“Nothing is nothing,” Ted said—his new motto. And anyway, defoliation was denying the enemy valuable cover.
Eight hours later, Albert Wolfe, against orders, machine-gunned a rock that’d looked a little like a tank from a thousand feet up and in just the right light. To be safe, Ted ordered Wolfe home and had the rock bombed, inflicting casualties only on the surrounding flora and whatever fauna might’ve been unfortunate enough to have chosen that particular outcropping on which to warm itself in the thin, inconstant sunlight.
“Nothing is nothing.”
The men began to wonder whether Ted was losing it. Knowing that they were afraid of something (even if that something had no specific name), they began to wonder what had him so scared. What he knew that he wasn’t telling them.
Fenn got lucky. He was the first to receive the clearance, to be loosed against a positive target in badland, and to vent some of his fear and fury through the chattering breech of his guns.
He was flying close to the river, had spotted six wagons and thirty horses running across open ground for the cover of trees just on the other side. They’d no doubt heard his engine too late and gotten caught out.
He was flying Jackrabbit. Was loaded with incendiary rounds. Had plenty of fuel and a solid identification, support from the rest of his wing, and about fifteen minutes of daylight left. The situation was perfect for an engagement. It wouldn’t get any better. The closest bomber was ten minutes away, minimum—having been called out to bomb Wolfe’s tank rock—and in less than five, the caravan would’ve reached the cover of a heavy wood less than a mile from them. There was an almost subconscious sense among the pilots listening in on their radios that if Ted didn’t release Fenn on this target, then there was something more to his reticence than plain caution, something more than a sudden unwillingness to allow his fighters to engage ground targets or spend them against anything more dangerous than the landscape.
There was a pause—a gap of silence between Fenn’s lackadaisical request for free-fire clearance and the response. A gap of doubt, perhaps, into which everyone poured their worry that Ted had gone soft, gone insane. Everyone silently hoped it was a gap of somber, calculated, and bloodthirsty thought.
Then the call came back from Diane, fresh on her shift, sitting in the radio chair and with the scent of Ted Prinzi all over her voice. “Jackrabbit, control. Order is engage. Repeat: Engage, engage, engage.”
It was over in less than a minute. Three close passes. Three hundred rounds of ammunition from Fenn’s twin Spandaus. He hit everything that moved and then, to be sure, hit everything that didn’t move. The phosphorous rounds burned blue in the air, sparked as they hit the ground, bounced, and danced. The wagons caught fire. All observers reported secondary explosions. And then it was done.
In the tent, Diane had gotten the call from Captain Teague. Ted was already there. It’d been him who’d sent Ernie O’Day in to bomb that rock. Coughing, red-eyed, drinking coffee from a filthy tin cup, Ted had checked the maps, the computer projections. He’d leaned close, putting a hand on Diane’s shoulder that’d made her want to recoil, partly. Partly wanting to lean into it. He squeezed, probably without thinking about it. His breath was awful.
Then he’d stood back, as if to get a long view, as if this were momentous. Jimmy McCudden was there. He’d been afraid to leave the comms tent for days and had set up a disgusting little nest in the ready room. Tanner, the backup radioman, was there. Shun Le, the second controller, watching the split flight of three squadron over the near-south sector. They all watched him. Diane looked up at him, something pleading in her eyes, her own sweet breath coming low and rough.
All Ted had done was nod once sharply. Then he immediately turned and left the tent.
“Jackrabbit, control,” Diane had said, something like a butterfly beating its wings against the cage of her ribs. “Order is engage. Repeat: Engage, engage, engage.”
But what she’d really been saying was kill. Kill, kill, kill.
Ted had gone directly to the strip and stood there, unmoving, watching the sky until every plane touched down safe and sound.
After that, the action came easier for a time.
AT TELLER S-2, during the guild troubles, Carter’d flown missions off a naval carrier. It was a huge thing, like a city in orbit. He’d fly—mostly defensive patrols, guarding the carrier and other blockade ships against a terrestrial splinter government that had no space fleet—and then he’d come home, back to his steel and plastic apartment near the center of the massive ship. He had better accommodations than any navvie below command grade could’ve dreamed of. He lived alone. Two rooms. Private bath. Murphy bed and an entertainment center. It was just him and fifty Flyboy mercenaries, only nominally under the authority of the Colonial Council, the Terran navy, and spacers guild, and they were generally left to their own devices. It would take him most of an hour to get from hangar seven where his squadron was berthed to the tier where he was quartered. It was like commuting. There was a train—two trains, actually—and a lot of walking involved.