Warworld: The Lidless Eye (20 page)

“Look over there!” she cried. There was a brief flash, not enough to hurt his eyes so he knew it was some distance away, a couple hundred klicks at least.

Then they saw the familiar dark plume, from old newsreels and solidos, followed by a rumble that shook the old stone walls.

“Jesus wept,” John said without thinking.

Tears were streaming down Ingrid’s face. “Those poor people. Our world is coming to an end.”

John nodded.

“Is the blast far away?” she asked.

“Yes, or we’d be blind.” He took her in his arms without thinking. Ingrid buried her face in his thick wool sweater.
Damn, she feels good
, he thought. Then they caught sight of the mushroom cloud and didn’t say or think anything for a long time.

The second pair of Redfield/Suomi planes were maneuvering to relieve the first as Leino watched from a circling pattern due west.
A boring and silly exercise
, he had decided, but it did give him and his men the chance to study the Redfield ships and pilots at close quarters.

The last skirmish with the Redfield Satrapy had brought a few of their planes down in Uossi Suomi territory. The technicians were both delighted and astonished to find that the enemy aircraft had wooden frames with canvas skins; except for the engine, almost no structural metal at all. This made them more fragile than the Suomi aircraft, but lighter and more agile as well, much less prone to stall or suffer loss of control in the thin atmosphere of Haven.

It was Leino and the fighter pilots like him who had to learn that the Redfielder ships were also practically invisible to Uossi Suomi’s powerful radars, modified from designs for detecting metal-skinned jets—such as the Invictas flown by the Militia and some of the richer Valley states.
They’d learned that the Redfield planes didn’t appear on their screens until very close indeed. And they’d learned it the hard way.

It makes an interesting match
, Leino thought. He himself had brought down three of the Redfielders’ ships during that last flare-up, but the enemy had given a good accounting of themselves, as well.

Something glinted along the coast, two thousand meters below.
Two somethings
, Leino corrected himself.

“Viggen, this is Leino, do you read?”

“Leino, this is Viggen, I see them. Do you have a signature?”

The Redfielder’s voice had gone tense. Leino’s radar had not sounded its detection tone. He increased the gain, aligning his aircraft toward the two glittering streaks below, already very much closer than any conventional aircraft could have gotten so quickly—and climbing! There was still no image on his screen. Yet, they were obviously metal jets.

“Negative, Viggen. Either they’re jamming us or using—”

Leino’s voice choked on the word “stealth,” the level of technology required to render jet aircraft invisible to radar was so far beyond his experience as to be practically mythological.

Another voice came on over the channel, one of Viggen’s squadron.

“They’re splitting up, sir, one making for—
Christi!
”

The spook passed so close that Leino could clearly see the great, flaming eye insignia on the fuselage, and could even make out the pilot in fully secure extra-orbital flight gear.

Pirates
, he realized, and in the next instant a thunderous shock wave of displaced air battered Leino’s aircraft straight up and back. Leino’s face struck the instrument panel, shattering glass, and blood filled his eyes. The shock wave must have deafened him, too, because he couldn’t hear his engine.
I hope it’s my ears
, he thought, as he wiped the blood from his face. He would need the engine to recover, now; his aircraft had gone into a flat spin.

As the all-terrain vehicle bounced along the twin ruts that passed for a road, Brigadier Cummings tried to keep from biting his tongue in two. He was in the backseat of the rover, with Colonel Robert Thurstone, the commandant of Fort Kursk. The Sergeant-Major was driving, while Cummings’ aide, Colonel Leung, rode shotgun. The makeshift road led to a barn where a small helicopter had been hidden.

No one was sure just how good Sauron surveillance was, nor did they want to find out. Few battle plans survived contact with the enemy; in this war, he had learned,
no
battle plan survived contact with a Sauron. And where they were involved, things were always worse than they appeared. The combined maxim hadn’t failed him yet.

The evacuation of Fort Kursk was going as fast as possible, better than expected. The only good news so far. They’d cut communication to the absolute minimum and had been left alone by the Saurons, almost as if they were not a serious target.
We probably aren’t
, he thought, grimly. Most of the militia’s jets, the Invictas, had been destroyed in the air by enemy fighters or put out of commission before they left the ground. A few had landed at out-of-the-way airports, as directed in the contingency plans, but he had little hope they’d survive the invasion. Not that they were much good against Sauron fighter craft, whether supraorbitals or just plain air breathers.

“I don’t think you should leave, Brigadier,” Colonel Thurstone said. “We need you here to take charge of the evacuation. We have thousands of dependents to look after and I for one don’t think we have much time before the Saurons hit us again.”

Thurstone, like himself, was a former Imperial Marine from
Churchill. He was an excellent commandant and, with Colonel Leung, had Fort Kursk running like an Imperial Naval vessel. However, he was a true peacetime warrior. He was also Cumming’s oldest friend on Haven.

“We aren’t leaving,” the Brigadier said. “We are temporarily relocating to Fort Fornova. At least I am. I want the Regiment to disperse into companies and lie low until we learn more about this invasion. For some reason the Saurons haven’t touched the forts at all. That worries me.”

“Last report is that another shuttle landed outside Evaskar. Maybe they plan to establish the bridgehead there.”

“It makes sense. Whoever controls the Karakul Pass holds the steppes in the palm of their hand. It’s where I’d have landed at the outset if the situation were reversed. First, take Fort Stony Point, and then Evaskar at my leisure. Fort Fornova is the next stepping stone to holding the northern Valley. That’s probably why they’ve left Fornova alone; they plan to take it in one piece and use it as their own.”

Colonel Thurstone nodded. “If the Empire has lost this bloody damn war, part of the reason was leaving you stranded on this godforsaken ball of mud. They should have kicked half the General Staff upstairs and made you Lord Marshal; the Saurons wouldn’t have known what hit them.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Robert. But I seriously doubt my leaving the war had much to do with the Empire’s success or failure. What I need to do is get to Fort Fornova before the Saurons. If they’re going to set up camp at Evaskar, I want to have a little surprise waiting there for them.”

“You should get full support from Colonel Harrigan. Should we send any of our troops with you?”

“It will be difficult enough just to get me and a small staff there without alerting the Saurons. Impossible with a company or two along for the ride.”

“The nuclear depot. You had everyone convinced they were stored right here at Fort Kursk. It kept King Steele reined in; he was always
afraid you’d play the nuclear wild card.”

Cummings laughed. “That’s because he was a vain little man who thought he was the best the species had to offer, so obviously no one could be cleverer. A serious failure of the imagination.”

“Why not let Harrigan take care of it?”

“Colonel Harrigan is a good officer, but he’s better at taking orders than fulfilling them. He tends to think he knows more about any situation than he actually does. We need to husband our small nuclear cache and use it for the largest possible gain.”

“Right, Brigadier,” Thurstone nodded, frowning. “I can see where Colonel Harrigan, or Cahill, his junior, might have some ‘ideas’ of their own about what the best course of action is. Are you sure you can trust him?”

“Yes, as long as he’s certain that the Brigade is still under my command. We don’t have much time before long distance travel is out of the question. What we can’t afford to do is wait to see what the Sauron game plan is.”

Sergeant-Major Slater slowed the jeep as they approached an abandoned farmhouse; the house was mostly subterranean, Harmony-style. The barn was still standing.

Slater honked the horn twice and the barn’s double-doors opened, revealing a small chopper. The pilot and two militiamen left the barn and approached the Brigadier.

“Any problems?” Colonel Leung asked.

“No, quiet as a church.”

“Won’t be for long,” the pilot said, with a grin.

As Slater and the militiamen moved the copter out of the barn, Colonel Thurstone turned to the pilot. “Think it’ll be safe up there?” He pointed up towards Cat’s Eye, then he cocked his thumb in the Brigadier’s direction. “You know, we can’t afford to lose him.”

“We’ll hug the ground, keep our radar signature down,” the pilot said, with a shrug. He casually added, “Should be as safe as taking a barrel down the Alf River.” He laughed then, as if he had just cracked the
best joke in a century.

The small gathering nodded glumly at his frighteningly accurate assessment.

Fighter Rank Vil smiled at the fragility of the human norm craft.
Museum pieces
, he thought in wonder. At least the Imperial Invictas, even if they were half a century out-of-date, had been adversaries of a sort. He hadn’t actually meant to destroy the kites, only shake them up a bit, but at least two of the triple-winged high ones, the ones that didn’t register on his radar, had simply disintegrated as he passed.
Fascinating, really.
He looked down at the remaining enemy ships, most out of control, one or two fighting to recover from his pass. He saw no parachutes.

That’s interesting
, he thought idly.

Still, any survivors would have the word out that the “pirates” were here in force. He and his wingman, Stahler, had been waiting all morning to show off their newly-painted fighter craft.

Fighter Rank Stahler hailed him on the combat frequency. “Amazingly frail ships.”

“Affirm. What do you think of my introduction to the cattle of the
Dol Guldur’s
air superiority?”

“Effective, but a bit overpowering, don’t you think?”

Vil checked his screen and visuals, and shrugged.

“Evidently not. A couple of the kites are reforming. We should have time to splash another pair before returning. Let’s go subsonic; be sure to give them a good look. I’ll show them some vertical thrust maneuvers.”

“Have fun,” Stahler said without emotion. He had not embraced the pirate role as wholeheartedly as Vil and most of his fellow pilots. He had never believed in arrogance toward an outclassed opponent. Desperate foes did desperate things, and could very easily surprise you.

The flat spin was often fatal, Leino recalled coolly from his flight school classes. None of the aircraft’s control surfaces interacted with the surrounding air stream the way they had been designed to. Uossi Suomi craft used to have tail ’chutes or canard airfoils to help in such situations, but that was a long time ago.

Leino began going over every technique he knew to recover from the spin. Every aircraft type recovered in a different way, and you couldn’t really be sure how a particular ship would do it—or if it would do it at all—until you had to try and do it for real. By then, there was often no time to learn.

But he was lucky; he had altitude, his engine was still running, even his hearing had come back—in one ear, anyway. The airframe was making a high-pitched rattling sound, like a snare drum.

Leino dropped the flap opposite to the direction of the spin and kicked the rudder likewise as far as it would go. The airframe groaned impressively, but there seemed to be little effect otherwise. The ground was a good deal closer, now. Leino repeated his last maneuver and added a hard push on the stick, then yanked the throttle.

The biplane shuddered as its engine roared and the tachometer needle snapped past the redline. The ship stood on one wing, turned onto its nose, then dropped like a stone into a power dive.

Just great
, he thought.
At least before I was going to die sitting down—not face first!

But it was possible to recover from a dive. He pulled out of it with a scant hundred meters of daylight beneath him. He didn’t blackout, and that was a blessing, too. Recovering with a roll, Leino regained his former altitude in minutes only to see the formation utterly shattered. Three
aircraft were missing from the Redfielders’ squadron, and one from his own as well.

The spooks were nowhere to be seen, but at the speeds they were obviously capable of, they could be back at any moment.

“Viggen, this is Leino, do you read?” His voice sounded funny to him; he ran his tongue over his gums, finding very little left of his front teeth.
I must look freaking wonderful
, he thought;
blood running down my face and no teeth. The wife’ll love this.