Down to the Sea (48 page)

“Hazin!”

A Shiv lookout, up on the forward deck, was pointing off to the North. They were far off, on the other side of the shoals, hardly visible in the mist kicked up by the waves driving into the rocks a mile away.

The dots bobbed and weaved, rising and falling in his vision, and he turned away, shaking.

Was it truly a foretelling? Or fantasy, a dream vision of the future that had taken him to this time and place long years ago? Or was it merely his imagination telling him it was so?

He saw O’Donald down on the deck, attention still focused on the other horizon. The first of the transports was just coming into view, the fifty ships holding the umens of the Shiv.

Hazin could see, too, see him as in the dream, and it fascinated him. Am I the master of my fate, he wondered. Or has fate cast me into this moment, this role that would change everything.

The gun in the number one turret began to lift up, steam hissing from the exhaust line. The massive thirty-foot-long barrel stopped, and Yasim half turned, covering his ears. There was a blinding flash of light, barrel recoiling, water going flat from the shock wave.

He raised his glasses, training them on the burning city. Explosions were lifting up, fires spreading. Another explosion blew. It was impossible to tell if it was from his ship; at the range of nearly two leagues it was impossible to track where a shell might land. Closer in to shore the cruisers and frigates were attempting to slam aimed shots into the fortifications on the heights beyond the city. Aft, the number four gun now fired, again the shock wave.

For a human city it was actually rather impressive. On one of the hills in the center of the city was a great golden domed building. Yasim had overheard one of the gunnery officers discussing the rivalry between the gunners in the three turrets as to who would hit it first. The fourth turret, damaged by the suicidal pilot, was still out of action. Water was still leaking in from dozens of buckled plates below the waterline, and all pumps were working hard to keep ahead while the chief engineer directed repairs. He had requested that the flagship cease firing, as the vibration of the great guns firing was making the situation difficult to control, but Yasim would not hear of it. Honor demanded that his ship participate in the initial bombardment. At least the fact that the bombardment required slow cruising had helped, the ship barely moved at a league and a half in an hour as it hovered off its target and pounded the city to rubble.

The sun was low on the horizon, illuminating the clouds of smoke from the gunfire and from the burning city, a beautiful sight, worthy of a hada, a seven-line poem of alternating five and seven words.

He tried to compose one even as he watched the billowing explosions, the first spreading across the city, a secondary explosion in what one of the gunnery officers described as most likely the Republic’s main shipyard.

It was a glorious, beautiful sight—and yet he felt that something was not correct, not in place.

Was it Hazin?

There had to be a reason why, always the game within the game, like the toy he had had as a child; a golden ball that when opened revealed another within, and then another within that, and then yet another.

He had ordered his chamberlain to go through the ship’s roster yet again, to have his chief protector question yet again any who might be suspect, who might be of the Order and concealed in the ranks. Yet they had found nothing.

Something was wrong, marring this moment, and then another explosion caught his attention, a cheer rippling along the deck. The golden dome had been hit, disappearing in a shower of flame and smoke, which glowed in the late afternoon light.

Then the alarm sounded.

Adam leveled out, pulled up his goggles to wipe the sweat from his eyes, wiped his hand on his pants leg, then gripped the stick again.

It was stunning. The city had been their beacon for fifty miles, smoke and flames as they flew a circular approach far behind the fleet, swinging around to the west before coming down to wave-top level and then flying straight in for twenty miles.

“Low, sun at your backs and in their eyes,” Petronius had said. “The bastards will all be looking the other way, focused on the burning city, enjoying themselves, figuring the battle is won.”

Petronius was right. The seven battleships were lying four miles off the coast, the frigates and cruisers lined farther in, with only two frigates several miles out on picket to the west of the battleships.

In the lead, Adam led his flight of eight Goliaths wide of the frigates, and not a shot was fired until he was abeam the second ship. A few shells detonated, and then they were past, the battleships four miles ahead.

It was another mile in before he sensed that the Kazan were finally reacting. The battleships were moving slowly, guns firing, and then finally the last ship in line began to turn off the firing line to starboard, heading south, trying to run straight out into the open sea. Perfect, for it set them abeam, the widest target possible.

The second ship in line began to turn as well, still lumbering along. Adam grinned. Petronius had predicted that as well. Ships of that size would take ten, fifteen minutes to build up to battle speed, and by then it would be over.

He raised his glasses, scanned the first ship, then the second and the third, which was continuing straight on course. The fourth ship in line. That was it, the red banner.

He looked to left and right. The other Goliaths were roughly in position to either side.

He finally caught the eye of the pilot off to starboard. He.pointed at the battleships, held up four fingers, and then pointed forward. The pilot nodded. He tried to get the attention of the man to port, but he was completely focused on the spectacle ahead.

He started to bank out, moving to swing beyond the range of the guns of the last battleship in line. It would add several dangerous minutes to the flight, but the emperor’s ship was the one he wanted.

The first battleship was directly abeam, a mile and a half to port and still turning. One of the Goliaths on his port side banked up and started to turn in on the ship.

“No damn it, no!”

There was no way he could reach him. If he tried to turn to catch him, the others would follow and assume they were going in.

He flew on, cursing even more when a second Goliath rolled out to attack. Several of the Falcons flying above them broke to follow the two planes.

Adam looked back to his right and saw the groups from
Wilderness
and
Perryville
off to his left, a mile or two farther back, spreading out slightly, focusing on the first two battleships.

Far off to his left, close in to the burning city, the cruisers were breaking out of the firing formation, beginning to speed up.

Finally the shooting started, breaking the tension. Every gun on the aft battleship seemed to go into action, medium-caliber weapons letting loose. Seconds later an explosion ripped the sky directly ahead, several hundred yards off, fragments slashing the water.

The agonizing seconds dragged out; the third ship was abeam, beginning to fire as well, and then a half mile farther on and a mile off his port side was the target. A minute and a half he realized, a minute and a half and either its sinking or I’m dead, or perhaps both.

He lightly touched the release lever. He was tempted to pull the safety pin out, but decided against it, fearful that something might go wrong. He forced himself to continue on, watching the ship, gauging its speed, trying to calculate where it would be in another minute.

It was beginning to turn, swinging like the other ships, southward.

He looked back at the pilots to starboard; they were still with him. He raised a clenched fist, held it aloft, then jerked it down even as he kicked in the rudder and pushed the stick over.

The move was a little too aggressive with the half ton weight slung underneath, inertia wanting to push the plane along the path it had been following. Wings straining, he began losing altitude, dropping down to less than twenty feet. Leveling out, he felt he was off, aiming too far astern, and pulled the stick back slightly, gaining a few precious feet. He slipped in a touch of rudder, correcting the approach, and then everything broke loose.

Gatlings opened up from the deck of the battleship. The rounds fell short by several hundred yards as they arced up high and plunged down, but they appeared before him like a visible wall that he would have to fly through.

Amazingly the Falcons, which had been there to provide top cover if any Kazan aerosteamers were about, went in as well, going up to full throttle to move ahead of him. He wondered if they should have been ordered to carry a light load of bombs as well, but it was too late now for that. The first one went through the curtain of fire and seconds later was in the sea, wings snapped off, a second Falcon going down a hundred yards farther on.

Their actions brought him precious seconds of time, diverting fire from the slower attack planes. He spared a quick glance to starboard again; his remaining three Goliaths were still with him.

Looking to his left, he saw chaos. The aerosteamers from
Wilderness
and
Perryville
were boring in on the two battleships astern. Smoke was coiling up from a dozen or more wrecks dotting the sea, while tracers slashed back and forth. The lead Falcon was already over the battleship, soaring past it, his gun still firing.

A jolt snapped his attention forward. Another jolt came as a tracer slashed past his windscreen. A stream of tracers from a gun aft was snaking around, following him. Yet another jolt, and the sound of glass shattering. He was glad he didn’t have a copilot, because the man would have been dead.

Range was half a mile.

An explosion. To his right, the Goliath on his wing was gone.

He focused forward.

Water sprayed up, slashing through the broken window. His ship dropped, as if the spray from the explosions would push him down into the sea. He surged back up, over correcting, losing speed. Pushing throttles to the wall, he nosed over and leveled out, then another jolt shredded the wing just inside from the port engine.

Six hundred yards.

Another round hit the forward windscreen, more glass shattering. Something tore at his right arm.

He reached down, wrapping his hand around the release lever.

More spray, tracers crisscrossing. A Falcon flew directly across his path, nearly colliding.

Four hundred yards.

He touched the rudder in, leaning into the sight, judging the angle. He pulled the lever.

Nothing happened.

He pulled again. And still nothing. The damn safety pin!

Fumbling, he reached around to the side of the lever, found the pin, and yanked it out.

Another jolt. He looked up and realized that he was off alignment, turning out and away. He jammed the rudder back in, realizing he was crabbing, that the torpedo would strike the water at an angle, and not nose straight in. If it didn’t break up, the fuse might not arm.

Stick over, coordinate with rudder, straighten back out.

Three hundred yards.

He grabbed the lever and pulled.

His airship surged up. Now what?

Bank to port, starboard. He had never thought to discuss it, to plan it, he might pull across right in front of someone else. He pointed straight at the enemy ship and pressed in. The seconds passed, fire crisscrossing. He pulled up, skimming over the deck, too terrified to look to either side. Cleared of the ship, he nosed down slightly and raced out for several hundred yards without a shot being fired, then finally several of the guns on the enemy’s port side opened up, tracers splashing the water around him.

He started to jink, still running low across the water. A half mile out he finally began to turn, for the enemy cruisers in close to shore had all come about and were speeding toward the beleaguered battleships.

As he turned, he finally looked back toward his target. The torpedo should have crossed the three hundred yards. A lone Goliath was zooming over the stern, a Falcon directly above it.

And then the bow of the ship seemed to lift, a massive column of water, several hundred feet high, a blinding flash sweeping over the deck, seconds later another explosion farther aft. As he continued to climb, he saw both battleships, sterns blazing, the farthest aft with its bow blown clear off, the ship already settling.

It had worked! By all the saints, it had worked. Now the only question left was how to get his crate home.

Yasim stood in stunned silence. Damage control parties raced past him without ceremony, dragging hoses. Flames swirled up from the foredeck, the ship all but dead in the water.

A thunderclap of fire burst across the western horizon, the battleship Yutana going up. Behind it, Motaka had rolled over, keel pointed heavenward.

“Sire.”

He stirred from his thoughts and dark contemplations. It was Admiral Ullani.

“Sire, I suggest that you transfer your flag.”

Yasim nodded, saying nothing.

“Sire, we can save this ship, but come dawn they might strike again. It would be best if you were on a vessel that can maneuver.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

He looked back to the burning city. All this to achieve what? He wondered. This contemptible place, for what?

It was time to turn about, to find Hazin, to find out the real reasons for all of this, and then to kill him.

Minutes later a cruiser slowed, lines snaking out to the stricken flagship, swinging in close so that a chair could be run across to bring the emperor over.

Word had flashed through the ship that the emperor was leaving, from his third bodyguard, to a message runner, straight to an ammunition handler in the main magazine.

Twenty years prior he had taken the Oath of the Novitiate of the Third Order, had taken his assigned task and lived it across all the years, in a dozen battles, two hundred feet aft of Yasim and forty feet below him. He had even received, from Yasim’s own hand, a commendation for heroism at Tushiva. And all that time he had waited, never knowing when the order would come or how it would come. It had arrived only the night before and only if the ship had already been hit seriously, otherwise he was to do nothing.