Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream

They would not offer more than passing resistance, but at least they could be counted on to hold their ground and fight to the death.

It was therefore something of a surprise when the first contact with the forces of Zind came from the air.

Feric’s lead tank had reached an area no more than seventy miles from the border of Zind itself; here the patches of radiation jungle were thicker and more extensive than what paltry grasslands remained. For nearly an hour, all manner of monstrosities had fled from the cancerous jungle as the flamethrowers of the tanks set these cesspits of genetic putrescence aflame: giant featherless birds with four clawed legs and dripping carcinomas where their beaks should be, loping skinless obscenities trailing pulsating organs that flopped about in all directions, pus hounds, swine, and packs of assorted tiny horrors that might be deformed weasels, or badgers, or hedgehogs, or more likely mongrelized hodgepodges of all three.

Therefore, nothing seemed out of the ordinary when Best pointed out some twenty specks flying toward the Helder army out of the eastern horizon. “Some sort of vile mutated bird, no doubt,” Feric observed, and paid them no serious heed, for they seemed small and slow.

But a few minutes later, his perspective underwent a sudden shift: rather than small and slow, the things were swift and huge, for quite suddenly they were flying over the tank.

“What nauseating horrors!” Best cried. This was, if anything, an understatement. The creatures consisted primarly of huge fifty-foot wings composed of loathsome translucent slime tissue stretched tight over frameworks of thin bone. Slung under the wing was an almost vestigial torso, also covered with translucent slime tissue, through which pulsating internal organs were clearly visible. There were no heads or other appendages to speak of, save enormous distended sacs hanging obscenely on either side of the thin body.

As the monstrosities passed over Feric’s tank in a tight formation, sphincters in the bottoms of the huge bulging sacs opened, and a dribble of noxious green fluid began to fall on the tanks immediately behind Feric’s. As this putrid rain contacted the armor plate of the tanks, dense clouds of vile yellow smoke sizzled from the metal.

“Open fire!” Feric cried. He himself opened his hatch, snatched up his submachine gun, and poured a stream of bullets into one of the horrors, tearing scores of holes in the slimy membrane of the wing. Instantly and soundlessly, the creature folded up and the great sacs burst like pustules, showering a tank below with acid rain, before the thing crashed to earth to be pulped beneath the treads of scores of on-rushing tanks. The tank that had been under the monster sent a pillar of lung-searing smoke into the air and seemed to dissolve.

“Try the flamethrower!” Feric commanded his own turret crew, as he continued to fire at the things with his submachine gun, downing yet another of the monstrosities at the cost of one more tank. Even as he spoke, the air above the Helder tanks became filled with red-hot machine-gun bullets; six more of the creatures burst their sacs and crumpled, destroying four tanks in the process.

A moment later, a great tongue of orange flame sprang from a nozzle atop the turret of Feric’s tank and caught one of the flying things in a bath of fiery petrol. The thing crisped to blackened ash before it could hit the ground, its acid sacs exploding in midair harmlessly.

Seeing this, the commanders of the other tanks opened up with their flamethrowers and caught seven more before the remaining monstrosities abruptly wheeled in unison like a flock of geese, climbed for the sun, and turned tail to head back to the east from whence they came.

“My Commander!” Best shouted, pointing high in the air above the formation of monstrosities as they dwindled into the distance. Five hundred feet above the things was a similiar flying creature; instead of acid sacs, this one had a kind of metal basket slung beneath it in which a humanoid shape was clearly discemable.

“A Dom!” Feric exclaimed. “Of course! There had to be a Dom to control the beasts!” He spoke into his command microphone: “Open fire! There’s a Dom in that basket up there, and it’s getting away!”

At once the air was filled with whistling cannon shells, tongues of flame, and an incredible hail of machine-gun bullets, all of which were futile. The flying thing was out of range of all but the cannon, and since the cannon shells were not fitted out with proximity fuses, the chances of a hit were a million to one.

After a few moments of this gigantic barrage, Feric saw that nothing was being accomplished but the wasting of ammunition, and he ordered his forces to cease fire.

“Well, we destroyed plenty of the things, my Commander,” Best said somewhat dispiritedly as the flying things dwindled once more to specks on the eastern horizon.

“But not the one that counted. Best,” Feric said. “No doubt this was more of a scouting foray than a serious attack. Now the Dom who led them will report in detail on our approaching army.”

“That’s hardly likely to improve their morale,” Best pointed out brightly.

At this, Feric’s own annoyance was lifted. Best was a good battle companion; the lad always saw the sunny side of things!

With every man in the army keenly alert, Feric led his troops further eastward toward the border of Zind itself.

By now the Zind forces in the border area must be fully alerted and as ready for action as they would ever be, and in a few hours the huge Zind horde to the north would be notified of the true situation and would begin to swing south. A great battle was clearly in the offing; it was essential that it take place as far north as possible and deep inside Zind itself.

Therefore, Feric wheeled his army slightly northward; once the border defenders had been smashed, it should be possible to penetrate several hundred miles into Zind toward Bora before the massive Zind horde to the north could swing around to block the advance. No time must be wasted dealing with the Zind forces at the Malax border; every hour of delay would place the great battle that much further from Bora. Leaving nothing to chance, Feric called for a fifty-plane air strike to pave the way into Zind itself with the broken bodies and smashed equipment of the defenders.

Half an hour later, ten V-fonnations of sleek, black dive-bombers roared over the Helder army, dipped their wings in gallant salute, and headed eastward across rolling hills thick with rank radiation jungle. Before the planes had disappeared over the hills, there was a sudden loud whistling, and a brace of shells exploded in gouts of turf and smoke not three hundred yards in front of Feric’s tank.

“Zind artillery!” Best exclaimed.

Looking east and upward, Feric spotted a tiny black speck high in the sky. Instantly, he was on the radio to the commander of the planes. “There’s a Zind artillery spotter above us! Send a plane back to dispatch it. Send another plane forward above the Zind horde to broadcast range and bearings to our tank gunners.”

“At once, my Commander! Hail Jaggar!”

Another barrage of shells burst in front of the tank, these several score yards closer. Then, low on the horizon, Feric spied a single flash of gleaming blackness zooming in from the east. Another barrage fell, closer still, peppering the armor of Feric’s tank with bits of gravel. The tiny flash of black grew rapidly into a sleek black Helder fighter-bomber; the plane arced upward into the sun, then fell nearly straight downward at the Zind flyer in a swift power-dive. Feric could see the bright orange sparkle of the plane’s machine guns; then the noxious Zind flyer folded and fell like a stone. The fighter roared low over the Helder army, executed a smart victory roll, then made a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn and returned to the fray in the east.