Chapter Forty-eight
Thorvald and Freya were asked to crew the capsule. Both said yes, despite being advised of the risks. They had always known they were signing up for a dangerous job, and they wanted to do their part for Pleiades. At the ages of sixteen and seventeen, respectively, there was no way they could fully comprehend what they were signing up for, but in the end the Committee decided that Reyes was right: they had no choice but to hand this terrible burden off to younger people. The launch was scheduled for May 6, 937.
On April 10, Michael spotted twelve snekkjas sailing along the southwestern coast of Florida, heading south. Knowing that the ships could not have been embarked more than a few hours earlier, he guessed that they must have been hidden somewhere in Charlotte Harbor, just north of the future location of Cape Coral. Flying low over the area, he found the remnants of what appeared to be an abandoned outpost. If this was the same group of Indians who had attacked Camp Hughes, they must have left the ships they’d used in the attack and then traveled overland to the outpost, where they’d rendezvoused with the rest of their force. The level of planning that had gone into this attack was becoming evident: the Cho-ta’an had gone to great lengths to keep from revealing anything to the Eidejelans for as long as possible.
The P-51 carried no weaponry; Eckart had done some work on replicating the machineguns the Mustangs had been equipped with during World War II, but the project was considered low priority and had never been completed. For the next two days, Michael watched as the ships moved southward. As the fleet moved closer, Michael’s patrols were supplemented by Lila, flying another small prop plane, giving them near-constant surveillance during the daytime.
When the fleet cleared the Keys, the ships unfurled their sails and headed due east. Michael had kept the Committee informed of the fleet’s progress by radio, and when the ships turned east, Reyes ordered the evacuation of the mines in Trinidad and Jamaica. These sites were even less prepared for an attack than Camp Aldrin, and without a ready supply of petroleum, the Eidejelans now had more steel and aluminum they could use. Camp Collins, in Bermuda, was evacuated as well. The animals were slaughtered and every ship that could be spared was loaded with people or foodstuffs and sent to Camp Aldrin. For better or worse, the Eidejelans would make their stand on Antillia.
The snekkjas traveled slowly, as the wind was from the northeast and the crew probably didn’t have the sailing proficiency to tack. They kept the sails furled, creeping along by oar. On April 15, the ships reached the western shore of Andros, the largest island of the Bahamas, and the army made camp for the night. As far as Michael could tell, the army was made up of about 500 men, almost all of whom appeared to be Native Americans. He saw no sign of any Cho-ta’an.
The next day, the fleet embarked again. To Michael’s surprise, the ships did not sail south toward Antillia or one of the other Eidejelan sites, but rather rowed north along the coast of Andros. The ships rounded the northern edge of the big island and then turned east. Michael soon realized why. Extrapolating their course, he flew low over Nassau and soon located a walled settlement on the southwest of the island, near Coral Harbor. The settlement rivaled Svartalfheim in size, with dozens of buildings and perhaps two thousand people, who made no effort to hide from the low-flying airplane. At the harbor was a ship-building operation as large as Camp Wilbur. Resting on the beach or anchored in the harbor were some three hundred snekkjas.
With favorable winds, Antillia was a week’s voyage from Nassau. The Cho-ta’an had built an army and a means for transporting it to the Eidejelans’ front door, right in their own backyard. With better surveillance, the Eidejelans might have spotted it earlier, but they had only a handful of airplanes, and there were thousands of islands in the Caribbean. The Cho-ta’an must have known their location for several years, at least. Maybe it had gotten some information out of someone at Camp Orville, or maybe it had guessed they would pick a tropical location for their launch. However it knew, its agents had undoubtedly seen a rocket launch. The Cho-ta’an knew exactly where to send its fleet. They were just waiting until they were at full force to embark.
The twelve-ship expeditionary force reached the Nassau harbor on April 17. Its arrival prompted a flurry of activity at the fort. Ships were brought to the docks to be loaded with men and supplies and then anchored in the harbor to await the others. The Cho-ta’an was mobilizing its forces for an assault. Ships began to leave the harbor on April 21. With a strong wind from the northeast, they made good time, traveling south on a trajectory that would take them directly to Antillia.
It was clear that the invaders would reach Antillia before the scheduled launch date of May 6. Most of the preparations for the launch had already been completed; the engineers in the auxiliary guard were taking advantage of what free time they had to practice with the rifles. When the size of the force they face became clear, though, Reyes made the difficult decision to put the engineers on double shifts in order to move the launch up to April 29. Defense preparations would suffer, but with some luck they would get the Iron Dragon into space before the Cho-ta’an’s fleet arrived. What happened to Camp Aldrin after that was a less pressing concern.
Michael grounded the P-51 in the hopes that he and Eckart could get the guns installed before the fleet arrived, and Lila took over surveillance. A single airplane equipped with machineguns would be a formidable force, and with most other defense preparations on hold, it might be decisive in the battle to come. As the fleet drew closer and Michael and Eckart worked round the clock, it became increasingly doubtful that they would get the guns working in time. It was a tricky business, as the firing of the guns had to be timed with the spinning of the propeller: if the timing was off by a hundredth of a second, the P-51 would wreck its own propeller the first time the guns were fired.
The launch was scheduled for seven a.m. As of the morning of the 27th, it looked like they launch before the fleet arrived. Their weather-tracking radar told them the low-pressure area that was pulling the wind from the northwest would likely dissipate the evening of the 28th. This would not only slow the fleet’s advance; it would result in near-ideal launch conditions. The Iron Dragon would launch on time, and the invaders, exhausted from rowing in the heat, would not arrive until later that afternoon. By nightfall on the day before the launch, though, the low-pressure zone continued to linger, and Michael reported that the lead ships were now within a hundred miles of Antillia. The Eidejelans spent an anxious night trying to sleep and praying for the weather to clear.
Dawn came and the wind continued, carrying with it gray clouds and pelting rain. Michael reported that the fleet was now within forty miles of Antillia. Thorvald and Freya climbed into the capsule, but the weather showed no sign of clearing. If it came down to it, they would launch despite the wind and the rain, but bad weather was a complication they didn’t need. Rain would hamper visibility of the rocket from the ground and wind would create additional drag. The rocket could correct for some air movement, but it didn’t have enough fuel to fight a significant amount of drag. A sustained windspeed over twenty miles per hour would doom the mission.
The one source of hope the Eidejelans still had was the inexperience of the men sailing the snekkjas. The Indians had obviously been trained, but they were a far cry from the skilled navigators of the Norsemen. Given a favorable wind, they could sail straight, but that was about the extent of their ability. Any shift in wind or change in course resulted in collisions and ships straying miles from the main body of the fleet. Three ships had already sunk due to collisions, and many more lagged far behind the rest of the fleet. By the time the lead ships approached the northern shores of Antillia, it was less a fleet than a disorganized collection of ships scattered over an area some ten miles long and three miles wide.
The Committee’s hope was that the ships would land one by one and the attackers would advance sporadically, giving the defenders time to target them with their rifles. As the lead ships neared the island, though,
they furled their sails and switched to oars, maintaining positions a hundred yards or so from the beach. The bulk of the force soon caught up, and Antillia was so wide that even the ships that had strayed far to the east or west mostly found their way there. Some overshot the island and had to row back, but this only improved the fleet’s tactical position: by ten a.m., they had the island almost completely surrounded.
The Eidejelans had taken defensive positions early that morning. There were five places along the shore of the island where a snekkja could land, three on the north and two on the south, including the small harbor where the shipping docks were located. The Eidejelans had four hundred riflemen, of whom thirty-eight were trained security officers and the rest were engineers, teachers or laborers who were part of the auxiliary security force. As most of the dedicated fighting men had been left at Svartalfheim, the riflemen were in fact mostly riflewomen: about sixty percent of the force was female. None of the women and only forty or so of the men had ever seen battle. Most of these were older men who had moved into teaching or engineering positions after working for Eirik raiding Europe for resources in the early years of the project. The man in charge of the defense was a grizzled old Viking named Olaf, who had been with them since Harald’s attack on their fort on the Seine.
The riflemen took up positions behind whatever cover could be found at the docks and on the beaches. If pressed, they would retreat to the buildings clustered on the eastern end of the island and attempt the attackers from advancing inland. The top priority was, of course, defending the Iron Dragon itself. The launch site, located on a rocky promontory on the far western end of the island, was inaccessible from the sea and difficult to approach except via the strip of asphalt that connect the launch area to the rest of the settlement. A blockade of logs and razor wire had been set up across the road, west of the beaches, to prevent the attackers from reaching the launch site. If it looked like the defenders were going to be unable to hold the attackers at the beaches, the riflemen would retreat behind the blockade and hold them off as long as they could.
So disciplined were the Cho-ta’an’s forces that by mid-morning, the Eidejelans began to suspect that the Indians did not intend to attack at all. Hope began to kindle among the Eidejelans: if the Cho-ta’an did not realize how close they were to executing another launch, they might opt for a siege, hoping to starve the defenders out. And although no one on Antillia was looking forward to a siege, it would at least give them a chance to complete their mission.
Shortly before noon, as the drizzle and gusting winds persisted, a signal went up from one of the ships on the north side: a bright red flare, soaring a hundred yards into the sky. In response, more flares went up to the left and the right. Soon the red streaks were visible in the sky all around the island. Before the last one fell, war cries sounded from the crews. Oars hit the water, and the ships began to move in.
Chapter Forty-nine
The first snekkja hit sand a few minutes later, the crew leaping onto the beach before it even stopped moving. While men were still vaulting over the gunwales, another snekkja slid onto the sand fifty yards to the north. Three more soon ran aground on the beach farther to the north. Soon dozens of ships had hit the shore, and hundreds of men carrying spears or tomahawks advanced rapidly up the beaches. Lila, circling the island in the small prop plane, provided updates on their progress to Reyes, who would coordinate the Eidejelans’ defense from the observation tower near the launch site. O’Brien and Helena were the only other Committee members in the tower; Eckart was in the hangar working on the P-51 and Alma was in the launch command center, watching the weather and hoping to issue the all-clear for the launch.
Soon Lila reported that the defenders had opened fire, but most were too distant to aim effectively. Fortunately, the Eidejelans had an effectively unlimited supply of ammunition: cranking up their production of bullets had been one of the few things they could do to prepare for the attack. As attackers advanced, they began to fall, one by one. From the command center, the sound of distant gunfire was nearly constant. Within a minute of the first ship landing, Lila informed Reyes that at least forty of the attackers had been killed.
As ships continued to land, though, the number of attackers became overwhelming and the defenders’ lack of training became evident. Their aim was poor and their firing uncoordinated. Dozens of Indians, armed with spears or tomahawks, advanced toward the settlement. Meanwhile, hundreds more landed and moved toward the defenders. The Eidejelans closest to the beach were soon driven back, and Indians with rifles took up positions behind the rocks and trees the Eidejelans had been using as cover. Lila reported that the first wave of attackers had crossed the beach and were beginning to circle around behind the defenders. Olaf sounded a general retreat over the radio, but it was too late: several groups of Eidejelans were already cut off and surrounded.
Olaf tried to get the defenders to regroup at the settlement, as planned, but most of those who were not bogged down fighting Indians near the beaches panicked and ran down the road toward the barrier that had been set up to protect the launch pad. Olaf, realizing the situation was hopeless, ordered the remaining defenders to follow. The Eidejelans manning the roadblock opened a gate to allow the riflemen to flee inside. The Indians, having overrun the remaining defenders at the beach, pursued them. Reyes, along with O’Brien and Helena, watched helplessly from the tower.
Things might have gone far worse, but just as the first wave of Indians reached the asphalt, the P-51 roared down the runway from the east, causing them to fall back in terror. Whatever technological wonders the Cho-ta’an had shown the Indians, they’d clearly never seen anything like a P-51 Mustang. Whether Michael and Eckart had finished installing the guns or Michael just wanted to get the P-51 in the air one last time no one knew, but the plane’s takeoff was enough of a distraction to allow the fleeing riflemen to get to the gate. The P-51 leapt into the air just as the gate opened.
Only about a hundred made it through the gate before the Indians, having recovered from their terror, fell upon them. Realizing the roadblock was in danger of being overrun, the Eidejelans forced the gate closed, trapping most of the defenders outside. As the P-51 receded into the gray western sky, Olaf desperately tried to rally the riflemen, but panic had taken over. As the Indians attacked with tomahawks and spears, the defenders pressed against the barrier, which was little more than a chain link fence topped with razor wire and reinforced with the trunks of palm trees. Crowded too tightly to use their rifles, the Eidejelans put up little resistance as the Indians advanced, hacking with their tomahawks and thrusting with their spears.
The battle was turning into a slaughter when a distant buzz from the western sky became a roar: the P-51 had banked and was coming back toward them. This time, though, the Indians showed no fear, continuing to press their attack on the helpless defenders. It wasn’t until the streams of bullets began to tear through them that the Indians began to realize their initial instincts about the airplane had been correct. Dozens of men fell as if struck down by the hand of a god, and those nearby scattered. The P-51 shot away to the east and then veered sharply and came in from the north. The attackers closest to the barrier had been spared by their proximity to the Eidejelans, but as the P-51 rained another stream of bullets on them, this group was cut off from its comrades. The Eidejelans, now facing only a few dozen attackers, rallied. The defenders closest to the Indians fired desperately, driving back the first wave long enough for Olaf to get the rest of the Eidejelans through the gate. The attackers continued to advance, though, and as the Indians threatened to overwhelm them, the gate had to be closed again. Olaf and the few brave men and women who had held the line were soon cut down by the attackers.
Michael made several more passes in the P-51, tearing through the attackers continuing to advance toward the barrier. Meanwhile, Lila reported that no defenders remained in position in the beach or the settlement; the attackers were pouring out of their ships and across open grou
nd toward the road. She estimated there were over five thousand of them. Among them were nearly fifty carrying rifles, who were amassing behind the buildings nearest the road. A few had begun taking shots at the two airplanes flying low overhead, and no sooner had she reported this than her radio went out. The little plane made one final pass over the island before crashing into the ocean.
“I’ve got to get down there,” O’Brien said, watching the panicked mass of riflemen inside the barrier. The plan had been for the Committee and other key personnel to remain in the tower or the launch command center, but with Olaf dead, the plan had gone to pieces. A Frankish engineer named Corben was supposed to be Olaf’s second-in-command, but O’Brien didn’t see him anywhere. He’d either been killed or had panicked and hidden somewhere. In his absence, the riflemen had devolved into anarchy. A few squad leaders had managed to organize their men to take up defensive positions along the barrier, but most of the defenders had fled to one of the buildings where the civilians had taken cover or were wandering around aimlessly, trying to figure out what to do.
“You can’t,” said Helena, as the P-51 roared overhead. They watched as its guns opened up again, ripping through the men near the barrier. “We need you alive. I need you alive.”
“That’s my son out there,” O’Brien said, pointing to the P-51 as it soared away. “He’s risking his life to buy us some time, but it’s not going to be worth a damn if those riflemen don’t do their job.”
It was true: the Indians were pressing the attack, even in the face of machinegun fire. Already several were attempting to scale the fence, and they face only haphazard resistance from the riflemen. The defenders closest to the barrier found their view blocked in places by the wooden reinforcements, and those who had take positions farther back were afraid to fire for fear of hitting their own comrades. Without leadership on the ground, their riflemen would be overrun within minutes. The rainclouds still hanging the sky meant the launch crew needed more time. O’Brien didn’t pretend to be a tactical expert like Gabe or a leader like Reyes, but maybe his status as a spaceman would be enough to rally the defenders.
The Voyage of the Iron Dragon Page 34
