William Forstchen - Men of War

The Hornet banked up sharply, the pilot showing off for the audience on the ground, and Varinna winced slightly at the boyish display. The fault with the rear-mounted engine had killed half a dozen pilots before it was figured out, and though the problem had been solved, she wished the pilots were a little less reckless.

Out in the field where the seven new Eagles were moored, ground crews were double-checking the tie-downs for the evening and getting ready to settle in for the night in their camp, each crew of twenty-five sleeping in tents arranged around the mooring poles. They had to be ready to react instantly, day or night, to any shift in the wind or weather. Far more ships had been lost to thunderstorms than had ever been shot down by the Bantags.

Another airship, a somewhat battered Eagle-number twelve, a veteran of the winter campaign and sent back for refitting-came in, banking erratically, a cadet pilot most likely at the controls. She watched anxiously as it turned to line up on the vast open landing field of several dozen acres.

“The boy’s crabbing, not watching the wind vane,” Vincent announced.

Varinna nodded, saying nothing, as one wing dipped, almost scraped, then straightened back up, the boy touching down hard, bouncing twice, then finally holding the ground. She could well imagine the chewing out he’d get from Feyodor, her assistant now in command of the pilot-training school, made worse by the withering sarcasm of the crew chief for the machine, who would make it a point of stalking along with the pilot for the postflight checkoff, blaming the novice for every crack and dent the machine had ever suffered since the day it had first emerged from a hangar.

“How many more machines can you have up within the next five days?” Vincent asked.

“For what?”

“Varinna, you know it really isn’t your place to ask. I’m ordered to send up every available machine, and that’s what I’m out here to check on.”

“I know the plan as well as you do,” she replied sharply. Vincent started to sputter and, quickly smiling, she held up an appeasing hand.

“Colonel Keane shared it with me when he was here in the city last week. But even before then I knew about it.”

“I don’t even want to ask.” Vincent sighed, gesturing back to the west, where the distant spires of the cathedral in Suzdal stood out sharply against the late-aftemoon sky. “That damn city is a sieve when it comes to keeping a secret.”

“And that’s just one of the reasons I don’t think the attack should be launched in front of Capua.”

She could see her statement had caught his attention, and he had learned long ago not to dismissively wave off her opinions. That was another thing Chuck had taught her. When you prove yourself right on the big issues, you can get away with one hell of a lot. It was Chuck’s insistence on continuing the rocket-launcher program that had saved everyone’s hide at Hispania, and that little feat had been performed in direct contradiction to orders.

“So go on, madam general, explain,” Vincent pressed. She bristled for a second, then realized that he wasn’t being sarcastic and was in fact listening respectfully.

“Capua is so damn obvious that this new chief of theirs must know it as well. For that reason alone I think we should avoid it.”

“Don’t you think Andrew and I have argued out that point a dozen times in the last three months?” Vincent replied, a slight flash of temper in his voice.

“Ah, so you don’t agree either then?”

He flushed, his eyes turning away for a moment, and she nodded slowly. Vincent always had been too transparent. But now she knew she was in.

“I’ve talked with every pilot who’s come back here throughout the spring. One of them, Stasha Igorovich, told me that he flew a reconnaissance flight just two weeks ago and reported signs of numerous land ironclads having been moved into the forests north of town.”

“I read that report, and you know then as well as I do that when Andrew sent up two Hornets the following mnming to check on these tracks this eagle-eyed pilot claimed he saw, there was no sign of them.”

“The Bantag are learning concealment, Vincent. The same as we have.” She pointed back up toward the all-important offices and machine shops for the Ordnance Department. The once attractive whitewashed buildings had been covered with a coating of dirty brown paint. Netting with woven strips of green-and-brown cloth had been draped over the buildings so that from the air they were all but invisible.

“Need I remind you that we got the idea for that netting from the Bantag? Yet another thing this Ha’ark and his companions most likely brought over from their own world. In fact, I suspect that from the air we are far more visible than they are. And if so, the Bantag must be blind not to have noticed the buildup along the Capua front, the number of guns moved up, the dozen pontoon bridges and hundreds of canvas boats, rocket launchers, all of the equipment needed for a direct assault across a river. They’re waiting for us.”

“Maybe they are, but the war has to be decided, and decided now If we can only come to grips with them, beat them on their own field, we’ll turn the tide. Damn it all, woman, they’re still parked less than one hundred miles from Roum. We have to get them out of there now.”

“Or if we don’t Roum leaves the Republic? Is that the sole motivation now for this attack?”

“Or the Republic, or what we want to call the Republic, will leave Roum.” Vincent sighed, wearily shaking his head. “Varinna, you know as well as I do this country’s finished. One more winter of war, and we fall apart. Even if we win now, it’ll be a near-run thing at best.”

Vincent looked away again, watching for a moment as the pilot who had so clumsily landed endured a good chewing out from Feyodor while the crew chief pointed at what was most likely a broken wheel strut and exploded into a torrent of swearing.

“Tell me where we have shortages right now,” Vincent snapped, looking back at her.

She said nothing.

“Where do I start then? Fulminate of mercury for percussion caps? Our source of quicksilver is playing out, six more months and we might have to start rationing cartridges, or go all the way back to flintlock guns. How about silk for these airships? We’re out. Oil for kerosene, the Bantags overran the last oil well eleven days ago. Sure we can substitute coal oil, but that’s just one more example. And men …. ”

His voice trailed off for a moment.

“How many hundred thousands dead? If we had five corps more, even three corps, I’d break the back of this war in a month. But even if I did have the extra men, where the hell would I get fifty thousand more uniforms, cartridge boxes, tents, smallpox inoculations, and rations for a summer’s campaign, let alone the rifles and eighty cartridges per man for one afternoon’s good fight?”

| Again he sighed, extending his hands in a gesture of infinite weariness.

“One of the things I’m supposed to order is the reduction of the workforce for the airships.”

“What?”.

“You heard me right. You and I played a good litde game of doctoring the books, but some of our congressmen finally figured it out and hit the ceiling. They want the resources put into artillery or land ironclads.”

She waved her hand dismissively.

“Taking one for the other is illogical. Those people are trained for this job. We’ll lose production on both ends if we switch them off.”

“Well, they want five thousand of them transferred before the month is out. Sent to the fields if need be to try and harvest more food. Lord knows we’re falling short of that as well.”

She wearily shook her head.