popped up to shoot at all the easy targets. A few dozen quads tried to swarm him, but he just popped sideways and took them out a few at a time. The exhausted tried to flee, but he caught them easily, then searched for those who hid.

  Billy knew that the quads he fought today were nothing compared to the Mongols he battled several years ago. The quality of the enemy fell every time Genghis had to recruit.

  Billy hid when he spotted a shadow on the horizon. He waited for their best quads to rest, then shot them on the ground. A few hundred chased him away, but he just circled around to strike those too tired to fly.

  Now their best quads had to stay in the air to warn the rest. Once rested, Billy hugged the terrain, blew past their sentries, and fireballed everyone who had not launched. He avoided the strong to attack the weak.

  This worked well all day, and even better after nightfall. They couldn’t see him coming until giant orbs of flame engulfed those napping. To Billy, it was the best game ever invented. Nothing made him feel more alive than taking everything a man had, and everything he would ever have.

  They dispersed in the dark, so Billy left to catch up to his division. He found them looking relieved to see him.

  Billy explained how he wanted to beat the Mongol force between them and Grandma. He gave memory sticks containing his latest exploits to several who knew Grandma, along with instructions for the next battle, and sent them to find her.

  It took his division three more days of easy flying before they found the new enemy force. The division rested all day while Billy located the enemy camp and found a large enough hiding spot. It took five hours of flying in the dark to get there, but at least it was only an hour from the enemy. The Mongols put their long range patrols north, south, and west, not behind them.

  After sleeping well, the Americans took off two hours before dawn. Without the Baron, they never would have dreamed of attacking one hundred thousand quads, but Billy gave them confidence. Even though they didn’t know if Grandma’s force would participate.

  They hugged the ground in the dark to not stand out in the sky, which helped them get much closer unseen. Sentries sounded warnings, which other patrols repeated, but the commanders assumed the enemy came from the west, not east.

  His line slowed to minimum speed and dropped their bombs into the mass of sleepy men scrambling into formation. If warned just a few minutes before, the Mongols could have murdered the weighted down Americans flying low and slow.

  Instead, the marathoners dropped their shrapnel explosives and got off several volleys into grounded targets with nowhere to run. The Mongols were within lethal range of the Americans, but the Americans were not within lethal range of the Mongols. They crossed the camp and rose steeply since they enjoyed momentum, while the Mongols did not.

  Billy, however, rose in an arc back over the camp. As thousands of Mongols rose to chase the Americans, Billy screamed, blazed his wands, and shot volleys. He waited for them to get close, then led several thousand of them east, away from his escaping division.

  As planned, the Americans waited until the fastest enemies nearly caught up, several kilometers from camp, then formed a ten square kilometer vertical wall in the sky to launch volleys down at the thousands of angry quads chasing them. Stretched out in a long pipeline, the Mongols threw themselves away against the American broadside. Even when an entire division charged as one, volleys from ten thousand with stronger wands fired from greater altitude destroyed them. Once the Mongols stopped the blind charge, the Americans closed the distance before the Mongols circled around them.

  After mauling these Mongols, enemy reinforcements arrived. Twenty battalions raced to encircle the Americans, who instead fled west towards Grandma.

  Except Grandma was no longer west of them. On Billy’s instructions, she hid as close as possible south. When her spies reported twenty battalions chasing the American division, Grandma ordered her slowest twenty battalions towards the enemy camp, while she led her fastest to hit them from the other three sides. In the dark, the Mongols assumed the dark shadows were their battalions returning.

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nbsp; The Americans caused about fifty thousand casualties, but most were minor cuts and burns. But those wounded needed immediate attention.

  Team Red shot up the camp from every direction. Only a rapid reaction battalion stayed in formation, and Grandma’s super-quads made it a priority. The rest amounted to shooting a lot of disorganized individuals, or torching felt huts with wounded inside.

  When Billy returned, a few hours after dawn, the five super-quads ambushed the Mongols chasing the Baron. Now came the fun part: preparing the camp before the remaining twenty thousand enemies returned.

  The American division arrived first, having lost their exhausted pursuers. They gave the code and were given a hero’s welcome. Then Billy set up patrols and sentries just like the camp originally had. While Grandma’s force hid, the Americans pretended to be Mongols.

  The returning battalions looked relieved to be almost home again. Billy stole the uniform of a battalion commander so that his battalion could escort them to base. Billy led them to an open parade ground where they buried the munitions they found.

  Naturally, they hit the Mongols as they landed. Grandma’s force dropped bombs on their heads, which exploded the buried munitions. Everyone else rushed to blast them from all sides and above. The good guys had every advantage over the twenty thousand bad guys and suffered no casualties.

  Billy’s friends swooped down on him as soon as the blasting died away and Bear gave him one of his famous hugs. So many people surrounded him that quads had to extend steel just to pat him on the back.

  “Why’s everyone so happy?” Billy asked. “At this rate I’m gonna run out of Mongols.”

  And he wasn’t joking.

  Grandma pushed her way through, not afraid to elbow her own grandchildren. Or, perhaps, delighted for an excuse to knock them about.

  “We’ve been reduced to melting down statues and chiseling loose precious gems. Work work work! You know how bitchy the boys get when they go too long without killing. It was like living in a camp full of old cranky ladies.

  “Then your messenger arrives to tell us you plan to attack one hundred thousand Mongols -- with or without us. First you abandon us, then you command us to save you from the big bad Mongols? We’d have blasted your messenger if he didn’t start talking nonsense -- how you beheaded Hulagu, tried to kill Genghis Khan in his own palace, kidnapped the Empress, took on the capital alone, made fools of an entire enemy division, then sacked cities deep in Mongolia. Hell, I’d have blasted him myself if he didn’t produce the videos. That turned my boys into puppies eager to follow you into hell. Me? I’m only here to smack the fool who walked into the Khan’s tent city alone to assassinate the Great Immortal.”

  With that she smacked him across the head like his dad used to, then kissed his forehead. Billy tracked their hero-worship like a fireball. A woman collapsed at Billy’s feet, crying out of control. Billy felt caged by their admiration.

  “Geneva is happy you killed the person that Genghis loved most,” Bear helpfully explained. “You paid him back for all the loved ones that he took from us.”

  Billy understood, but didn’t want to endure fifty thousand hugs. “Just don’t call me a hero because I know exactly what I am.”

  Grandma suddenly looked sad. “Genghis has left governing to his granddaughters to run his massive flying school. He should have half a million quads soon. We should bomb them before he learns of our victory.”

  “Yep. I hoped you moved enough bombs near him.”

  “We have a million not far from him, another million hidden along his most likely route west, and a few million more in Kiev.”

  “The sooner you strike, the safer it’ll be,” Billy said, looking up. “You have great weather for flying.”

  “Crap,” Bear said with a tired sigh. “He wants us to leave today.”

  “If you leave after breakfast, you can bomb him tomorrow night. I’ll infiltrate his camp to find out where his super-quads, high altitude troops, and marathoners sleep, then I’ll find a path through his patrols.”

  Grandma sighed in resignation and the other super-quads knew Billy won again. It’s hard to argue with someone willing to do so much more.

  The next day, Billy met them at the rendezvous point. He projected a huge overhead image of the camp and pointed out the barracks of the specialty quads.

  “Genghis spread them out around the camp to make targeting them harder. The paranoid bastard has too many patrols up to his west, so the only way in is from the east. And, even then, we’ll have to slice up a few patrols and fly in so high that sentries on the ground don’t see us. So the bad news is that we have another day of flying into enemy territory. The good news is that cloud cover should cloak our approach.

  “Instead of bombing the whole camp, I want to divide our force into four groups, three targeting his specialty quads and the fourth to destroy his supplies. Let’s dive straight down, bomb when we get close, hover and blast at two hundred meters, then let them come up to us. Each group will need to break a battalion into squads, flying an overhead perimeter to intercept the enemy. Each group leader should stay above their troops and signal retreat as soon as circumstances turn unfavorable. The facility is huge, so each unit leader must act independently. I’ll do my scream to distract them. Afterwards, I’m gonna start my next mission, so I don’t know when you’ll see me next.”

  “The preposterous one you can’t tell us about?” Bear asked.

  Billy put a hand on Grandma’s shoulder to emphasize his next point. “Keep him away from home and don’t let any messengers through. Okay?”

  “Just what do you plan to do, Red?” Grandma asked, alarmed.

  Billy, quoting his mother, smiled. “I’m gonna kill as many as I can, as fast as I can, for as long as I can.”