canteen back, blinking admiration. “The caavalry earned their pay today! I confess I never imagined such a… quickly moving fight on land! And the Marines who covered them at the end!” she added proudly. “Those new breechloaders are a wonder! The Grik pursuers melted before them like wax!”
“Yeah, the cav did swell,” Flynn agreed. “Everybody did. And those Allin-Silvas are great-but they use a lot of ammunition, fast.” He looked around. “Just swell,” he muttered. “So, now everybody’s here with us, in one place, being burned alive.” He paused, steeling himself. “What’s left?” he asked at last.
“It was bad,” Bekiaa admitted, “but the work you had us do paid off. We lost over a hundred dead in the bombing, and many more wounded.” She sighed, her tail swishing in the glow. “A lot of those will not live. I estimate twenty-eight hundred effectives remain.” She stood up straight at last. “We brought out some of the Sulaaran’s caissons, with many people clinging to them-but then lost several of our own to the fires. I am not sure exactly what our ammunition situation is, but we can still fight.”
Flynn pointed at the sky. “We can’t fight that! Where the HELL is the Air Corps?”
Bekiaa shook her head. “I do not know. The communications equipment survived, but the aerial is down-for now. Saachic has taken out a patrol, but the Grik stay back.”
“Makes sense,” said Flynn. “No point in them getting burned by their own zeps when they come back.”
“You think they will?”
“Why not?” Flynn said bitterly. “The fires are dying down, but we can’t put ’em all out. We make a fine target from the air.” He grunted.
“What?” Bekiaa asked.
“Oh, just a weird thought. There might be fifty thousand Grik out there-plenty to go over us like a steamroller-but they’re waiting for their high-tech weapons to finish us off!”
An hour passed, then two. Axes dropped most of the rest of the smoldering trees and they were shifted into a checkerboard of revetments, fighting positions, and overhead protection. The aerial was restrung, but now there was a problem with the batteries. Apparently, one of the trees they felled landed heavily against its cart and cracked their mobile power supply. A Ronson wind generator was rigged, but there was no wind. The handles for the hand generator couldn’t be found, and the comm ’Cats were trying to make some with the help of a battery forge. It was all infuriatingly frustrating and exhausting work-on top of a long, difficult march the day before and the events of the late afternoon.
Heavy, echoing thunderclaps of massed artillery fire and ripping sheets of musketry drifted toward them from the Rocky Gap, and flashes like lightning beyond the horizon lit the sky above it.
“Second Corps is in it now,” Flynn said to Bekiaa, still by his side. None of the 1st Sular’s senior officers had survived, and she remained his exec. An exhausted Captain Saachic returned and blearily reported that there very well might be fifty thousand Grik surrounding North Hill, but for now they were holding back, waiting, as Flynn had predicted. Flynn ordered him, and everyone who could, to get some sleep. The long night wore on and the flames faded almost entirely, giving them hope that the enemy airships might not return. Of course, they could just be waiting for daylight now. The fighting in the gap ebbed and flowed, but never ceased, and all that William Flynn, Bekiaa-Sab-At, and much of what remained of the 5th Division could do was stand, sleeplessly, and wait.
Eventually, just as the sky was beginning to turn gray in the east, the dreaded sound of the odd little Grik zeppelin engines reemerged. Inexorably, the airships drew closer, nearly invisible in the dark sky above.
“Sound ‘Stand To,’” Flynn sighed, and shortly after, the drums began to rumble.
Staring up, Bekiaa thought she could just make out the enemy craft, the sun beginning to reach the higher objects. She was startled when a stream of reddish, flaring dots suddenly arced through the air and impacted against one of the dingy cylinders. Almost immediately, it erupted into bright, hungry flames and began to fall out of the creeping formation!
“Col-nol!” she cried, grasping Flynn’s arm.
As was customary at that latitude, aided by the elevation, dawn came swiftly-particularly to the “furball” that suddenly erupted in the sky. A squadron of white-bellied Nancys swarmed the remaining eight zeppelins, hosing them with tracers from the single. 50-caliber machine gun mounted in their noses. The weapons were further gifts from the salvaged Santa Catalina; either spares or guns that had been removed from the P-40s. It had been deemed unnecessary for all the Warhawks to carry their full complement of six, particularly those deliberately lightened to increase their range or carry bombs. Now the slowly resolving sea of Grik around the hill emitted a rushing wail as the Nancys slashed their own machines apart.
Blazing, crumbling airships stumbled from the sky, some intact, but most in disintegrating, fire-breathing sections. Some even fell on the gathered Grik below. Firebombs vomited flaming fluid from the impacting machines, or drizzled fiery tendrils down on clots of Grik between the hills. Shrieks echoed and seethed. A flight of Nancys rumbled low over the horde and Allied bombs tumbled among it, detonating and spewing fire, weapons, and parts of Grik in long, roiling ovals.
“All batteries, commence firing with spherical case!” Flynn roared. “Fire at will!” The Grik were too far for canister to be effective. “Mortar crews, stand by! Action south!” Mortar ’Cats scrambled from their various positions around the perimeter, lugging their tubes and crates of ammunition.
Chest-thumping concussions ringed the hill and white smoke billowed outward as exploding case shot soared among the Grik, popping with gray-white puffs above or within their ranks, and scything them down with hot, jagged shards of iron. More bombs fell from another flight of the strange little seaplanes before it clawed its way back into the sky. A huge mushroom of smoke chased them this time, and one of the planes staggered. Its port wing fluttered away and it spiraled down amid a smear of fire.
“Damn!” Flynn growled. “Must’ve been those antiair mortar things of theirs again!” The cumbersome Grik weapons had made their first appearance on Ceylon.
Another Nancy was in trouble high above. A long stream of gray smoke chased it as it peeled away from a final, plummeting zeppelin. The plane steadied for a moment, but the smoke grew thicker and darker and it dove for the earth.
“Caap-i-taan Saachic!” Bekiaa shouted over the pounding guns. “That plane looks like it will try to set down there, near where the Marines had their works last night! You must rescue the crew if they survive the crash!” Nancys had no wheels-but wheels would be useless in the tall grass, at any rate. Maybe a hull designed for landing on water would fare better?
Saachic, already mounted, whirled. “First Squad!” he cried to the ready unit that had been around him throughout the night. “Follow me!”
With a clatter of equipment, swords, and carbines, 1st Squad’s me-naaks vaulted the breastworks and raced toward where the wounded plane was leveling off above the long grass that glowed golden green under the bright sunrise. The Nancy was burning now, its engine gasping and popping in agony. It nearly stalled, but the pilot dropped the nose and it swooped low, into the very top of the grass, and practically fluttered to the ground. Even with such an amazingly light impact, the high wing immediately sagged to either side of the engine and the fuel tank in front of it ruptured with a searing whoosh!
A man leaped out of the forward cockpit, coveralls smoking, and did a somersault in the damp grass. Immediately, he jumped to his feet and tried to get around the collapsed port wing to the aft cockpit, where his observer/copilot sat. It was no use. The plane was fully involved by then. Ammunition for the. 50 cal started cooking off and finally forced the man back.
“Look!” someone shouted. “The Grik!” A mob of the enemy several thousand strong was sweeping forward despite the fires and the other pursuit ships that had followed their comrade down. The planes began making strafing runs to keep the Grik back, but it wasn’t working.
“Damn it, they’re going for him!” Flynn growled, eyes darting from the Grik to Saachic’s cavalry, now streaming toward the man. It was going to be close. He had a sinking feeling; not only because of the danger to the flyer, but about the Grik they faced. Once, the trauma of the last quarter hour would have rattled them badly. They’d stood against unusually determined Grik in another pass, on Ceylon, but even they had finally broken off. The Grik trying to take the flyer showed no hesitation at all, and Flynn suddenly noticed that the vast majority of the rest of the army surrounding them had remained steady as well.
“I think we may really be in for it,” he whispered.
“Mortars!” Bekiaa roared. “Commence firing in support of Captain Saachic and the flyer!”
Saachic’s cavalry won the race, and Saachic himself scooped the pilot onto the me-naak’s back. A flurry of crossbow bolts and even some musket shots chased the squad as it bolted for the safety of the breastworks. Flynn
