December 16th, 1990
Dawn had come too early. Gavril understood why the caravan was leaving in the near-dark hours of morning. Especially given the barrage a couple of days before. There was no telling when the Zinoveks would strike next. With planes they might choose to avoid the town and take aim at other targets; further civilian targets.
He stood in the cold, giving Darya one last hug, one last hand squeeze. :Take care on the trip back,: he murmured, aware others were waiting on them.
:I should be telling you that, here,: Darya objected, before reaching into her pocket and slipping a small piece of paper into his hands.
Puzzled, Gavril opened it to find an international phone number, and a postal address.
:The phone number and post box the Argyros family has been kind enough to provide me for the duration of our stay,: Darya explained. :If you can, call Amylla. She misses you still. If you really want us to be a family again, then reach out when you can. I won't keep you two apart.:
If he didn't want a divorce, he was going to have to prove he meant it about wanting them back and that it would be different. Gavril clutched the paper tightly, and tucked it carefully in his small notebook that he carried everywhere before tucking it back in his coat pocket. :Thank you. You'll hear from me as often as I can call or write. It may not be often enough… given the circumstances, but I will try.:
:I don't expect novels,: Darya assured him. :War is… an acceptable excuse, but in the light of everything happening now, I see things differently than I did before.: Then she leaned in and kissed him far, far too briefly. :Take care of yourself.:
:You too, though I know you're better at it than I am. I'll try to call Amylla this week. I miss her, too.:
:She'll be thrilled.: Darya hesitated, then gave him a quick peck on the cheek. Before he could respond, she had turned and walked to the car.
Gavril watched her get into the vehicle, and the row of cars until they had all left the camp, and vanished down the road and out of sight. Then he turned and headed towards his first meeting of the morning, in the Amestrian corner of camp.
The Amestrian meeting tent was still mostly empty, save for Cal Fischer and coffee. Fischer looked up at Gavril with a strangely sympathetic smile. "So, were you able to woo your wife?"
It was an astute question, particularly given Gavril had made little mention of her being there to anyone, and certainly aside from the general knowledge that they were separated, had not spoken of the situation in general conversation. "I hope so."
Fischer nodded, as if it was the answer he'd expected. "I know I didn't get to see much of her, but she reminds me a little of my wife."
"How so?" Gavril asked curiously as he picked up a battered mug and poured himself some of the coffee.
"She could probably make a burlap sack look like an elegant fashion statement, for one thing." Fischer grinned over his cup. "She also gave me that sense of someone who knows her role in her world, excels at it, and is happiest when she can fulfill that role."
It was an incredibly accurate statement to precisely the core of what had made Darya happy in life, and probably a good part of what had attracted her to Gavril in the first place. She had been the perfect wife for an up-and-coming visionary politician. It was the rest of it she hadn't bargained for. "That does describe Darya.." Gavril had met Fischer's wife in Central, and spoken with her at dinner more than once. As he thought about it, he could see the similarities there. "How did you ever find the balance?" he asked Fischer.
"We almost didn't sometimes," the other man admitted. "Alyse wanted me in that nice, mostly safer desk job in Central. I was always better at this," he gestured around them, "being out in the field, using my alchemy, getting into scrapes and out of them again. She's the nice girl with the quality upbringing. I accepted the job when it was offered because it meant more time at home with her, and with our children. It took me a while to get to like it though." Then he snorted. "To be fair, most days I still don't like the paperwork part, but she does more for me than I could ever return to her in a dozen lifetimes, and it was worth it. Meeting each other's needs is a little bit compromise, and a little bit finding new options completely… and a whole lot of talking things through and seeing things from the other's perspective, which were not always my strongest skill set either. We had some rough patches. Thankfully it's been years since the last one. I'm not sure there's anything I wouldn't do to keep it from happening again."
"How do you keep duty from getting in the way?" Gavril knew himself, and he knew with what was coming it would be a long time before his time was his own to do with, but he wasn't entirely sure how much he could promise to Darya and Amylla either, even if he had the best of intentions.
"Delegate, and make the time. The duty will always be there," Fischer replied in all seriousness, "but your family won't."
A lesson he had already learned. The question now was, how well had he learned it?
Lieutenant Rothschild tried not to be nervous as he sat in the cockpit of the first new, completed All-Amestrian Aircraft, which had just successfully passed its full pre-flight check and was ready to take off for its first long-distance flight. Test flights had all been successfully conducted out over the only strip of unoccupied countryside for miles, though his maiden flight was designed to align with Amestris' announcement to the public of the first ever flight program. The planes were being advertised entirely as cargo and personnel carriers to the public. After all, there was no longer any realistic way to keep pretending that no one had noticed them, or that people had been getting in-and-out of Drachma in nearly impossible times without explanation. The people were neither completely oblivious, nor that stupid. None of the combat capabilities would be discussed, as the specifics would remain classified, but the public needed something, and it made a good distraction.
Rothschild had been the obvious choice for the maiden flight, and he was honored. His position as the most experienced pilot besides Trisha Mustang, who was already in Drachma with their other plane, had made that a reasonable choice. This new plane was an improvement on that one, in his mind, and he knew they were still working to make further modifications and updates as they fine-tuned each plane.
His cargo for this run consisted mostly of supplies—both medical and alchemical mostly—and support personnel, including a couple more Alchemists, one of which was not even a combatant, but almost entirely trained in alkahestry, so they would have another healer. The air attack on the news had made it clear they could wait no longer, either to get in the air, or to provide more support. Rothschild just hoped he'd be able to land without getting shot at. The announcement would be coming out on the news the day after he took off, though it would be announced as leaving that day, so hopefully the Drachmans would be looking in the wrong piece of sky when he got there.
If not, the plane did have low profile guns, and he had two soldiers on the plane trained to man them. With the little bit of experience they could get anyway. They were known for being good shots, and incredibly quick and accurate on the draw. That would have to do.
Two days, and they would hopefully be on the ground in Drachma. He hoped they could arrive before the Zinoveks could pull another destructive attack like the most recent one. Hang on, the cavalry's on the way.
December 17th, 1990
A combination of preparation and paranoia went a long way towards being ready for the next enemy attack. No one anticipated the Zinovek troops waiting overly long before sending their bomb-dropping planes out again for another strike. They had done serious damage before, and while most of it had been repaired, and the worst injuries treated, there had still been losses. A couple more attacks like that and they would be in serious trouble.
Cal just hoped their plans would be enough. While they had been able to minimize the damage of the surprise attack due to their training, prodigious use of restorative alchemy, and a lot of luck, he didn't want to rely on that last one to save the people they were here to protect, or themselves as he had no intention of dying in the near future.
While the first attack had come in the fog of early dawn, the second came in the evening, as soldiers rotated through their scheduled dinner periods in the Mess tents. The weather had taken a turn for the miserable, a warm-ish front bringing in with it freezing thundering storm of sleet instead of just snow. In an hour everything was icing over. His leg aching from the additional wet-cold, Cal tried to think of it as additional ammunition for his alchemy. His attempts at optimism weren't doing much for his mood, however. Neither was the rapid speed with which his dinner was cooling.
They were half-way through dinner when Molecule's voice crackled over the radio at his side, and Sara's across the table, shouting "-cule to all Liondragons, requesting backup immediately!"
Cal, and every other alchemist at the table, dropped their food and bolted for the entrance. Sara had her radio in hand and was barking a warning to the Drachman Generals more rapidly and with more instruction than Cal could have managed without having to think about it. As soon as they were outside, it was obvious where the planes were, and why Molecule was shouting. Even through the gray-frozen-sheets falling from the sky, the red-and-orange glow was evident. The entire pass was on fire, the sound of whatever explosions had set it ablaze muffled and mixed with the onerous rolling thunder of the sleet storm.
Fire that somehow the drenching sleet was not putting out. In his mind, Cal rattled through all of the possible chemical reactions the Drachmans could have used to create a fire that reacted badly to water, and he didn't like any of them, or a fuel source that would provide enough fuel that it would keep burning anyway.
Unhindered by auto-mail—or age—Rapid was ahead of Cal, and in one horrifying moment, Cal realized the younger man had dropped to his knees, a water-proof oil-pastel stick in hand. If he transmuted without knowing what it was and hit the fire with regular water—
"Don't do it!" Cal shouted, and the moment that it took for Rapid to hesitate was enough for Cal to catch up. "It's not regular fire."
Rapid's eyes widened, then he nodded, understanding Cal's caution. "Then how do we put it out?"
"Suffocate it!" Trisha Mustang shouted as she kept running right past them.
"That is what I was going to suggest," Cal commented to Rapid, who snickered. "How are you with dirt?"
"Wet as this ground is, I think I'll be okay. Besides, Whisper taught us all the standard tricks." Rapid changed his circle, then slammed his hands into the ground.
It was less than two minutes from call to action, with alchemical energy everywhere. Cal could sense Twilight and Whisper sucking the air away from the flames, which they were all able to confirm as highly chemical in nature despite Drachma's supposed lack of military alchemists. Marble and Rapid had a wall of muddy filth rolling down the hill towards the fire that was—Cal could now see—somehow moving up the highway towards them. It wasn't moving quickly, but it was definitely being pushed from behind. Molecule was doing her best to rapidly drop the air temperature around the flames until there wasn't enough air left for them to suck from.
Cal's own alchemy joined the mud-wall crew, while Live Wire kept eyes on the sky for the rest of them. Hopefully her healing skills would be unneeded.
The wall of flames flickered, lowered, surged, fought, and began to lose ground. From behind him, Cal heard the first volley of tank rounds from their own side as they sailed over his head towards the enemy. Only when something beyond the line blew up did Cal realize that the artillery was aiming at whatever was pushing the wall of fire.
The rolling wave of soggy muck finally caught up to the wall of flame, and the two collided in a spectacular smush-hiss that could be heard through the storm, and the rumbling of the ground made it easily felt, even if it was difficult to see. Smothered, oxygen yanked away, the glow lessened, and the fire faltered.
His face was going numb from wet and cold, but Cal had to get closer to see what was going on, and what was behind that wall. Aside from vehicles, he would place bets that the enemy army was advancing. If they made it the few miles up to the opening of the pass, this would turn into an entirely different war very quickly. Where are those planes? He felt the prickle on the back of his neck that always meant danger, but he could not sense where it might be coming from. Just instinct. So, he moved on instinct.
Sprinting the last dozen yards, he came to the edge of the river, jagged and rocky, just where it started to drop into the pass. Below him, the river became a roiling rage of white-plumed rapids, all the way down to the bottom of the pass and beyond. Not that he could see it now, but he had taken a very good, long look at it days ago. Pillars of sharp, broken rock jutted out at irregular intervals, and the water swirled and crashed and would toss and break anything that fell into it. The river was part of what made the pass work in their favor. It had carved the pass in the first place, eons ago, before wearing down its smaller channel after an avalanche that Cal had been told had been cleared a couple hundred years ago to make the road. The enemy couldn't spread out, and they had to be careful not to get too close to the edge. That meant that they could only move up the pass on the road, which was only four lanes…. Two tanks wide was the most that would fit at a time.
That was what Cal thought he could see through the sleet, as he peered through the falling darkness and tried to see past the fire.
A loud, rolling thunderclap overhead and a bolt of lightning that jumped in the clouds brought both a moment of visibility, and terror. There it was—the sound of plane engines. Glad he had his gloves on, Cal readied a transmutation. With the entire river below him, he could blast an aircraft out of the sky if he could get a shot.
Squinting up into the wet, he saw a shadow, like a ghost… a dragon of old… transmuting, he yanked at the raw power of the water, pulling with every bit of energy he could manage, and sent a geyser of it shooting right up into the sky, anticipating its direction and speed. Above him he heard a metal sheering squeal and the plane veered sharply. Whether he'd hit it or it had somehow partially avoided his blast he couldn't be sure, but he hoped that pilot was having a heart attack right now.
That seemed to have been the signal for everyone, or the timing was good because at that moment too-organized-to-be-natural lightning bolts began to lance from the sky, striking behind enemy lines. Despite the startling moment blindness, Cal could see now that they were right. Tanks and other well-armored military vehicles were lined up behind the flames, a row of tanks at the front rigged with what were basically gigantic snow plows, shoving the inferno in front of them.
The storm became unpredictable as Twilight and Whisper's alchemy wrought mayhem, creating small swirling vortexes that whipped up sleet-riddled tornadoes and threw them back at the enemy, and up at the planes, that Cal could still hear every so often above the racket, in rare split seconds of less noise.
Still, the whistle was his only warning before the world exploded in a brilliant burst of searing, painful heat, spinning air, and a sharp crack to the head that left him seeing spots before Cal felt himself plunge into breath-stealing ice that enfolded him, and sucked him under.
Tumbling, tossing, pain, his shoulder struck a rock, then he rolled and slammed into another, then for just a moment his head was above water and he took a ragged desperate gasp before being plunged down, and falling, pain spreading even as he went increasingly numb. Don't panic, don't breathe, hold it….gotta stop. Frantic for purchase he grabbed for any surface that wasn't slamming into his head, back, nose—searing agony and a gasp….coughing, water, blow it out, hold it…. His limbs weren't responding right anymore. His lungs ached. Needed another breath. A few more seconds…. Blackness… richocet, like a ping-pong ball, flipped, up was left, right was down, swimming went nowhere as the water pulled him inexorably down, forward, faster… Cal couldn't move, fighting was slower… eyes crammed closed he could sense nothing, and the pain began to ebb, and his last conscious thought was that at least he hadn't been shot this time.
Only because she had been looking in the right direction, aiming another blast of air at the incoming aircraft did Sara see the wisp of disturbance in the air—feel it with her alchemy—as the plane she was aiming at dropped an explosive straight down just before she managed a direct hit, spinning it off into the side of the hill, where it exploded instantly with a beautiful, violent impact.
Otherwise she would never have had a moment's recognition that it was Cal Fischer standing on that ledge, blasting at the planes with impressive focus blasts of water that carried more than a hundred feet in the air, or the pain of momentary blindness as the explosion landed between them, or had the horrifying realization as she rapidly blinked her eyes clear of seeing that the entire ledge—rocks, fire, alchemist—was a smoking ruin.
Experience held her together as part of her heart screamed and writhed with fear and sorrow. That part was crushed underneath the drive of battle. That aircraft was already down, but she wasn't about to let another one drop anything.
The radio at her hip crackled to life in something other than Drachmans barking orders at the artillery, "—as that Whitewater?" Live Wire's voice shouted—just a few decibels short of being a panicked cry—through at the rest of them.
Sara thumbed the switch. "Keep it together!" she shouted, eyes scanning the sky for any additional targets. They had downed one, and driven off two, which meant at least those two were still in the sky. "Rapid, I want you to soak that wall. You hear me?"
"Yes, Ma'am," the other water alchemist replied with a grim tone. He had to know what she knew, if they hit the rest of it with water, it was going to explode. What did it matter now? Roads could be repaired.
"Molecule, feed it. Live Wire, light them up. Marble, I want a wall thick and hard enough to insulate a giant oven now."
A chorus of Yes Ma'am, and Yes Twilight followed.
They were going to cook any of the enemy who had decided it was time to come up that pass. The artillery behind them was shooting volleys into the pass, and Sara could hear the shouting of Drachmans now. There was no way there were foot soldiers marching in this, but that didn't mean they weren't causing a panic. Sara had no idea what officer had come up with this particular plan, but she had a feeling if they weren't fried, they would be in for a really nasty meeting later.
One more order to give. "Whisper, while they're aiming low, we're going to clear the sky-road."
"I read you loud and clear," her daughter's voice came back, grim, stifling the emotions Sara knew they all were. Cal—they couldn't do anything for him right now, if at all.
Destroy the enemy first. "Bring them hell."
Despite the distance between them and the spotty visibility Sara could sense every Alchemist on the field like a brilliant beacon of energy, and it all happened at once. The fire flared, and exploded, sending debris cascading, and it didn't matter how loud the storm was because the screams behind it were louder.
Pushing together, Sara and Trisha shoved the storm front forward, sending the sleet flying almost horizontally for half a mile in either direction right back into the faces of the enemy, in the direction from which the planes had come. A focused microburst designed to knock anything still flying out of the sky.
Whether it hit anyone she didn't know, beyond a certain point they had to release the storm again—even two alchemists could control a weather system only so much—and hope it did what they had sent it off to do. All Sara did know, was she didn't hear another whir of plane engines, and not another bomb was dropped. The Drachmans, frantic, were retreating, while the Western Drachman artillery and alchemists pounded them with everything they had. It would be morning before they could see the full extent of the damage.
Night had fallen completely. It would be morning before they could even possibly hope to mount an investigative party. Sara didn't dare let herself think too much beyond that. Brutal and fierce as it had been, the fighting hadn't lasted more than an hour, though the cleanup would take all night, and they would be watching, waiting, in case the Zinoveks tried anything desperate.
Their allies could handle the rest, however. Thanks to the alchemical interference, the worst of the storm had rolled slowly past them, and the sleeting stopped. Grabbing a flashlight, Sara made her way across the icy ground towards the edge of the river, near the cliff.
The other alchemists met her there. In the darkness, even with handheld lights, she could make out only faces, grim, concerned. Live Wire looked shaken. The rest hid their fear better. Clearly however, they all had the same idea. Slowly, lights aimed at the ground, they combed an area nearly twenty yards in all directions, before coming to a very simple conclusion.
"He's not here," Marble commented as they reconvened. "Not a trace of human remains."
Live Wire blanched.
Sara nodded. "Based on where the bomb landed, and where the rock cracked, it's likely he went over the falls." Whether a living Cal had plummeted into the water, or an already dead one, made little difference at this point. Anyone falling into the river had little hope of survival. Still, if anyone did, it was the Whitewater Alchemist. If he'd gone in alive, he might have been able to transmute himself out of the mess.
"How do we mount a rescue party?" Rapid asked, eyes glinting eagerly. The younger man was clearly still wired, his adrenaline still in his system as he bounced ever so slightly on the balls of his feet. "There's no path down beside the road, is there?"
"No." Trisha shook her head. "The locals have been very clear on that point. There's no way down here except the highway, and we've just rendered it completely impassable."
"We could always make a new one," Marble suggested. "I mean, I can make us a safe path down the river side. The Drachmans probably won't even notice, and we can always remove it later."
Transmute an entire path down the mountain side. Well, Sara had heard—and done—crazier in her days. She looked around at the team, and realized the only way to talk them out of attempting to at the worst find and retrieve their comrade's body, would be a direct order; an order that she thought might be more destructive than letting them try. But they couldn't all go. "All right then. Whisper, you're the lead on this. Marble, Rapid, go with her. Make a path, and search all the way down as you go. If he's alive, he might be hanging on to a rock anywhere between here and the valley floor. Look for signs of survival—scrapes on the shoreline, uniform pieces… blood. Anything. Do not go into the enemy camp. If you don't find anything before the river widens out, report back immediately."
Trisha looked momentarily startled that Sara hadn't demanded to lead the mission herself, but seemed to understand within the moment. "We've got it," she promised, then turned and headed towards the rocks in the darkness, with the other two alchemists walking briskly behind her.
Live Wire and Molecule turned to Sara after they'd left. "What do you want us to do, Ma'am?" Molecule asked formally.
"Come with me," Sara replied. "We need to report in to Command and see if they have any additional intelligence about what it is we just put a stop to, or what they want us to do next. Then, Live Wire, I expect you'll be wanted in the infirmary."
The pale-faced red-head nodded. "Did we sustain any casualties?" she asked, looking surprised. "They didn't manage to drop any more bombs on us…except the one."
"Probably no dead, but there will be injured. By morning they'll have had to deal with making sure that fire is out and hasn't spread. We'll be keeping an eye on that as well, in case alchemists are needed. But they'll have work you can assist with, minor injuries if there aren't any major ones. Anything to keep the military running at full strength. I have a feeling we're going to need them sooner than we like. They've started pushing us, and they won't stop just because we've thrown a few tricks at them. Eventually they will learn how to counter our defenses." Sara would not place bets on them giving up. They had to keep pushing, because their leader would not accept anything else. Fear of retribution from their own government would keep the Zinoveks coming. "Let's go."
