Down to the Sea (36 page)

“I contemplate all things possible,” Hazin said with a smile.

Yasim slowly shook his head.

“You might see differently someday. But as for the Shiv, we have several alternatives. They were simply an experiment that has proven fruitful. Now we shall unleash them upon the North. If the Republic breaks apart, which I suspect it will after the first onslaught, they can rule. Then, if we actually achieve a gate, we can push them through and see what the results are.”

“Or slaughter them all,” Yasim said quietly.

Hazin smiled. “Yes. Once they’ve served their purpose, that might be necessary. You see, there is always the prospect that the experiment will work too well, that they just might be superior. That is why I suggest what I do as to our own race.”

“My original thought, Hazin, was to kill you now, to sink the transports. Your words push me.closer to doing it.”

“Majesty, never whisper your inner thoughts too loudly.”

“Damn you.”

“We are locked in an embrace, sire. You fear me and that is wise. I need you, for never would the families of the blood accept a base-born bastard such as me as emperor. If we understand that, together we can have our arrangement.

“Believe me, sire, kill me, slaughter all the Shiv, and there will still be another such as I, and yet another behind him, or her. Always remember the old adage that it is better to have an enemy that you know beside you than an enemy that you do not know behind you.”

Yasim turned away, hands clasped behind his back, and walked to the far end of the bridge. The staff who had been gathered there respectfully withdrew through a hatchway into the cramped quarters of the weather bridge.

The scum is right, he thought. War is the eternal nature of the race, but if it continued internally, we would eventually annihilate ourselves while the humans to the north inherit the planet. If I ever breed a son, I want to hand him an empire, not a smoking ruin.

Yet will he ever rule? Will there be a Hazin standing behind his shoulder with a hidden needle of poison? If I have more than one son, will they slay one another as I’ve slain my brothers?

He looked back at Hazin, who was leaning over the railing, back turned.

This war against the Republic, I must win it swiftly, he realized. Let my cousins be in the forefront, kill off as many of them as possible, and let the others think it was for glory, promising the survivors more and yet more to drive them forward.

And then annihilate the Order once the war is won.

As Emperor Yasim of the Kazan contemplated these ideas, little did he realize that his rival, standing but forty feet away, was contemplating the exact same path.

“You did what?”

Qar Qarth Jurak flung down his cup and stood up to face the courier.

“My Qarth wishes to report that a regiment of the Yankee horse riders has been destroyed.”

“By all the Ancestors, that is not what I ordered. I said, hold them at a distance.”

“My Qar Qarth, they were within an hour’s ride of our column of yurts. It was either that or submit to slaughter. I was there. They deployed into battle order, weapons drawn, and were preparing to attack.”

“Which regiment?”

The courier, bowing, went back to his lathered mount and pulled out a flame-scorched yellow flag and handed it to Jurak.

“Third Regiment, Army of the Republic,” Jurak read. He balled the flag up and tossed it to the ground.

That was Keane’s regiment. He remembered the brass number on the boy’s collar. If the boy was dead, then the full fury of the father might very well be unleashed.

“Did you kill all of them?”

“Not yet all. Some of them gained a hilltop, but surely they are all dead by now. We could see that the only ammunition they had was what they carried on their horses. The wagons were taken. The other half of the regiment came up to support them and fell into the second trap. All of them died.”

Jurak looked around at those gathered about him. More than one was grinning with delight, a few venturing to approach the courier to slap his shoulders. One of them ceremonially offered him the gift of his knife, the traditional present for a bringer of glad tidings.

“This means we are at war,” Jurak announced.

“We were never at peace to start with,” one of the Qarths growled. “We merely waited until a new generation could be bred to avenge their fathers.”

Word of what the courier had reported was spreading like wildfire through the encampment. A shaman began a chant to the heroic dead, calling on the Ancestors to greet them with drink and the flesh of cattle, a chant not heard in the camp for over twenty years. The chant was picked up, other voices joining in. A nargas sounded, its deep brazen tone chilling, awe inspiring.

Jurak stared at the fire, kicking the glowing embers with The toe of his boot.

So it has begun, he realized. In the morning they might think differently, though. We must push hard, outrun their pursuit and gain the mountains, then pray that the ambassador of the Kazan spoke the truth, that an army will land bringing with it the weapons we need to survive.

He lowered his head. He had liked the boy. A pity he was dead. A pity for this entire damned world. He wondered what the elder Keane was actually thinking. Would he be motivated now by hate? Would he seek out his old foes, but this time slay them all? Or would it now be the other way around, that the Bantag shall join with the Kazan and slay the Republic and all who lived there?

Either way, he felt, I shall lose, and my people, the Bantag, shall lose.

“Now remember, you clear the deck and keep your nose down, let her drop. You’ve got over thirty feet to play with before leveling out. If anything goes wrong and you have time, push her to starboard. That way when you go in the drink you’ll be off to one side and not get plowed under by your ship.”

Adam Rosovich, with Theodor by his side, paced in front of the pilots and gunners gathered around him on the deck. A brisk wind was up, whipping his hair, and he turned into the breeze.

“We’ve got a good thirty-knot blow running between the ship and the wind. You shouldn’t have any problems.”

He looked around at the pilots. More than half of them were graduates of this year’s class from the academy. Most of the rest had come out a year or two ahead of him. One of them had been his senior cadet commander when he had been a first-year plebe. It felt strange to be giving advice and orders to them. The new captain’s bars pinned to his collar seemed ponderously heavy, and in a way he felt like a fraud. He had gained the rank simply because he had been available and done all this first. Granted, he would admit to himself that he was a damn good pilot. But the technical side of it had actually captivated him during his work with the Design Board, and besides, it was a hell of a lot less suicidal than the assignment he now had.

“Finally, we’re trying something different here than what you trained for on land. When you clear the aft deck for landing, if you don’t touch down and snag, we want you to give it full power and get the hell up again, then go around.”

“Full power?” one of the Goliath pilots asked incredulously. “What the hell are you talking about? You should cut throttle completely and if need be nose it in.”

“Sir,” Adam replied quietly, staring at the pilot who was five years his senior and commander of the squadron on
Perryville
.

There was a momentary pause as the pilot looked around at his comrades for support. Finally he showed a trace of a definite grin. “Yes, I’m waiting for a logical answer, Rosovich.”

“Look, O’Reilly. Let’s say you’re tenth in line coming back from the strike. We’re pushing the planes forward after they land. You miss your approach, go drifting down the deck, throttle off, nose down, but you keep missing the snag wires. Where the hell do you wind up? You plow into the next plane in line, maybe two or three of them. You chop open a fuel tank, that new benzene fuel goes spraying around, and suddenly the whole ship is on fire.

“Mr. O’Reilly, therefore, if you miss the approach, the landing officer is going to wave you off. You obey him, by God. You hit the throttle, bank to port, and get the hell out of the way.”

“All right, Adam. But another thing, that damn benzene. One bullet and it explodes. At least kerosene just bums. What the hell is the Design Board trying to do to us?”

Theodor stepped in front of Adam, ready to confront the anger that had been simmering ever since the new burners for the engines and the new fuel had been revealed.

“It’s a question of energy and weight,” Theodor said. “With benzene you get a lot more heat per pound of fuel. Weight is crucial, gentlemen. You might have to push this out to maximum range, and the benzene fuel will give you an extra fifty miles, which might make all the difference in this flight. I don’t like the risk any more than you do.”

“You’re not flying it,” someone whispered from the back of the group.

Theodor bristled, but it was Adam who stepped forward.

‘Any man here who dares to question Theodor’s bravery better step forward right now.”

No one moved.

, “You know what he did in the last war. Does anyone want to challenge that?”

There was no response.

“All right then. Everyone get ready for a go around.”

A groan went up. Theodor looked over at Adam, but said nothing.

“And remember, for the first time we’re all doing it with full loads.” He pointed at the lined-up aerosteamers. Each of them had a barrel strapped underneath filled with sand.

Actually, all the planes would be lighter than when they did it for real. The guns on the Falcons were empty, and the fuel load was just enough to take them around on the exercise. There simply wasn’t enough wind to get them off otherwise.

The group broke apart, the ten pilots who were flying headed for their aerosteamers, which were packed onto the deck. The pilots of the second group drifted off to stand along the side railing.

Adam looked up at the bridge, caught the attention of Admiral Petronius, saluted, then pointed a clenched fist forward. Petronius wearily shook his head, finally saluted back, and turned away.

Theodor laughed softly. “You know, there’s a lot of debate up on that bridge about who is actually in command on this ship.”

“I take orders from Petronius like everyone else, but when it comes to actual flight operations, I guess I’m in charge.”

“Heady job for someone barely out of the academy.”

“Wasn’t it the same in the last war? You were what, twenty?”

“Something like that.”

The lead aerosteamer, a Falcon, was rolled into position by its crew. The routine had been practiced for several days as the
Shiloh
cruised down from Suzdal to its first refueling stop at Cartha. That ancient city was fifty miles astern. The vast river, now named the Mississippi, was several miles wide. Straight ahead, Adam could make out the high ground that rose up like a bastion on the east bank—the Merki Narrows.

With the Falcon in place, the launch chief, a new position created by Theodor, and given to Quintus who had suggested the position, stood ready, holding the flapping red flag, a visual indicator of wind speed and any last-second variants.

Behind the lead Falcon the second and third machines were already revving up, running through the final check.

The launch chief waved the flag in a tight circle over his head, pointed it forward and ducked down.

As the lead pilot threw in full throttle, his support crew let go of the wingtips and ducked to either side. The Falcon lumbered down the deck and lifted off a good thirty feet before reaching the bow.

“Note it down,” Adam said, looking over at yet another new creation, the launch and landing observation mate. “Plane number one should keep his wheels down as long as possible. He pulled up too soon. He’ll argue he had the speed, but if the wind had suddenly dropped, he would have stalled and gone in.”

The second plane took off without mishap, followed by the other four Falcons of the first squadron. Now came the heart-stopping moment, the big two-engine Goliaths.

The four airships were lined up at the aft end, all of them set off center so that their port side wings extended half a dozen feet over the side of the ship, just barely giving them enough clearance to get their starboard wing past the bridge.

The first of them started up, slowly rolled down the deck, bounced, lifted a few feet, touched back down, then lifted again, and gained altitude. The other three followed without mishap, and Adam, who felt like he had been holding his breath through the entire operation, exhaled noisily.

“Time?” he asked, looking over at Theodor.

“Thirteen and a half minutes.”

Adam shook his head.

He looked aft. Once the launching had started, and the first four planes were cleared, there was enough room aft for the rear ramp to be lowered so that the planes of the second squadron could be brought up from below and prepared for launch.

As each plane cleared the ramp, launch crews struggled to swing the folded wings into place and lock them, then started up the engines, which would take nearly ten minutes to fully heat up.

Adam paced back and forth nervously, every few minutes looking over at Theodor, who was still holding his watch.

“Too long,” Adam snapped. “Damn, the lead squadron will burn an hour’s worth of fuel waiting for us.”

“I know.”

The six Falcons of the second squadron lifted off. The wind had picked up slightly, and all six were cleanly airborne by the time they reached the end of the launch deck.

Finally, the last four Goliaths came up.

“Don’t screw this up,” Theodor shouted. “You want them to follow you, you better do it right the first time.”

Adam nodded, heading to the aft ramp as his aerosteamer emerged. He squatted down, carefully examining the weapon strapped underneath. The other Goliaths were carrying sand, but he was carrying the real thing, the first live test of the new weapon.

He climbed up into the cockpit and revved the engines even as the launch crew walked the plane forward, rapidly ran through a final check of controls, looked over at Quintus, who waved his flag in a tight circle and then pointed forward.