Never Sound Retreat

by William R. Forstchen

  "East around the sea," he said softly as he moved the queen off to the upper right corner of the board. In his imagination he could see the positioning. Nippon was several hundred miles to the east. If they had pushed the rail line aggressively, the way he wanted, and the hell with internal politics, they might have made it out to them in time, shipped in arms, and started building an army. The Nippon population was big enough that he could have fielded twenty divisions from their ranks within a year. With those twenty additional divisions, no Ban-tag army could ever have challenged them.

  "Damn, if only we had pushed the rail line through to Nippon."

  "If wishes were horses . . ." Emil replied. "And besides. We're not talking about the old days, when we could have thrown smoothbore muskets in their hands, trained them for a month, then lined them up and had them bang away. War is getting too damn complex now.

  "The units they've let us see are still armed the old way, with bow and lance, but remember everything Hans told us. They have factories, breechload-ing rifles and artillery, and those damn land cruisers. Even if we had gotten to Nippon in time, we would have been hundreds of miles out on a string pulled taut and ready to snap. It might have been a repeat of the First Roum Campaign, but only worse, far worse. Cut the rail line anywhere along that three-hundred-mile stretch, and you would have been finished."

  "What you're saying is that the Nippon were doomed from the start."

  Emil shook his head sadly.

  "It's like the classifying of the wounded I do during a battle. Those who can take care of themselves for a while, we hand them the bandages, give them a little morphine, and tell them to wait. It's deciding about the other two, who will we try and save and who do we set aside to die because they're too far gone, that still breaks my heart every time I do it."

  He looked away, and yet again Andrew sensed the all-so-different side of the war that Emil, his own Kathleen, and the other doctors experienced. In spite of his loathing for it all, there were still moments that seemed to transcend the brutality and revealed to him, yet again, the inner workings of his soul.

  The eternal question he had wrestled with for ten years was before him yet again . . . what am I? Though I loathe war, I know I would be somehow lost without it. All that I am now was formed in the crucible of battle. How I prayed for peace, and yet how I felt somehow incomplete when peace came, as if I was a machine of Mars, packed away but only until the bugles called again.

  "It's that moment when I have to look into a boy's eyes," Emil said, interrupting his thoughts. "It's that horrible moment when I have to lie as convincingly as I can that I'll be back later to take care of him, but that there's others who are hurt far worse . . ." His voice trailed off into silence for a moment.

  Andrew felt a wave of guilt for what he had just been musing about.Gates's Illustrated Weeklyhad printed hundreds of pictures of heroic struggle on the battlefields of the Republic, but they had never done one of the operating room, the battlefield that Dr. Emil Weiss fought upon. That was the other side of the equation which he had seen often enough. A man would go down by his side. There was the stunned moment of disbelief, shock in the wounded soldier's eyes, disbelief that it had finally happened, and then the fumbling at the clothes to see how bad it was. Funny, you could never really tell in those first few seconds until you actually saw the damage inflicted on your body; then you knew. A veteran, one who knew about wounds, would examine himself, and there might be a smile of relief, a sense that it was bad but he'd still make it. For the others, though, their gaze would suddenly unfocus, as if they were already seeing into the other land. And even though the doctor lied, both of them somehow knew.

  He remembered his own moment, the retreat off Seminary Ridge at Gettysburg, the few survivors of the Thirty-fifth gathered round him, and then the shell all but tearing his left arm off. The last he could remember was lying on the ground, looking up at his men, the regimental flag above them fluttering in the afternoon breeze, shot-torn and wreathed in battle smoke, then a fading away into the darkness, to awake with Emil sitting by his side, breaking the news that the arm was gone forever.

  "You can't save the whole world, Andrew Keane."

  Andrew tried to reason with himself that his frustration was coldly pragmatic, a hundred thousand potential troops for his army lost, in large part because of the shortsightedness of the government. But no, it was far more, far more . . . the thought of the Horde riding into yet another city, the division between those who will live a little longer, and those who will go immediately to the slaughter pits. He had hoped that somehow they could push the railroad ahead of the Bantag, lay rails faster than the Horde could move, then finally swing south, cut them off, and rescue millions, tens of millions. But the Horde had been the one to do the cutting off. As long as the Bantag held the way to the east and south, all those behind them were now doomed.

  He looked across the room to where Sergeant Major Hans Schuder slept. Like any old campaigner, Hans knew when to catch a nap and could drift off in seconds.

  Andrew watched him affectionately. Hans had been back for four months now. The physical wounds, the bullet hole in his leg, the saber slash to his head, were healed; but he was changed.

  Andrew knew sadly that the old Hans would never quite return. He had simply seen too much in his long years of captivity. Emil had even coined a term for it, "survivor's guilt," and said that many of the nearly three hundred that Hans had brought out suffered from it. Yet on Hans, the burden was heaviest. It was his decision which had triggered the breakout from the Bantag prison, and in the process knowingly condemned the thousands left behind to certain death.

  "Ah now! And you won't believe who I just dragged in!"

  Andrew looked back up and saw Pat O'Donald towering in the doorway, shaking the rain from his poncho. Taking off his soaked and drooping campaign hat, he pulled up a chair beside Andrew, took the bottle without asking, poured a drink into an empty glass, and downed it.

  Hans stirred from his slumber and, cursing, looked up.

  "You damn stupid mick, can't you keep it down?"

  "Mick is it? You thick-headed Dutchman."

  "Prussian by Gott," Hans snapped back.

  Andrew started to smile, shaking his head, waiting for the inevitable exchange, with Hans swearing at Pat in German, and Pat lapsing into a wondrous stream of Gaelic invective. But Pat broke it off and pointed back to the door, and all in the room fell silent.

  Jack Petracci stood in the doorway, grinning and standing at attention.

  Andrew leapt from his chair and, with hand extended, rushed up to Jack's side.

  "We thought you were dead, son. What the hell happened?"

  Holding on to Jack's hand Andrew led him over to the table, motioning for him to take a seat. Behind him Andrew saw Feyodor, his hand wrapped in bandages, and gestured for him to come over as well. Jack looked longingly at the bottle, and Pat, laughing, poured out drinks for everyone. Jack took the first drink and handed it over to Feyodor, who clumsily cupped it, grimacing as he tried to wrap his hands around the mug.

  "I was down at the dock watching as one of the courier ships from the blockade fleet came in," Pat announced, "and by all the saints I seen him standin' on the deck."

  "We'd given you Up, Petracci," Hans interjected, pulling a chair up beside Jack. "What happened?"

  "They've got a new airship design," Jack whispered shakily, as the vodka hit him. "Must have kept it hidden till they made half a dozen of them. Bigger wings, two engines, one on each wing. We did our run over Xi'an and about twenty miles east, turned about to head back, and I was starting to go down low for a closer look at things. Suddenly these new ships came diving out of the clouds."

  He sighed and took a long sip of his drink.

  "So we started to climb. Clouds were at nine thousand; I punched through into clear sky at ten. But they came through after us and kept right on climbing. Damnedest thing, sir, not only could they match our height, they were faster. It mus
t be those wings of theirs."

  "I want sketches of them as soon as possible for Ferguson to look at," Andrew said.

  More and more Andrew found that he was looking to Ferguson as a talisman, the young inventor always able to find yet another answer to whatever the Hordes threw at them. In the last war it was the rockets, in this one it might very well be the airships and the land ironclads he was developing.

  "Already made some," Jack replied, as he reached into his bedraggled tunic and pulled out a sheaf of papers, spreading them out on the table. Andrew leaned over to examine the drawings. Besides being the best pilot of the Republic, Jack had a fair hand as an illustrator as well. The ships looked sleeker, the engines mounted on the wings, and, looking at the scale line, Andrew saw that Jack estimated them at being nearly a hundred feet across. He looked over at Hans, who shook his head.

  "Damn Ha'ark," Hans mumbled. "I should have shot the bastard when we met under the flag of truce. Bet this is another one of the things he brought from that world of his."

  "If you'd shot him, you wouldn't be here now," Andrew replied. "I think, all things considered, the trade was worth it."

  "Then what happened?" Hans asked, his face drawn with worry.

  "Well, we had a running fight all the way back to the coast. I dodged down into the clouds, but they were patchy. Anytime I broke through, one of them was on me. They had at least ten ships up, six of them the newer design. Just as we cleared the coast they boxed us in. I tried to climb out, but they were on top of us. We dropped two of them, but they finally put an explosive round in our stern as I was climbing through twelve thousand feet, andFlying Cloudwent up."

  "Tell 'em about how you jumped," Pat interjected with a grin.

  Jack sighed, and Andrew could detect the terror that still lingered just below the surface. Back during the rescue of Hans he had flown with Jack onFlying Cloud.It had been one of the most terrifying experiences of his life. He'd rather charge a battery of guns or face an onslaught of Bantag cavalry than have to go up in one of those machines again.

  "Ferguson saved our lives. I thought the umbrella idea of his was insane, but we jumped anyhow— there was nothing left to do. It took a little doing to get them out of the packs on our backs, but once they popped open we floated down and landed in the sea."

  "Stefan?" Emil asked quietly.

  "He got out too late," Jack whispered. He closed his eyes and took another drink.

  "You know what was amazing?" Feyodor said, breaking the silence. "A couple of the Bantag flyers came down through the clouds, one of them circled us as we floated down. Thought we were dead for sure, their gunner had me in his sights, and then the bastard simply waved and took off."

  "Fellow pilot," Jack replied casually. "I'd have done the same."

  "They're Bantag," Hans growled.

  Jack looked over at him and shook his head.

  "I know that, but he gave me a break, and I'll do the same if I ever see him again. But anyhow, we were lucky. Came down a couple miles off the coast. There was Petersburg almost right under us. When Bullfinch heard what we'd seen he transferred us over to a picketboat and had us brought straight back here." "You know, if Ferguson was here, I think I'd kiss him," Feyodor announced, then grimaced as Emil leaned over the table and started to unwrap the bandages from his hands to examine the wounds.

  "What was it that you saw?" Hans asked.

  "Like I said we got about twenty miles east of Xi'an and saw a dozen trains on the line, all of them packed with troops from the look of it. But they were heading east, sir."

  "You sure of that?"

  "Absolutely, sir. The encampments we saw springing up around Xi'an, they were struck, the gear packed, the troops heading back east. The ships were still along the river, but there were no workers. I wanted to get down for a closer look at the sheds lining the riverbank, see if we could somehow peek inside, but that's when we got jumped."

  Surprised, Andrew looked over at Hans.

  "One if by land, two if by sea," he said. "This could mean they're giving up a seaborne attack."

  "Jack, could they have shot you down earlier?" Hans asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "They chased you for what, an hour, two hours?"

  "Something like that. Why?"

  "Yet they didn't get you till you were clear of the coast."

  "I don't see your point, Hans."

  "Nothing, son. Just wondering." Hans sighed, then he lowered his head.

  Andrew stood up and went over to the map hanging on the wall. There were indications of at least thirty umens in the area of Nippon. Most of them were still armed the old way, with bows and lances, but there were units of artillery and even some mounted infantry armed with muzzle-loading rifles. One of the photographs Jack had taken on an earlier mission clearly showed rows of parked cannons in Xi'an. If Ha'ark was giving up on a seaborne assault, was he now shifting his modern units to Nippon?

  Hans came up to join him.

  "Are we being set up?" Hans whispered. "Did they want Jack to see the move? They must have figured we were down to the one airship. Maybe they wanted him to see it and report back."

  "Then why shoot him down? They couldn't have known about the umbrellas."

  "Maybe they did. Or maybe someone got carried away and shot him down against orders. Hell, he said they dodged around for eighty miles, then, just after he got over the coast, down he goes."

  "Are you saying it's a trick?"

  "Expect the unexpected with Ha'ark. A game within a game."

  Andrew said nothing, looking over at Hans. He could sense the fear Hans carried of Ha'ark. Not a fear of meeting him on the field but rather of his cunning, his unrelenting will. Was that now blinding him? If Jack had escaped, and was then blocked the next time he returned to Xi'an, there'd be reason for suspicion. But shoot him down without word first getting back?

  He stared at the map. The trouble was there was no way of knowing.

  Emil had finished unwrapping Feyodor's bandages and was clucking softly as he examined the copilot's red and swollen hands.

  "If they do come from the east," Andrew said, pointing at the map, "it'll be a hard fight for them. The terrain's in our favor, mostly forest, not very good ground for cavalry at all. If need be, we can fall back to the final river line on the Shenandoah— it's damn near six hundred yards across."

  "They could stretch the front into the woods though," Hans replied. "Remember, this Ha'ark is different. He knows war maybe fifty, a hundred years ahead of us. They'll fight dismounted, as infantry, not like the Merki trying to maneuver a hundred thousand mounted warriors through the forest when we got flanked on the Neiper. If they had left their horses behind them, they actually would have moved faster through the forest and might have bagged you. In one of my conversations with Ha'ark he seemed to have a damn good grasp of the mistakes the Merki made."

  Andrew nodded.

  "So what do you think it will be?"

  "Both," Hans replied. "He has the resources to fight on two fronts. Our one point of threat to him is right here, out of Port Lincoln. It's our one base on this sea from which we can mount an invasion one day. We have to take out Xi'an before he takes us out here. Whoever succeeds at that first wins the war."

  "So you're convinced it's a feint, this withdrawal of his modern army from Xi'an."

  Hans nodded and pointed to the ground between the eastern shore of the Inland Sea and the western shore of the Great Sea.

  "We know he's moved upwards of ten umens over here. That's not enough to break the three corps we're committing to hold that front. Andrew, I think he'll strike behind us by sea. Land somewhere between here and Port Lincoln down to our front a hundred miles to the south."

  "Even if it is a feint, there's still Bullfinch and the fleet in front of Xi'an."

  "He's convinced he can beat the blockade fleet."

  Andrew sighed and continued to gaze at the map, as he had done now for four months. The equation was simple en
ough. Both sides were dependent on their factories to supply the sinews of war. His own bases were more than five hundred miles to the west, starting at Roum. The Bantag factories were a thousand miles to the southeast, three hundred miles back from Xi'an. If the Bantag could seize Port Lincoln, any hope of ever striking at them was gone. The Hordes would continue to build and finally overwhelm his forces without any danger to their industrial base. Yet his own ability to leap forward and seize Xi'an was limited as well. Even if they could take Xi'an, all the land strength of the Bantag could then be marshaled against them while his own troops would be hanging six hundred miles away, dangling at the end of a seaborne supply line.

  Was Ha'ark capable of striking now? Hans was pushing an equation that was a speculation built upon two assumptions, the first that the withdrawal was not real, and the second that their fleet could beat Bullfinch. It was pushing it too far.

  "And now we're blind," Andrew whispered, looking back at Jack and Feyodor. Emil had fetched his medical bag and was busy dabbing Feyodor's hands with what Emil claimed was an antiseptic.

  "One more flight, damn it," Andrew said, "just one more flight."

  Jack heard him and looked up.

  "Sorry, Jack, wasn't talking about you. LosingFlying Cloudwasn't your fault."

  "Still feel like it was, sir," Jack replied.

  "Are you sure about what you saw down there?"

  "At least a dozen trains heading east, fully loaded," Feyodor interjected.

  Andrew looked back at Hans.

  "It'll be more than month before we get our newest airship built and can check again."

  "What about our going back to Suzdal to meet with Congress and the president?" Hans asked.

  Andrew hesitated for a moment. The meetings had been planned for weeks, but it'd put him nearly three days away from field headquarters. Yet there were so many things to iron out back home as well.

  "We still go. The old arrangement stands. Pat, you head east. Vincent Hawthorne will stay here as chief of staff and keep an eye on the southern front. Marcus will continue to oversee the building of the fortifications and rail line in the south."