Филип Фармер - The Stone God Awakens

"There's an opening!" she said.

"Steady as she goes," he told the steersman.

Under the branch ahead was a cavernous hole. It was oval and about a hundred feet across. Shadowed by the branch, its dark interior seemed empty. But Ulysses was sure that there must be many bat-men crowded into it. They would be waiting, until they were sure that the entrance had been detected, and then they would act. Or their commander might decide it would be better to take the offensive.

Graushpaz said, "There's another hole!"

He pointed at a dark oval under a branch in the trunk on their right.

The ship would be passing between the two holes, which meant that it could be attacked from both sides simultaneously.

Ulysses had this information transmitted to the other ships and then ordered them not to follow the flagship but to rise and circle. He was taking a chance by bringing his vessel to a place where the bat-men could get above him. They had bombs now, and it would only take one to blast a hole in the thin skin and another through the hole to turn theBlue Spirit into a burning, falling wreck.

He spoke again into the radio box to the rocketeers stationed on the blisters on the sides of the craft and in the cockpits on top. A minute later, as the airship slid by the holes at ten miles per hour, dark objects spurting flame and smoke soared toward the holes from the dirigible. Several struck outside the entrances, but five went into one and three into another. Each had a warhead of ten pounds of plastic explosive and one pound of black gunpowder and a detonating cap of picric acid.

Flames and black smoke belched out of the mouths of the entrances. Bodies came flying out, and then the ship had passed the holes. A moment later, winged men jumped out of the holes, fell, began flapping and then tried to catch up with the dirigible. They continued to stream out incessantly.

At the same time, the Dhulhulikh appeared from holes previously unseen, and the vine complexes yielded hundreds of bat-men.

The second volley of rockets hit the nearest holes again and caught many within them. A dirigible, flying over a gigantic vine complex, dropped time bombs at the junction of the complex and a branch. These tore loose the moorings on one side, causing the tangle to drop to a vertical position. At least a thousand bodies fell from the vines, although most of these began to fly back up. A majority of these were women and children.

Awina pulled at Ulysses' arm and pointed to the starboard at a downward angle. "There!" she said. "There! Under the third branch down! There is an immense hole!"

Ulysses saw it, too, just before the ship's passage took the hole away around the curve of the trunk. This hole was triangular and looked as if it were hundred yards across. Out of it, in unending files, stepped forty bat-men abreast. They marched in strict parade step, sprang together off the edge of the hole, fell, raised and lowered their wings, checked their fall, and then began climbing upward. They did not attempt to catch the dirigible, as the others had done, but flew upward as if toward a rendezvous.

Probably they were intent on getting as high as they could and would then form to attack.

Ulysses gave the order to put the dirigibles in battle formation at some distance above the height attainable by the Dhulhulikh. This manoeuvre took fifteen minutes. The ships had to gain altitude and at the same time make a circle which would bring them all together and facing the opposite way. Then, the flagship half a length in the lead, the fleet proceeded against the cloud of bat-men flying around and around the trunk just below the base of the mushroom-shaped top.

Ulysses intended to attack the city directly afterward, but it would be necessary to deal with the fliers first.

Many of them had bombs. The bat-men had gone to the Wufea village and there learned how to make powder from the Wufea, who had not suspected that the bat-men were now their enemies. Ulysses had learned that in the beginning of the torture of the Dhulhulikh by the Neshgai.

As far as he could tell, the winged men knew nothing about rockets. He hoped that this was true. The dirigibles were very vulnerable to rockets.

Also, it did not seem likely that the Dhulhulikh would have a large supply of bombs. Sulphur surely was not available anywhere in The Tree. They would have to get it from the south coast or the far north. He was hoping that there would not be any bombs left inside the rooms in The Tree. If every bomb available was being carried by the winged defenders, then they would be expended when the carriers were expended. At that moment, the forces of the Dhulhulikh looked inexhaustible. There were sections of the sky which were black with them. Perhaps the estimate of the prisoners that there were sixty-five hundred warriors in the city was true.

The fleet and the massed winged men flew toward each other. The ships were just below the extreme height attainable by the Dhulhulikh, but before the first bat-men reached the ships, the ships rose, and then they were over the bat-men. Ulysses gave the order, and rockets with impact fuses soared out from the hatches in the bottom of the ships. They burst among the clouds of men, and tiny pieces of rock — shrapnel — struck the winged men.

Rocket after rocket flew out, but the ships did not exhaust their supply. They needed some for the landing — if they would be able to land.

Hundreds of bat-men were put out of action by the blasts and the shrapnel. They fell, their wings fluttering, and struck the branches or the vine complexes or dropped into the dark abyss of the lower part of The Tree. Many struck those below them and knocked them out or broke their wings, and these, in turn, fell into others below them.

The ships passed on at full speed and left the hordes behind them. They circled and came back again with the bat-men flapping desperately to get on a level with them. This time, however, they had put much space between the warriors to lessen the effects of the rocket blasts. Despite this, they lost several hundred.

The fleet left them behind, turned around and passed over. Now the rockets were spared, and a few bombs were tossed out from the bottom hatches or catapulted from the side domes. By then, about an hour of sunshine was left. The lower part of The Tree was already in night.

For the third time, the fleet came around, and now the noses of the ships dipped, and they slid down an incline of air. The Dhulhulikh commanders saw that the ships would pass under them. Doubtless, they wondered what madness had struck the invaders, but they intended to take advantage of it. They continued to fly around in descending and then ascending spirals, taking one spiral past the other to avoid collisions, the whole army presenting a seeming confusion of corkscrew formations narrowly missing each other, moving back and forth.

The flagship continued to lower and then, shortly before it reached the first of the defenders, it rose. When it ploughed into the front of the mass, it was on an approximate level with the highest of them. None of the bat-men were able to get above it.

But they were even with it, and they closed around it like a net.

Rockets burst among the winged men. Bombs, thrown by catapults, exploded among them. The air was filled with puffs of smoke, charging and falling bodies. A moment later, the flagship released part of its hawks. The birds flashed out from the hatches on every side and threw themselves into the faces of the nearest bat-men.

Four of the ships were with the flagship, and these had loosed a quarter of their hawks. The other five ships had continued descending, and such was the havoc caused by the explosives and the hawks, no Dhulhulikh bothered them.

Their motors going full speed, the five dirigibles passed the trunks in a circling movement and sped more rockets into the holes. Their heaviest concentration was on the huge hole, and a rocket must have struck a supply of bombs to judge from the series of explosions. The edges of the hole were ripped apart, and when the smoke had cleared, a gaping wound was revealed in the side of the trunk.