Never Sound Retreat (5 page)

"Pilot up front and forward?" Jack asked.

"With the old design, the gondola car underneath, you had a 360-degree view, but it was underneath. If we put you up forward in the bow, you'd have a 360-degree view forward, up, and down. You'd also have a forward view down as you did before. We'd put a second person in what I'd call a turret directly under the wings. He'd be a gunner and could also drop bombs. We'd put a third person, a gunner, topside and aft on the tail. You'd all be hooked together by speaker hoses, and I even thought of a small access tunnel that your bomb dropper could use to get up to the forward cab. With this arrangement there isn't a blind spot on the entire ship."

"How long before we get them?"

"That's the problem." Chuck sighed. "Three weeks, maybe a month for the smaller test model, three months or more for ships with the range of
Flying Cloud.
My suggestion is that we scrap those currently under production and take the material to refit for this new design."

"That leaves us with no ships at all."

Chuck nodded. "More
Flying Cloud
models would be nothing but sitting ducks, even with the wings I was putting on. I want to take one of the smaller two-engine models, refit it, use it as a test. Then start turning out two-engine models like the Bantag's, and then some of these."

He pulled out another sheet of paper and unrolled it. Jack could feel a rush of desire, as if Chuck had unrolled a copy of one of the racy lithographs that someone had been mysteriously producing in the last couple of months and which had become so popular with the soldiers.

"Four engines, 120-foot wingspan but with only half the gas of
Flying Cloud.
I figure it can do nearly sixty miles an hour, maybe seventy. It should be able to carry half a ton of bombs six hundred miles."

"How many can you make?"

"I want sixty of the smaller ones as escorts," Chuck replied, "and twenty of these big ones by next spring."

Amazed, Jack shook his head.

"I know, seems impossible, but I think this war will be decided by airships. I don't want them fed in piecemeal. I convinced Colonel Keane on that score. Build them and unleash them all at once, have one all-out pitched battle and destroy their airship facilities on the ground. We struck a deal with the Cartha, paying a pretty penny, but with them as the middlemen we're buying every stitch of silk to be had."

"The Cartha?"

"Yeah, I know, the bastards are playing both sides."

Jack could understand the pressure they were under, the ruins of the Merki tribes hovering on their western border, the Bantag on the east. The Cartha were even supplying the Bantag with metal. Pat was calling for taking them out, or at least blockading their ports, but with the fleet stretched to its limits, literally disassembling ships from the Inland Sea fleet and shipping them by rail to the Great Sea, Bullfinch had argued that now was not the time to start a war on yet another front.

"But what about now? We're blind."

Chuck nodded. "I know but do you see any alternative? Send up the ships we're currently making, and they'd get slaughtered."

Jack realized that he should feel a sense of relief. What Chuck had told him was that he could anticipate living till next spring. As a pilot without an airship, he was out of the war. He could stay on in Suzdal, help his friend with the design work, do some test flying, and most definitely have his pick of every lovely lady in the city. And yet, the knowledge that Keane would be fighting blind a thousand miles to the east filled him with dread.

"What else do you have?"

Chuck smiled and pulled a sketchbook out of his desk and started to thumb through it.

"Wonderful how war can unleash the creative talent," he said coldly. "Improved engine design, both for your airships and for our navy. I rather like this beauty I've got here."

Jack looked at the curious sketch.

"What the hell is it?"

"I just took the design for an old Mississippi river-boat. Cut off all the gingerbread works, the way we did back on Earth during the war. There'll be a small armored top and that's it."

"All that just to carry one gun?"

"Ah, here's the beauty of it. It's a ship for landing troops straight on to a beach while under fire. That entire hold can carry two hundred men. The bow simple drops down and out they go, the steampowered Gatling gun I've been working on providing cover from the armored turret."

Jack was reminded of a copy he had once seen of a sketchbook belonging to Leonardo da Vinci. Hastily drawn pictures filled the pages, some just rough outlines, others expanded out with greater detail. Jack took Chuck's sketchbook from his friend and leafed through it. He paused for a moment to study an artillery piece, mounted on a strange-looking carriage so that it was pointed nearly vertical; beside it stood a man who was hunched over, looking into the middle of what appeared to be a long pipe with telescopes mounted on either side.

"Range finder," Chuck announced proudly. "Simple idea. Mount two telescopes ten feet apart, have a mirror in the middle to split the image. The gunner turns a dial which ever so slowly shifts the mirrors, and when the two images merge the dial will show him how many yards it is to the target. Simple geometry of knowing a base, and the angles of the mirror gives you the height. You then cut the fuse and fire. Any airship that wanders into range is dead."

Jack nodded, turning the page. The next one he managed to figure out quickly enough since he had heard his friend talk about it. It was a ship that was almost submerged except for a small conning tower. The ship could fire something Chuck called a torpedo, which would then be guided to its target by a rubber hose through which jets of air would be used to turn the torpedo to port or starboard.

Next came the sketches of the land cruisers which were going into production. The first land ironclad company, under the command of one of Chuck's new engineering students, was even now trying out its first maneuvers with the dozen machines produced so far.

"How are these going?" Jack asked.

"Power to weight ratio is all off. At best they can only make four miles an hour, and on any type of upslope it's damn near a crawl. There's a big fight going on as well regarding how to use them. Gregory Timokin, the engineer I assigned to test them out, says they should be kept together as a strike force. The testing board is saying they should be dispersed, a couple to each corps as starters."

"And what do you think?"

"Keep them together, of course, the same way I want to see your airships learn how to fight as a unit rather than individuals. Mass; this next war will be about mass and the concentration of mass at the crucial point."

"The Bantag have sixty umens; I've heard rumors they can marshal another forty, even sixty if they coordinate with other tribes and the Merki. If it's a war of mass. They have it and we don't."

"So we outthink them, as we always have, Jack."

"I'm afraid this new leader can match us even in that. I never thought I'd see the day where their airships could fly circles around ours."

Chuck suddenly leaned forward and started to cough. His features were contorted with pain, the cough sounding like deep rumbling thunder. Gasping, he fumbled for a handkerchief and covered his mouth. Jack saw flecks of blood. Ferguson's wife was instantly through the door, kneeling by Chuck's side, looking at him anxiously until the spasm passed. Her gaze shifted to Jack, as if he was the blame for the attack.

"To bed right now."

"In a couple of minutes."

"Now!"

Chuck looked back over at Jack.

"There's not enough time for everything to be done," he whispered, still gasping for breath. "I've got to train others to do this work. It's here that the war will be won or lost." He tapped his notebook. "The new airships, the land cruisers, and heaven knows what else they have, they scare me."

"Why's that?"

"It shows me that whoever it is on the other side, this Ha'ark, he knows more than I do."

The shrill call of the pipes and the thumping rattle of the drums set Andrew's heart to pounding as the regimental bands struck up "Battle Cry of Freedom." The Thirty-fifth Maine, as befitted its privileged position as the first regiment of the Army of the Republic, led the parade through the city square of Suzdal, tattered national colors and state flag at the fore. The two flags were the most treasured of all the heirlooms of the Republic. Battle honors were inscribed in gold lettering on the red-and-white stripes of the American flag—
Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancel-lorsville, Gettysburg, Wildnerness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, the Ford, Suzdal, Roum, St. Gregory's, Potomac, Second Ford, Hispania.
 

It was a belief as old as armies that the spirits of the fallen dead of a regiment, a battalion, a legion, or phalanx, forever hovered about the standard they had followed, and Andrew could sense their presence now—boys with forgotten names, who were in his company in the Cornfield and West Woods of Antietam, his own brother Johnnie lost at Gettysburg, and all the thousands who followed and stood beneath the fading silken folds, wreathed in the grey smoke of battle, facing rebel charges, the Hordes of Tugars, Merki, and now the Bantag.

As an actual fighting unit the old Thirty-fifth was In reality no more. Only a handful of those who had come through the Tunnel of Light with him still stood beneath the colors. Two-thirds of the Maine boys who boarded the transport
Ogunquit
were dead—Hispania alone had claimed nearly three-score of them. Those who still survived were now in command of regiments, brigades, divisions, and corps, or ran the government. The young flag bearer who had led the charge across the very square the regiment was parading across, William Webster, was now the secretary of the treasury. His financial genius somehow kept the Republic solvent. Gates ran the newspaper and a flourishing publishing business, l erguson the research and college, Morrow the Agriculture Department for the supply of food.

The ranks were filled, instead, with the best the Republic had to offer, the young men of Rus, of Roum, even a few from Erin, Asgard, refugees from Cartha, and the Chin and Zulus that Hans had brought back with him out of bondage. After two years training with the Thirty-fifth they would move on to other commands as young officers—the Thirty-fifth was now the West Point of the Republic.

There was a hushed awe as the colors went past the review stand, Andrew coming to rigid attention, tears in his eyes as he saluted the treasured colors. Sergeant Major Hans Schuder rode before them, returning the salute. Hans insisted upon retaining the title of Sergeant Major, in the same way Andrew was still technically a colonel, even as they stood as the first- and second-in-command of the Armies of the Republic.

Father Casmar, the prelate of the Holy Orthodox Church of Suzdal raised his hands in blessing, the colors respectfully dipping low as they passed him. Andrew wondered what some of his old comrades from New England would think of that. The curious religion of the Rus seemed to be an amalgamation of early Orthodox Christianity with a fair smattering of pagan customs still lingering. Thus God was called Perm, the ancient Slavic pagan deity, and Jesus was Kesus.

Hans rode on, the regiment parading by in perfect step. Behind them came the First Suzdal, the original regiment of the Republic of Rus, and the reverent silence of the crowd gave way to thundering cheers, for this was truly their own. In the crowd Andrew could see many a veteran of the Old First, men with empty sleeves, or leaning on crutches, standing at attention as their cherished colors floated by. Other regiments followed, the Second and Third Suzdal, the Fifth Murom, the Seventeenth and Twenty-third Roum, which had been sent west for combined training with the Rus. All these were the reserve battalions, going to the front to join the rest of their regiments already on the line.

Some of the men were still dressed in the old white or butternut uniforms of the original armies, while newer recruits proudly wore the navy blue tunic and sky-blue trousers of the new uniform, patterned after the cherished uniform of the regiment which had led them to freedom. Black slouch caps were pulled down at a jaunty angle and rubberized ground cloths were slung over the left shoulder in the old horsecollar arrangement. Black cartridge boxes bounced on the right hip and heavy leather brogans slapped on the pavement. Trouser legs were tucked into calf-high wool socks to prevent the dust and biting insects from getting up their trousers, and, as Andrew watched them pass, he remembered the road to Gettysburg, and everything seemed to merge into an eternal oneness. He wondered, as well, how many of those marching past would soon go to join the ghosts of comrades who had marched through the June twilight so many years before and from there departed into legend.

The thought set him to wondering yet again. If this should indeed be his last campaign, what then afterward? Would his old comrades from the past— Mina, Malady, Colonel Estes, his brother John— would they be waiting upon the far shore, under the shade of the trees as Stonewall Jackson said upon his deathbed? And if they were, would they still be in the old union blue, gathered about a sparkling fire, laughing, telling the old stories and remembering glories past? If there is a heaven, he thought, might It not be Valhalla after all, a warrior's paradise, for he knew that in spite of his protestations and genuine desire for peace, war was part of his soul forever. Perhaps in such a paradise the good Lord allowed the fallen warriors to tramp the fields yet again, and to feel the shiver go down their spines as musketry rattled in the distance and the thump of artillery echoed across the heavenly sky.