“Correction.” Ted again. “Course now below Riverbend, far side of the river. Intercepting a large and moving force, numbers unknown. Hold.”
A pause. Chatter from ground control. Chatter from the pilots. The confusion of the rapid deployment resolves itself after a single turn over the airfield and the flights fall into staggered lines, drifting apart, making space.
Ted: “Our indigs are wearing their asses for hats.”
Brief conversation between Carter and Fenn. Voices upon voices upon voices. They call out their wings, break right and left and, with a mile of space between them, form up into terrible flying wedges, which, to the Lassateirra indigs, must seem the sign of vilest evil; of angry gods, roused to wrath, and bringing nothing but pain.
In a moment, they are at maximum throttle, the fastest machines dragging the slowest, engines howling. The sweetest sound in the world is the metallic clack of a magazine going into the centerline cannon. Carter knows this. The sweetest sound is the skatch-skatch of belt-fed machine guns being primed. It is the whip of air across cowlings, the howling of it in the stays, moaning as though he travels with an honor guard of ghosts.
He bounces the palm of his gloved hand over the aluminum fins of the bombs he has hanging in the shotgun loops and calls for a gun check while his flight is still in the clear. Rounds sing by his flanks, gleaming phosphorescent tracers streaking the sky, and he lovingly strokes his own trigger. Death, death, death.
At nearly 200 mph, they are baying down on the river in minutes. Horrifying creatures, raining down fury from on high. Finally, they have been released to do what they do best. Finally. And Carter thinks that, someday, many centuries from now, the indigs on Iaxo will tell stories of dragons that belched fire and smoke, of monsters that flew and murdered and consumed whole towns with their rage.
He thinks that, when they do, they will be talking about him.
Ted once more: “Indig siege force was rolled up forty-five minutes ago by explosives and rifle fire, type unknown. The A.O. is considered hot. I’ve got a comms intercept saying hand grenades and land mines at least. Gunfire in the trees. Automatic rifles possible. The Riverbend Lassateirra have moved out of the city and are chasing the friendly retreat, moving toward the bridge and northeast on the high flank under tree cover. Enemy in the open near the river and on the ridgeline. Tallyho, gentlemen. Send them the fuck home.”
They cross the river south of the advance in a blink, come north, power down, split-loop out to get their bearings. Carter calls Fenn.
“Fenn, Carter. Play you high-low?”
“Done, Captain,” Fenn calls back. “B flight has the high side.”
“A flight has low then.”
“Happy hunting, Kev. I’ll meet you in the middle.”
Carter switches over to the flight channel and releases his fighters like dogs slipping a chain. “A flight, this is flight leader. Enemy in the open along the river, south of Riverbend. We are free-fire and hot. All fighters, break and attack. Let’s tear ’em up.”
The battle would go on for ten hours.
On their first pass, Carter’s flight descended in formation, swooping down on the vanguard of the pursuing force in a wedge and chewing great, bloody channels into the ranks before rolling out, pulling tight turns, and coming back for another run. And another. And another. They killed, at first, with the wild abandon of animals turned loose from their bonds; out of rage and frustration and anger at having been pent up so long. They killed sloppily, occasionally joyously, sometimes stupidly as though they were very, very parched and only killing could slake their desperate thirst. Before a quarter of an hour had passed, two of Carter’s flight—Lefty Berthold and Porter Vaughn—had to turn for the field because they’d burned the barrels out of their machine guns, dropped all of their bombs, jammed the mechanisms of their weapons beyond all simple repair. On the radio, one of them was sobbing as he turned for home. Crying or laughing so hard that it was almost the same thing. Carter never figured out which it was.
With two men gone, Carter re-formed his diminished flight—turning out high and rallying the remainder of his planes for a precision-bombing run with whatever they had left. The intention was to lay down a stick of hell just forward of the advancing Lassateirra vanguard (mostly light horse) in the hopes of hobbling them, tripping them up, blowing the legs out from underneath the animals, whatever. The planes dropped from the sky like bombs themselves, in hard dives, screaming across the front rank of horses at fifty feet off the deck and dropping their ordinance right where it belonged.
The result was horrific. Smoke and dust and clouds of debris fortunately hid the worst of the details of the carnage, but they still left visible just enough to catch Carter’s eye like a burr and sink deep into his brain: horses cut off at the legs, squirming on the tortured, icy earth; indigs catapulted from their mounts and torn by shrapnel; indigs then trampled by following lines of horsemen trying to control mounts blowing bloody foam, bleeding from the eyes and ears. These images would give him nightmares, he knew. Provided he lived long enough.