Wind's sou' sou' west, wouldn't you say, Mr Kage?' he says suddenly.
Wind?' I blurt back, taken completely by surprise at this unusual question.
'Yes/ he says, glancing at me with a smile, 'and it looks as if tiiere is a counter-cyclic at about six thousand metres/
Your guns must lob their shells a hell of a long way up for that to matter/ comments Loron from the other side of the lieutenant.
'Oh no, tiiey don't go up at all, they just come down/ he replies amiably, pressing a stud on the bottom of the gadget and holding it up above his head.
'Doesn't go up...' murmurs Gudmanz. This is coming from orbit?'
That's right/ Striden affirms with a nod. 'I'm ground observation officer for the batdeship Emperor's Benevolence. She'll be opening fire shortly/
'A batdeship?' I ask incredulously. My mind fills with memories of the cruiser that was with us in the Kragmeer system, and the rows of massive guns along her broadside. Emperor knows how much firepower this batdeship has!
'Here it comes/ Striden says happily, directing our eyes upwards with his own gaze.
The sky above Coritanorum begins to brighten and a moment later I can see the fiery trails of ten missiles streaking groundwards. As they approach, movement on the ground attracts my attention as the rebels begin to scurry around in panic when they realise what's happening. With a vast, thunderous roar the torpedo warheads impact into die plain, and "a ripple of explosions, each at least fifty metres across, tears tiirough die assembled traitors, tossing tanks tiiirty or more metres into the air with great balls of fire. I don't see any bodies flung around, and I assume the men are completely incinerated. The ground is engulfed in a raging inferno, and tiien die blast wave hits us, from a kilometre away, causing the Navy officer's cape to flutter madly as die blast of hot air sweeps over my face, stinging my eyes. The air itself seems to burn for a few seconds, blossoms of secondary explosions filling the skies. Striden taps me on the arm and nods upwards and I can just make out a series of streaks in the air, reflecting the light of the flames around Coritanorum. The Colonel climbs out of the trench to watch, his eyes glittering red from the burning plain.
The shells' impacts are even more devastating tiian the torpedo fire as they explode in four parallel lines towards us, each one ripping up great gouts of earth and hurling men and machines in all directions. The roar of the detonations drowns out their screams and the screech of sheared metal. The blasts from the shells extinguish the murderous fires from the plasma warheads; a black pall of smoke drifts into die night sky, silhouetted against the twinkling lights of distant windows in Coritanorum. The salvo continues, numerous explosions creeping closer towards us across the plain. For a full minute
the shells impact nearer and nearer and I start to worry that I'll go deaf with the intense, continuous pounding in my ears.
This is replaced by a more urgent fear as the bombardment carries on into a second minute, and it seems as if the battleship is going to go too far. When shells start exploding at die bottom of the ridgeline and keep coming, panic grips us, and everybody starts hurling diemselves into the trench. As die bombardment continues I begin to fear for my life. I wouldn't trust ground artillery to shell that close to me, never mind a battleship more than a hundred kilometres above my head! The Colonel jumps in after us, a concerned look on his face, but Striden just stands there on the lip, gazing in raptured awe as the devastation approaches. Rock splinters are hurled into die sky by an explosion no more than fifty metres away and in die bright glare of the detonation, I see Striden raising his arms above his head and just make out shrill laughter over the tumult of the barrage. His cape is almost being ripped from his shoulders by die successive blast waves, but he stands tiiere as solid as a rock.
Then everything goes silent and dark, my ears and eyes useless for a few seconds as they adjust to the sudden lack of violent stimuli. Striden's still laughing like a madman, and the Colonel gives a scowl and brushes down his coat before climbing out of the trench. The Navy lieutenant drops his hands to his sides and looks back over his shoulder, his eyes wide with excitement.
'Emperor help me, it doesn't matter how many times I see that, Mr Kage, I still get a tingle watching it!' he exclaims passionately, bright teeth showing in die darkness.
That was a little fraggin' close!' I shout at him, pulling myself up over die rim of the trench and striding over to him.
'Orders, I'm afraid/ he says apologetically. 'Usually we'd bracket a target first to make sure of our positioning, but we weren't allowed to do that this time. This time, we're here, so we don't want anydiing unfriendly dropping on us, do we? And we were requested to miss the gatehouses too, which is a bit strange, but orders is orders. There's no need to worry, though: we've had quite a lot of practice at this/
'I guess we won't be able to get in if the gate is fused into a molten lump/ says Lorii, vaulting gracefully over the top few rungs of the ladder out of the trench. I survey the scene as it is
now, not even five minutes have passed since the starshells went up. The plains are pockmarked with hundreds of craters, at a rough guess, and from here, with my eyes still reeling, I can just about make out tangled heaps of wreckage scattered around. For about six kilometres in every direction, the plain has been bodily ripped up and dumped back down again. A haze of smoke floats a metre or so above the ground, dispersing slowly in the sluggish wind. The tang of burnt shell powder is almost asphyxiating, the air is diick with it. Nothing could have survived that, nothing mat ever walked, crawled or was driven across the face of a world, at least.
'Going inside?' says Striden suddenly, Lorii's words filtering into his over-excited mind. 'Emperor's throne, that sounds damned exciting. More exciting than standing here waiting for my next target orders. Mind if I join you?'
4Vhat?' I exclaim. 'Have you totally lost it?'
He gives me a pleasant smile and then looks towards Coritanorum, eyes staring with fascination.
'He can come,' I hear the Colonel say heavily from where he stands, further down the ridge, looking at the devastation wrought by the Emperor's Benevolence. I can tell that even he's impressed by the magnitude of the slaughter - there must have been near on ten thousand men down there a few minutes ago, and upwards of a hundred tanks. Now there's nothing. 'I do not think we could stop him, in fact/ says the Colonel meaningfully. I understand what he's saying - Striden'll follow us anyway and short of killing him, which the Navy won't appreciate one little bit, there's noming we can do.
Picking our way across the ruined landscape is a time-consuming process. We need to move quickly, but the route to Coritanorum is littered with burning tanks and mounds of corpses, not to mention the fact that the ground has been torn up and in places the rims of the shellholes are six metres high and fifty metres across. As we get nearer, within a few hundred metres of the gate, a thick layer of ash carpets the ground, in places piled up in drifts which go knee-deep. I remember that this is where the plasma torpedoes impacted.
'Do you know what happens to someone who gets caught in the noval centre of a plasma warhead explosion?' Gudmanz asks nobody in particular as he hauls himself up the slope of
another impact crater, his robes covered with flecks of grey ash. We all shrug or shake our heads. Gudmanz bends down and grabs a handful of the dusty grey ash and lets it trickle through his fingers with a cruel, rasping laugh.