“What would happen if he got bumped off?” Silva asked casually.
Jindal snorted. “Who knows? He’d never expose himself to harm, I’m sure, but ‘Blood Cardinals’ are reputedly immune to ‘earthly injuries’! That’s one reason we’ll hang the bastard for all to see when we catch him. That might go a long way toward undermining the foundations of their perverted teachings!”
“Don’t they ever just, you know, croak?”
Blair snorted this time. “Oh no. To attain ‘godliness’-and I do mean they’re semideified!-Blood Cardinals must mutilate themselves to death! For your average Dom, it’s enough that they ‘die in pain at the hands of another’ to enter paradise!”
“Do they really do it?” Chack asked, amazed. He knew more than Silva, but hadn’t known that.
“Their ‘popes’ sometimes do, when they’re old and sick. I’m sure they’re drugged silly at the time. Usually, those like the chap here, or Don Hernan, are simply laid out for viewing after they’ve suddenly been ‘called to the heavenly embrace.’ I suspect they’re mutilated after a natural death.”
“Wow,” said Dennis. “Huh. I bet them Dom soljers’d flip if they seen their head witch doctor spattered by a cannonball!”
“A lovey thought, and likely correct,” Blair said, grinning, “but as I said, he’ll be well protected-and better protected the longer we wait to finish this!”
Chack looked at the Imperials, then studied the condition of the troops gathered round. “We must destroy them now, while we have the momentum, before they have time to consolidate and improve their defenses!”
All during the conversation, the guns in the bastion continued a steady fire, demolishing houses and shops on the ground separating the two forces. The air was filled with white dust and gray smoke from shattered masonry and rampant fires. A few buildings remained standing, probably full of observers, but it was clear the Doms were making a killing ground that would be difficult to cross.
“Big guns for a fort not designed to protect a harbor. What are they? Eighteens? Twenty-fours?” Dennis suddenly asked.
“Twenties,” Blair said, and Silva blinked at the odd, non-“British” standard bores.
“Watcha got in them forts Sor-Lomak’s fellas took?” he asked.
“Thirties… but many will be damaged and none will bear!”
“So? Look, Chackie here knows you ain’t gotta prod me to fight, but a great hero o’ mine once said, ‘Never send a man where you can send a bullet’! How long would it take to bring them thirty-pound whoppers up?”
“Considerable time, I’m sure,” Blair said, “but they would outrange the enemy batteries and negate their efforts to improve their defenses-once we started battering them down! Mr. Silva, I’ve heard a
… great many things about you, but the accounts have neglected your tactical value!”
“Oh, he’s a taac-ti-caal wonder, gentlemen,” Chack said dryly. “Just pay no heed to his… straa-teegic suggestions!”
“I’m too modest to crow,” Silva proclaimed grandly, looking at Lawrence, who stood there with the broken Doom Whomper. The artillery duel he’d proposed would make a hell of a show, but he intended to send a few well- placed bullets of his own. “Say, anybody in this dump got any glue?”
Colonel Tamatsu Shinya strode into Waterford at the head of his column of Lemurian troops late that afternoon, still staring in wonder at the forest of blackened, skeletal trees surrounding the surely once-picturesque lakeside town. His eyes quested upward occasionally, searching the sky for “dragons,” or “Grik birds” as the fliers called them in their reports. Nothing flew, not even the blizzards of parrots and small, indigenous “dragons.” There was nothing in the air but smoke.
It had been a grueling day. First, they’d come ashore under stiff fire from Dom positions on either side of the beleaguered town of Cork, where the pitiful remnants of the garrison had managed to hold through the night, despite gloomy expectations. The survivors were overjoyed to see them and the mighty USS Maaka-Kakja, as her massive form resolved itself offshore in the light of the breaking day. Another Imperial ship of the line had joined her in the night, and added her guns to Maaka-Kakja ’s as she shelled the enemy positions. Air strikes from the great carrier and the planes she’d recalled from Lake Shannon quickly disrupted the Doms and rebels investing the town across the Belfast and Easky roads. Unable to stop the landings, both forces withdrew as the crack Lemurian regiments streamed ashore. Imperial Marines disembarked from the newly arrived ship of the line, under the direct command of t one-armed Sean “O’Casey” Bates, who’d come to represent the Governor-Emperor himself. As soon as the enemy pulled back, Bates went aboard Maaka-Kakja to greet Rebecca Anne McDonald, his long-lost princess. It was a tearful and touching, if brief reunion, between the child and her onetime fugitive protector and guardian, but Bates quickly returned to shore to oversee his troops and the reconsolidation of the defenses around Cork.
The Imperials remained there while “Shinya’s Division” pushed over the Wiklow Mountains and saw firsthand the results of the previous night’s action in the valley below. None had seen the valley before except the local scouts who led them, but by all accounts what had once been a beautiful, green, sprawling land of old-growth timber, now more closely resembled the bristly black back of a rhino pig. Miraculous pockets of green remained in freakish clumps or lines where the vagaries of the vortex had spared them, but most was now a charred, smoldering landscape as far northwest as the eye could see. Denser smoke still choked the sky in the far distance, fed by the awesome firestorm Lieutenant Reddy’s air attack the previous night had sparked. Nothing could have survived in the path of the monster the fire became, and Shinya doubted any of the Doms that came so close to retaking Waterford had lived.
They’ll be lucky to save Bray itself, he thought, unless the rains come to its rescue or the wind shifts back on itself. Shinya was.. . horrified by the sheer scope of destruction, and suspected their allies would be none too pleased, but he knew Captain Reddy’s cousin and Dennis Silva-of course Silva had been involved!-had done the only thing they could to ensure the forces fighting in New Dublin weren’t cut off from Cork, or attacked from the rear. That didn’t mean he was unaffected by what he saw. Tamatsu Shinya had viewed many horrors in this terrible war, and though the dead valley couldn’t compare to the countless dead people he’d seen, it struck him in a visceral, almost-prescient way that deeply disturbed him.
Adding to that discomfort, all the long day he hadn’t known what became of Reddy and Silva after their flight to check on the situation at New Dublin ended with a terse “bats outta hell” sent by Silva’s erratic Morse, and he’d been surprised how concerned it made him. They’d lost so much in this bizarre war, but he’d come to truly believe Silva was indestructible. And there was the issue of Captain Reddy’s cousin to consider. The captain had become such a source of moral strength to the western allies, not to mention these new ones in the east, some of that… aura… had been bound to rub off on his cousin to some degree, he supposed. How much was uncertain, but with Captain Reddy so far beyond help or even communication, and his fate utterly unknown, the possible loss of the young aviator so closely connected to his “clan” had caused a notably chilling effect aboard the ship beyond what he would’ve expected. It was… odd. Adar was unquestionably Chairman of the Grand Alliance, but whether he realized it or not, or even wanted it, Matthew Reddy had become “royalty” of a sort, and that status extended to his “family.”
Finally, shortly before, a courier arrived from Cork on horseback with the latest intelligence via Sor-Lomaak, describing the battle at New Dublin and the evolving situation there. Included was a brief statement that Reddy, Silva, and Lawrence had survived the downing of their plane. Reddy had been taken to Salaama-Na with a concussion, but Silva and Lawrence had vanished into the swirl of battle. Shinya was relieved but still disturbed. It looked like the battle in New Dublin might require a costly frontal assault to finish, and he was anxious to get there and see the ground for himself. H of Captaired, his division was tired, and they had a long, long way to go.
“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.”
