The appearance of the infamous Red Baron at Fish Lake changed the mood of the American marathoners from depression to euphoria. Few knew him, but they all trusted him with their lives. They had a miserable year, an even worse winter, and no wealth to show for it. Illness caused more casualties than the Mongols. If a battalion of replacements had not arrived in mid-winter with food and medicine, many of them would have died.
Like his father, Billy had flair. He dropped screaming from high altitude and fell doing his fire dance. From optimum altitude, he blasted an island in the middle of the lake to create an impossibly large crater. He disappeared into the hole before the dust settled.
Ten thousand Americans flew to the crater rim to see what became of him. He turned in place, arms welcoming, a big smile the only part of his face they could see.
Then it started raining gold. One by one, his squad dropped coins on him. Billy started laughing and everyone joined him. When the roaring subsided, Billy popped up to give them their first orders:
“I want you all to celebrate tonight, because we’re gonna spend the next few months killing Mongols and taking their wealth so you can go home rich!”
Lifted from their misery, the crowd fell in love. They got drunk without alcohol and danced without music. The Red Baron led them in their favorite songs, which he learned for just this purpose.
As always, almost half of the Americans were female because -- weighing less -- they could fly farther. But William never intended for them to work year-round, so the several hundred mothers nursing their newborns in the main bunker worried Billy. He needed to get them home, but they couldn’t safely fly far until the babies were older. Yet they couldn’t stay here because this location was compromised. Even if they beat the Mongols surrounding them, other units would bomb these bunkers into the permafrost. So he sent them with the sick and wounded to his supply depots on Kamchatka Peninsula.
Still, they were thrilled to meet the Red Baron. Billy asked the names of their babies, careful to record them clearly as the fathers wondered if he meant to replace them.
“You know what all these babies have in common?” he asked after recording them all. “They’ll all be one gold ton richer when you set up an account in their names at Global Bank! We’ll call them the Tonner Babies.”
So show he wasn’t kidding, he recorded himself ordering the bank to transfer a ton each, then passed the video memory to everyone. He had most of the fathers and all of the mothers crying more than any of the babies. Although they thought him incredibly generous, it seemed small compensation for them risking their lives in a freezing wilderness for a year with no plundered booty. It also made them more likely to campaign with him next time. The publicity value alone made this worth doing.
The battalion commanders took the Baron aside to let him know that five divisions were closing in all around them.
“I know. We saw two of them on the way. We’ll start wiping them out tomorrow. Those idiots are still five hundred clicks away because no division wants to get closer than the rest. What they should have done is rushed our camp from five directions at the same time. We’ll make them pay for the mistake with their lives.”
Word soon spread and everyone noticed that the commanders lost their stressed out looks.
After dinner, Billy regaled them with the recent victories, rotating in place so everyone could see the videos. They couldn’t believe that Europe -- widely believed a lost cause just a few years ago -- was now free. Billy distributed the mutual defense agreements. He showed them the fifty marathon battalions cleansing the Stans, pointing out the uniforms of Russia, Scandinavia, Prussia, Turkey, Arabia, and Persia. He walked them through the battles on the Alps and Kiev and shocked them with how much he deposited into their retirement accounts. The video of he and Bear ridiculing the Great Khan for handing a thousand gold tons to his newest rebels had them rolling on the ground in laughter. More importantly, it motivated them to do their share for the war effort. For a year, they felt like losers.
Billy finally told them how the Khan’s personal guards killed his babies and their mothers, and showed them what he did to avenge those deaths. He helped them laugh at the heads in Hulagu’s garden, and saddened them when he spoke of the empress with such respect. Then he got them chuckling again by taking on the capital of Mongolia alone for three days.
The next day Billy re-organized the marathoners into ten full battalions, with the sick, wounded, and pregnant moving to a temporary location. He put those with the highest ceiling into Battalion #1 and sent them after the enemy farthest away from help. Billy knew he couldn’t surprise the Mongols, who had too many two-wanders as scouts and sentries, so he tired out their quads. #1 broke into squads to make it harder for the enemy to estimate their numbers. They hit the division just before dinner and kept them awake all night long, blasting everyone on the ground while trying to avoid the Mongols in the air.
Billy’s other battalions slept for several hours, then hit the division at dawn, when #1 left to get some sleep nearby. Nine thousand marathoners quickly owned the sky and, by noon, hunted down survivors.
Each enemy unit only had half a division of mostly short-range, low-altitude quads and half a division of two-wanders who were basically useless in battle. The trick was attacking the divisions before they combined their strength.
So Battalion #2 ate lunch and rested. When scouts reported the neighboring enemy division just an hour away, #2 harassed them until sunset. Then #3, who ate and rested next, went on duty, attacking until dawn. Battalions 4-10 engaged them after breakfast and by nightfall stripped their corpses of valuables.
#1, meanwhile, slept all day and attacked the next closest enemy before they supped. At dawn, after a good nights sleep, #2 took over. #3 took their place at sunset, but by then, another division arrived to delay the inevitable. #1 joined them after midnight and was able to exhaust them until noon.
Battalion #4 and #5 rotated attacks on another division fast approaching, to give the rest time to destroy the two divisions that joined up.