Abe looked around at his perimeter. Maybe fifty men left who could fight, another forty or so wounded, dying, or beyond caring, lying comatose.
“Lieutenant,” Togo whispered. “Your speech was all mighty fine, but if we don’t get water and food, well, it’ll be over with by the end of the day.”
Abe wearily nodded.
“We wait till dark. You and the sergeant major,” and he nodded to the old man who was dozing in the shade of a blanket propped up with several Bantag spears, “break out down the west slope. Maybe some of you can get into those ravines and find a way out.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll stay here with the wounded.”
“A lot of good that will do, Lieutenant. This isn’t the time to get sentimental or play some heroic game. You stay here, you die, and it won’t be pleasant. Those buggers take you alive and figure out who you are, it’ll be a slow death.” Abe shook his head.
“I don’t think so, and they won’t take me alive.”
“Then I stay, too.”
“No. If anyone can lead these men out, it’s you.”
Togo sighed and finally nodded in agreement.
“You know none of us will make it. They’ll expect this.”
“I know.”
Togo laughed.
“Rice wine. A gallon of it, that’s what I’ll have when I get to where I’m going.”
“Lieutenant!”
He got up and half crawled to where a trooper on the west side was calling, pointing.
Abe could see it, mounted Bantag in the ravine. “Sergeant major! Round up ten men, get them over here.”
A hundred riders swept up out of the ravine and came forward at the charge.
“Wait for it,” Abe said. “Sergeant major, pass out the reserve ammunition one round at a time!”
The riders crossed the first four hundred yards without a shot being fired.
The last two hundred yards they swept in as before, low in the saddles. The Bantag dug in at the fallen redoubt resumed their harassing fire of launching arrows nearly straight up, shafts clattering down, striking ground. A trooper cursed as one caught him in the calf.
Measured shots snapped off, dropping several of the riders. Most of them dismounted, scurrying up to the wall and dodging in amongst the boulders and rocks. A few raced forward, coming up the slope, but were dropped by carefully placed shots.
The fight slacked off.
Several of the men looked at Abe, not sure of what was to come next.
“Just to see if we still had some fight in us,” he announced. He didn’t add that the reinforcements meant that any hope of breaking out had been sealed shut. The Bantag wanted to make sure that no one escaped.
“Sir?”
It was Togo, kneeling up and pointing.
He saw it too, and within seconds so did the others. There was a feeble shout, then men stood up, waving.
High up, half a dozen miles off, a dot was moving across the sky, slowly floating along…a flyer.
Men started shouting, taking off hats, waving, ignoring the flurry of sniper shots fired from the ravines. But the flyer continued on its way, never swerving from its course, tracking off to the northwest, growing smaller and yet smaller until it disappeared.
Abe knew that whatever faint hope still lingered with his men had finally broken at that moment. If a flyer had patrolled out this way and not seen them, it would not search there again. There were ten thousand square miles or more of ground where they might be lost, and that was assuming that the courier he had sent off had even made it back to the regiment.
Wearily he stood up and headed to the hospital tent, to take the medical orderly aside and ask him what was the most humane thing to do for those men who were unconscious when night came. He knew what the answer would be, and dreaded the thought. As he walked past the major, the madman simply sat there and glared, then broke into a taunting laugh.
Commander Cromwell walked down the flight line, thrilling to the sound of a hundred engines turning over, warming up; air crews and ground crews running past. He recognized several of them, classmates from the academy who had gone on to the air corps while he had joined the naval wing.
Every plane possible had been pressed into service, fifty at this field, nearly seventy more at the other two fields hastily laid out in the narrow plains behind Constantine.
There had been over a hundred and fifty, but without hangars for the larger ships or sheltered tie downs, nearly a quarter of the entire air corps had been destroyed by the storm before a single shot was fired.
Cromwell reached his aerosteamer, the Ilya Murometz he had flown two days before. Igor was already up in the cockpit, running the final checks, and Octavian was in his gatling position astern. Xing, however, had been replaced after complaining of a sudden stomach ache. It was just as well, Richard thought, since the forward gunner was also the bombardier. Approaching the massive airship, he spotted the new aimer. Surprisingly, a Cartha like himself named Drasulbul. They shook hands, then he crouched down to look under the plane.
The four bombs were in their racks. At five hundred pounds each, it was the heaviest load any of the attackers would carry this day. He would have given anything to have the weapons on the aerosteamer carriers.
He walked around his plane, pausing for a second to watch as a Falcon took off. It barely rolled a hundred feet before it was up, nearly losing control in the gusty wind then leveling out. Another Falcon was airborne, and then a third.
He went up the ladder into the cockpit, slipping into the seat opposite Igor. His copilot and top gunner said nothing, just pointed to the gauge for the outboard starboard engine.
“Running a hundred revolutions a minute off, we’re not getting the heat on the engine. It’ll cut our speed a good five miles an hour. If it acts up, we’ll lose it.”
Cromwell stared straight at Igor.
“You suggesting we stand down?”
Igor gave him a tight lipped smile and shook his head.
“Just thought you should know.”
“What the hell,” Richard replied, “we’ll make it there, that’s the main thing.”
“How far out are they?”
“Thirty miles, last report.”
Two enemy scout planes had crossed over Constantine just before noon, flying high at well over five thousand feet. Neither of them had been caught by the four Falcons sent up in pursuit. Two of the Falcons had made it back with the latest fix. The watch tower on Diocletian Hill above the town had telegraphed a report just before he’d left the briefing, declaring that smoke was visible on the horizon.
Two more Falcons took off. A gust of wind upended one of them, wing clipping the ground and tearing off, the ship cartwheeling, then bursting into flames.
“Well there’s one that didn’t need his parachute,” Igor growled.
Richard said nothing. Petracci had announced that except for the Falcon pilots flying cover, no parachutes would be issued. It saved nearly a hundred pounds per man, a crucial factor where every pound saved was eight additional rounds for the gatlings. As for the attack aerosteamers, they would be flying too low to ever use them. Besides, there simply were not enough to go around.
A crew chief came running down the flight line, stopping in front of Cromwell’s plane and signaling for him to rev up.
Two more Falcons lifted, then two more. The ten Goliaths were next, lumbering off one at a time, straining to lift the ton of weight strapped under their fuselages.
The crew chief pointed to the right, signaling for Richard to begin taxiing out, a dozen men on the wings pushed, helping him to turn.
A Goliath floated past, propellers a blur. Three more Goliaths were ahead of him, the lead one turning, lining up to lift off…and then it burst into flames.
For several long seconds Richard sat, transfixed, not sure exactly what had gone wrong. He saw the aft gunner of the burning Goliath staggering out of the fire, wreathed in flames. No one was helping, men running in every direction. Richard’s crew chief pointed up, then turned and started to run as well.