CHAPTER 71
Billy sat in the lotus position to slow his breathing when Princess started up again.
"I know you can hear me," she said, as if he wasn’t in the same room. "It's ridiculous that you won't wait for us. We may not fly as fast as you, but we can fly pretty damn fast. Isn't that the point of putting all the super-quads in their own units? But no, you want to play the hero and attack them alone like in Barcelona. I saw the Mongol uniform you have under your overcoat. That means you plan on infiltrating their camp."
Billy didn’t care about glory, fame, or power. He just wanted to stop a never-ending world war that killed a million civilians a year. Nine generations of his ancestors died for that mission. As the world's most powerful quad, he owed it to them. Everyone has to decide what to make their life about -- stopping a cruel imperialist empire from subjugating the entire human race seemed a pretty good way to spend one's life. It was not just worth killing for, but worth dying for. But Princess knew all this.
Billy got up and inspected his backpack while silently thanking his father for his advice.
"I wanted to wait until morning, but you won't let me meditate, even though you know that the more I slow my breathing, the higher I can fly, and therefore the faster and longer. I can get there early to slow the enemy vanguard. But not with you filling my head with your fears. You want me with you, but you drive me away. I am what I do. I’ll spend the rest of my life killing Mongols. If you help me, then we can be together. If not, not. But right now you’re costing me my edge. I need peace of mind in order to do what I do, so you are killing me."
Princess broke into tears -- a woman's cruelest tool. He packed some leftover food, bandages, and water sacks.
"Listen to me," he said, raising her chin with his palm. “My mother, Elizabeth, was the only legitimate child of King Richard of England and Queen Ann of Ireland. If something happens to me, take our children to my grandfather. Technically, I’m still next in line to the throne.”
“You’re a real prince?” She backed up as if bitch-slapped. “Here I’ve been telling everyone to call me princess, and all this time you’ve been a damn prince? And didn’t tell anyone?”
“I’m too busy to rule, so I told the king to find another heir to the English throne.”
Princess nearly fainted. She stared at him as if her eyes couldn’t focus. Her mouth formed such a perfect “O” that it tempted Billy to place a coin in it like a fish on a dinner plate.
“Do you have any other family secrets you’d care to share with your fiancée?” she finally deadpanned.
"Oh, on my father’s side I’m a Prussian baron and heir to the kingdom of Bohemia. It’s why I call myself the Red Baron. Like my father, my name is William von Richthofen, but my parents called me Billy.”
“That’s it?” she asked sarcastically.
Billy twisted the knife. “You know how Jack thought Subodei wiped out his first family, and how he love his wife so much that he never remarried? Well, a great-granddaughter was visiting her lover in the White Mountains when it happened, but Jack only learned she survived when he saw me with his wands from three centuries ago. I was the last of his legitimate bloodline, so he has made me his heir.”
“But Jack owns most of the Americas and will probably end up with half of Africa,” she said, only slightly exaggerating.
“Our kids will enjoy the life my parents should have had.”
She snorted in disgust. "I’m not really a princess. My parents were orphaned together, so I don’t even know who my grandparents were. They call me princess because I’m probably the only Indian in the Americas who can’t trace ancestors to a tribal king. My real name sounds great in my native Iroquois, but translates into Running Turtle."
Billy burst into laughter, then hugged her until she laughed, too. "Look, I’m not trying to get myself killed. This is my job, and no one is better at it, which saves the lives of those who can't do what I do as well. Don't make my job harder than it already is. I cannot be with you if you make scenes like this." Drawing a line in the sand of their relationship, he walked out the door. Before flying off, he paused to floor her once more. “I never make promises, but I promise to make you a real princess before I die.”
“And how will you do that?”
“By marrying you, silly.”
She stripped him before he could escape and showed him how much she loved him. It turned out that he didn’t leave until morning, after all.
Billy launched before dawn while she snored. He ascended as high as possible, acclimated to the thin air, then slowly rose higher, while falling into a meditative trance that allowed him to fire all wands at maximum thrust for many hours.
Billy loved to fly because he associated flight with his beloved parents. It cleared his mind and let him soak in the amazing experience of shooting through the sky. Flying high, far, and fast relaxed him like nothing else. It gave him peace. It made him feel like part of the universe. And the longer he flew, the more he merged with the cosmos. No drug, no wand, not even sex beat the experience. He heard that runners experienced a kind of natural high, but this was so much deeper. It was like sleepwalking in the clouds. It emptied his head, purified his spirit, and drained his rage. Plus, the longer he flew, the more it increased his wand power, which made him repeatedly push his limits.
He had no idea how many hours he flew, but it was dark and his body needed to sleep. He landed in a village, slept until dawn, then flew north. A day after that he passed the Tarkestan Desert and slept in a gully. Next he flew west until he spotted the enemy outside of Samarkand, still showing the wounds from Grandma’s raids. It was funny that the Mongols rebuilt this city since Genghis Khan famously destroyed it three hundred years before. Large units camp near cities for quicker re-supply. Hunting enough to feed ten thousand takes too long.
Billy landed in the ancient city and drank in a tavern to learn the latest. The vanguard broke into five divisions to form an arrow around the tip of the supply train. Each division would dedicate a battalion to long range patrols. Each division commander would rotate the battalion flying patrols to share the burden evenly. The other fifty thousand quads would stick with the thousands of horses, mules, and oxen slowly pulling the bombs, gold, and supplies. Billy ate, checked into a nice hotel, then slept until nightfall.
Instead of attacking the quads near Samarkand, Billy flew to the division farthest to the north. He started targeting those least visible to others, often walking past hundreds of sleeping troops, just to find another dip, gully, crevice, ravine, or sloping wooded hill where troops fatally chose to sleep. And so he spent the night. By midnight, with the division looking for him, Billy landed among the bombers to throw munitions at other bombers. Now that he had everyone’s attention, he rose above them, flashed his wands, and did his scream to freak them out.
They now had to find him.
Billy slept in his hotel in Samarkand the next day, then killed quads in the second division that night. A cut to his thigh drove him away early, so he flew to the town nearest the next battalion and slept all day. That night he repeated his attack, but this time in the rain, which helped him kill more Mongols.
Now he flew to the unit near Kabul and started work as soon as the troops fell asleep. On his fifth night he hit the Mongols camping by Kandahar. Except he didn't stop at dawn. With greater visibility, the number of pursuers grew to alarming levels, but Billy kept weaving through the trees until they boxed him in. Dozens of squads now patrolled overhead, but he knew he could evade them. He only hoped his contempt for mediocre quads didn’t get him killed by a lucky shot.
He assumed the divisions stayed in constant contact, which meant they all now knew where he was. By luring the southernmost division south, he brought the rest as well. Which is why he left India alone. This was a one man job. Another person would have only slowed him down.
Billy lured them towards the Himalay
as. Now all he had to do was let them believe they could actually catch him. The sight of several thousand quads blotting out the sky in pursuit of a lone flier would probably have horrified Princess, but he was truly having fun. He loved to test his tactical instincts. How else would he improve? His life of constant self-sacrifice had its moments.
After just a few hours most of the enemy tired out. Several hours later, even their best gave up. Billy, who brought jerked mutton and several bags of water, had already eaten lunch in the air, so now he pummeled those on the ground. They ran, they hid, they flew into trees, but Billy still had plenty to fire at. Billy spent a wonderful afternoon shooting fish in a pond, or its Mongolian equivalent.
Just when he thought it couldn't get any better, a large group of fliers in a skirmish line appeared on the horizon. blasting those trying to fly away. They didn't actually meet until sunset, when Princess broke their line to greet him with a flying kiss that nearly broke his nose. Side by side they hunted Mongols until it grew too dark to see.
They camped far in the woods and roasted deer for dinner in a ravine. Only the first battalion of super-quads arrived yet, but the others would get there soon.
"When we saw the sky darken, we couldn't figure out why," Bear told Billy. "They didn't fly in a normal formation, but they were shooting at someone we couldn’t see, so we figured only you could drive people so crazy. Instead of helping you, Princess suggested backtracking the enemy to their camp to steal their bombs. We found several hundred Mongols still there, packing up, tending the wounded, or burying the dead. After eliminating them, we ate their food, took their bombs, then raced after the main body. We started finding the enemy in small groups. These one-side engagements hardly qualified as fights.
"Several hours later we found a larger force with patrols airborne. We sliced up two patrols, dumped all our bombs on their camp, then blasted the survivors. Again we ate their food. After that the groups got smaller, and we found most of them on the ground. It was like hunting cattle.
"Spoiled by super-quads, I forgot just how little good most quads are. No wonder Genghis left them behind. They’re only useful attacking in large numbers over short distances. Most were too tired to even fly over the horizon. Pathetic!"
"What happens now?" Princess asked.
"The survivors of this division will tell the other divisions. They cannot continue their journey without first removing the Red Baron. This is the value of being a boogeyman.” They laughed. “So each division will leave a battalion to clear airspace around the logistical train, but the rest will come south to kill me. These are not marathoners, so those flying patrols will soon exhaust themselves.
“How about I draw them to the Himalayas while the rest of you kill the battalions they left behind? Follow their patrols to hit the main units while they sleep.”
The next day, Billy showed himself to the next closest division, so they could tell the others. He played cat and mouse with them, causing a few hundred casualties, but really he was just killing time and Mongols until his next battalion got here.
As he evaded their small, slow fireballs, it occurred to Billy that they could kill him easily if these pathetic fliers had just one super-quad. He had to let them get close to pull them southeast, so just one large, fast fireball could have swallowed him whole.
Because they moved from cloud to cloud like a ninja using shadows, Billy didn’t even see his guys until they struck the division from behind. His second battalion was more than a match for several thousand tired mediocre quads. Slow units are no match against fast ones, so the battle grew ever more one-sided. If they had just a few more hours of daylight, Team Red would have destroyed them all.
Billy had this battalion take their bombs and look for the next closest enemy camp. They found them around midnight, coming south just as Billy predicted, and bombed them good. The super-quads shot them up until they stopped coming out to fight.
Now Billy feared the other divisions wouldn’t come because of what happened to the first ones, so he sent this battalion to harass the baggage train while he alone lured the enemy to the Himalayas. Soon he had the remains of five divisions afraid of a skinny boy with deadly wands.
Instead of terrifying them, Billy exaggerated his thigh wound so they’d chase him. Before he tore them down; now he wanted them over-confident as they approached the Indus River.
At the Himalayas, thousands of air bandits searched for gold. He had dropped plenty of shiny coins when he flew over this slope on his way out of India, so they had reason to believe in buried treasure.
A Mongol patrol found the bandits, who promptly attacked. The survivors went back for more Mongols, who attracted more bandits. Both sides fed quads down a hole in the sky. Just watching a battle without any use of tactics gave Billy a headache. He wanted them both to lose and, surprisingly, they did.
The ability to fly in formation won the day for the Mongols, but Team Red wiped them out that night.
Fifty thousand down, fifty thousand to go.