I watched for mantas. Had no trouble finding them. They came boiling ‘round the flank of an ivory mountain, cloud of black on cliff of white, a mob like bats leaving a cave at sunset. Hundreds of them.
My heart sank. It’d be thick, grim, and there was no point even thinking about attack formations.
All a man could do was keep away and grab a shot at opportunity. But we’d take losses. One couldn’t watch every way at once.
A few mantas peeled off and dove for the ships attacking the whales. The bulk came on, following a line that’d cross the Dase.
We met. There were gliders, mantas, shells and lightning bolts thicker than I’d ever seen. Time stood still. Mantas passed before me, I pulled trigger rings. Horst’s death’s-head devices whipped across my vision. Sometimes parts of gliders or mantas went tumbling by. Lower and lower we dropped, both sides trading altitude for speed.
Nose up. Manta belly before me, meters away. Jerk the rings. Fog across the canopy face, but no explosions against dark flesh. We struggled to avoid collision, passed so close we staggered one another with our slipstreams. For a moment I stared into two of the four eyes mounted round the thing’s bullet head. They seemed to drive an electric line of hatred deep into my brain. For an instant I believed the intelligence hypothesis. Then shuddered as I sticked down and began a rabbit run for home, to replace my ammunition.
A dozen mantas came after me. Horst, alone, went after them. I later learned that, throwing his craft about with complete abandon, he knocked nine of those twelve down before his own ammunition ran out. It was an almost implausible performance, though one that need not be dwelt upon. It’s one of the mainstays of his legend, his first ten-kill day, and every student of the fighting on Camelot knows of it.
The runway still had a half meter of snow on it. The three mantas followed me in, ignoring the counterfire of our ground batteries. I was so worried about evading their bolts that I went in poorly, one wing down, and ended up spinning into a deep drift. As a consequence I spent two hours grounded.
What I missed was sheer hell. The mantas, as if according to some plan, clamped down on our landing and launching gates, taking their toll while our craft were at their most vulnerable. In the early going some tried to blast through the overhead netting. That only cost them lives. Our ground batteries ate them up. Then they tried the barrage balloons, to no better effect.
Then the whales arrived. We’d been able to do nothing to stop them, so busy had the mantas kept us. They, sensing food beneath the net, began trying to break in. Our ground batteries fired into the dangling forests of their tentacles, wrecking those but doing little damage to the beasts themselves. Gigantic creaks and groans came from the net anchor points.
For pilots and ground crews there was little to do but prepare for a launch when circumstances permitted. I got my ship out, rearmed, and dragged to catapult head. Then for a time I stood observer, using binoculars to watch those of our craft still up.
In all, the deaths of a hundred fourteen mantas (four mine, ten Horst’s) and twenty-two whales were confirmed for the first two hours of fighting. But we would’ve gone under without help from down the cable.
When the desperation of our position became obvious the Commander signaled Clonninger. Its sailcraft came north, jumped the mantas from above. They broke siege. We launched, cats hurling ships into the Gap as fast as steam could be built. Horst and I went in the first wave.
Help had come just in time. The whales had managed several small breaches in the netting and were pushing tentacles through after our ground people.
Even with help the situation remained desperate. I didn’t think it’d take long for the mantas, of which more had come across, to clamp down again. When they did it’d only be a matter of time till the whales wrecked the net. I pictured the base destroyed, littered with bones.
Before we launched, the Commander, ancient with the strain, spoke with each pilot. Don’t know what he said to the others, but I imagine it was much what he told me: if I judged the battle lost, to run south rather than return here. The sailcraft had to be salvaged for future fighting. If we were overrun the fighting would move to Clonninger.
And in my ear a few words about taking care of von Drachau. I said I would.
But we survived. I won’t say we won because even though we managed to break the attack, we ourselves were decimated. JG Kill’s effectiveness was ruined for the next week. For days we could barely manage regular patrols. Had we been hit again we’d’ve been obliterated.
That week McClennon three times requested permission to evacuate nonessential ground troops, received three refusals. Still, it seemed pointless for us to stay when our blocking screen had been riddled. Small herds were passing daily. Clonninger was under as much pressure as we and had more trouble handling it. Their defenses weren’t meant to stand against whales. Their sailplanes often had to flee. Ground personnel crouched in deep bunkers and prayed the whales weren’t so hungry they’d dig them out.
Whale numbers north of the Harridans were estimated at ten thousand and mantas at ten to twenty.
Not vast, but overwhelming in concentration. Populations for the whole continent were about double those, with the only other concentrations in the Sickle Islands. By the end of that week our experts believed a third of the Harridan whales had slipped past us. We’d downed about ten percent of those trying and about twenty-five percent of the mantas.
IX
A fog of despair enveloped Beadle. Derry had informed McClennon that there’d be no more reinforcements. They were needed further south. Permission to withdraw? Denied again. We had only one hundred twelve effective sailcraft. Ammunition was short. And the main blow was yet to fall.
It’s hard to capture the dulled sense of doom that clung so thick. It wasn’t a verbal or a visible thing, though faces steadily lengthened. There was no defeatist talk. The men kept their thoughts to themselves-but couldn’t help expressing them through actions, by digging deeper shelters, in a lack of crisp efficiency. Things less definable. Most hadn’t looked for desperate stands when they signed on. And Camelot hadn’t prepared them to face one. Till recently they’d experienced only a lazy, vacation sort of action, loafing and laughter with a faint bouquet of battle.
One evening Horst and I stood watching lightning shoot among the near pure copper peaks of the Harridans. “D’you ever look one in the eye?” he asked.
Memory of the manta I’d missed. I shuddered, nodded.
“And you don’t believe they’re intelligent?”
“I don’t care. A burst in the guts is all that matters. That’s cash money, genius or retard.”
“Your conscience doesn’t bother you?”
Something was bothering him, though I couldn’t understand why. He wouldn’t worry bending human beings, so why aliens? Especially when the pay’s right and you’re the son of a man who’d become rich by doing the same? But his reluctance wasn’t unique. So many people consider alien intelligence sacred-without any rational basis. It’s a crippling emotional weakness that has wormed its way into Confederation law. You can’t exploit a world with intelligent natives...
But conscience may’ve had nothing to do with it. Seems, in hindsight, his reluctance might’ve been a rationalized facet of his revolt against his father and authority.
Understandably, Ubichi was sensitive to speculations about manta intelligence. Severe fines were laid on men caught discussing the possibility-which, human nature being what it is, made the talk more persistent. Several pilots, Horst included, had appealed to McClennon. He’d been sympathetic, but what could he have done?
And I kept wondering why anyone cared. I agreed with the Corporation. That may have been a defect in me.*
*“If this thought truly occurred to del Gado at the time, it clearly made no lasting moral impression. News buffs will remember that he was one of several Ubichi mercenaries named in Confederation genocide indictments stemming from illegal exploitation on Bonaventure, thoug
h he was not convicted.
-Dogfight
As soon as we recovered from attack, for morale purposes we launched our last offensive, a preemptive strike against a developing manta concentration. Everything, including armed zeppelins, went. The mission was partially successful. Kept another attack from hitting Beadle for a week, but it cost. None of the airships returned. Morale sagged instead of rising. We’d planned to use the zepps in our withdrawal-if ever authorized.
In line of seniority I took command of my squadron after a manta made the position available. But I remained von Drachau’s wing-man. That made him less impetuous. Still addicted to the flying, he avoided offending a man who could ground him. I was tempted. His eye was still deadly, but his concern over the intelligence of mantas had begun affecting his performance.
At first it was a barely noticeable hesitance in attack that more than once left blistered paint on his ship. With his timing a hair off he sometimes stalled close enough for a mania’s bolt to caress his craft.
My admonitions had little effect. His flying continued to deteriorate.
And still I couldn’t understand.
X
His performance improved dramatically six days after our strike into the Harridans, a day when he had no time to think, when the wing’s survival was on the line and maximum effort was a must. (He always performed best under pressure. He never could explain how he’d brushed those nine mantas off me that day. He’d torn through them with the cold efficiency of a military robot, but later couldn’t remember. It was as if another personality had taken control. I saw him go through three such possessions and he couldn’t remember after any.) It was a battle in which we all flew inspired-and earned a Pyrrhic victory... the back of the wing was broken, but again Beadle survived.
The mantas came at dawn, as before, and brought a whale herd with them. There’d been snow, but this time a hard night’s work had cleared the catapults and sailships. We were up and waiting.
They walked-or flew-into it. And kept coming. And kept coming.
And by weight of numbers drove us to ground. And once we’d lost the air the whales moved in.
McClennon again called for aid from Clonninger. It came. We broke out. And soon were forced to ground again. The mantas refused to be dismayed. A river came across the Gap to replace losses.
Clonninger signalled us for help. From Beadle we watched endless columns of whales, varicolored as species mixed, move down the dragline south. We could do nothing. Clonninger was on its own.
McClennon ordered a hot air balloon loaded with phosphorous bombs, sent it out and blew it amidst the mantas crowding our launch gate. Horst and I jumped into their smoke. That entire mission we ignored mantas and concentrated on the whales, who seemed likely to destroy the net. Before ammunition ran out we forced them to rejoin the migration. But the mantas didn’t leave till dark.
Our ground batteries ran out of rockets. Half our ships were destroyed or permanently grounded.
From frostbite as much as manta action (the day’s high was-23° C.), a third of our people became casualties. Fourteen pilots found permanent homes in the bottom of Ginnunga Gap. Rescue balloons couldn’t go after them.
Paradoxically, permission to withdraw came just before we lost contact with Clonninger.
We began our wound-licking retreat at midnight, scabby remnants of squadrons launching into the ink of the Gap, grabbing the ups, then slanting down toward Clonninger. Balloons began dragging the line.
Clonninger was what we’d feared for Beadle: churned earth and bones ethereally grim by dawn light.
The whales had broken its defenses without difficulty. Appetites whetted, they’d moved on. From three thousand meters the borders of the earth-brown river of devastation seemed to sweep the horizons. The silvery drag cable sketched a bright centerline for that death-path.
We were patrolling when the first airships came south. The skies were utterly empty, the ground naked, silence total. Once snow covered the route only memory would mark recent events...
Days passed. The Clonninger story repeated itself down the cable, station after station, though occasionally we found salvageable survivors or equipment. Operations seemed ended for our ground units. But for us pilots it went on. We followed the line till we overtook straggler whales, returned to work.
As the migration approached Derry corporate defenses stiffened. Though we’d lost contact, it seemed our function at the Gap had been to buy time. True, as I later learned. A string of Beadlelike fortress-bases were thrown across the northern and Sickle Islands routes. But even they weren’t strong enough. As the mantas learned (even I found myself accepting the intelligence proposition), they became more proficient at besieging and destroying bases. The whales grew less fearful, more driven by their mating urge. Mantas would herd them to a base; they’d wreck it despite the most furious defense. Both whales and mantas abandoned fear, ignored their own losses.
JG XIII was out of the main action, of course, but we persevered-if only because we knew we’d never get off planet if Derry fell. But we flew with little enthusiasm. Each additional destroyed base or mine (whatever Ubichi was after had to be unearthed) reassured us of the inevitability of failure.
When a man goes mercenary in hopes of buying off, he undergoes special training. Most have a paramilitary orientation. (I use “mercenary” loosely.) Historical studies puzzled me. Why had men so often fought on when defeat was inevitable? Why had they in fact given more of themselves in a hopeless cause? I was living it then and still didn’t understand. JG XIII performed miracles with what it had, slaughtered whales and mantas by the hundreds, and that after everyone had abandoned hope...
Horst reached the one fifty mark. I reached one hundred twenty. Almost every surviving pilot surpassed fifty kills. There were just thirty-three of us left.
XI
On the spur of the moment one day, based on two considerations, I made my first command decision: good winds during patrol and a grave shortage of supplies. For a month the wing had been living and fighting off the remnants of stations destroyed by migrating whales. Rations were a single pale meal each day. Our remaining ammunition was all with us on patrol.
When I began this I meant to tell about myself and Horst-Johann von Drachau. Glancing back, I see
I’ve sketched a story of myself and JG XIII. Still, it’s almost impossible to extricate the forms-especially since there’s so little concrete to say about the man. My attempts to characterize him fail, so robotlike was he even with me. Mostly I’ve speculated, drawn on rumor and used what I learned from Commander McClennon. The few times Horst opened at all he didn’t reveal much, usually only expressing an increasing concern about the mantas. Without my speculations he’d read like an excerpt from a service file.
The above is an admonition to myself: don’t digress into the heroism and privation of the month the wing operated independently. That wasn’t a story about von Drachau. He endured it without comment. Yet sleeping in crude wooden shelters and eating downed manta without complaining might say something about the man behind the facade, or something about changes that had occurred there.
Hard to say. He may’ve ignored privation simply because it didn’t impinge on his personal problems.
We were in the air, making the last patrol we could reasonably mount. I had command. In a wild moment, inspired by good ups and winds, I decided to try breaking through to Derry territory.
Without knowing how far it’d be to the nearest extant station-we hadn’t seen outsiders since borrowing the Clonninger squadrons. That Derry still held I could guess only from the fact that we were still to its north and in contact with mantas and whales.
The inspiration hit, I wag-winged follow me and went into a long shallow glide. Derry itself lay over two hundred kilometers away, a long fly possible only if we flitted from up to up. Much longer flights had been made-though not against opposition.
It took twelve hours and cost eight sailcraft, but we made it
. It was an ace day for everyone.
There seemed to be a Horst-like despair about the mantas that left them sluggish in action. We littered the barren earth with their corpses. Horst, with seven kills, had our lowest score.
Because I was behind him all the while I noticed he wasn’t trying, shot only when a pilot was endangered. This had been growing during the month. He was as sluggish as the mantas.
Our appearance at Derry generated mixed reactions. Employees got a big lift, perhaps because our survival presented an example. But management seemed unsettled, especially by our kill claims, our complaints, and the fact that there were survivors they were obligated to rescue. All they wanted was to hold on and keep the mines working. But aid to JG XIII became an instant cause celebre. It was obvious there’d be employee rebellion if our survivors were written off.
I spent days being grilled, the price of arrogating command. The others were supposed to remain quarantined for debriefing, but evaded their watchers. They did the public relations job. Someone spread the tales that were the base for von Drachau’s legend.
I tried to stop that, but to do so was beating my head against a wall. Those people in the shrinking Derry holding needed a hero-even if they had to make him up, to fill in, pad, chop off rough corners so he’d meet their needs. It developed quickly. I wonder how Horst would’ve reacted had he been around for deep exposure. I think it might’ve broken his shell, but would’ve gone to is head too. Well, no matter now.
Myself, I’d nominate Commander McClennon as the real hero of JG XIII. His was the determination and spirit that brought us through. But he was an administrator.
Much could be told about our stay at Derry, which lasted through winter and spring, till long after the manta processes of intellection ponderously ground to the conclusion that we humans couldn’t be smashed and eaten this time. The fighting, of course, continued, and would till Confederation intervened, but it stayed at a modest level. They stopped coming to us. Morale soared. Yet things were really no better. The mating whales still cut us off from the south polar spaceport.