The little craft buzzed overhead, a plywood teardrop below a Rogallo fabric wing, with a tricycle of wire-spoked wheels beneath and a pusher-prop behind. Stub wings on either side held six-tube pods for light rockets; they were empty, and had a scorched look. The pilot waved, sunlight glinting on his goggles and crash helmet, scarf fluttering in the wind.
"-that they took out four more heliograph towers. The line's definitely broken in half a dozen places between here and Crossing, and between there and Tartessos."
Marian nodded. The chain of wooden towers flashing Morse-code light signals were almost as fast as telegraphs. Luckily, they were about as easy to cut, too.
"My congratulations, and then orders to refuel and keep company," she said.
The pilot didn't need to come here to report; that was reflex of a life where the only way to talk to someone was to get within shouting distance. And it was a valuable reminder that giving someone a uniform and a haircut, or even a lot of training, didn't make them over into a twentieth-century American.
Not that I should need a reminder, seeing as I sleep with the evidence every night. God knows I love her, but even after all these years, she's still weird sometimes.
"Halt," she said aloud.
The armored car slowed and came to a stop by the side of the road, engine ticking. The popping whine of heavy tires on the crushed rock of the roadway died out and left a silence loud by comparison. The two smaller Jeep Cherokees that'd been ranging ahead rolled to a stop as well, each to an opposite side of the road; they had armor panels, and Gatlings mounted on pintles. The gunners scanned outward, across rolling fields of grass and young wheat and dry corn stalks and occasional orchards or olive groves or copses of holm oak. Ahead-northward-there was a hamlet and a scatter of isolated houses with farm compounds around them.
The houses and village ahead had the dead quiet air of abandonment. Behind them, columns of smoke stained the sky, and scores of the huge black-winged Iberian vultures made circles that marked herds of slaughtered livestock. Swindapa winced slightly as her eyes followed Marian's.
Yeah, I know, sugar, the black woman thought. Doing scorched-earth hurts, especially in country as pretty as this. But Isketerol can stop it anytime he wants. We're not here to conquer his country. We couldn't if we wanted to. All we want is for him to get out of our way.
The crew of the car popped various hatches and came out, enjoying the fresh air and space; someone produced one of the foraged local hams and cut slabs of it to hand 'round. Marian took one and put it on a piece of dog biscuit, gnawing and taking an occasional swig from her canteen as she studied the map and waited. The earthy, salty taste of the acorn-fed and smoke-cured ham was so good that you forgot how vile hardtack was.
The rest of the Mechanized Battalion came up behind at last. The name was only partly ironic. After all, bicycles were mechanical transport… and about four times faster than foot infantry, on these fine roads the Tartessians had been kind enough to build. Watching seven hundred helmets bobbing along with rifles over their shoulders still brought a narrowing of the eyes that someone familiar with Marian knew for a smile. Another scatter of Cherokees and Hondas drew a brace of rifled siege cannon, heavy mortars, and trailers of fuel and supplies.
She fought down fierce envy for the two genuine Humvees she'd attached to Brigadier McClintock's HQ. Fair is fair. There were only three of those left in all the world.
"Major Stavrand," she said to the officer in charge.
"Commodore," he replied. "This is it, eh?"
He grinned enthusiastically. His white-blond hair, long narrow face and elongated build made him look like something out of one of the gloomier Ingmar Bergman films. The Nordic Death effect was spoiled only by his glasses, and the elastic cord he wore to keep them on.
"Right over that ridge, and I think we've outpaced the news of ouah arrival," Alston said. "Ride with me."
The troops put their bicycles on the kickstands and fanned out, skirmishers moving forward until the thick bar of human figures became a scattering across the rolling land. Stavrand fastened his ten-speed to the rear deck of the car with a bungee cord and perched on the turret, holding on to one of the welded brackets and looking like a Stockholm-gargoyle rendering of Alfred Nobel, or possibly the patron saint of demolitions.
The ultralights went by overhead with an insectile drone, keeping an eye on the target and the countryside round about. Marian waited until a signal flare went up before waving the armored car forward. They crested the rise and halted.
Mmmm-hmmmm, she thought, as they halted in a vineyard whose gnarled branches rose up from the earth like arthritic black fingers. Yellow mustard flowers starred the grass between the vines.
Now for another bit of legal vandalism. Christ, but I hate this business.
The town lay in a valley that ran back up into the low mountains beyond; patches of woods thickened into outright forest not far north of it. An earth-fill dam held back a considerable lake north of the town, glinting blue with dead trees sticking out of the water in spots. There were about three or four thousand people living inside the walls, she thought. It was all rawly new, a gridwork of dusty streets and whitewashed adobe, save where tall brick smokestacks marked smelters and forges. This was a major center by Tartessian standards, their equivalent of Irondale, working the minerals of the mountains behind and forwarding the products to their capital.
"Major, I don't suppose…?"
"I'm afraid not, Commodore," Stavrand said regretfully. "See how the river runs? The flood'll go right past the town when we blow it. Of course, that'll cut off their water… mostly for waterpower, see how they ran the canal along the contour to preserve the head? Quite well done."
An ultralight went by overhead, then turned into the wind that blew out of the north and came in to land on the roadway. Offhand skill flared the wing up to shed speed, and it came to a rolling halt only ten yards from touchdown. The pilot vaulted out and came running over, pushing back the goggles that kept eyes from freezing or drying out and pulling off her helmet. She was small and slight-there was a 120-pound weight limit for pilots-and brown-skinned, with a broad face and a dense cap of raven hair so dark it had blue highlights.
Mmmmm-hmmmm, Alston remembered. Lekkansu-born. From one of the bands virtually annihilated by some uptime virus back in the Year 1; a few children had been bereft of even distant relatives to take them in, and ended up adopted on-Island.
"Ma'am, sir," she said, vaulting lightly up despite the heavy sheepskin flying suit and joining them on the deck of the turret. A glance at the map, and:
"Yeah, they've got fallback earthworks going up inside the gates, and they've just started putting up a berm to back the wall. Looks real crowded in there-lots of refugees, tents, and brushwood shelters in the streets and open spaces, ma'am."
"Thank you, Ensign Walters," Marian said.
"Ah, youth," Swindapa observed as the flyer bounded back to her little craft and vaulted one-handed into her seat; a couple of Marines swung it 'round into the wind.
Marian snorted. This from someone who occasionally turns cartwheels in the street just for the fun of it?
"Wait 'till you hit forty, 'dapa." She scanned the defenses. "Let's see…"
Curtain-wall of mud brick on a mound, wet moat, field of lilies.
Those were metal-tipped punji-sticks, a nasty low-tech version of barbed wire. It would be expensive to assault, but it was designed to keep out hillbilly raiders with clubs and bronze-headed spears. Nothing like the massive works around Tartessos City or some of their forts elsewhere; Isketerol had had too much to do to put that sort of thing around every town. Absurdly, there were still ducks swimming about the ring-ditch, occasionally dipping their heads and leaving twitching tails in the air as they fed.