The wall of the factory finally collapsed under the incessant pounding. That, at least, was a relief. His battery commander before being killed by a sniper had already informed him that they were digging dangerously into their reserves of ammunition. A ragged cheer erupted from the warriors who had been ordered back, and they surged forward again, closing in for the kill. Soon it would be finished.
Somehow word had spread into his army that it was the legendary Hans who was leading this fight. A Chin demigod, a legend returned to liberate. And something now told him that directly ahead was where Hans was cornered. He had already passed the word to his warriors that if Hans could indeed be captured and brought to him alive, the warrior would be promoted to command of a thousand.
It wasn’t that he wanted Hans to die in agony as Tamuka muttered about. True, Hans would have to die, and the Chin had to see him die to crush their hope of resistance forever. And then the Chin would have to die as well.
Hans would have to die, but first he wished to speak to him. Ha’ark had had that privilege a number of times. He had but observed him from a distance. If one was to understand Keane, Hans was the teacher. He was, as well, a consummate foe, a warrior worthy of respect for what he had accomplished, escaping, leading the flanking attack that finished the campaign in front of Roum, and now this.
So he would feast him once and talk long into the night. Perhaps he would learn something from him, perhaps not, but still he wanted that moment, and then with the coming of the following dawn he would offer him the knife or the gun so that he could finish it with his own hand. Then, after the Chin were brought forth to see the body, he would bum and scatter his ashes to the wind out of respect.
The charge reached the wall and within seconds gained the entryway, a desperate hand-to-hand struggle erupting in the piled-up rubble.
And then he saw them.
A commander of a thousand had just ridden up to ask for orders and his gaze, locked on Jurak, drifted, looking past him, eyes going wide. Raising a hand, he pointed.
Jurak turned and looked. For a moment he refused to believe, and then the enemy aerosteamers began to fire.
Hans, standing by Ketswana’s side, waited just inside the shattered wall. The first of the Bantag were up and over the barrier, crouched low against a hail of thrown bricks and chunks of iron ore. They slashed into the defenders, the killing frenzy upon them. Several, looking in his direction, shouted to each other and came on, as if recognizing him.
Instinct took hold and he raised his carbine, aiming straight at the chest of the nearest one, and fired, dropping him. He heard a revolver let go, several rounds, dropping the next two.
Ketswana was by his side.
“Two rounds left,” his friend cried, looking at him questioningly.
Hans smiled.
Skimming the ground, Jack Petracci bore straight in, aiming directly at the tall standard adorned with horse tails and human skulls. An umen commander at least, perhaps even Jurak, he thought grimly.
There was no need to tell his copilot to open fire. Crouched behind the steam-powered Gatling in the nose, his copilot fired the forward weapon. A steady stream of bullets stitched into the low ridge, slicing through a mortar battery, walking up along the hillside, the standard-bearer collapsing.
Continuing to fire, the gunner shifted aim, slashing into the open-order columns of Bantag infantry. As they raced past the first compound, which was blanketed with smoke and fire, he saw a charging column gaining a shattered wall. Looking down from above, he saw the thousands huddled inside and knew what was about to happen.
Hoping that the other aerosteamers were not following too closely and would continue to press toward Huan, he banked his Eagle hard over, shouting to his top gunner to bring the column under fire as they turned.
Swinging about to the south, he spared a quick glance back to the west. Twenty Hornets, flying nearly wingtip to wingtip, were coming straight in, joined as well by the four surviving Eagles. The arrival of the Hornets in Xi’an just before dawn had left him stunned. The Eagle he had sent back to Tyre had actually survived and touched down. The pilots of the Hornets clamored to be released, to go up and save Jack and Hans. The fact that they had actually made the audacious jump from Vincent’s position all the way to Xi’an, burning nearly every ounce of fuel they had to make it, had filed him with awe. As it was, nearly half of them had been lost in transit. Never had he known such pride in his command as he did at that moment.
The twenty Hornets and four Eagles were all that was left of a force of over eighty that existed but a week before. From the looks of what was going on below, once they expended their ammunition there would be no place left to land. He might be able to get back to Xi’an, but with the increasing wind out of the west the Hornets were doomed. Yet still they came on, sweeping low over the ground.
Behind them, half a dozen miles back, he could still see the eight trains. He had almost strafed them coming in until he spotted a makeshift flag of the Republic fluttering from each of the locomotives, and then realized that the thousands packed aboard the flatcars were in fact Chin. What they proposed to do was beyond him.
He bore straight in at the compound, top and forward gunners both firing continual blasts of Gatling rounds into the attacking column. Within seconds the enemy began to dissolve, looking up in panic, turning aside, and running.
As he winged up over the compound he wagged his wings, hoping all below would see the stars of the Republic painted on the bottom of his ship. And in spite of the noise of battle, he could hear the cheers.
Banking hard up to the left, he winged over sharply, turning to head straight toward the artillery batteries that had been pounding the makeshift fortress only minutes before. Gatling fire from a Hornet flying across his own path at a right angle slashed into the position, decimating the crews. As the Hornet passed he added his own fire into the balance. A caisson blew, and he winged over yet again to avoid the exploding mushroom cloud.
He was behind the advance line of Hornets, who now that they were into the fight had poured on full throttle and were quickly surging ahead at nearly a mile a minute.
Smoke poured out from underneath as twenty Gatlings fired, sweeping the Bantag lines, tearing them to shreds. The enemy quite simply broke apart from this unexpected pounding from above. Chin started to pour out from the beleaguered compounds, racing forward, a human wave of tens of thousands, moving like a swarm of locusts.
He circled back around once more to check on the first compound. But the countercharge was already up and over the broken wall, some of the Chin were nearly into the Bantag artillery positions.
And then he spotted him, a ragged guidon, several Zulus around him standing out in dark contrast to the surrounding Chin.
And then he saw him fall.
Jurak stood motionless as the burst of fire swept past him, knocking over his standard-bearer, and he wished at that instant that it would take him as well, ending this horrible burden forever.
The rounds stitched past, clumps of sod kicked up in his face, then the machine passed. Another one soared by, skimming the ground so close he could look straight into the cab and see the human pilot.
Around him was chaos. A mortar battery annihilated, a caisson erupting in a fireball. He could see his warriors falling back, not giving ground doggedly but running, frightened of the mob, the tens of thousands of Chin pouring out from their beleaguered positions sweeping all before them.
Looking back to the west he saw the plumes of smoke, and for a brief instant there was a renewed flash of hope, but he knew in his heart that it had to be Chin coming up from Xi’an. If it had been his own warriors, the Yankee aerosteamers would have strafed them.