“And that’s your reason for attacking here and now?”
Andrew leaned forward, resting his chin on his drawn-up knees.
“No, Hans. I think I’d have enough sense to stop it if I understood that was the only reason for attacking. But Marcus is right, we have to do something. The people of Roum have to know that the Rus will fight to help them take back their land. So there is the politics. We have to find a way, as well, to end this war before we either collapse or Kal succumbs to the pressure that’s growing in the Senate to accept Jurak’s offer for a negotiated settlement.”
“If Kal accepts that, he deserves to be shot,” Hans snapped.
“He’s the president,” Andrew replied, a sharp edge to his voice.
“And you wrote the bloody Constitution. So change it. I tell you I smell something in this.”
“Are you accusing Kal?”
“No, damn it, of course not. If anything he’s a rotten president because he’s too damned honest and simple.”
“We used to say that about Lincoln, but under that prairie-lawyer exterior there was a damn shrewd politician.”
Hans nodded, spitting a stream of tobacco juice and wiping the bottom of his chin with the back of his hand.
“We have to end this war now,” Andrew announced, shifting the topic away from matters that he felt bordered on treason. Hans was right; he had indeed written the Constitution for the Republic. But once that Constitution had been accepted by the people of Rus and Roum, it had gone out of his grasp, and it now must bind him as it bound any other citizen who swore his allegiance to it, and thereby accepted its protection.
He stood up. Raising the field glasses that hung from his neck, he turned his attention to the opposite shore. The eastern bank was lower than the western, the terrain flat, not cut by the ravines of the western bank. Jurak should have drawn his line farther back, not here. It was almost as if he chose a weaker position to tempt them in. Andrew could see the outlines of the fortifications lining the opposite bank.
Wisps of smoke, morning cook fires, rose straight up in the still air. Again the shiver of a thought. The monthly moon feast had been two days ago, the cries of the victims echoing across the river throughout the night. He wondered if what was left was now roasting on those fires.
Originally he had planned the attack to go in then, but it was too obvious a night for them to strike, and, besides, the bastards usually stayed awake throughout the feast night and might sense something.
There’s still time to stop, the inner voice whispered. The battlements along the eastern bank were clearly silhouetted. This was the precious moment, the west bank draped in darkness, the east bank highlighted. He heard footsteps behind him … it was Pat, followed by Marcus.
“Andrew, it’s three-thirty.”
Andrew looked at Hans, almost wishing he could defer the decision. Hans was staring at him.
Andrew lowered his head, whispering a silent prayer. Finally he raised his gaze again.
“Do it.”
Jack Petracci, circling five miles back from the front, took a deep breath, not sure if he was glad that the moment had finally come, or dreaded the fact that the show was really on.
“There’s the signal flare,” he announced to Theodor, his copilot. “Make sure the others follow.”
Banking his aerosteamer over to a due easterly heading, he scanned to port and starboard. The formation appeared to be following. Leaning over, he blew into the speaker tubes.
“Romulus, Boris, report.”
“One airship, turning back,” Romulus announced, “think it’s number twenty-two. Rest are forming up.”
Better than expected, Jack thought; forty heavy aero-steamers and thirty of the new Hornet single-engine escorts, it would be the largest air strike ever launched, the dream of more than five months of planning. Not exactly the way he wanted it done, but it would prove once and for all that the tremendous investment in airpower was worth it.
More flares were soaring up along the front line, marking the beginning of the assault, slowly rising heavenward in the still morning, catching the scarlet light of dawn. Seconds later sheets of fire erupted, climbing rapidly and filling the sky with curtains of flame and smoke as more than three thousand rockets thundered across the river, smothering the Bantag in an inferno of explosions. Long seconds later the dull concussion washed over him, clearly audible above the howl of his ship’s engines and the wind racing through the rigging.
Another volley rose up, several errant rockets twisting, corkscrewing back toward his formation, which was now less than two miles from the front. The shells detonated in the air, leaving white puffs of smoke drifting.
He was now over the rear lines of the fight.
Long snakelike columns of troops were below, black against the landscape, waiting to head down into the ravines lacing the riverbank, which were the assault paths to the front. Pontoon crews were already out into the river, floating their barges into place, dropping anchor lines, while hundreds of assault craft, water foaming about them as the men paddled furiously, were already approaching the far shore.
It looked like the first wave was making it, men swarming out of the boats, struggling up the muddy embankments. Mortar shells were impacting on the river, foaming geysers erupting.
“Colonel, sir?” It was Romulus, his top gunner.
“Go ahead.”
“Formation is spreading out as planned, sir.”
“Fine, now keep a sharp eye for their ships up there, son.”
He caught a glimpse of half a dozen of his airships breaking formation, turning to the northeast, and was startled as four Hornets passed directly overhead, moving fast, forging straight ahead to penetrate deep into the rear, ready to interdict any Bantag airships that dared to venture up.
They were over the river, thickening clouds of dirty yellow-gray smoke obscuring the view.
“There’s our target!” Theodor shouted, pointing off to starboard. Jack picked it out, an earthen fort on a low rise that jutted out into the river. It looked just like the sand table model of the front that he and his force had spent days studying and planning over. Smoke was rising up from the position; the rocket barrage had hit it hard, but he could see where dark-clad Bantags were pouring into the position from a trench connecting the battery position to the rear. Two fieldpieces were already at work, spraying the river with bursts of canister.
“Hang on, boys. Here we go!” Jack shouted, as he pushed the stick forward, the heavy four-engine craft rapidly picking up speed. Slipping out of his seat, Theodor dropped down below Jack’s legs, fumbling to open the steam cock to the forward Gatling gun.
A dark shadow slipped overhead, and, cursing, Jack jammed the throttles to his four engines back as he stared up at the underbelly of an aerosteamer slipping across the top of his ship, the bottom gunner and bomb dropper gazing down at him in wide-eyed fear. Jack pushed the nose down, praying his tail wouldn’t slam into the ship above. Romulus, in the top gunner position, cursed wildly in Latin.
For an instant he forgot the fight below until a rifle ball slammed up between his legs in a shower of splinters. Looking down, he saw the ground racing up and pulled back hard on the stick. The aerosteamer nosed up, swinging in almost directly astern the ship that had almost collided with him. The Bantag trenches raced by, several hundred feet below, and Theodor opened up, 58 caliber Gatling bullets stitching the earthworks.
He felt his ship surge up and at almost the same instant Boris, his bomb dropper in the cabin slung below, cried that their load had been dropped. Ten canisters, each weighing a hundred pounds, tumbled into the fort. Jack violently swung his craft over into a sharp banking turn. He caught a glimpse of his bomb load slamming in; the first two tins burst open but the percussion fuses which studded them failed to ignite. The third one, however, blew, sparking the load of benzene to life. The fort disappeared in an incandescent fireball as nearly two hundred gallons of benzene exploded, the concussion rocking his ship.