Down to the Sea (29 page)

“I volunteered the moment it was discussed,” Richard replied evenly.

“I know. I know the whole routine about honor, duty.” He paused, his hand absently rubbing the empty sleeve.

“Frankly, I’d prefer if you stayed with Bullfinch. There’s a place with his staff if you want it.”

Richard smiled. “I’m the one most qualified to scout.”

“Just because you saw their ships once, at night, and flew one of their airships. I don’t see those as deciding factors for who flies scouting missions. To be blunt, I don’t want to lose you. I’ll need men like you. Second, well, there is the political issue.”

“You mean getting rid of me might be read by some as a message?”

Andrew shook his head. “Damn, I never wanted to get into politics. Being a colonel was straightforward. Even commanding an army in a losing war was easier.”

He turned away and started to pace.

Rumors of what was happening had finally broke. Yet again a senator with a mouth too big and a few too many drinks had spilled the news to some friends in a tavern. From there it had exploded across the city that the mobilization for maneuvers was actually a front for war with the Bantags and that Hawthorne was already leading a punitive expedition into their territory.

Once that news broke, another senator, figuring everything was out in the open, had told the rest to some of his in-laws who had major interests in the market, and thus would profit immensely if a new naval appropriations bill was run through. The insiders made their buys the following morning, then quietly let the other shoe fall. By noon the issue was finally raised by a Chin congresswoman on the House floor, and by dusk it was a firestorm, fluctuating between war hysteria, terrified panic, and renewed rumors of secession.

“We couldn’t have kept it quiet much longer anyhow. What we were doing to the three armored cruisers and five frigates was already drawing notice. I had hoped to keep a lid on it, though, until we had something absolutely positive. Some will whine that I provoked this war as a means of reunifying the country. A lot of questions will be asked tonight at the joint session about why the
Gettysburg
was beyond the treaty limits.”

Standing by the windowsill, he lightly tapped his clenched fist against the frame while looking down on the crowds milling about in the square. A few protesters had shown up earlier, claiming that the entire crisis was a hoax, one sign proclaiming C
ROMWELL, TRAITOR BEFORE, TRAITOR AGAIN
! An angry crowd of sailors on leave had set upon them, and it had taken half the constabulary force of the city to quell the disturbance.

Several people on the plaza, recognizing Andrew in the window, began to shout, and he drew back, shaking his head and pulling the curtains shut.

“I wonder how many days Lincoln had like this,” he sighed. He fixed his attention back on Richard, as if the commander had just suddenly materialized in the room.

“Yes, Mr. Cromwell. Please consider what I just said.”

“I think it would be best all the way around, sir, if I followed through on what I volunteered for.”

“A statement, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. I know what it means to you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Andrew took his head. “Son, I think in a month’s time this Republic will be in the most desperate struggle it has yet faced. This foe, unlike the old Hordes, is far more insidious, far more seductive, and thus far more treacherous. The Hordes, no matter how hateful their practices, were warriors of honor in their own right. Jurak added a new element, though still honorable in his attempt to split us politically. The message of this Hazin, however, will appeal to far too many. But beneath it, there is a cruelty unimagined.”

“Yes, sir. I knew that from the beginning. I only wish O’Donald had seen it as well before he was trapped.”

Andrew nodded sadly. “Stay alive, Cromwell. This might drag out for years, and I’ll need you.” Andrew let go of his hand.

Saluting, Richard left the room, briefcase clutched tightly in his hand.

Andrew, watching him leave, could only shake his head in weariness and then returned to the preparation of his speech before Congress, asking for a full mobilization to war.

“Did you see the copy of the president’s speech last night?” Flight Lieutenant Adam Rosovich asked, looking over at the chief engineer from Republic Aerosteamer Company.

Theodor nodded. “Hard to see how anyone could argue against it. Hell, he laid it out clearly enough. These Kazan are insane, and they are coming this way. We have to fight.”

A sharp, steady breeze whipped the two as they walked across the plank deck as the armored cruiser
Shiloh
came up to full speed. This was its first test run. Men scrambled around the two. An engineer came up to Theodor and pointed to the single smokestack, which had been shifted from center line to the starboard side.

“That thing is leaking like a sieve. The fittings below deck are a mess, sir,” he shouted.

Theodor smiled and simply nodded. “We can fix it later. The purpose now is to see if this damned idea really works. Then we turn around and head back to Suzdal.”

The engineer shook his head wearily and walked away, shouting oaths at several crew members who had stopped to gawk at the spectacle that was about to take place.

Adam approached his airship, a brand-new single engine Falcon. The engine was already ticking over, propeller a slow-moving blur. The crew chief, in the cockpit, scrambled out as Adam approached, and saluted.

“Everything ready, sir. Engine temperature at two hundred and forty, I’ve revved her up to twelve hundred, all controls checked. Just remember, sir, she’s got no ammunition on board and only ten gallons of fuel, so she’ll settle in real light.”

Adam smiled, nodding his thanks. His chief, an old Roum aristocrat who had joined the air corps because he was fascinated with aviation, was obviously delighted that his young pilot had been selected for this first experimental flight.

“Just bring her in nice and steady now, sir,” Quintus continued, a bit nervous. “Remember that you’re trailing that ugly-looking hook. Just let it catch.”

“Quintus, leave the boy alone. He’s already practiced this on land half a dozen times,” Theodor shouted, his own tension ready to explode.

The two fell into an argument, Quintus though a sergeant, still maintained a certain bearing of nobility and refused to be disciplined by anyone, even the chief designer for the Republic’s entire air fleet.

Adam ignored the two, gave his machine a quick walk around, and then climbed up into the cab positioned just forward of the propeller.

The Falcon, the latest model to come out of the Republic’s design shop, had a curious twin boom fuselage that swept to either side of the prop, with rudder and elevators aft. Its bi-wings were sleek, canted back at a ten degree angle, missing the tangle of support wires, which had been replaced by single vertical support booms out near each wing tip.

Adam pulled down his goggles, slipped his feet up against the rudder pedals, and looked down at Quintus, who broke off from the argument in mid-sentence and gave a thumbs-up. Adam swung the rudder back and forth, then checked the elevator control by pulling the stick back and then forward. and finally the ailerons.

He revved up the throttle, watching the temperature gauge, which dropped slightly then held steady. The new revolutions per minute gauge ticked up over a thousand. It felt like the machine was about to surge forward with a jolt. The only thing holding it in place were the wheel clocks and tie-downs.

He edged the engine back down and gave a thumbs-up in reply.

The launch crew, urged on by Quintus, scrambled around the plane, freed the wheels, and released the tie-down straps. With two men holding each wingtip, Adam gingerly edged the throttle back up, slowly letting the plane roll forward.

He caught a glimpse of Theodor holding both hands over his head, clenching them together in a victory salute, and then he focused his attention forward.

Shiloh
was up to full speed at fifteen knots. Over the last week a crew of half a thousand men had hurriedly covered over the entire topdeck with wooden planking, while shifting the exhaust stack to one side, then built a small wooden bridge forward of the stack. It was, without a doubt, the strangest ship Adam had ever seen, designed for one purpose only, to carry and launch aerosteamers, not just two as were now carried on the armored cruisers for scouting purposes, but twenty Falcons and two-engined Goliaths.

The President had cut through all the years of debate with a direct order: convert the three armored cruisers to aerosteamer carriers and have them ready to fight within a fortnight. His argument was straightforward and simple. If the report about the Kazan battle cruisers was true, the armored cruisers of the Republic were obsolete and to continue building them was a waste. Besides, the change over to a plank decking on the hulls was far simpler than the two months of fitting out that would be required to install the guns and other equipment for the three cruisers.

Admiral Petronius, who was slated to command the new flotilla of cruisers, had resigned in protest, but his resignation was refused by the president, who ordered him to take command regardless of his personal feelings. Adam looked up at the bridge and saw Petronius’s baleful gaze, and he wondered if the admiral was praying to his pagan gods for him to crash on takeoff.

Just forward of the small wooden control tower the launch crew stopped and at Quintus’s command stepped back. Adam looked down at Quintus, who was gazing at the ship commander’s bridge. He wasn’t really sure what to do next and decided it was best to salute. The admiral returned the salute.

Adam settled back in his seat and slammed the throttle forward. The engine seemed to hesitate for a second, RPMs suddenly began to climb and the Falcon ever so slowly began to roll forward. With only a hundred and fifty feet of deck, the takeoff distance seemed impossibly short.

There had been talk of putting steam catapults forward, but there simply wasn’t enough time to rig them up. The engineering crew would have to work on the conversion after the ship had sailed. Adam wondered if all the mad haste was going to cost him his life in the next ten seconds.

The Falcon continued to build speed. The edge of the launch deck was only feet ahead as he pulled back on the elevator…and nothing happened.

Once over the edge, the rumbling of the wheels on the rough wooden deck stopped. In the strange silence, the aerosteamer began to fall. Instantly he reversed controls, pushing the stick forward. He had forty feet to drop, the cruiser had been moving at fifteen knots, the wind had been light but steady at just under five knots. All he needed was another fifteen knots to hit minimum flight speed.

He waited to the very last second as the Falcon drove toward the water. He pulled back and it leveled out, wings holding him aloft; so close that the wheels actually skimmed the water. Heart pounding, he lifted up half a dozen feet and let her build up speed.

He flew on straight for half a mile, letting his speed build up to sixty knots, then eased back on the stick. Putting in a touch of airelon, he brought the Falcon slowly upward in a banking turn. Looking over his left shoulder, he could see the cruiser and the antlike figures scrambling on the deck.

He laughed with childlike delight. If ever he’d felt totally alive, this was the moment. Being the first to try this mad scheme, to be soaring alone into the heavens, the world drifting away beneath his wings.

Climbing through a one hundred eighty degree turn, he leveled out, setting altitude at three hundred feet. In less than a minute the
Shiloh
was off his port wing a half mile away.

Ungainly and strange as it looked, to him the carrier was a beautiful sight. Such a vessel had been discussed in advanced design school, but never had anyone attempted to make one. Admiral Bullfinch and so many others on the Design Board had firmly blocked it, claiming it was a total waste of effort. Aerosteamers were scout planes, and all that was needed was one or two float planes on a cruiser.

Well, all that debate was gone forever, and he was ecstatic to be the one to prove it. If he’d crashed, the scheme would have been canceled, and Petronius would have gotten his old tub back.

Adam grinned, not today, dear sir, not today.

A mile aft of the
Shiloh
he began his slow banking turn. Nothing fancy, though he knew he could put the Falcon up on its wing and still maintain control. The Falcon was the first aerosteamer ever to be rolled and looped, at least deliberately, and still hold together, but for today, it was slow, gentle, and steady flying.

He came out of his turn at two hundred feet and lined up straight on the landing deck. He felt a momentary ripple of fear. The damned thing looked so impossibly small, just three hundred fifty feet long and thirty-five wide. He was glad he was trying this first with a Falcon rather than a Goliath. With its fifty-foot wing span, a pilot would have to land off center to the port side in order to avoid clipping the bridge.

Concentrate!.. he screamed at himself. This wasn’t quite as easy as he had boasted it would be. Lining up on the fantail of the ship, he closed in. Then he watched his target slip ahead. He’d forgotten for a second that the place where he wanted to land was steadily moving forward at over twenty feet a second.

He raised his nose slightly, edged in another hundred RPMs, saw that he was coming in a bit high, and dropped the RPMs back down again. Right hand on the throttle, he gripped the control stick tightly. One of the things he liked about the new Falcon was that just before stalling there’d be a slight shudder on the stick from the airflow breaking up over the wings.

He edged the nose higher, the plane dropping as it lost flying speed. Watching from the comer of his eye, he saw the creamy wake rolling away from the ship, then the edge of the landing deck. He cut the throttle back, felt the shudder on the stick. The metal wheels hit the deck with a clattering shriek. Panic flashed through him as the nose dropped. It seemed that he was racing straight at the bridge. Then, with a snap, he was jerked to a stop. The tail hook had snagged the cables laid across the deck, which were weighted down with sandbags.