Never Sound Retreat (2 page)

He looked across the room to where Sergeant Major Hans Schuder slept. Like any old campaigner, Hans knew when to catch a nap and could drift off in seconds.

Andrew watched him affectionately. Hans had been back for four months now. The physical wounds, the bullet hole in his leg, the saber slash to his head, were healed; but he was changed.

Andrew knew sadly that the old Hans would never quite return. He had simply seen too much in his long years of captivity. Emil had even coined a term for it, "survivor's guilt," and said that many of the nearly three hundred that Hans had brought out suffered from it. Yet on Hans, the burden was heaviest. It was his decision which had triggered the breakout from the Bantag prison, and in the process knowingly condemned the thousands left behind to certain death.

"Ah now! And you won't believe who I just dragged in!"

Andrew looked back up and saw Pat O'Donald towering in the doorway, shaking the rain from his poncho. Taking off his soaked and drooping campaign hat, he pulled up a chair beside Andrew, took the bottle without asking, poured a drink into an empty glass, and downed it.

Hans stirred from his slumber and, cursing, looked up.

"You damn stupid mick, can't you keep it down?"

"Mick is it? You thick-headed Dutchman."

"Prussian by Gott," Hans snapped back.

Andrew started to smile, shaking his head, waiting for the inevitable exchange, with Hans swearing at Pat in German, and Pat lapsing into a wondrous stream of Gaelic invective. But Pat broke it off and pointed back to the door, and all in the room fell silent.

Jack Petracci stood in the doorway, grinning and standing at attention.

Andrew leapt from his chair and, with hand extended, rushed up to Jack's side.

"We thought you were dead, son. What the hell happened?"

Holding on to Jack's hand Andrew led him over to the table, motioning for him to take a seat. Behind him Andrew saw Feyodor, his hand wrapped in bandages, and gestured for him to come over as well. Jack looked longingly at the bottle, and Pat, laughing, poured out drinks for everyone. Jack took the first drink and handed it over to Feyodor, who clumsily cupped it, grimacing as he tried to wrap his hands around the mug.

"I was down at the dock watching as one of the courier ships from the blockade fleet came in," Pat announced, "and by all the saints I seen him standin' on the deck."

"We'd given you Up, Petracci," Hans interjected, pulling a chair up beside Jack. "What happened?"

"They've got a new airship design," Jack whispered shakily, as the vodka hit him. "Must have kept it hidden till they made half a dozen of them. Bigger wings, two engines, one on each wing. We did our run over Xi'an and about twenty miles east, turned about to head back, and I was starting to go down low for a closer look at things. Suddenly these new ships came diving out of the clouds."

He sighed and took a long sip of his drink.

"So we started to climb. Clouds were at nine thousand; I punched through into clear sky at ten. But they came through after us and kept right on climbing. Damnedest thing, sir, not only could they match our height, they were faster. It must be those wings of theirs."

"I want sketches of them as soon as possible for Ferguson to look at," Andrew said.

More and more Andrew found that he was looking to Ferguson as a talisman, the young inventor always able to find yet another answer to whatever the Hordes threw at them. In the last war it was the rockets, in this one it might very well be the airships and the land ironclads he was developing.

"Already made some," Jack replied, as he reached into his bedraggled tunic and pulled out a sheaf of papers, spreading them out on the table. Andrew leaned over to examine the drawings. Besides being the best pilot of the Republic, Jack had a fair hand as an illustrator as well. The ships looked sleeker, the engines mounted on the wings, and, looking at the scale line, Andrew saw that Jack estimated them at being nearly a hundred feet across. He looked over at Hans, who shook his head.

"Damn Ha'ark," Hans mumbled. "I should have shot the bastard when we met under the flag of truce. Bet this is another one of the things he brought from that world of his."

"If you'd shot him, you wouldn't be here now," Andrew replied. "I think, all things considered, the trade was worth it."

"Then what happened?" Hans asked, his face drawn with worry.

"Well, we had a running fight all the way back to the coast. I dodged down into the clouds, but they were patchy. Anytime I broke through, one of them was on me. They had at least ten ships up, six of them the newer design. Just as we cleared the coast they boxed us in. I tried to climb out, but they were on top of us. We dropped two of them, but they finally put an explosive round in our stern as I was climbing through twelve thousand feet, and
Flying Cloud
went up."

"Tell 'em about how you jumped," Pat interjected with a grin.

Jack sighed, and Andrew could detect the terror that still lingered just below the surface. Back during the rescue of Hans he had flown with Jack on
Flying Cloud.
It had been one of the most terrifying experiences of his life. He'd rather charge a battery of guns or face an onslaught of Bantag cavalry than have to go up in one of those machines again.

"Ferguson saved our lives. I thought the umbrella idea of his was insane, but we jumped anyhow— there was nothing left to do. It took a little doing to get them out of the packs on our backs, but once they popped open we floated down and landed in the sea."

"Stefan?" Emil asked quietly.

"He got out too late," Jack whispered. He closed his eyes and took another drink.

"You know what was amazing?" Feyodor said, breaking the silence. "A couple of the Bantag flyers came down through the clouds, one of them circled us as we floated down. Thought we were dead for sure, their gunner had me in his sights, and then the bastard simply waved and took off."

"Fellow pilot," Jack replied casually. "I'd have done the same."

"They're Bantag," Hans growled.

Jack looked over at him and shook his head.

"I know that, but he gave me a break, and I'll do the same if I ever see him again. But anyhow, we were lucky. Came down a couple miles off the coast. There was 
Petersburg 
almost right under us. When Bullfinch heard what we'd seen he transferred us over to a picketboat and had us brought straight back here." "You know, if Ferguson was here, I think I'd kiss him," Feyodor announced, then grimaced as Emil leaned over the table and started to unwrap the bandages from his hands to examine the wounds.

"What was it that you saw?" Hans asked.

"Like I said we got about twenty miles east of Xi'an and saw a dozen trains on the line, all of them packed with troops from the look of it. But they were heading east, sir."

"You sure of that?"

"Absolutely, sir. The encampments we saw springing up around Xi'an, they were struck, the gear packed, the troops heading back east. The ships were still along the river, but there were no workers. I wanted to get down for a closer look at the sheds lining the riverbank, see if we could somehow peek inside, but that's when we got jumped."

Surprised, Andrew looked over at Hans.

"One if by land, two if by sea," he said. "This could mean they're giving up a seaborne attack."

"Jack, could they have shot you down earlier?" Hans asked.

"What do you mean?"

"They chased you for what, an hour, two hours?"

"Something like that. Why?"

"Yet they didn't get you till you were clear of the coast."

"I don't see your point, Hans."

"Nothing, son. Just wondering." Hans sighed, then he lowered his head.

Andrew stood up and went over to the map hanging on the wall. There were indications of at least thirty umens in the area of Nippon. Most of them were still armed the old way, with bows and lances, but there were units of artillery and even some mounted infantry armed with muzzle-loading rifles. One of the photographs Jack had taken on an earlier mission clearly showed rows of parked cannons in Xi'an. If Ha'ark was giving up on a seaborne assault, was he now shifting his modern units to Nippon?

Hans came up to join him.

"Are we being set up?" Hans whispered. "Did they want Jack to see the move? They must have figured we were down to the one airship. Maybe they wanted him to see it and report back."

"Then why shoot him down? They couldn't have known about the umbrellas."

"Maybe they did. Or maybe someone got carried away and shot him down against orders. Hell, he said they dodged around for eighty miles, then, just after he got over the coast, down he goes."

"Are you saying it's a trick?"

"Expect the unexpected with Ha'ark. A game within a game."

Andrew said nothing, looking over at Hans. He could sense the fear Hans carried of Ha'ark. Not a fear of meeting him on the field but rather of his cunning, his unrelenting will. Was that now blinding him? If Jack had escaped, and was then blocked the next time he returned to Xi'an, there'd be reason for suspicion. But shoot him down without word first getting back?

He stared at the map. The trouble was there was no way of knowing.

Emil had finished unwrapping Feyodor's bandages and was clucking softly as he examined the copilot's red and swollen hands.

"If they do come from the east," Andrew said, pointing at the map, "it'll be a hard fight for them. The terrain's in our favor, mostly forest, not very good ground for cavalry at all. If need be, we can fall back to the final river line on the Shenandoah— it's damn near six hundred yards across."

"They could stretch the front into the woods though," Hans replied. "Remember, this Ha'ark is different. He knows war maybe fifty, a hundred years ahead of us. They'll fight dismounted, as infantry, not like the Merki trying to maneuver a hundred thousand mounted warriors through the forest when we got flanked on the Neiper. If they had left their horses behind them, they actually would have moved faster through the forest and might have bagged you. In one of my conversations with Ha'ark he seemed to have a damn good grasp of the mistakes the Merki made."

Andrew nodded.

"So what do you think it will be?"

"Both," Hans replied. "He has the resources to fight on two fronts. Our one point of threat to him is right here, out of Port Lincoln. It's our one base on this sea from which we can mount an invasion one day. We have to take out Xi'an before he takes us out here. Whoever succeeds at that first wins the war."

"So you're convinced it's a feint, this withdrawal of his modern army from Xi'an."

Hans nodded and pointed to the ground between the eastern shore of the Inland Sea and the western shore of the Great Sea.

"We know he's moved upwards of ten umens over here. That's not enough to break the three corps we're committing to hold that front. Andrew, I think he'll strike behind us by sea. Land somewhere between here and Port Lincoln down to our front a hundred miles to the south."

"Even if it is a feint, there's still Bullfinch and the fleet in front of Xi'an."

"He's convinced he can beat the blockade fleet."

Andrew sighed and continued to gaze at the map, as he had done now for four months. The equation was simple enough. Both sides were dependent on their factories to supply the sinews of war. His own bases were more than five hundred miles to the west, starting at Roum. The Bantag factories were a thousand miles to the southeast, three hundred miles back from Xi'an. If the Bantag could seize Port Lincoln, any hope of ever striking at them was gone. The Hordes would continue to build and finally overwhelm his forces without any danger to their industrial base. Yet his own ability to leap forward and seize Xi'an was limited as well. Even if they could take Xi'an, all the land strength of the Bantag could then be marshaled against them while his own troops would be hanging six hundred miles away, dangling at the end of a seaborne supply line.

Was Ha'ark capable of striking now? Hans was pushing an equation that was a speculation built upon two assumptions, the first that the withdrawal was not real, and the second that their fleet could beat Bullfinch. It was pushing it too far.

"And now we're blind," Andrew whispered, looking back at Jack and Feyodor. Emil had fetched his medical bag and was busy dabbing Feyodor's hands with what Emil claimed was an antiseptic.

"One more flight, damn it," Andrew said, "just one more flight."

Jack heard him and looked up.

"Sorry, Jack, wasn't talking about you. Losing
Flying Cloud
wasn't your fault."

"Still feel like it was, sir," Jack replied.

"Are you sure about what you saw down there?"

"At least a dozen trains heading east, fully loaded," Feyodor interjected.

Andrew looked back at Hans.

"It'll be more than month before we get our newest airship built and can check again."

"What about our going back to Suzdal to meet with Congress and the president?" Hans asked.