The Fires of Coventry

by Rick Shelley

  The chain of explosions was continuous, rocking thetrees, scattering debris, and shaking the ground that Alfie was hugging. He held his breath. Counting the blasts was impossible. He could only hold on and hope that he would still be alive—and able to move—after the last shrapnel and debris had come to rest.

  What if a tree falls on me? That sudden fear was somehow worse than all of the rest. He could hear wood cracking. Somewhere close, trees or large branches were falling, too weakened by the shrapnel to continue holding themselves up.

  “Now, Alfie!” Tory shouted over the radio. “Up and back here. While they’ve still got their heads down.”

  “Let’s go!” Alfie shouted on his fire team’s channel, but the others were getting up even as he started to lever himself to his feet. Alfie was only partly conscious of the fact that they were all moving in the right direction. It would have been easy to get that wrong, far too easy.

  He was almost unaware of the rifle fire pouring into the Federation positions as he ran back to where the rest of the first squad was. Alfie dove over a fallen tree trunk and did an involuntary somersault before coming to rest.

  Alfie could do nothing but lie on his back and stare into the forest canopy while he sucked in monstrously deep breaths. His lungs felt as if they were burning, or trying to turn themselves inside out. He could hear Tory talking to him, but he could not make out the words at first. He certainly could not begin to reply.

  “Just lie there, Alfie-lad.” Finally, Alfie understood the words in his earphones. “Try to relax. Your heart’s beating over two hundred times a minute.”

  Can’t be, Alfie thought. It’d blow itself out. But he could not get in enough air to even try to talk.

  “I’ve stuck a patch on. You’ll be right in a minute or two.” Tory had never seen vital signs go so completely berserk before. Selectively, the platoon sergeant could view medical data on each of his men. Monitors were built into each helmet, and the telemetry could be used by officers and noncoms. Alfie’s heart rate had actually gone well over 225, almost went into fibrillation, and his respiration and bloodpressure had fluctuated all over the place, from deeply depressed to wildly exaggerated. Tory had known that he had to do something quickly, and he wasn’t certain that the medical patch he had slapped on Alfie’s neck was the right thing to do, but the relaxant patch’s nanobugs ought to give Alfie time, even if they could not correct the problem on their own. It might be a half hour before a medical orderly could get to Alfie, maybe with something better suited to the problem.

  “Keep you eye on him, Mac,” Tory told John McGregor. “I think he’ll be okay for now. I’ve got to get back to the rest of the platoon.”

  McGregor simply nodded. He didn’t feel that he had all that much extra air for talk yet himself.

  Tory slid off through the undergrowth, keeping the fallen tree trunk between him and the Feddie positions as possible. There was still a lot of shooting going on, but most of it was farther off now. There must be fighting going on all around the perimeter now, Tory thought.

  He needed a moment to get to the positions the rest of the platoon held. There had been some movement in the minutes that he had been concentrating on Alfie. He was ready to call Spencer again, to find out what they were going to do, when a long series of explosions—quite some distance off—stopped him.

  “Must be on the other side,” he whispered. The blasts seemed to go on and on, a series of chains, some overlapping, others separate, for two minutes or more. Most he could identify as grenade explosions, maybe Commonwealth, maybe Federation, but some of the blasts were deeper-toned, and louder than grenades or small antipersonnel land mines.

  What the hell? he wondered. Then Captain McAuliffe came on the noncoms’ circuit.

  “The Feddies are attempting a breakout on the east side. They’ve punched at least three holes through Alpha and they’re pouring through. We’ve got to push in after them. Tell your men to watch out for any surprises the Feddies may have left behind.”

  • • •

  Al Bailey could not recall ever working so hard, or sweating so much. No matter how many trips he made out into the fields east of the road, and no matter how many other residents came out to help, there always seemed to be more wounded people who needed to be carried in for medical help. There was scarcely room left in any of the houses on the east side of the lane to hold any more casualties. And there were scores of dead lying between the houses and the forest. More than a few of the dead were people Al had known.

  At one point, after perhaps a half dozen round-trips, Al had managed to catch his reflection in a window. What he saw shocked him so badly that he went inside to look in a mirror, to get a better image of himself. His face was streaked with blood and tears and dirt. His cheeks seemed sunken, as if he were near starvation. His eyes were bloodshot and dripping tears. Seeing his eyes made Al aware that they hurt, stung. But there was no time to do anything about any of what he saw. He had to get back to work.

  On his next trip out behind the Evans house, Al had found something too useful to be left with the corpse of its owner, a revolver and a full box of ammunition. Al had stuck the pistol in his belt, under his shirt, and the ammunition had gone into his rear pocket. There were still Feddies on Coventry. He might find a use for the weapon.

  The searchers had finally reached almost to the woods. Al, his father, and Joseph Evans stood at the edge looking around for several minutes, even peering beyond the first ranks of trees. All three of them were breathing heavily. They had run across from the Evans house. To the north and south, other residents were still carrying wounded back to their homes, or to the shady sides of them, so that they could be treated. But there were no longer any wounded close enough for Joseph and the Baileys to go after them.

  “We’ve done our bit, I think,” Evans said, not quite gasping for breath. “Let’s rest up for a minute or two, then go home. The women are going to need all the help we can provide.”

  Reggie was staring west, through the gap between two houses, not really listening to what Evans was saying. “It sounds as if the fighting has picked up again. Listen to it.”

  Joseph blinked several times. He had not been conscious of the sounds of battle. Gunfire, explosions. There seemed to be a hint of fire growing in the forest, maybe a mile away.

  “It would serve them right if they got themselves burned out,” Joseph whispered, talking to himself. “They burned out enough of us.”

  “Are my ears playing tricks on me, or does it sound like the fighting is moving this way?” Al asked.

  A startled look crossed his father’s face. Reggie tried to listen more closely, tried to decide if his son was right.

  “I can’t tell,” he said after a moment. “It’s all a jumble,”

  “If it is moving this way, we’d best get back to the house now, while we can,” Joseph said. “We might not be able to make it later.”

  Joseph was too tired to run, but he rushed the walk as much as he could, until he was breathing so hard that he had to slow down. Reggie had already fallen behind, his chest burning from the effort. Al didn’t stop until his father called for him to wait. With his back to the others, Al moved his right hand to his waist, feeling the comfortable hardness of the revolver under his shirt.

  Maybe I will get a chance to use it, he thought. There was a dizzying headiness to the idea.

  Al glanced over his shoulder. His father had almost caught up. That was good enough for Al; he started moving again. At first, he tried to restrain his pace; he didn’t want his father to yell for him to slow down again. But soon he was moving almost at a run. Al didn’t slow down until he got to the rear door. Inside, he had to step past and over wounded. They were lying on every piece of furniture that would hold them, and on the floor in every room.

  “We couldn’t find any more wounded,” he announced, loud enough that his mother, Mary Evans, and the other adults who were helping the casualties could hear. “It sounds like the fightin
g’s getting closer again.”

  His mother scarcely looked up from the young womanshe was bandaging. She did not notice that her son went straight through to the front door and out into the courtyard of the Evans house.

  As soon as he opened the front door, Al was certain that the fighting was closer. It seemed to be moving toward the road again. He crossed to the stone pillar next to the gate, an almost subconscious recognition of the need for caution gripping him. He had seen too much blood, too many dead and wounded Coventrians, to be totally reckless now. There was so much blood on his clothing that it was hard to tell what colors the shirt and trousers had been before.

  Al’s right hand touched the butt of the pistol in his belt as he looked across the road and between two houses. He could not see any of the combatants, but he could hear the sounds—even the occasional scream of a wounded man.

  If I get a chance to do anything, I’ll take it. Then he took the revolver out from under his shirt, making sure that his back was to the door, so that neither his mother nor father would be able to see it. He checked to see that all six cylinders were loaded, then put the gun back in his belt. After his shirt had been pulled down over it, he looked back to assure himself that the gun had not been seen by anyone who might take it away.

  It’s my world too. I’ve got every right to help kick the Feddies off. He looked at the door again, defiantly this time. Just give me a chance.

  27

  “Sir, you were there at the beginning, weren’t you?” Lieutenant Zileski asked on the bridge of HMS Hull.

  “At the beginning of what?” Ian Shrikes asked. He had not been paying much attention to the casual conversation going on around him. Hull and the rest of the fleet were in Q-space, about ready to return to Coventry again. Between his worries about that return and making certain that all stations were prepared for whatever might come, he had tuned out all but the essential duty talk.

  “Back when Admiral Truscott changed all of our tactical doctrine to start diving in and out of Q-space so quickly.”

  Ian smiled. “You make it sound as if it were a generation ago, and not … barely eighteen months.”

  “That’s not what I meant, sir. What I meant was, well, I mean, didn’t the admiral think that it would give us a big advantage over the Feddies?”

  “It did give us a big advantage, Lieutenant, overwhelming even. For all of five weeks. Two engagements. And I doubt that Admiral Truscott expected the advantage to last even that long. In war, if one side comes up with an important innovation, the other side has to find some way to counter it in a hurry, or else. All that the admiral was really interested in when he started working out the new tactics was winning one battle, the one he was involved in at the moment. The rest was beer and gravy, as they say. He was improvising to meet a very immediate crisis. That shaped the way both navies operate.”

  “That was a decisive engagement,” Zileski said.

  “And now we just play hide-and-seek,” Shrikes said, sensing the frustration that had prompted the original question.

  “Yes, sir. At least, that’s how it seems. One side comes out of Q-space, the other ducks in, taking just a passing swipe on the way out, if that. Come back in and the other side scoots. That sort of show. It can go on forever, now, can’t it?”

  “Theoretically, unless one side withdraws from the system. Barring that, the first commander to make a serious mistake comes up the loser. Those are the facts of life for us now. It does place more emphasis on intelligence and training, less on the sheer size or strength of your forces.” Ian went quiet for a moment. One of the responsibilities of command was helping junior officers develop professionally. Zileski had not been looking for a lecture when he asked his question, but Ian would not pass up the opportunity to make a point.

  “At times like this, that makes a difference,” he said. “Losses are difficult to replace. The Commonwealth can’t afford to build all of the ships we’d want to have clear numerical superiority each time we meet the enemy. And, as far as I know, the Commonwealth has no plans to build anything comparable to the Feddie dreadnoughts. They are simply too expensive to build and maintain, and too easy to lose in combat.”

  “You mean saving money is more important than winning the war?” Disbelief was clear in Zileski’s voice.

  Ian laughed. “Money is an important consideration, even in wartime, Lieutenant. Especially in this war, I fancy. And it’s more important for us than it is for the Federation. Their, ah, tax base, is much larger than ours, and they aren’t so strictly limited in what they can extract from their population.”

  “It seems a bit of a letdown, sir,” Zileski said. “I mean,

  fighting a war with accounting clerks rather than patriotism.”

  “It’s the accounting clerks on Buckingham and Union who might bring this insanity to an end someday, Zileski. Don’t slight them.”

  • • •

  Noel Wittington’s lips were bleeding. Over the last several hours he had bit at them so much that they were raw and extremely painful. He had been out collecting wounded for most of that time, starting almost as soon as the Baileys and their host had. The casualties, the dead and the wounded, were mostly strangers to Noel. He had only seen two people he recognized as coming from South York, and he only knew one of them by name.

  After his first several trips out to help the wounded, he had started collecting weapons as well as people—weapons and ammunition, stockpiling them next to the house he was staying in. Inside, that house was quickly packed with casualties. Up and down the lane, there had to be two or three hundred injured civilians … and at least as many dead had been left out in the fields.

  Once the wounded had all been accounted for, Noel had started going from house to house, looking for able-bodied men. “We’ve collected some weapons and ammunition. Those Marines might need our help. By God, Coventry is our world. We should be helping to kick those Federation bastards off, not just sitting around waiting for someone else to do it for us.”

  There was no time for him to recall the ignominious results of his previous encounter with Federation soldiers. For the first time in many days he did not rub at the fading tattoo that they had placed on his forehead. He did not even think about Captain Stanley.

  “We can get together enough of us to make a difference,” he told people. “Maybe make the difference.”

  For all of his arguments and cajolery, he earned only meager results. After talking to at least fifty men, he had persuaded only eight of them to join him, and few of those had shown any real eagerness for the prospect of fighting. Saying yes to Noel had simply become less distasteful than continuing to listen to him. The only really avid volunteer had been a twelve-year-old boy, one Noel had met in the camp to the east, and the boy’s parents had vetoed the idea out of hand. Noel had not tried to change their minds, buthe had used the example of the boy to try to attract more adult volunteers. Later, when the sounds of fighting intensified and started to move toward the houses, two more men came to accept the challenge.

  “I think it’s time we move out to where we can get a piece of this,” Noel told his ten volunteers. “If those Feddies get to the houses, they might start burning again.”

  He led his men across the road. Behind cover of one of the houses on the west side, Noel listened to the gunfire and explosions for several minutes, trying to decide which way to head. A little farther to the south, he decided. It sounds like that’s where it’s hottest.

  Eleven civilians, armed with a motley collection of mostly old weapons, few with as many as twenty rounds of ammunition, ran toward the low stone wall that separated the yard from the forest beyond. None of the men noticed the twelve-year-old boy who came running after them, clutching a revolver in his hand. Al Bailey was very determined. He wanted a part of this. And he would not be denied.

  Alfie Edwards felt as if he had been put through a blender, poured out, and frozen back in shape. He still felt more than a little shaky—his hands
were trembling violently—but mostly from the memory of what he had been through. It had been a novel, and entirely unpleasant, experience, one that he had no desire to ever repeat. But his vital signs were back to normal—relatively close to normal, in any case—and he was eager to get back into action.

  I sure don’t want more time to think about it. I might really freeze up then, like Baker. It hadn’t been fear in Alfie’s case, except perhaps a retroactive sort. He had experienced fear often enough, and he knew how to deal with that, how to use it to his advantage. He had no idea what had happened to him this time, how his body had gotten so far out of control, going berserk just when he was reaching safety after a sticky patch. He had never even heard of the like, nor had the medic who had treated him.

  Alfie wasn’t even certain how much time he had lost. But when he became aware of his surroundings again, when hisheart and lungs were through with their nearly catastrophic race, the battle seemed to be raging even hotter than it had been while all of the covering fire was being laid down to let his fire team escape from the tight corner they had been in.

  Then came the word that the Feddies were breaking through on the other side, heading east, back toward the houses and all of those civilians.

  “I’m ready to go, Tory,” Alfie said. “No use me hanging around back here.”

  Tory’s arguments had been short and halfhearted. Within two minutes, Alfie was back with the rest of the squad, pushing through the area where the Feddies had been earlier, moving past the bodies of dead and wounded who had been left behind.