The Company of the Dead (74 page)

It had sounded rather simplistic. It sounded no less reckless than Wells’ own performance. Yet voiced in the presence of the machine’s aura, it had the cold ring of truth. Webster reasoned that he might have even considered such a solution himself. Perhaps.

And still his eye did not hurt.

Then Kennedy told him what he already knew. What he had seen from the air as he’d descended into this lost valley. That an army was poised on their borders, led by men who might have some inkling of the treasure buried nearby. That the machine, struck hard by the pulse, required long hours of restorative work. Hours he didn’t have.

Webster asked, “What happens to this world after you leave?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it destroyed? Lost?”

“That’s what happens if I fail,” Kennedy replied.

Webster’s throat was as dry as his socket now. He rasped, “And if you succeed?”

“I don’t know. Never coming into being, maybe this place just fades away.”

“I find that very disturbing. I have no intention of just fading away. It doesn’t suit my temperament.” There was the low drone of a generator humming at the machine’s base. “I’m going with you.”

Kennedy didn’t appear surprised. He said, “It’s a lifeline, Webster. Not a lifeboat.”

“Have you told that to Miss Malcolm?”

Kennedy’s jaw worked beneath the stubble of his chin, but he made no reply.

Webster said, “So I suspected. Joseph, I don’t see you bargaining from a position of strength here.”

“She comes with us,” Kennedy said.

“Fine,” Webster replied. “Fine. Then I’ll take your berth.”

“I can’t let you do that, Glen. I can’t unleash you on that world.”

It was as gracious a compliment as Webster had ever received. He asked, “What did you want from me, exactly?”

“You’re on the
Patton
. I need planes. I need you to gain me those hours.”

“And in return, I get the satisfaction of a job well done?”

“No. In return, you get the satisfaction of knowing that I face the same fate as you. I’ll stay behind. I’m supposed to die here, anyhow.”

“I believe you.”

Webster took a final look at the machine. Black and silver, shimmering with hope and expectation and the promise of horrors undone and worlds remade.
Deus ex machina
. He thought about what he might do with such a beast and looked back at Kennedy.

“Martyrdom suits you, Joseph.” He thought about what he might do. He said, “How much time do you need?”

At 0730 hours he’d briefed his tactical agents aboard the
Patton
. By 0800 they were stationed throughout the stratolite. At 0815 he’d convened an emergency meeting with five other members of the Advanced Command Post.

He had his files with him. He showed them what he had on them. By 0930 he’d secured control of the
Patton
. He informed Houston of the regrettable loss of the stratolite, with all hands, over the Arizona state border, before shutting down all external communications.

He put forty-five scouts in the air. Twenty-five functioning turrets were mounted with one-oh-five millimetre cannons along the broad waist of the massive airship, and three atom bombs were nestled among the standard ordnance of the bomb bays.

The
Patton
, licking its wounds, swung westwards...

And now, riding low at twenty thousand feet, the stratolite—Webster’s reluctant mistress—taunted the Japanese guns. She poured contemptuous fire upon the crushed lines of armour and infantry. Her scouts darted among the formations of bombers, bringing them down upon the shattered units. The Japanese fighters, caught off guard and wedged between the first wave of Confederate air and the brutal metal of the
Patton
’s anti-aircraft cannon, broke off contact.

Webster strode from scope to scope. A few of the operational cameras delivered detailed images of the carnage below. One featured the rock formation he’d spied by dawn’s light that morning. Though the shack was rubble, the dome shield itself appeared intact. Other cameras focused on the main body of the Japanese divisions, showing smudged abstracts of black and grey and red, a twirling rondo of smoke and flame. Distant images, transmitted from lenses on the ballonet array, showed the Japanese fighters reforming far to the north. Close at hand a lone fighter, soaring too close to the
Patton
’s guns, played Icarus.

He dropped half a purple. This was no mistress he rode. This buxom steel wench, corpulent and grotesque, was the Whore of Babylon, grinding the desert flat. He stretched a hand out before him, lining up his naked eye view of the devastated installation beneath his palm. Squeezing and thinking,
Crush you all.

Here are your hours... Here are the minutes you craved. Dished up by your foe on the piled bodies of your rivals. So tell me, Joseph, is this what it feels like to be you?

Kennedy worked his way back along the path his men had shred through the Japanese ranks. Beyond the line of eighty-eights, abandoned and silent, he traversed a tormented terrain on elbows and knees. He sought the higher ground where some of his men remained gathered; there, to watch the world unfold.

The bodies were thick at the foot of the escarpment. They formed battlements. The occasional afflicted face of a ghost dancer turned to him in passing, and to each he croaked the same reply. Strengthened, each turned on his back and gazed at the sky in expectation.

Good cloud was coming.

He scaled the incline with a firmer grip, rising to his feet as the sounds of diving planes and answering fire rose and fell. The crest of the escarpment gave way to the wide ledge of rock where not so long ago his men had deployed. It was barren now, save for a small party within the conquered Japanese watchpost. There was no movement among the sandbags. His men sat at odd angles.

He heard sounds, stifled and crackly, issue from the radio he’d employed earlier. A slumped body moved slightly, shoulders heaving as it voiced a reply. It coughed harshly. Kennedy advanced with softer tread. Tom Shine was saying goodbye to his son.

He turned to face Kennedy. Disbelief gashed a smile across his anguished face. Sorrow and pleasure played there. The radio crackled again. He spoke into the mouthpiece and then said to Kennedy, “Take it. I’m done.”

Kennedy stared stupidly at him for a moment.

As if offering the simplest of explanations, he said, “I can’t move, Major.”

“You did real good, Tom.” Kennedy gently removed the mouthpiece from Shine’s wavering grasp. He removed his air filter and said, “Kennedy here.”

There was a riot of responses. He thought he heard Patricia’s voice in the background.

The air was filled with distant explosions as some resumption of fighting took place beyond the edge of the ridge.

“How much longer?” he asked. His voice was brittle in his ears.

“An hour, maybe less.” It was Lightholler.

“Is everyone safe?”

Lightholler’s reply was lost in a screeching howl of distortion.

Another voice broke into the conversation.

“I think they’re fine, Joseph. I must say, though, that I’m surprised you’re not huddled down there with them.” Webster’s voice sounded slurred. His words ran together in a monotone drawl.

“Couldn’t get there if I wanted to, Glen, and besides, we had a deal.”

“I can’t imagine what I was thinking.”

Indistinct noises vied with the static. He thought he might have heard Lightholler calling to him again.

“From my vantage,” Webster continued, “the fighters seem more intent on bringing me down than causing your base any more damage. More jap interceptors are inbound. Looks like I’m going to be the main event now. How do you like that?”

Kennedy, eyes still on Tom Shine, nodded absently. His comrade’s face had slackened. Something within the old soldier was receding.

“If you tell me where you are,” Webster continued, “I might be able to plot you a safe course back to the Rock.”

“Now why would you want to do something like that?”

“It’s something I’d like you to live with.”

Shine was moving his lips. Kennedy drew closer, bringing his ear to the old man’s mouth. He did so with dread, fearful of receiving some brutal explanation of why so many men now lay broken.

Shine whispered the coordinates and closed his eyes.

Kennedy quoted the numbers back over the radio, curious to see how this might all play out.

Static ebbed and flowed as the moments drew themselves out. He adjusted the amplitude slightly, unable to raise the cavern or Webster. An approaching rumble might have been one of Webster’s scouts, dispatched to deliver the
coup de grâce
.

He spied the drawstring pouch lying in the dust. Were there some grains of that
other
world, paler, purer, mixed among the white powdered sand? He’d been awaiting revelation so long now that he was undeterred when some final spark of the carapace effect ignited itself in his brain.

There
was
no other world. There was to be no exchange taking place here; no fading away or destruction. The ghost dance begins in fire and ends with a whimper but not all tears speak of sorrow. He should have paid more attention to Tecumseh... what he was about to witness was renewal.

“Dragon.” Tom Shine’s eyes had fluttered open.

Fire licked at the earth around him, swept by wild winds. He turned on his knees to see the flaming snout of the Dragon tank bearing down on him. He heard a voice crash through the static and then, somehow, echo from close by.

He pitched forwards into oblivion.

“What the
hell
just happened?”

Lightholler made sure that Morgan had copied the coordinates. He’d heard every word of the major’s transaction with Webster, but was unable to break back into the communication. Absorbed now in recalibrating the transmitter, he ignored Doc’s cry.

“You saw that, didn’t you?” Doc was talking to Morgan.

Lightholler suppressed an urge to call for quiet and concentrated on his task.

A bright glow suffused the room...

Everything slipped...

“You saw that, didn’t you?” Doc was talking to Morgan.

Lightholler suppressed an urge to call for quiet and concentrated on his task.

A bright glow suffused the room. He swiftly turned towards the source but the carapace had reclaimed its shadows.

Doc was staring, open-mouthed, at the energy reservoir. “You
saw
that, right?”

Morgan said, “I saw it.”

Only Malcolm wasn’t looking. She still gazed with mute despair at the now silent radio.

“What happened?” Lightholler demanded.

Doc stammered in his haste. “The carapace reservoir just exceeded one hundred per cent. That’s
impossible
.”

“Why is that impossible?”

“Because I haven’t re-engaged the generator yet.”

Malcolm was tugging at Lightholler’s sleeve. “Please,” she urged. “Get him back.”

“Is it reading right now?”

“Yes.”

“Please, find him.”

“I’m trying.” Lightholler tore his eyes from Malcolm’s pleading face. “And what the hell was that light, Doc?”

“I don’t know.”

The cavern shuddered again. Fresh silt deposited itself on the growing stalagmites of spilt earth.

“Brilliant.” The carapace, verging on full power, flexed unknown muscles. “Will it still work?”

“There’s a slight problem with the proximity of the first staging point. We’re looking at forty-five minutes.”

“Brilliant.”

Doc went back to his numbers. Lightholler returned to the shortwave. The others hemmed him in, forming a tight circle around the radio.

“Major, are you there? Please respond, over.”

The radio yielded white noise.

The Eye was a seething mass. Agents and intel techs strove for his attention. He’d stopped giving orders five minutes ago. He stared at the radio’s console with mounting frustration. Kennedy’s silence was becoming wearisome.

Its balloon array in tatters, the stratolite hung well west of the cavern’s entrance. Confined to the lower airs, it limped on, drawing the Japanese planes back over the scattered remains of their anti-aircraft cover.

Webster glanced at one of the screens. Nothing moved within the waste land of Red Rock. Beyond the monitors, the sky was a tapestry of grey tracer-laced pom-poms. Tufts of smoke bloomed, tiny fists catching and crushing the occasional interceptor. There was no need for fire discipline, no need for the
Patton
’s gunners to be circumspect in their targeting. All the scouts were long gone. Only the recon flights remained aloft. They’d called in, one by one, sustaining the litany of approaching enemy planes.

He peered down at the coordinates he’d received. A camera, trained on the site, displayed a swirling black maelstrom.

“I don’t think I can help you now, Joseph,” he murmured. He turned off the transmitter.

He cleared the Eye of all but his senior agents. The remaining men, covert operatives placed among the stratolite’s crew when she’d first been cast to the winds, represented all the
Patton
’s services. He listened to their appraisals.

There were at least eight Japanese squadrons inbound. A flight of rocket scouts had been spotted among their formations. There’d been some external attempts, from Dallas and Houston, to contact the
Patton
. All had been ignored, as per his orders.

One communiqué piqued his interest. The flotilla of German stratolites secreted above the Japanese Home Islands had delivered their atomic stockpiles over Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

He reviewed his options. Their scarcity alleviated his task.

More than a hundred Japanese planes were on their way. The
Patton
wouldn’t live out the hour.

He gave orders to make west at full speed. All unnecessaries were to be jettisoned in order to gain the highest altitude. He dismissed the men, telling them that he was not to be disturbed. He shook their hands at the elevator vestibule and sealed the Eye’s entrance at their departure.