Chapter 11

Whatever the city of Dunkirk had been before the turn of the century, it was gone now.

In it’s place, using her own impressive eyesight as she perched on a small tree branch, her claws digging in tight, Mina Murray could see that the Martians had not been busy. Their industrious machines and their enslaved humans – all of them bald and black eyed, like those she and her fellow vampires had rescued – had torn down pretty French homes and large French piers and in their place had thrown up sleet black metal constructions that rose from the Earth with stark, fierce lines. They were geometric in shape and utterly alien in their design ... and yet, despite that, Mina could immediately identify them as walls, towers, and bunkers.

There were no tripods that she could see, but she was positive that there was room enough behind the walls to conceal many of them.

The surrounding countryside, too, was being transformed before her eyes. The people rescued from Britain had made mention of something called the red weed – and now, here, she could see it for herself. It grew out from the stark walls, creeping up and strangling trees, choking along creeks and flowing outwards along the beaches, reaching tendrils greedily into the ocean, careless of salt or waves both. To her vampiric nose, it smelled stark and acidic, and she found the color quite distasteful – doubly so when she saw that the trees that had been completely entwined by it were already dead and collapsed down into ruins, creating a flat plane around the coastal city.

She swung herself down, so that she was hanging suspended from the branch, between the two others. Time? She asked, mentally.

Jenny Harker clicked her stopwatch shut. “Thirty minutes.” She paused. “Are you sure about the timing?”

No ... but ... Mina smiled toothily at the woman who had been her husband, and now would be her wife. I’m sure that we can do it. No matter what.

The whole army had approached at night – the humans guided and even carried through the wilderness by immense beasts, vampries using their shapeshifting to take forms that could bear entire companies in a single go, while the horses and beasts of burden they had rustled up carried the rest. The horses had needed to be forced to drink vampire vitae, to chain their simple minds to the control of the vampires in the army – to force them from panicking when wolves the size of houses padded next to them during that long, night ride.

The vitae had further helped by enhancing their stamina, improving their constitution. AT the beginning of the ride, the officers and cavalrymen with the army had grumbled about how they would be lucky to have any horses to fight with by the time they arrived. Instead, their mounts remained frisky and eager.

“Are you sure about attacking during the day?” Aleera whispered to her left, his own hands nervous checking the weapons and tools that hung from the thin harness that he wore over a simple set of clothing that served in lieu of a uniform. It wasn’t as if they needed many markers to indicate who was and was not a martian – the German and French soldiers were fairly confident they could tell the shapeless, one-piece uniforms of the Martian indoctrinated from their own blue colors. “We’re-”

They have sun lamps, Mina said. So, our powers are going to be cut down anyway – and more, we have thousands of humans that need to see. She shook her tiny head, then closed her eyes. She focused and gave the signal.

Now.

A vampire during the day lacked many powers. They could not shapeshift, nor turn to mist. Mortal weapons could still barely harm them, but they could at the very least strike them. What was more, they were weak to being pierced with wooden stakes, which could bring about their final end. They still had some tricks of the mind, enhanced perception and senses, and they retained whatever shape they had taken during their last transformation. This, here, was the key to Mina’s plan.

There was no law that said that vampires had to return to the human shapes they normally wore – though many vampires did, simply because the human form was adaptable and useful and, more importantly, highly pleasing to their minds and souls. They were no longer mortal, but they were human.

But humanity had its weaknesses.

Twenty of the vampires had volunteered to have the discomfort and distress of being trapped in inhuman forms for the beginning of this battle. They were something close to large lumps of heavily corded muscle and bone, formed into crude, grasping claws, with long, multi-jointed limbs. Their eyes were mounted on long, thin stalks, allowing them to crouch behind low hillocks and behind trees and next to hedges while still seeing the world beyond. And with Mina’s voice in their heads, they worked – snatching up the first munitions beside them and hurling them outwards.

The munitions had been put together via the use of vampiric alchemy and the knowledge of some of the artillerymen, those who knew more about some of the more clever shells used by their armies. The exact mixture of potassium chlorate and lactose and dye was unknown to Mina, she hadn’t been involved in the creation of them. But the result of their crashing into the red-strewn earth between the walls and their formation was ... exothermic and obvious.

Smoke – colored a brilliant red – began to gush outward, from the impacts before the second volley had even landed. With three whole volleys thrown in a time it might take an average fellow to put three darts into a dartboard (if he didn’t mind much about getting bullseyes), the entire front began to froth and smoke with red gas. It was unpleasant and burning to her nose, but it also completely blocked all vision.

Wolf brigades! Mina thought.

Fifty vampires stood then – each of them still in the immense, lupine forms that they had carried humans with before. But now their carrying harnesses had been replaced – hastily, in the cover of the trees – with metal boxes that were perched on their backs, with firing slits in them. The men within were the best sharpshooters of the German and French armies, and as the wolves bounded forward, they rushed into the smoke, which was beginning to flicker and glow with search lights and heat rays, trying to blast away the smoke.

The Martian base was beginning to wail with sirens.

Mina nodded.

Now it was time for the scary part. Wish me luck, she thought to Jenny, who leaned forward and kissed her furry belly ... and then Mina Murray, who had been in the shape of a small, brown bat for the past four hours, dropped from the branch and beat her wings hard. She shot upwards, then soared above the battlefield, where the chaos of the ground fighting would keep anyone from noticing her. She looked down at the canvas of the battlefield and saw that the thick curtain of smoke had allowed the wolves to reach the walls. One of them had taken a glancing sear from a heat-ray before he had gotten to the wall, and his metal casing was glowing a faint red.

The men, though, were scrambling out as the wolves dove into their native soil, leaving behind the metal casings that abutted the wall. The men worked with feaverish speed, firing their rifles up at the heat rays, while indoctrinated humans tried to bring the heat rays around to fire down at the wall.

Now! Cavalry! Mina thought to one of the vampires embedded in the German cavalry. Come around to the eastern flank! Then, switching her thoughts to the vampire embedded with the French artillery. I see some tripods in the city! Be ready!

Looking down at the city, she could see that there were more than some. There were ten of them, each parked low to the ground, and another twenty of the smaller, quadrapedal versions that were used by humans. She could see Martians moving along the ground, pushing themselves to the tripods – they had clearly not been expecting the attack so soon. She grinned, showing her cute little bat teeth, expecting the wolves to come out underneath the Martians and massacre them ... but then she cursed.

We can’t get into the city! One of the wolves, Heinrich, said, his voice full of alarm. There is something in the way!

They paved the ground with that black metal of theirs – keep going, see if you can’t get out on the beach, they haven’t paved that. Don’t go too far, though! If you come out into the ocean...

The tripods started to stand, each Martian having reached his war machine, while indoctrinated humans rushed for the smaller ones. Meanwhile, the heat rays at the walls had been taken out by the riflemen, and the infantry were beginning to advance, jogging towards the wall now that they weren’t going to immediately be destroyed. They entered into the fog, grim and determined – there was no gay war cry, no eagerness, just men who knew the risks doing what needed to be done. Interspersed among them were vampires who had been turned more recently than others – German and Frenchmen and Spaniards, who had been in the artillery before they had been turned.

Mina beat her wings to keep herself above the battlefield as the tripods began to advance. The smoke was starting to clear – she thought: There are ten tripods emerging. Take this image ... she focused and threw the mental image that she was getting into the eyes of the vampire with the french quick firing guns.

The most agonizing moment came here.

There was nothing more that she could do than hope that the rest of her army knew what it was doing.

One of the artillerymen was Antoni. The young vampire had never served French guns before, but with the quick learning of a vampire, he had picked it up in a lighting hurry. His piece was near the front of the rows of hastily thrown up weapons – they were essentially arrayed on a field, with no cover or earthworks. Any counterbattery fire would simply need to blow through their splinter shields and they’d be turned into so many chunks of meat. Despite the haste of their preparations, they had managed to take at least some precautions – the ammunition had been hastily and partially buried by a vampiric wolf, creating a berm of dirt between it and the city, so that anything but a prolonged heat ray strike wouldn’t simply immediately set off their powder.

Antoni tried to not think of that as the vampire who was serving as the conduit between the artillery and Mina pointed at the wall. “There’s two coming there!”

The roiling smoke that still made the air between the wall and the artillery a hazy, indistinct mass, did as much to ruin Antoni’s view of things as it did to all the other humans. Vampires were better at picking out subtle movement in chaotic environments, but even that had its limits. He narrowed his eyes, while his loader and shell jerker both looked at him nervously.

Uuuuuuuuuuuulaaaaa.

His ears perked.

The eerie siren call of a Martian tripod – something like to a war cry, he thought – rang out over the field, louder than the crackle of gunfire and the stamping of feet.

He sighted over open sights.

And for a single moment, his entire body roared with an intense awareness that now was the moment. He yanked back hard on the red lanyard on the gun and the cannon roared, its barrel depressing into its casing with a quick, bucking motion. He unconsciously put his hands against the wall and the gun, as if he could get it to stop dead in its tracks. At night, he could have. Instead, the wheel scraped against his palm and his thigh was knocked out from under him by the recoiling weapon – sending him sprawling, more dazed than hurt.

“Hit! Hit!” his loader shouted – and Antoni sat up, grinning as he saw that a tripod was stumbling and shambling, left and right. It was not using a heat ray, but rather, it had gotten out the steam sprayer used to disperse black smoke. That steam sprayer was now gushing everywhere, wiping away the clouding smoke that they had used to conceal their advance, but it was clearly out of control, the cockpit of the tripod having been smashed open, revealing red ruin and gore and smoke. It fell to the side as other guns roared – firing their shells as fast as they could.

With this range, with such clear targets, and with this concentration, they wrought terrible damage.

One Tripod, stepping casually over the wall, was hit four times at once. Others were missed entirely, but shells detonated around their feet with flashes and roars, causing them to stumble and step to the left and right.

What was most important was that they were delayed, momentarily, before their heat rays could be activated.

Sergeants and NCOs throughout the advancing wave of infantry bellowed the order.

“Fire! By ranks!”

Men dropped to their knees and, as they had been trained, fired.

They did not fire upon the heavily armored cockpits.

They did not fire upon the long, slender legs.

They did not fire at the writhing, winding tentacles.

Instead, fusillades of bullets – some poorly aimed, some ill considered, some hitting only by sheerest luck – were sent up at the tripod’s heat rays. Lenses cracked and mirrors shattered as bolts were worked and the infantry fired and fired and fired – pausing only to reload, or to dash to some new cover as the smaller quadrupeds started emerge from behind the wall. These had their heat rays, and their machine guns, but were flimsier and slower. They emerged to find that the cavalry that had gone, likely under Mina’s direction, to the eastern flank were among them.

The heat rays lit the air with invisible flames. The machine guns chattered.

Men screamed.

Horses screamed louder.

But the cry of Germany Over All! And Long Live France! Came just as loudly.

At close range, the cavalryman’s sabers and pistols and grenades (makeshift weapons, modeled on the satchel charges used by lupine troops) did their best against the quadrupeds. Antoni was glad he was in the artillery – and aiming at a tripod from a good distance, rather than in that slaughter. His loader slammed home a new shell and he aimed, then fired in the same movement, the barrel having aligned just right. His vampiric perception and reflexes, even if they might be dulled by the sun, saw another tripod stumbling backwards. It had not been a direct hit – but it had stopped it from stomping upon soldiers with its terribly long legs.

“More shells!” he shouted and laughed.

Fall back! Mina thought down to the cavalry. Disengage now! Machine gunners, set up positions HERE! She focused hard on the exact landmark she was thinking of. Men began to run, but she saw the cavalry that were trying to flee were simply getting cut down in even lager numbers. They had left a few of the quadrupeds burning, but the remaining war machines were sitting still and swiveling their stunty, stubby little bodies back and forth, back and forth, back and forth – and with each little rotation, they spat bullets and heat.

Mina focused. Lupines!?

The first of the wolves finally emerged from the ground – it had been less than a minute, but in a battlefield, that was an eternity. And thanks to her, they emerged to the east of the city of Dresden. They emerged among the quadrupeds. Their massive paws and their jaws alike did remarkably little to the war machines, as the sunlight was sapping their supernatural strength, but it was still enough to end the stream of bullets and heat rays that were chasing the surviving cavalry away. Mina thought to them again – ordering them back down before the quadrupeds could turn their weaponry upon them.

The wolves dove back into the ground.

Meanwhile, the last of the tripods was stumbling and falling under concentrated artillery bombardment.

The timing was wrong, though.

They’d need to wait five minutes for noon.

Mina shook her head – laughing giddily at this. Of course, things going too fast, going too well, might end up being just as disastrous for her side as things going too poorly. But for the moment, she instead kept her eyes on the quadrupeds. They advanced around the flank of the wall, planning to come in to support their tripod comrades. Instead, they emerged out to find that the field had a diagonal slash of heavy machine gunners, who had sprinted forward and thrown themselves flat, then set up their weaponry in the scant few moments that the wolves had bought.

Cavalry carbines and pistols and sabers were one thing.

Machine guns, firing rounds each as big as Mina’s pinkie, were an entirely different story.

The first rank of the quadrupeds did not so much stop as they stumbled, their hulls crumpling as bullet holes punched their way along their thin armor. Several exploded as internal components were touched off by the hateful fire poured upon them. Some turned back – but the bullets ripped through them from the rear as easily as they had from the front. The machine guns only stopped their ratta-tatta-tatta after it was clear that every last one of the Martian war machines were dead.

Noon.

Mina dropped down and transformed back to her human form in the slice of time where a vampire could take a different form during the day. She brushed her hand through her brown hair, her body burning with adrenaline. Her hands shook and she focused. All vampires! To the guns we have to prepare them at once! Then, aloud, to the Frenchmen near her: “Good shooting, lads!” she winked at them, and the machine gunners all gave her huge smiles.

She could see that the men were looking around themselves, blinking, as if wondering...

Is this ... true?

Is this what victory tastes like?

The vampires that could transform had. The artillerymen vampires had already begun to explore the interior of the Martian facility and had found the best places to seat the guns – the other vampires had transformed into large beasts with hands – the hands were the vital part. A hideous collection of over sized gorillas and inhuman creatures that looked as if they had been dredged from some nightmare zoologist textbook came loping across the field, carrying with them artillery and ammunition. The only vampires who weren’t taking part was Mina, Jenny, and Lucy – Lucy having taken the form of a bat, who was looping around overhead. Jenny had binoculars she had taken from General Schlieffen, and she was looking out towards the sea, her head scanning back and forth.