Salt (28 page)

Not all my plans were followed, of course. Ours was not a hierarchy, for all that war gave me command over some people. And so there were some who insisted, stupidly, that we meet the Senaarians in the air. I advised against it, there were even (I remember) fistfights by the evening fires, but enough of a group of others made the case. And so they decided to augment our three planes with more. But, even with industrial Fabricants and the finest software, it is a slow and complicated business building planes, and doubly complicated to modify the components ad hoc to render them tougher, shield-added, weaponed, all the things that distinguish a warcraft from a peacetime one. And we had only a few rescued industrial Fabricants, and poor software. We made another plane, but within a fortnight all our planes were broken in the air and left in black pieces on the deep desert floor. Only a madman forces himself on even though every step injures him. The better way is to come at it in another manner.

So we developed manpacks. We trucked out a series of Fabricants from the position we had occupied (this was before we attacked, but we anticipated clearly that the Senaarians would retaliate more thoroughly after we began making the war), and took them to the mines in the more northerly mountain strongholds, and there we established a Fordist rota, where equipment was produced in continuous cycles. Mostly these machines were manned by the injured or the maimed, although some able-bodied refused to be part of the war, and they either went north or left altogether. There was little of this, though, because the rage was large enough to hold most people.

And to these people I said, ‘Forget that you live in a certain place, because you no longer do: now you live in the desert, you eat whatever you find, you drink from whichever source presents itself. Forget that you are alive, because you are only dead, already dead. Forget that the Senaarians are people, because we must kill them and
kill great numbers.’ We took the needleguns and needlerifles that had already been Fabricated, and we spent three days preparing ourselves as best we could. The needlerifles were advantaged with a spot-laser that aimed down the spine of the gun, and we spent the afternoon target-shooting in the cavern, and out of the cavern also, on the flat and amongst the creases of the hills. (I was worried about this last, because I reasoned Senaarian sats could spot us easily, and that we looked like soldiers training, which would warn the enemy. This did not come to pass, and I only discovered later why: that Convento had disabled them all, claiming accident.) The rifle Fabricant software came with a training fluid, to be spat out of the rifles instead of metal. This fluid, shot out by laser, hurt and bruised the skin when it struck you, but it did not kill, and so we spiced our training by dividing into two bands.

We also prepared camouflage cloaks: these were very capacious, but rolled behind to sit at the base of the spine in a wedge. These cloaks, then, were coated with salt crystals over a polymer of reflective cloth that gave back the same readings as sodium. In the desert, we could unfurl them and throw ourselves on the salt ground, and dig ourselves under, or cast heaps of salt over us if we had time. No sat, no plane, probably no man (except if he were very close) could spot us. It seems now, as I recall it in this place, a primitive piece of technology, but it served us better than machines with ten thousand moving parts; all our planes were destroyed soonest.

We also (this through our ingenuity) made up large balloons of strong but delicate-seeming material – a cloth of large grown crystals that meshed together to form rigid bags, though they had almost no weight. These were fitted tight about our stomachs, hips and thighs until we needed lift, and then a micropump would empty all air from them and the balloons would begin to lift us. Then the manpacks could raise us. The engines in these packs worked with counter-revolving jet pressure, and they would move us upwards. But they were sluggish and sometimes failed with the weight of a person and kit (and so we had the balloons): and even with as little as fifty kilos or so, they were erratic. They grasshoppered us out, upwards so fast
our ears sang with pain, usually on a simple ellipse to 2000 metres and then coming down about a kilometre away. A chip in the motor controlled them, angling them slightly to give us lateral movement, but after that always keeping them pointing dead downwards, so we never spiralled or came down on our heads. But it was a rough ride. I vomited during several trips, and clothing tended to become singed. Nonetheless it saved my life many times.

We were no hierarchy but warmaking has its own dynamic. It seemed I was talented with this making, and most were content to follow my advice. Some not, but we all faced the same enemy. So a force of sixty agreed to come with me. Another hundred wanted to stay with the planes, to fly them and fight from them like marines. The rest, and the wounded, were to go north with the cars, to the mines and safety. It was clear that as soon as we attacked the Senaarian base in Als we would have to leave the cave, because the enemy would retaliate with greater air force, and try to eradicate us. Our only defence in this situation, I thought, was to spread ourselves, although the pilots and the marines disagreed and spat at me, saying that they could wrench control of the air from Senaar. Then we ate, set up provisions, and parted. Most drove north; I took three cars and drove south. They were so full of rations that most of the ground troop had to walk beside them.

It was an hour before the Evening Whisper when we moved. I ordered all weapons hidden beneath clothing, or otherwise disposed of (which was easy, because a needleweapon is a light and compact thing). Any sats seeing us might take us for refugees; a needless precaution with hindsight, because the sats were disabled. Our balloons made us seem tubby, like old people on an evening stroll. We drove the cars out east, and parked them in the lee of a dune, with salt-cloth draped over them. Then we made our way through the twilight towards the sea. It was tightly timed. Our attack had to happen at exactly the time of the Whisper, when nobody expected it.

What this meant was that the sixty of us lay against the wind-side of a dune in the purpling light for ten minutes, waiting for the wind to start to rise. I lay nearest the top, and pushed a sight-tube all the
way through the pinnacle so that the end glinted a little out of the other side (but dune tops always glint whites, silvers, reds and purples in the sunset, so no sentry would notice it). And there was the camp. Two planes parked, rigid-structured and packed wind-side against the evening winds. Then there were sentry posts, again packed against the wind. I saw also blocks, which must have been supplies, and a portable plant to desalinate the Aradys. There were three sentries, but they would go inside when the wind came. The rest of the force would be inside, taking mess. The other plane (because we knew there were three) was clearly still up in the air; and would either land very soon, or else would climb higher than the storm winds to be out of the way of the corrosive particles. Either way, the time was almost upon us.

So I pulled out the tube and gave a thumb-signal left and right. We would attack when I stood up; and we would end the attack with our manpacks when I fired a yellow flare from my shoulder. Then we would regroup by the cars, and set up a defensive position; although I hoped we would inflict enough damage to avoid counter-attack.

Nearly time. And the wind was starting at our backs. I pulled on my mask, as did we all; to cover all the skin and hair of the head. Even with its protection though, I could begin to feel the prick of bulleting salt crystals as tiny smarts.

So, in those pre-fighting moments, what was it I felt? Because there was a nervousness, of course. And a sudden hot realisation in my head that I could die, that within minutes I could be dead. But this was not a trembly epiphany; and it reasoned like death without
feeling
like it. It felt like being alive. I could feel every component of my body, every finger and every toe. I could feel the pressure of my heart against its nestling membrane as it sucked in and pushed out. As the wind grew at our backs, and the grains of salt began stinging the backs of our heads, or the backs of our calves through our trousers, this feeling grew in my belly. It grew like a pregnancy speeded a hundred times; I grew great with my elation.

It was suddenly very dark, and my ears were consumed with the howl of the wind. The universe had shrunken to this moment, and I
stood. I barely noticed the line to my right and left standing, and barely noticed them following me as we stepped over the height of the dune.

Running.

First, down the dune, with the drop in sound and the reduction in the sparkling stabbing of the Whisper: but only a reduction, a fall in pitch like a musical composition. The heels digging into the pliant ground, half sliding, half running with ridiculous, comic exaggeration, lifting the legs very high and planting them much further forward than would be normal.

Then, with a jolt, onto the harder compacted salt of the Aradys beach. Suddenly we were running in earnest, feet whipping through the sparse salt-grass, the ground beneath us seething with a shallow skin of wind-whipped salt. The Whisper was fierce now, and the flurry of salt grains was intense. It swung us as we ran, trying to tug us over (some did fall, although I did not notice it at the time). The stinging was now a fierce pain, striking like needles at every part of the body at once. But in the moment, the pain hardly registered; or it was only a goad. I may have been screaming as I ran. I really cannot remember. It made no difference. No human voice could impact upon the immensity of the Whisper.

And then, my memory of the engagement is similarly precise. I remember points, illuminated as if they were tableaux, rather than the narrative of the whole; that was pieced together afterwards as we compared our stories. So I know that we covered the ground between the last dune and the camp; that the sentries were sheltering from the pain of the Devil’s Whisper, and so hardly noticed us: that it was automatic sensors that alerted them; and that (evidently) the sentries refused even to pay attention to these sensors. We assume they often malfunctioned during the Whisper.

So I rounded the first sentry-hut and nobody came to engage me. I had to stop running, which felt wrong when the elation of running had been so intense. But I had to pull at the sentry-box to open it. As the hatch yawned the guard did not even come out, only looked up with a round expression. I shot him with a needle into the face, and
his hands went up. As he fell forward, I shot some more needles into the back of his head. The other two sentries were out of their boxes, with their goggles on and their weapons up, but they were killed before they could fire. I waved the laggards up: they were slower because they were carrying heavier ordnance. These we set up using the sentry-boxes for cover, and aimed at the supply machinery and the planes. We would have to lose this ordnance, because we could not carry it with us when we jumped out, but it was crude. Pipes, from construction software, blocked at one end, with old-style detonation explosives in them on firework thrusters. Each was manned, and there were four of them.

Then I waved the remainder forward. We were still undetected, but the setting up of the equipment had taken time, and the Whisper had passed its worst point. We started over the ground of the camp. Some went behind the barracks tenting and towards the water; I stayed this side of the buildings, and veered a little towards the planes. I was bleeding inside my clothing now, from a hundred tiny punctures. The pain did not bother me greatly but, oddly, I remember feeling discomforted by the sensation of slick wetness inside my suit.

The planes, though, were manned at all times, and as the Whisper began to die, and the air started to clear, somebody must have seen us from one of them. Whatever, there was some warning, and suddenly armed and suited enemy troops were coming out of the two mess tents.

We engaged, but here I remember only snapshots. The fighting was dreamlike, soundless in the roar of the wind. I did not fall to the ground, although some of us did for cover, but I crouched a little over my weapon and started shooting needles at the targets. I remember these shots, because they had the fluid connectivity of music: my finger on the button, the silent lash of metal visible only liminally, the target dropping as if deflated. Needles flashed by me. Then I remember being on one knee, firing my rifle rapidly, cursing, realising too late that the cartridge was empty. Then (this sounds idiotic when I relate it, but this is what I did) I stood up, and slowly (because my fingers were numb and bleeding through the fabric of
their gloves) pulled out the old cartridge and dropped it to the ground. Then I fumbled for a new cartridge, a palm-sized circle, in a belt pouch. This took many, many seconds. Then I slotted it into position, and dropped again to my knee to start firing.

The wind was almost passed away now, just a last few fragments of salt whirling through the air. To the west the sky was clearing (the worst the wind could do over the Aradys was to scoop up some large waves), and the light was getting better. I got up to both feet and sprinted over towards a knot of Alsists.

This was when the mortars were set off, and there was an instant
whoom
and a spectacular bellying-out of light, of flame, and then the shockwave reached us and knocked us over with a flick. We all fell to the ground but I struggled round to look up, and saw the planes and the desalination machinery trapped in fire. One mortar had struck the tent, but the fabric (though strong against winds) was too thin to block it and the charge had flown right through both walls and landed in the water.

Because we had been expecting it, we were the first to get to our feet, and then there were some easy targets as the Senaarians struggled up again. I put needles into three or four of them, and then rushed in to claim their guns. The firelight glared hellishly. One of the men, with needles through both lungs, clutched spastically at my ankle; I shook him off.

Somewhere at this point I remember feeling a pinching sensation in my foot, which was nothing. But, later, it revealed itself as a needle wound to my heel. One of the Senaarians, flat on the salt, had taken advantage of the situation to fire low, and the needle had pierced my boot completely. But at the time I did not even register that I had been wounded. I crammed a bundle of weapons into a pouch under my arm, and ran back. I remember tripping over a body, falling, and clambering up again; but I do not know whose body, whether Alsist or Senaarian.