by S. J. Ryan
“Aim toward the upper half,” Matt Four said. “That should be where the armor is lightest.”
“When do I shoot?”
“I'll give the word.”
Even at full speed, the Good Witch took minutes to close the gap. Andra wove in and out of a cloud formation as they approached. They'd see a glimpse of the ship, then the view would go white with a visibility of not much more than arm's reach. Then Andra would steer out of the cloud and the ship's tail would have grown and Ada would swing the rifle slightly to adjust.
In and out of clouds, in and out, each time closer. Three kilometers. Fifteen hundred meters. Then the ship passed through a layer of haze and with the limited visibility as an advantage, Andra dared to near even closer.
Nine hundred, seven hundred, six hundred . . . Matt could see shadows in the gondola windows, hear the drone of the props.
“We going to crash into it!” Ada exclaimed.
It certainly seemed that way, Matt Four thought. But Ivan Four's archives said that six hundred meters was at the limit of primitive sniper rifle range, and Matt didn't know how far the bullet could travel against air resistance and still be able to penetrate its target.
Five hundred, four hundred. They were coming within a ship's length . . . Matt Four's own nerves couldn't take it, and he barked, “Fire!”
Ada pulled the trigger. Matt Four heard the click. There was no explosion. Wasn't there supposed to be a loud explosion with the detonation of the chemical charge that propelled the projectiles of these primitive kinetic weapons? He seemed to remember that.
Ada seemed to know for certain. “It didn't fire! What's wrong?”
Matt Four tried to think of an answer, but then he glanced through the window and spotted the dreadnaught's upper gun turret starting to swing its barrels toward them. “Andra!”
Andra was already diving. The tail of the dreadnaught blocked line of sight with the upper turret, but then the lower tail turret swung toward them, aiming its twin barrels. Andra spun the steering wheel hard. The primitive airship rattled and creaked and they dove into the adjoining cloud bank just as the dreadnaught's artillery opened fire.
Matt Four heard a distant booming from above: Pom-pom. Pom-pom. Pom-pom. Nemesis was laying down a continuous fire, in every direction its erstwhile stalker might flee.
Prin, monitoring gages, gestured to a large valve at the rear wall. “Wizard! Close that quickly!”
Matt Four rushed over and grasped the valve in puzzlement. “Which way?”
“Righty-tighty!”
He twirled the valve. The ship shuddered, the deck slanted, and they plunged out of the cloud cover toward the sea. The sound of artillery fire faded in the whistle of wind.
Prin shouted: “Now lefty-loosey!”
Matt Four spun the valve so hard that his forearms ached in protest. The ship tilted again and ascended into the clouds once more.
Ada was staring through the window, turning her head slowly, following the unseen Nemesis with the aid of Ivan's sensor array. Through a gap in the clouds in the direction she was looking, Matt Four briefly spotted the dreadnaught. It was about two klicks range, heading in the wrong direction but moving much faster than before and following a search pattern that would eventually stumble upon the Good Witch. They had clearly provoked the bear.
Matt Four patted Ada's shoulder and pointed to the rifle. “Let's see the bullet.”
She opened the chamber and the bullet tumbled out. He caught it, pulled off her glove, pressed it into her palm, wrapped her fingers around it.
“Ivan, analyze. Is there something wrong with this?”
Ivan Four responded in seconds, “The explosive charge contained within the bullet is inert.”
Matt Four instantly intuited that all the bullets in the chest were blanks; the live ammunition must have been swapped before the guns had been released from the police station. That was why the police captain had been willing to return weapons to a group that he considered to be terrorists.
Matt Four cursed himself. He should have seen it coming! Rule One in Guerrilla Warfare: Never assume your adversary is as dumb as you are.
Pom-pom! Pom-pom! Pom-pom! It was like thunder, source unseen but judging by the loudness less than a kilometer away. Andra followed an erratic path in and out of clouds, but when the gunfire erupted, it never sounded more than a couple thousand meters distant.
One time, they burst out of the clouds and found themselves facing Nemesis head on. Andra veered to the side and dove into the clouds just before the forward guns started firing.
“They're not going to let us get away,” Prin said. “Can we make it back to the storm barrier?”
Matt Four considered. They weren't that far from the barrier. They might be able to make it. But that wouldn't stop Nemesis. Free of the bothersome gnat, it would proceed on its deadly mission. All the friends he'd made in Britan might be long dead, but their children and grandchildren would still be alive. He owed it to them to stop Athena's monster from spraying death upon their homeland.
It was then that another idea occurred to him. An idea much riskier than a sniper rifle.
“Let's head back to the barrier,” he said.
“Full speed!” Prin said to Andra.
Ada shut the window against the roaring wind. She wasn't looking at Matt Four, which made it easier for him to invade her brain and converse privately with Ivan Four.
“Matt. Do you understand that particular code sequence is intended to attract, not repel?”
“That's why I want you to transmit it. At full power.”
Across the innocent fairy-land of ice cream castles, the storm barrier smudged the horizon. It was still kilometers away, and at any moment he expected to hear the pom-pom of the guns again. He went tailward and saw nothing yet. But Nemesis would soon realize that its quarry had vacated the scene, and it would soon pursue.
“Prin, Andra. According to what the kid mentioned, isn't there supposed to be an upper platform on this ship where I can observe forward and tailward at the same time?”
“The platform was removed during renovation,” Prin replied. “However, there is still an access tube that leads to the top of the envelope.”
He had Prin show him the hatch. It was on the ceiling, midway down the connecting passage to the tailward compartment. Prin unlatched and the door swung down. He reached inside and pulled down a ladder to the deck. Matt Four grasped the rails and peered up the length of the tube, into confining darkness.
“I'll be communicating through Ada,” he said. “You'll need to follow my instructions instantly and exactly. We don't have a margin of error.”
“What is this about?” Prin asked.
“You'll see.” He didn't want to be mysterious, but his idea was one that would lead to lots of questions, and they didn't have time for questions.
He discovered shortly into the climb that his body was far from completely rejuvenated. A climb that never would have been considered an effort at any other stage in his life was a physical ordeal. Breathing hard, limbs aching, he was exhausted and in pain by the time he pushed open the upper hatch and popped his head into the wind.
Rows and rows of angel hair, feather canyons everywhere. Ahead, a dark ominous band of churning, rain-laden clouds. And behind, a speck emerged from the clouds, rapidly closing upon its smaller, weaponless prey.
Judging distances between ships and barrier, Matt Four suddenly doubted that they could reach the barrier in time. But that didn't matter. It wasn't the plan.
He concentrated on the barrier, waiting. Come on, come on! The wall remained unbroken.
He turned around, eastward. The speck had become the Nemesis, tiny yet with distance but visibly growing even as he watched. Then it began to sparkle. He couldn't hear the guns, but he saw how the sparkles matched the timing. Silently he mouthed: Pom-pom, pom-pom –
He faced west toward the dark, unbroken band. Come on!
“Ivan, are you transmitting at maxim
um power?”
“I could increase power by twenty percent, but it would endanger my current host.”
The implant's antenna array was part of its neural matrix inside the host's cranium. In other words, Ivan was warning that he might fry Ada's brain cells. Matt Four pondered whether the risk was worth it. Although some of her memories might be irrevocably lost, the cells themselves could be repaired later. If Nemesis got close enough to score a hit, however, there would be no later.
His rumination was interrupted by a jarring, deafening blast. A wave of hot gas washed over his face. He caught his breath and looked up to see a blossom of fire directly over the ship.
“What the hell was that?”
“A proximity fuse shell,” Ivan Four replied.
Another blast came even closer, and Matt slumped, realizing the game was over.
“Ada. Tell Andra and Prin to stop the ship and signal surrender.”
The engines lulled, the ship slowed, turned one hundred and eighty degrees. The flashes from the gondola-mounted signal lamp reflected against nearest sheets of vapor. Nemesis ceased firing and responded with flashes in kind: DO NOT MOVE. DO NOT MOVE. DO NOT MOVE. DO NOT MOVE.
As Nemesis approached it slowed to a full stop, about a kilometer away at the same altitude, nose pointing toward the Good Witch, forward turret barrels trained upon the diminutive ship. For a moment, the ships rested. All was silent but the wind.
Then Nemesis opened a full barrage of all its forward-facing guns – top and sides and bottom, eight barrels blasting. Even before the noise of the flashing guns, proximity shells burst all about. Evidently the gunnery crews had miscalculated range by underestimating the size of their target, but they were rapidly correcting. The bursts came closer.
If he had been given a second or two, Matt Four might have reflected on his failure to the people aboard the ship, to the people of Britan, to the kid and to Synth. Instead, he was given no time for reflection at all. For, as soon the proximity bursts came within lethal distance, they abruptly vanished from the vicinity. The guns were continuing to fire, but the turrets had shifted and the barrels were spitting spears of fire to each side of the Good Witch.
Matt Four turned westward. The storm barrier was broken in a score of places by what appeared in the distance to be writhing worms. With their nearing, the worms resolved into serpents, eyes as large as lamps, mouths as large as doors, bodies large enough to swallow airships whole.
Sure, they were made of foil and hot air, but they brought lightning with the friction of their passing and they carried stone projectiles formed of minerals extracted from sea water and their fins were razors that could shred steel and foil made of starcaster filament.
Entranced, Matt Four was almost too late to give the vital command: “Ivan – shut off the transponder!” Then as the tsunami of serpents bore upon the ship he panicked and shouted, “No – transponder on! Repel signal! Now! Now! NOW!” Then to Ada: “Turn off engines! Turn off all power!”
Ada relayed the commands to Prin and Andra. Precisely when the engines shut off Matt Four wasn't able to discern, for at that moment he and the whole ship were engulfed in a tunnel of scales whizzing by in a blur. The shock waves rocked the ship in the sudden gloom and with the whoosh of the living storm he nearly lost his footing on the ladder. And then they were past.
Nemesis had turned to flee, but not fast enough to avoid becoming the main dish at a gargantuan feeding frenzy. Guns fired and ripped apart the herd of attacking serpents, but there were dozens of the beasts, too many for even a fleet of dreadnaughts to fight at once. Fins cut gashes, bodies slammed suicidally into the hulls, lightning flashed and ignited the artillery shells within the turrets. The dreadnaught lurched as its whole structure warped.
Matt Four watched for a few seconds, but quickly became sickened. He wobbled down the ladder to the deck of the gondola.
The others were in the forward compartment, gazing through the windows. Below, surrounded by serpents circling like vultures, the smoking wreckage of Nemesis sank toward the sea, bursting into fiery plumes as lightning ignited the hydrogen leaking from the rents of its balloon cells.
He spotted few parachutes among the falling, flaming bodies.
“Andra,” he said softly. “We need to be clear of the wreckage. I think the poison gas sinks, but just to be safe . . . . “
“Yes,” she said listlessly.
Prin helped restart the engines. The ship headed east to Britan, entering a cloud bank and losing sight of the tattered remnants floating on the sea that were all that remained of Pavonia's flagship. Ada stared at the wreckage long after it was gone from human vision.
“They attacked us even though we had surrendered,” Ada said.
Her expression was unreadable, but Matt Four would always remember how she'd reacted when he had forced her to attempt to destroy the ship. She wasn't showing it, but the scars of that trauma would likely be with her for some time. He started to feel guilt, but it was overwhelmed by anger – anger at the killers who had forced him to force a child to accept the role of mass-executioner.
“I wasn't going to let them get away no matter what they did,” Matt Four replied coldly. “And this isn't over yet.”
Without meeting her eyes, he dug into his pocket for Inspector Sagrid's service pistol and the container of ammunition. He privately subvocaled, “Ivan, I have an idea. Would it be possible to transfer gunpowder from these bullets into the blanks for the automatic rifles? Because I think we're gonna need some rapid-fire.”
“I will analyze the problem,” Ivan Four replied.
“Can you connect me with the kid?”
“Delta Pavonis Station has set below the horizon at this time. Next station-rise appropriate for re-establishing communications link in seven hours.”
“And when will we reach Britan?”
“At current velocity, in five hours.”
He hoped the kid would have sense enough to wait. But having once been the kid, he knew how unlikely that was.
17.
By the campfire at the edge of the mill pond southwest of Ravencall, Carrot stalked the bare ground where she had sketched the layout of what would soon become a battlefield.
A circle scratched with a stick represented the poison ring. The huts of the base were denoted as a scattering of pebbles in the northeast quadrant. A wavy scratch and another circle indicated the stream and the mill pond. A pile of leaves – Carrot thought it appropriate – represented the position of the army of the Leaf of the West southwest of the poison ring.
The rest was not to scale, as there was not enough area before dirt gave way to grass. A line that had been scratched east-west represented the Oksiden Road, intersecting the training field. To the east, she had placed a pile of rocks to represent the Romans. As messengers arrived with scouting reports, she had them update the placement of the rocks.
Major Hagan, who had become her second-in-command below only her father, gestured to small group of rocks that had just been updated, which were 'approaching' the training fields of Ravencall.
“Do you think they know of the poison ring?” he asked.
“I'm sure,” she replied. “They're marching on the Oksiden Road because it's convenient. When they reach the perimeter of the poison ring, they are likely to head north around it.”
“You seem certain they will not head south.”
“We're in the south. If they wished to fight us, they would have made this detachment much larger.”
“Then what is their purpose?”
“I'm only guessing. You know of the woman who escaped here and that Mirian recaptured?”
“The one that moves like a demon?”
Carrot nodded. “She was absent long enough to have gone to the Roman camp and come back. She would have been there when this force was assembled.” She gestured at the rocks along the Oksiden Road. “I believe it's marching by her orders.”
“So what is it for?”
Carrot took a
deep breath; her command of the army was still tenuous, she thought, and it did not do a commander well to be known for making mistakes. Allowing a spy to receive privileged information was a major mistake. Nonetheless, there was no way to avoid the admission.
“When she was our prisoner,” Carrot said, “she may have overheard that my father was to the west, holding onto the Pandora of Britan. The Box, that is.”
“And as you have said, the Box is all important to the Romans.”
“I believe that this Roman force has been sent to procure the Box.”
“But your father and his men and the Box are with us now.”
“The Romans don't know that.”
“So they are marching to nowhere and we need take no action. Or were you planning to engage them?”
“That is one possibility. What do you think?”
“I have not been taught strategy in battle and I have no experience in battle, so my advice is of questionable value. However, I can say this much. It is simple common sense that it is easier to fight men separately than united. Let's fight them while they're apart from the main force.”
“So you counsel engagement?”
Hagan frowned at the crude map and pointed with his stick at the road to the west of the poison ring. “We could ambush them here, but . . . I see in your eyes there is another plan.”
She blushed. “Am I so transparent?”
“My daughter is much younger than you, yet she could teach you about hiding things from one's face. Now what is your other plan?”
“Well, it is only a suggestion – “
“Colonel, speak your mind or cede command to your father and me. I'll take orders from a girl, but not a girl who is worried more about my pride than how to win a war.”
Carrot straightened and drew herself to her full height – which was somewhere under his chin. “Well, then. Here is my idea.” She knelt and picked up the rocks representing the Roman detachment and carried them from one side of Ravencall to the other, setting them down a distance to the west. “This is where they expect to find my father's forces and the Box. When they do not find the Box there, the Romans will return to their camp, right?”
