Panic would feed on panic, the Bantag beginning the slaughter, and the population, after years of occupation, slavery, and terror, sensing that liberation was at hand, but now confronted by the death they had sought so long to avoid, would then turn like cornered rats, believing that the gods themselves would now come to their aid.
Sitting on the side of the wood tender of a Bantag locomotive, which was slowly pushing up the main line toward the city, he nursed the cup of tea given to him by the locomotive engineer, a Chin slave freed when they had seized the engine works adjoining the foundry where they had landed.
The tea and a dirty chunk of hard bread were reviving him, and to his amazement he had actually managed to snatch a few hours’ sleep, the first in two days. Seeing that the cup was empty, the engineer gently took it from Hans, opened a hot water vent, filled the cup, then, reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a dirty rag, scooped out a precious handful of leaves, and threw them in, swishing the contents around.
Hans nodded his thanks. Setting the cup down on the floor of the tender to let it cool a bit, Hans leaned out of the cab. A firefight was flaring up ahead, yet another walled-in compound; one of the men reported that it was a powder works. The complex stood out sharply, the burning city, still several miles off, illuminating the world. His skirmish line, deployed a half mile to either side of the tracks, was hotly engaged, beefed up now by thousands of Chin, some armed with cumbersome Bantag rifles, others with the precious pistols carried in on the aerosteamers and not left behind at Xi’an. Most were just a surging, milling horde carrying clubs, pitchforks, stoking rods, knives, heavy Bantag swords, and spears.
Right through the middle of the fighting an endless column staggered to either side of the track, women clinging to screaming infants, frightened children clutching their mothers’ skirts, old men, women, lost children, all of them confused, terrified, moving west, trying to get out of the madness.
He had detailed off a few precious troops to cull out anyone, man or woman, who seemed capable of fighting. In any other setting the gesture would be obscene, for all of them were little more than emaciated skeletons, the final dregs of the pit after years of existence in hell and the death of millions in the monthly feasts or dying to prop up the empire of the hordes.
He tried to ignore them, to let his gaze linger for even a second on a lost child, or an exhausted mother lying in the mud and surrounded by screaming children would sap his will to continue the madness. He had come to try and free them, for they had become his brothers and sisters, yet now to free them he could do nothing but watch them die, and it was destroying him.
They were all dead anyhow, he had to remind himself of that. For surely, once the Republic was destroyed, the Bantag would annihilate everyone here and then move on. Yet rather than feeling like a liberator he felt as if he was the angel of death, realizing that as he looked at the inferno enveloping the world, a hundred thousand or more must be dying this night.
A blinding light ignited. Where the powder works had been a harsh white glare, brighter than a hundred suns, erupted, rising heavenward, the flash brilliance of it seeming to freeze everyone. By the light of the explosion the entire world came into a sharp-etched reality. Far to his left he could see the end of his battle line, a milling confusion, mounted Bantag swirling into a tangled mass of humanity. Straight ahead the track was clogged with people, all of them frozen, then falling, their cries drowned out by the earth-splitting thunderclap. The ragged line of infantry circling about the walled compound were turning, running back, flinging themselves to the ground.
The fireball soared thousands of feet heavenward, the brilliant glare darkening into a sullen red hell, spreading out. The concussion stunned him. He staggered, leaning forward into the gale, the air hot and dry. More explosions ignited, crates of ammunition thrown heavenward, bursting asunder, millions of cartridges flaring, sparkling, streaks of fire plunging back to earth.
The compound walls were down, blown asunder, providing a glimpse into the inferno. Bantag, looking like flaming demons, staggered out, flaying wildly at the agony that was consuming them, humans, dwarflike beside them, burning as well. A box of rifle cartridges crashed down beside the engine, exploding like a bundle of firecrackers, rounds pinging against the side of the tender.
“Hans!”
It was Ketswana, dragging several Chin behind him, all three dressed in the loose black coveralls marking them as men who worked aboard the locomotives. They were the precious few, allowed extra rations, exemption of their families from the feasting pit, and in the madness of the last few hours more than one had been beaten to death by those lower on the order of survival in this mad world and thus the special order to round them up not only for intelligence but also for their own protection.
Ketswana climbed into the locomotive cab and, exhausted, slumped down to the floor, back against the pile of wood in the tender. Hans offered his cup of tea, and Ketswana greedily gulped it down, nodding his thanks when Hans offered a piece of hardtack. The three Chin rail workers he had dragged along were in the cab as well, talking excitedly to the engineer piloting Hans’s train, their words flowing so fast Hans could barely decipher what was being said.
“They’re from the northern line,” Ketswana announced, still chewing on the dry bread.
“Northern line?”
“Remember, we knew they were laying a line up toward Nippon.”
“And?” He felt a flash of fear.
“We should have flown a few reconnaissance flights that way, Hans, before ordering Jack to take the remaining ships back to Xi’an.”
It was a stupid mistake, damn stupid, Hans realized. He should have ordered Jack to circle out for a quick look around, but had yielded to the argument that if any of the aerosteamers were to survive, they had to get back to Xi’an before dark, refuel, patch up, and hopefully find a hydrogen-gas generator at the Bantag airfield. From there they could get back to Tyre the next morning. But now this.
He knew that his releasing of Jack was also motivated by guilt. Jack had finally agreed to the attack, though he had insisted that the other pilots had to volunteer as well and could not be ordered. Of course all of them did volunteer, they were far too green to know when to say no, and none would ever allow himself to be called the coward.
Only nine airships survived the assault intact and in some semblance of flying order. Close to five out of every six Eagle crews alive just two weeks ago were now dead. Jack and his boys were beyond the breaking point, and thus Hans had sent them home. His sentimentality might just have cost him the fight. He had had no idea of the completion of the rail line to the north.
“The bastards didn’t just run the line up to Nippon,” Ketswana continued, “they hooked it all the way up to the line we were running along the north shore of the Sea!”
Hans lowered his head, saying nothing. Damn! Six, eight hundred miles of track in a year. He didn’t think the Bantag were capable of it. Wearily, he looked down at Ketswana.
“They have another route, Hans. Even though we cut the sea-lane, they can still move supplies by rail! Taking Xi’an means nothing; they can still keep the war going!”
“We should have heard something,” Hans replied, his voice thick with exhaustion, his mind refusing to believe the dark reality this intelligence presented. “Prisoners, escaped slaves during the winter, something.”