Not with Texan technology. Although Lehrer had been content to freeze Carolinia in the twenty-first century, for the most part, that nostalgia hadn’t extended toward weapons tech. Noam’d had plenty of time to compare specs between their weapons and those of the Texans barricading the airport. Their abilities were well matched—which, of course; Lehrer would never put Carolinia at risk by letting her military’s capabilities fall behind the rest of the world’s.
But that didn’t mean the antiwitching units hadn’t figured out some kind of cloaking tech Carolinia didn’t know about. And with no way to code his way past the antiwitching shields, Noam wouldn’t sense the enemy troops coming until it was too late.
He followed Bethany out of the barracks and down the hall to the tactical room. Lieutenant Colonel Harris was there already, alongside Major Xia, who looked very well composed for a man who must’ve been woken up not long before Noam had been.
“I strongly advise inaction,” Xia said before Noam could get a word out. “Third Battalion is already headed to First Battalion’s aid. We should hold here. We cannot afford to lose the ground we’ve gained.”
Noam glanced toward Lieutenant Colonel Harris, but the woman had no words to add. She gazed back with flat eyes and thin lips.
Fine.
“We aren’t abandoning this ground,” Noam said, tilting his chin up and looking back to Major Xia. “But we aren’t letting Texas massacrebothFirst and Third Battalions either.”
And—this might be too far; this might beexactlyone step too far. If so, Noam had to hope Calix Lehrer’s name was powerful enough to get him out of a court martial.
He wrapped his technopathy up in the nearest comm device and forced it to send an encrypted message straight to Major General García; let no one accuse him of acting in secrecy, at least.
The message pinged out into the night. Noam took in a shallow breath, one that did very little to steady his nerves.
“We’re moving on the airport,” Noam said. “Tonight. And we’ll do it using so much magic they’ll sense it all the way back in Houston.”
They approached openly, emerging from the woods to the south of the airfield to move across the wide close-cropped grass bracketing the runways. The barbed wire fence surrounding the property was meant to keep out delinquents and wildlife; it was no match for Carolinian tanks. It crumpled like jewelry wire under their tracks.
The Texans retaliated fast—they had their soldiers in some kind of loose formation by the time Noam’s boots hit tarmac, tanks rolling out from hangars and turning their turrets toward Noam’s battalion.
Noam’s blood felt like it was buzzing in his veins, his breath coming shallow and fast and this—
It was nothing like what Noam had experienced before.
Noam had trained in close quarters—fighting to stay one step ahead sparring with Lehrer, mock skirmishes drawn up in tactics class and acted out on constructed sets, Noam and Lehrer slipping through the close-grown trees of the quarantined zone in pursuit of a target. This wasn’t a riot turned violent, tear gas and ballistic shields and the constant threat of police weapons.
The sky felt too big, splayed out overhead like a black sea. They were open on all sides, visible at all angles, and even if riots and QZ missions held the threat of death, they’d been nothing likethis.
Texans up in the air traffic control towers froze their aerodrome beacons so the white light glared down in their faces. Noam squinted against the sudden glow of pain behind his eyes—and if he hadn’t been ready for it, hadn’t been waiting, the brightness might have been enough to distract him from the charge as it ignited in the chamber, the swelling heat and pressure against the metal body of the first projectile.
Noam flung his magic out andpushed.
It wasn’t delicate. It was magnetism, a great humming pulse that jammed the round in its chamber and bent the fiercely strong ferromagnetic buckypaper that constructed their tanks.
So that’s why I couldn’t detect anything on radar,Noam thought grimly. The carbon nanotubes that made up the buckypaper were highly electrically conductive; they could block microwave electromagnetic interference. Their planes were probably made of the same shit—pretty damn effective for keeping Noam’s technopathy off their computers and electrical equipment.
But the magnetism Noam had thrown against it was far more powerful than radar. All that advanced technology buckled and caved like paper crushed in a fist.
“Holy shit,” Noam heard someone mutter behind him, and any other day he might’ve found the time to be flattered.
Tonight, all he could think about was how silent Texan planes would be when they dipped down to spill their antiwitching soldiers across the grass.
Think about Ames,he told himself, extending his magic again to tear guns from their owners’ hands, knotting rifles up like ribbons.Think about Taye.
Hewantedthose antiwitching soldiers here. Because if Texas thought this was it—if they thought Carolinia was finally making its move, exposing the witchings among its units—well. They only had so many antiwitching soldiers. They couldn’t send them all. Texas would have to send a battalion to deal with Ames and Taye, a battalion for Noam and Bethany. Then they’d want to hold the rest in reserve, defending Houston and Dallas and San Antonio, dancing in anxious anticipation of Lehrer’s next move.
It was a gambit. But Noam didn’t have another choice.
Not one that left Ames and Taye alive.
Behind him the sergeants shouted orders to their units; rounds of tank fire blasted out from the front Carolinian lines. Then they stood there and watched the Texan lines bloom with smoke and asphalt and shrapnel.
Noam should tell them to hold fire. They should march in and take the Texans prisoner. They were defenseless; it was ... was capturing enemy troops any worse than slaughtering civilians?
