City on Fire

Aiah can feel despair tighten in her chest. “But the whole thing,” she says, “was a botch.”

He looks at her and shakes his head. “Your part of the mission was a success. That there was a failure somewhere else was not your fault.”

She gives a little shudder. It did not feel like a success, not when she was in the water with bullets lighting the air above her.

Constantine gently draws her closer by her arm. “In any case, well, things are not as bad as we might have feared. You succeeded in panicking the Provisionals.” He points at one of the video screens, and Aiah’s gaze reluctantly follows his hand, sees buildings being battered by shell-fire.

“When the Provisional command realized you were on the verge of causing one of their frontline brigades to defect,” he says, “they ordered their nearby units to attack Landro’s Escaliers. Those gunboats that struck the half-world were among the first units to respond. But their command structure is not very flexible over there—they have dispersed their communications and headquarters units so that they are not, once again, all attacked at the same time—and the first attacks were uncoordinated and easily repelled by a unit as specialized in this sort of fighting as the Escaliers. The Provisionals still have not managed a proper assault, but when they started the shooting they did push the Escaliers over to us. We have a bridgehead into enemy territory; we now need only to funnel our troops over in sufficient quantity-”

Uncertain hope catches in Aiah’s throat. “Do you mean it worked? The mission wasn’t…”

“Not a total failure, no. Our forces went on two-hour standby as soon as you crossed to the other side. As soon as we received word of the enemy’s movement, we started the clock ticking. The guns are firing already, and as soon as everyone reports ready, we will launch.” His lips curl in a wolfish smile. “We have some surprises in store—the Sea of Caraqui provides an unconventional environment for warfare, and we will take advantage of it in ways our enemies will not expect.”

Aiah looks up at the screens, at the scenes of violence repeated in one video display after another, Aground multiplied a thousand times… Let it all be for something, she thinks.

“May I… watch?” she asks. The words just fall out, and Aiah regrets them at once. She does not want to witness the catastrophe of Aground all over again, and multiplied a thousand times.

Amusement glimmers in Constantine’s eyes. “Find a perch,” he says.

She begins to look for a chair, then hesitates and turns back to Constantine. “Where is Karlo’s Brigade?” she asks.

“Mobile reserve, well out of the fighting.” He points at a map. “We hope to shift them to exploit any breakthrough…” He bows toward her with mocking courtesy. “// you approve, of course.”

Aiah clenches her teeth. “Ask me when the time comes,” she says tartly, “and I’ll let you know.”

Aiah finds an unused chair and sits. Suspense gnaws at her insides as she watches the preparatory bombardment, the reports of Provisional units being hammered, of plasm stations hit, ammunition barges blown up by dolphin raiders, of the enemy net, almost all their reserves, being tightened around Landro’s Escaliers… the enemy response, actions not as certain as the government’s, nor as strong, but still finding chinks in the government armor, causing delays as units have to improvise their way around the trouble…

invisible mage attacks on both sides, perceived only in an occasional flash, or through a verbal report… and then an ominous glow, a towering figure of fire…

The Burning Man walks along the front, his body a raging holocaust. Aiah’s heart leaps into her throat. A mage out of control, buildings igniting at his touch… and she knows that the Burning Man consumes not only the world around him, but the mage’s own body.

The Burning Man withers and dies as someone cuts off the mage’s plasm source, but the district he walked through still burns… The battle seems to have slowed down, and despair invades Aiah again, a giddy sense of hopelessness that makes her sway in her chair… When the last unit reports its readiness, and Constantine gives the command to commence the bridging operation, Aiah wants to cry out in relief.

A thousand mortars near the front open fire, dropping smoke into the no-man’s-land between the forces, bright swirling splashes of green or purple or red. Government artillery increases its rate of fire, shells dropping right into the enemy front line. And then the soldiers begin to cross the water, thousands of small powerboats moving forward under the cover of smoke. The Dalavan Guard aims at Lorkhin Island, driving straight at the enemy’s strongest point, and the Marines cross elsewhere.

Aiah turns from the screens to watch General Arviro of the Marines. He has trained his corps, labored long on their operational plans, and as the powerboats begin to roar he looks up at the screens, chin tilted back, neck muscles taut with tension. He looks as if he is willing them across the danger zone.

They cross, most of them. There are too many for the enemy to stop. The boats of the Dalavan Guard drive ashore on Lorkhin, running right up onto the firm ground of the island, and the Guard spill out onto pathways that, it can only be hoped, mages and explosives have already cleared of mines and traps.

Elsewhere, avoiding Lorkhin and its strongholds, the Marines storm across the danger zone. Unlike the Guard, they do not assault the enemy strongpoints—the giant, fortified buildings on their tall pontoons—but instead bypass them, swarming through the dark watery passages beneath the startled, entrenched enemy. Then, grouping in rear areas, the Marines seize communications links, break electricity and plasm connections, and assault the enemy from behind.

At the same time the Army attacks from the front. The Provisionals, when they created the no-man’s-land in front of their position, did so by gutting buildings and pontoons, turning them into barges filled with rubble, and by sinking others to create lanes of open water. Instead of building bridges and roads across the danger zone, as the enemy expected, Constantine has simply built new pontoons, each more than a stade long, colossal structures shielded from magework by bronze plates and mesh, with highways built not along the tops, but safely through the interior. Seagoing tugs, guarded by telepresent mages, shove these massive structures into position, and military engineers link them together to create long tunnels that stretch toward the enemy.

Aiah goggles at the sight as, on video, she sees these monuments being driven along watery lanes and into position. Shellfire plunges down, fountaining high in the water or hammering the armored roofs of the bridging pontoons. Occasionally a tug is hit and explodes in bright flame, or—listing—is forced back. But still the long bridges, link by link, drive toward an enemy stunned by bombardment, confused and cut off by attacks in their rear.

The first bridge to be completed, because it was unopposed, links government forces with Landro’s Escaliers, and government mercenaries roll to the attack in an attempt to expand their bridgehead. Other bridges are, with much greater difficulty, at length fixed in position. Crossings begin, against ferocious opposition.

“Yes, Triumvir.” Constantine presses a gold headset to one ear as he replies to Parq’s pleas. “We are doing our utmost to get the bridges across to Lorkhin.”

He winces, then holds the headphone some distance from his ear. Parq’s hysterical voice, released from the cup of Constantine’s ear, cries its distress to the room.

The Dalavan Guard have stalled on the Island, cohesion broken, the soldiers huddling in whatever cover they can find. Parq screams for Constantine to rescue them.

“We will reinforce,” Constantine reassures. “I guarantee it, Triumvir.”

Aiah suspects that the bridges trying to reach Lorkhin may be used more for retreat than for reinforcement.

The Provisional command seems disorganized and slow to respond, but their mercenary troops are all good soldiers, more experienced than the expanded Caraqui army, and the response of the individual units is professional enough. Government casualties mount. Storms of blistering fire are hurled against Landro’s Escaliers and the bridgehead. And then—in another part of the line entirely, near the border with Lanbola—a tentative breakthrough occurs. A clear pathway to the enemy rear opens. All enemy reserves are already committed against the Escaliers —there is nothing to stop government forces from slicing into enemy territory and cutting them off from all support—but somehow there is a breakdown on the bridge-tunnel, and reinforcements cannot be got across in any quantity.

“What… hideous… treachery…” Constantine’s eloquence deserts him as he watches the impediments multiply, one after another. Aiah watches him roar, pump fists into the air, pace manically back and forth. There is a mad desperation in his eyes; he is reliving, Aiah thinks, some nightmare from his past, from Cheloki, some other plan that failed. Engineers work frantically on the bridge. Officers are shouting words like “utmost” and “at all costs.”