Jack kept the ship nose low, coming in over the edge of the field, then continuing down most of its length to leave plenty of room behind for all the other airships to touch down. Hans, nervous, kept both hands tight on the throttles, never quite matching up to what Jack wanted as he shouted commands to throttle up on one side, then the other, ease back, then throttle up again.
The airship bounced down once, gently, soared back up, Jack cursing sharply, quickly slapping Hans’s death grip on the throttles, knocking all four of them back. The ship hung in the air for a moment, then settled back down, harder this time, as Jack spun the crank to his left, which opened and closed the vent to the top of the hot-air bag.
Hans saw someone darting up toward their cab, disappearing underneath to grab the forward hold-down line; a dozen others swarmed in to either side. Jack seemed to have three arms and four hands all at once, making sure the throttles were back, but not all the way, so that if the ground crew lost grip, he could slap them forward and try to claw back up into the sky. The hot-air vent was opened again. The machine lurched, ground crew under them becoming visible again as they spliced on a long pull line and a dozen men took hold, allowing the ship to weather-vane into the wind, and then pulled it off the field.
A pop that sounded more like a dull whoosh than an explosion startled Hans. Jack looking back out the port-side window, cursed softly, then settled back into his seat.
“Looks like number twenty-eight; I knew the boy was too green.”
“What?”
“Burning, what’s left of it. Most likely jammed a wing into the ground, snapped it, fuel line sprays, then the fire hits the hydrogen bags.”
He said it matter-of-factly, but there was a deep, infinite weariness in the tone.
The crew chief in front of their machine held up a red flag, spun it in a tight circle several times, then slapped it down to his side.
“Throttles off,” Jack announced even as he pushed them all the way back. “Fuel valves off, controls neutral.
He continued down the list, announcing each step as he did it, leaning over to Hans’s side to perform several of the tasks.
“Fine, that’s it. Open the hatch.”
Hans opened the bottom hatch, dropped the ladder, and, feeling very stiff and old, slowly went down the dozen feet to the ground. The air felt different, the memory of the long months in Tyre triggered by the scent of the ocean mingling with the dry musky sage. As he stepped away from under the ship he looked back and saw the flaming wreck of one of the airships. A wagon was drawn up, a crew working the pumps, laying down a feeble spray of water. More airships came in, pilots wisely swinging to windward so no errant sparks caught them.
Some of the ships came in easily, touched down as gently as hummingbirds; others plodded in, slamming down hard, bouncing. A few came in without enough speed, hung motionless, and started to drift backwards, one of them digging its tail in. Jack cursed soundly as the machine just hung there, ground crews frantically jumping up and down, trying to grab the hold-down lines. The pilot threw on full throttles, the machine started back up, hung in the air, finally stalled, and this time the nose dropped, most likely from his having opened the forward hydrogen bag. The machine slammed down hard, undercarriage wheels snapping, driving up into the wings, while the cargo compartment seemed to disappear. Even though they were upwind, Hans could hear the screams of the men trapped within.
As the ground crew around him secured the tie-down ropes to bolts fastened into heavy concrete blocks, the crew chief finally gave permission for the top gunner and the men in the cargo compartment to dismount. One by one they came down the ladder and were a pitiful sight, obviously half-frozen, covered in vomit, disgusted with themselves and the world in general. The last two had to be helped down and laid out on the grass. Hans realized he most likely didn’t smell too good himself.
He was relieved to see Ketswana coming up with Vincent right behind him, and together, as the shadows lengthened, the last of the airships from Suzdal landed. Then several minutes later the first of twenty-eight more ships, Eagles all of them veterans from the Roum Front, came in, the more experienced pilots having no problems with the cross-wind landing. Several of them simply bypassed the landing strip and, ignoring the shouted protests of ground crews, picked out a tie-down location, slowed to a hover, then gently floated in to a touchdown.
Last of all were the twenty-five Hornets from Suzdal and Roum, buzzing in like tiny insects after the heavy cumbersome four-engine machines. Mingled in were half a dozen more Hornets that had been fighting throughout the day in front of Tyre. Powder-smoke stains from the forward Gatling gun blackened the undersides. One of the ships was badly shot up, streamers of fabric fluttering from a starboard wing.
The display made Hans’s pulse quicken. Here, obviously, was one of the most remarkable sights in history. Over seventy flying machines, all of them gathered together in this one place. And though it was a wild, mad scheme, it gave him hope for the moment. Nature seemed to be adding to the display, the long shadows of late afternoon lengthened, exaggerating the size of the machines so that they looked like giants skimming over the ground. The bloodred sun hung heavy in the western sky, while to the north the towering thunderstorm, which everyone had been eyeing nervously, marched on in stately pageantry to the east.
The last of the Hornets, stripped-down versions with no forward gun, replaced by a small compartment underneath which could hold one man, came in and landed. There was barely any room left on the open field as the last ship rolled to a stop.
A young major came up to the group, and in the shadows Hans recognized the sky-blue jacket and silver trim of an officer in the air corps.
“Welcome sirs. Sorry I couldn’t come over earlier but I was kind of busy,” the boy announced, obviously from Roum and struggling to speak in Rus.
Jack clapped him pn the shoulder.
“Varro. Good job, son, your people did a damn fine job.”
“Thank you, sir. It helped to have those extra ground crews brought down by transport from Roum but still all the hold-down crews were infantrymen yesterday. I’ll pass the word along.”
“The Hornets that flew down from Roum yesterday”- he nodded to the half dozen machines that had the unusual baskets underneath-“started out this morning as ordered. Two haven’t come back, but the first reports are that they’ve cut the telegraph lines at twenty or more places from here all the way up to the Green Mountains.”
“Damn good news,” Vincent announced.
Hans nodded in agreement. Yet another idea of Varinna’s. One of the first objections he had raised when the plan was presented was that the moment they touched down with so many airships in Tyre, Jurak might surmise the real target. She immediately countered with the sketch of how to convert the light fighting airships into a two-man unit. Strip out the Gatling gun, put in a small crew compartment. The ship touches down along some isolated stretch of the telegraph line, the crew member hops out, climbs the pole, cuts the line, and if there’s enough time rolls up jLCouple of hundred feet of wire and takes it with them while a second Hornet, this one fully armed, circles to keep back any riders posted to patrol the wire.
Hans was delighted with the simple ingenuity of the proposal. Telegraph lines had always been so damn vulnerable. Back in the old war on Earth a couple of dozen cavalry men could play hell with a line, and it took regiments of men, posted damn near at every pole to keep a crucial line up and running. The Bantag umens at Tyre were now completely out of touch with Jurak, and it’d take at least a couple of days for word to be carried by horse. The trick, of course, was in the timing. To let Jurak get word of the ironclads’ landing in order to draw his attention to Tyre, but not the entire air fleet.