Firestorm

by Anderson, Taylor

  “Halt there, I say!” cried a hoarse, officious voice.

  “‘Imp-ees’ coming, sur,” the company commander walking beside him said—belatedly.

  His Springfield rifle on his shoulder, Shinya had been walking, almost oblivious to his immediate surroundings. He was so focused on the scope of the desolation, he hadn’t noticed the procession of dusty, smoke-blackened Imperial officers riding toward him from the edge of the ruined town. “Thank you for the warning, Captain,” he said wryly. “Have we no pickets to the right?”

  “Only friends to right . . . Nothing to left,” the ’Cat said.

  Shinya watched the Imperials bring their horses to an ashy, dusty stop. “Perhaps you have not learned human expressions well, Captain,” he said. “I’m not convinced these men are necessarily friends.” He raised his voice to the new arrivals. “I’m Colonel Tamatsu Shinya. I would speak to the person in command here. If none of you are he, please lead me to him, bring him to us, or get the hell out of our way. We have a battle to join.”

  “The battle here is quite over!” the officious voice declared, allowing Shinya to put a face with it. The man’s expression seemed more annoyed than relieved by that.

  “Excellent. Then we’ll continue on to find another,” Shinya snapped. He kept walking.

  “To what purpose? To further destroy this land?” the man snarled.

  Shinya waved the column on but stopped himself. “It’s been a long march already today—after a predawn landing and a short fight that began it. I’m weary. It was my understanding this battle ended in victory, for which you should be thankful. The Dominion does not treat those they conquer with kindness, true? Rejoice that the fighting here is done and you still live.”

  “But . . . that madman and his flying machines destroyed one of the most beautiful—not to mention strategic—resources in the Empire! This valley is almost sacred to those who live within it, and the timber is essential to the shipbuilding industry!”

  Shinya looked around. “No one lives here now, and there are other forests in the Empire.” He waved about him. “These trees will still make fine ships; they’re only scorched on the outside.”

  “Damn you, sir!” raged the officer. “Have you no compassion? No understanding of the tragedy here?”

  “Damn you!” Shinya roared, his eyes darker than the blackened trees. “Have you no understanding of the word ‘war’? I desire words with the commander here, not fools. If you can’t produce such a specimen, I’ll be on my way—anticipating the day you and I meet again on the Dueling Grounds at Scapa Flow!”

  “I command here, Colonel Shinya,” another officer announced firmly, after a brief hesitation. “As of this moment. Run along now, Colonel Meems. Perhaps I can convince this belligerent gentleman not to murder you in front of your children, come the next ‘Meeting Day’ Sunday!”

  The officious officer whirled his mount and galloped away, followed by another, amid a rising, gray cloud, leaving four mounted men.

  “Major Gladney, at your service,” the “commander” said, dismounting. “Of the artillery. Meems is an excitable fellow, where his trees are concerned. He has holdings here. Please, I brought maps when I saw your column. We have recent news of the fighting across the Sperrin range, and I think I can show you some pathways your infantry might use that will place you well to support our friends. The paths are quite steep in places and utterly unsuited for artillery, but men or . . . your people . . . should be able to negotiate them in daylight.”

  “Thank you, Major Gladney. I’d hoped as much.” Shinya paused, looking at his tired troops marching by. “Can these trails be found in the dark?”

  Gladney was taken aback. “I suppose, by one who knows them. I could not recommend it, however.”

  “Nevertheless, there will be a good moon again tonight, and we must move with haste.”

  “You’re talking about a march of thirty miles—as the parrot flies!—over two rough, high ranges without stop!”

  “We will stop . . . now and then. I may not make it with all my troops, but I’ll certainly have my Marines. They have . . . practiced marches such as this.”

  Gladney shook his head. “Very well. I’ll see that you have guides.”

  Sunday, January 8, 1944

  “Well, well,” Silva said, staring through an Imperial telescope with his good eye and stifling a yawn. “I figgered it was gonna be a helluva show. Glad we got here early for a good seat, hey, Larry?”

  All night, the big guns in the bastion and the heavier ones the allies dragged forward from the ruined forts flared and snarled thunderously at one another, jetting white, orange, and yellow fire from vents and muzzles amid sparkling streaks of tiny red embers. The bastion was taking a pounding, as was the entire city most likely, but the Doms simply couldn’t give as good as they got. They were more concentrated, engaging well-placed and dispersed targets, and the weight of metal alone left them at a disadvantage enough to smother them eventually. That fact didn’t seem to discourage them, and they did their best to match the allies shot for shot. Silva had to wonder just how much ammunition had been stowed in the bastion. The Doms had to know they couldn’t last long under such a storm of iron and must’ve decided to use their artillery to cause as much damage to their enemy—and the city—as they could before their guns were silenced.

  “Are you sure our guys know we’re here?” Lawrence asked nervously when a heavy roundshot struck the building on the ground floor below, crashing through the volcanic rock wall and sending pumice and plaster dust swirling up the stairs into their second-story overlook.

  Silva turned and spat a yellowish stream of “tobacco” juice that missed Lawrence’s clawed hand by inches. “Course they know, dummy! You think I’d lie here all comfterble an’ ser-een, careless o’ danger, if our fellas didn’t know we was in what the Doms’d expect to be a prime target for our guns?”

  “Yess!” Lawrence hissed darkly. “That was one of ‘our’ guns!”

  Silva shrugged in the gloom. “So? With all that flashin’ out there, some poor gunner was prob’ly seein’ triple. ’Sides, it might raise suspicion if they didn’t shoot at this shack once in a while. It was an observation post, after all.”

  Six Dom corpses kept them company in the building that had once been a drying house for a wheelwright. The Imperials made good wheels and the place was full of them. There were probably thousands of spokes and felloes of all sizes, and hundreds of hubs. Five dead Doms were downstairs where they’d been killed by Silva’s Thompson when he and Lawrence burst in upon them, utterly unexpected. A sixth man had fled upstairs, but Lawrence caught him from behind and tore out his throat before he could leap from the window they now stared through.

  “I wonder why the ene’ee doesn’t shoot at us,” Lawrence said. “It’s not as if we send any signals. They ha’ to think we’re here.”

  “Naa. What would we do if we was them dead Doms? Run back ’n forth ’mongst all that iron an’ shit out there? Make a light? They prob’ly had ’em here for daylight spottin’, or to holler if we was doin’ somethin’ . . . like we did. Now, quit bein’ a weenie!”

  Dawn began to break at last, and the cannonade slowly tapered off. It was as if each side yearned for a look at what they’d done to the other. Then, by some unspoken, mutual consent, all the guns on the north side of New Dublin gradually fell silent. Sunday was a holy day to all present, except Lemurians, and perhaps no one wanted to be first to resume the killing under the bright sun creeping above the eastern sea and displaying for all to view what that terrible night had wrought. Dark smoke towered into the sky from a large percentage of the city, rising above the mountains and joining a purple-brown haze moving west. Dennis, and likely the rest of the allies, caught their first real glimpse of the “dragons” then, spiraling high above on rising thermals in the clear air to seaward. There weren’t many, maybe half a dozen in view, and they weren’t nearly as scary in the daylight—at least to Dennis, who’d seen far more
frightening things. They did look like big Grik, though, with longer, more feathered tails—and broad, almost batlike wings, of course—and he knew if Lieutenant Reddy had been able to see them they’d have never brought his “Nancy” down. One of the creatures approached the battlefield from upwind and swooped down to light on a corpse, savagely tearing into it. Where the body was, it had to be a Dom.

  “Eww. Not particular about the menu, I guess,” Silva said. “Flyin’ Griks, all right. Nasty bastards. Can’t even tell whose side they’re on down here!” He blinked. “Hey! Maybe they can’t tell, with everything so mixed up. I wonder what good they are? They would’a had to already be here before the Doms ever saw a plane! Maybe they use ’em for goin’ after ships or somethin?” He shrugged. “Get a load o’ this, Larry! Your lofty relations got shitty table manners!”

  “Not relations!” Lawrence snapped. “You’re a ‘right guy,’ Sil’a, usually. You’re also an asshole!”

  “Well, this world is so screwed up, I guess it’s up to me to balance the scales,” Dennis replied philosophically. He continued to watch the creatures kiting lazily above. “Not real energetic this mornin’,” he muttered to himself, “and they don’t seem to care much for smoke. Every time one gets close to any, he veers off, soon as he notices it. Huh.”

  The “cease-fire” persisted, and it started getting hot in their upstairs lair. Eventually, a distant church bell tentatively rang, then another. Still the Doms didn’t fire.

  “I’ll be damned,” Silva said. “I was hopin’ for somethin like this!” He was peering through the telescope again, adjusting the length to sharpen the focus.

  “What?”

  “Everbody’s takin’ a break from the killin’, for a prayer meetin’! Since that didn’t poke the Doms into shootin’ at the ‘heretics,’ maybe they’ll have a ‘God save my murderin’ ass, ’cause I’m fixin’ to die’ meetin’ of their own!” He shifted his view to the steep mountains beyond the enemy stronghold, refocusing and examining, then returned it to the bastion. Quite a few guns had been dismounted, their carriages shattered, and the walls were largely battered to rubble. There were probably still more than two thousand men inside, some near remaining guns and others milling around. Corpses had been piled in heaps, and the yellow-and-white uniforms of Dom “regulars”—“Salvadores” he’d heard them called—and the yellow and scarlet of the “Blood Drinkers” were spattered and smeared with blackening red. He stiffened when a group, not nearly as soiled as most, emerged from what looked like a companionway in the ground, near the most heavily reinforced portion of the structure.

  “Yes indeedy! That goofy-lookin’ devil’s gotta be ol’ Bunny Crap hisself !”

  During the night, Silva’s name for the Blood Cardinal had changed many times. First, it was simply “B.C.,” but that didn’t seem right for a lot of reasons. Finally, he’d taken the initials and expanded them in numerous ways, ultimately settling on “Bunny Crap” with a vigor Lawrence didn’t understand. Of course, he had no idea what a “bunny” was. Maybe their excrement was particularly notable?

  Silva hefted the Doom Whomper and inspected the repaired wrist in the growing light. The brownish glue hadn’t quite set, but the joint seemed firm. He’d also wrapped it tightly with about a thousand turns of fine, strong thread. It felt as if it would hold. A bunch of dust and other debris had stuck to the tacky glue saturating the thread, but the weapon was otherwise spotless. “Gimme my pouch,” he ordered. Lawrence handed it over. Dennis removed a “paper” cartridge. (Although the allies had “real” paper now, the cartridges were a kind of early “industrial” grade, unfit for writing on, made from pulped, pressed “linen,” and waxed when assembled.) He tore it open and poured the powder down the barrel. Then he opened a small wooden box he’d made in one of Maaka-Kakja’s shops, expressly for protecting a dozen “perfect” bullets from deformation—particularly of their relatively fragile “skirts.” He chose a pair of the massive, prelubed projectiles and laid one aside, then carefully inserted the other into the muzzle. Drawing the rammer, he seated the bullet down the long, 25-mm barrel until it rested firmly against the powder charge. Removing the rammer, he handed it to Lawrence.

  “You hang ready to hand me a cartridge, that other bullet, and the rammer quick, you hear?”

  “I hear.”

  Dennis nodded and raised the frizzen of the old Imperial lock he’d lovingly tuned, picked the vent with a hammered bronze pick that dangled by a thong from the triggerguard, and poured a dash of finely ground priming powder into the exposed pan. Closing the frizzen, he retested the edge of the flint clamped in the jaws of the gooseneck-shaped “hammer,” or “cock,” with the tip of his finger. “She’s all set,” he said softly, easing closer to the window and sitting down. He’d spent some of the night erecting a sturdy rest for the long, heavy barrel, and he’d placed a wooden chair where it would support his right elbow. Carefully, he settled in.

  “You sure you can shoot that long?” Lawrence asked, his eyes flicking from Dennis to the distant target. “I never saw you shoot that long! Four hundred ’Cat tails . . .”

  “Just shut up, wilya?” Dennis growled. “I shot it this far enough times to mark the sight,” he added, flipping up the sight slide and easing the aperture up. “I ain’t done it since then,” he admitted, “but I ain’t had to. I know it’ll do it . . . I know I can do it. That’s what counts. Now, I’m gonna start concentratin’. Things might fuzz up, and ol’ Bunny Crap’s just a red blob in this sight. You get that glass and tell me everything you see!” He pulled the hammer back all the way and squeezed the rear trigger until it clicked.

  Lawrence raised the brass telescope and peered through it, adjusting the length to suit his vision. The device fascinated him. He couldn’t use human binoculars, but the telescope worked just fine. “He’s the guy dressed in the red sail, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Real fat booger with a goofy white hat. There’s other guys in red capes, or whatever, but they got helmets on.”

  “Okay. I got hi . . . he. He’s going through the soldiers, touching they, raising his hands o’er they . . . I think he’s going to get on a wrecked thing so they see he easier.”

  “Swell.”

  “You still got he?” Lawrence asked.

  “I still gottee,” Dennis mocked.

  Lawrence’s crest twitched upward, but he said nothing for a moment. “You . . . don’t think this is . . . incorrect to your soul, to . . . ass-assinate he like this?”

  The brow over Dennis’s eye patch arched slightly, while his right eye continued staring fixedly through his sights. “Uh, nope.”

  “It . . . gi’s I a strange . . . sensation. . . .”

  “You ain’t gettin’ cold flippers on me, are you?” Silva demanded. “We’ve killed lots o’ fellas together that had less of a chance than fatso over there.”

  “Yes . . . in war, in ’attle. Close. This ’eels . . . sneaky—like hunting, though not to eat. You should not hunt thinking, knowing things.”

  “It is sneaky, you nitwit! But I ain’t gonna eat him. He’s like a shik-sak, see? You kill ’em to keep ’em from killin’ you or people you care about. Some things need killin’ just because they’re bad, and there’s folks the same way. Bad folks that need killin’—an’ damn sure don’t deserve a ‘fair fight.’”

  “Shiksaks don’t know they’re ’ad.”

  “Which makes me feel more regret killin’ them than that fat bastard over there! Look, you know me. I’d rather walk over there and knock his brains out with a rock, but I don’t expect all them other fellas around him would let me. I’m told he’s the . . . shiksak’s head around here. If you cut a shiksak’s head off, the body might flop around a while, but it ain’t near as dangerous. In this case, if I take the ‘head’ off, the ‘body’ could do the same thing for a while, but it won’t necessarily die. Maybe . . . not all of it really deserves to die. Lotsa times, the body only does bad things it needs killin’ for because the head make
s it . . . see?”

  Lawrence sighed noisily. “Sorta. Now I think sad to kill . . . ’ody, and not just head!”

  Silva grunted. “Well, that won’t do. Look, war’s a hell of a thing, and there just flat ain’t any rules like we think of ’em otherwise. You try not to kill folks that don’t have it comin’, but the bottom line is to protect those that matter to you. Period. The enemy’s gonna try to do the same thing—and somebody’s gotta lose. That’s the deal, and it’s our job to make sure it ain’t us and ours doin’ the losin’. Now, we been sittin’ here most o’ the night waitin’ for this, and we better not screw it up. I gotta concentrate, an’ if you won’t spot for me, then get the hell outta my sight.”

  “I’ll s’ot,” Lawrence said quietly, and refocused his glass. “Okay, he’s on wreckage, still talking. He’s standing still—exce’t his hands. Looks like all now gathered to see . . . To hear. They kneeling, looking down, all exce’t ’unny Craph. He’s looking down too now, still talk . . .”

  Lawrence jerked when the mighty roar and physically stunning overpressure of the Doom Whomper took him completely by surprise. He almost dropped the glass, but he managed to steady it just in time to see most of the Blood Cardinal’s head erupt in a crimson explosion that launched large chunks of flesh, bone, and other matter in all directions—and sent the ridiculous white hat tumbling high in the air. The bloated body beneath the red blast instantly collapsed and rolled from its perch.

  “I thought you only see red thing!” Lawrence cried.