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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 19: Kondor 262
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 78
Bricks exploded from a dorm wall concurrent with the thunder of Gatling gun fire. Kondor looked, but he could see nothing but the damage. Checking, he decided the fire had come from one direction so he ran around the next building.
Advancing downhill, banners waving, swords out, were a good thousand birds approaching at walking speed. They advanced in block formation; Kondor had anticipated that the coup plotter’s forces would come from the east toward the college. The twin Gatling guns, one on the roof of the dorm where Slade had put it, and the other in a pit dug to the east of the dorm, were ready for the enemy.
Panic subsided, and he began thinking again. It was going to be a terrible slaughter. With the rifles and pistols and even swords of the swordbirds who were the toughest around added to the Gatling guns, he would be surprised if the enemy forces made it across the four hundred yard front they were marching across. In truth, he had thought the enemy would come from slightly further northeast where a small vale would have let them get within a hundred fifty yards before they were exposed.
The Gatling gun that the coup plotters had brought was used again again from behind the troops to tear at the same dorm. Why were they shooting at a dorm? Granted, he had not seen evidence of brilliant military leadership from the Clerk Coup, but still they had to know that the dorms were not valuable targets. The Little Green Men had thought they were, but they did not have spies on the ground.
Zeke ran up alongside him, and Kondor spoke in English.
“Something is off. I don’t understand why they are just marching a thousand men, I mean birds, to their deaths.”
“We’d run out of bullets before we got more than half of them,” Zeke said. Kondor rubbed his jawline trying to think. What Zeke said was true, but really, what military commander thought trading five hundred soldiers for thirty plus a position was a good deal? Then it came to him: the kind of commander who did not care one whit about the lives of the soldiers he was expending.
He pulled out his ranging binoculars and looked at the feathered faces of the advancing soldiers. Not good marching form, but then they were marching through tall grass. Nor did they seem horribly enraged although it was hard to read a Parakeet’s face. Kondor then looked at the Gatling gun, and the soldiers near it.
The gun was pointed lower than he thought reasonable. Most of the ‘soldiers’ looked overweight or out of shape, and bedecked with awards.
He looked over at the Gatling gun to his left, and saw the gunner loading it up.
“Zeke, run! Tell him to hold fire.”
Kondor leapt off running, leaving a confounded Zeke behind him yelling ‘Captain!’ as he headed for their roof gun. He raced up stairs, knocking Parakeets aside with yelled apologies in English which they did not understand. Reaching the roof, he gasped out after tagging a mind a singing command.
“No fire. No fire.”
The Parakeets, who were swordbirds, looked befuddled, but they followed his order. The troops waited as the advancing army came closer and closer–a thousand avians bent on their death and destruction, but Kondor was betting otherwise. Fifty yards from the front line, the attackers charged screaming. And Kondor and Zeke and others shouted to ‘hold’. Petrified, the swordbirds did. The army bolted past them, and around the dorm building to hide in its shadow. Bullets from the enemy Gatling gun chased them, and killed at least a dozen in vengeance before the gun itself and the trained soldiers behind it began a hasty retreat, but as Kondor went down, he saw the much relieved swordbirds patting each other’s feathers smooth again.
Walking down, he joined Zeke and the warfare professor and some other swordbirds as they approached the thousand strong enemy army. With his psi link up, he heard them yelling.
“We surrender. We surrender. Don’t kill us.”
Reaching deep into his lungs for the sound to overwhelm the thousand shouting would-be prisoners of war, he shouted and sang, “Throw down your weapons. We will not hurt you if you do so.”
Quickly weapons were dropped, and the thousand were ushered back from the line of weapons, most of them of poor quality, and few guns at all. Kondor looked for a leader.
One bird came forth.
“I am the Leader of the Doomed.”
Kondor and the other swordbirds walked up to him, and conversed as everyone listened.
“Doomed?”
His speech was partially broken, caused by a battered and bruised beak. “We were not grateful for the change. We were in the capital and we sought to strike, to stay home. So they gathered us ‘to talk, to negotiate’ they say. Instead, they capture us, and make us ride railroad here, and give us poor weapons. Anyone who survives fighting you will be forgiven. But if we don’t fight they will use Gatling gun behind us on us.” He had neglected the part of the story where the Clerks’ Guards had beaten every one of the strikers. “We thought you would kill us all. Then they would sweep in with their Guard while you were without bullets.”
Kondor rubbed his hands together. He really did not like killing, partly because he was immortal but everyone else was not. But these Clerks were just begging for a court martial and a firing squad. Scowling, he set everyone to work.
The few that could be saved from the dozen shot by the enemy Gatling gun were sent to the infirmary. The near thousand of the mostly healthy if bruised Doomed were given food and placed under watch as guards of the University with swords, and with the more trusted and skilled swordbirds with guns as their officers. Big Boy took Doom Leader with him to the shortwave radio to have Doom Leader explain the perfidious treachery shown to him and his. Hopefully, this would be the end of the coup, but the enemy Gatling gun and officers had retreated out of sight so who knew what the next day might bring?
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #525: Character Battles. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
