Hope Renewed (70 page)
Authors: S.M. Stirling,David Drake
John unlocked the doors. “No, I don’t, sir,” he said. “Therefore—”
Even with the sound of the bombardment in their ears, a few of the embassy staff paused to gawk. Within the dim barnlike space of the shed was a large biplane; each lower wing bore two engines back to back, with props at the leading and trailing edge. The body of the craft was a smooth oval of stressed plywood, broken by circular windows; the cockpit was separate, with only a windscreen ahead of it. Two air-cooled machine guns were mounted on a scarf ring in the center of the fuselage, where the upper wing merged with it. Bearing the planes weight were two long floats, like decked-over canoes.
“Fueled and ready to go,” John said. “Prototype—the navy’s ordering a dozen. Jeff! Get some hands on the props!”
Bright sunlight made him blink as the big sliding doors were thrown back. The body of the airplane began to quiver as men spun the props and the engines coughed into life in puffs of blue smoke. He looked back into the body of the aircraft; Jeff’s Unionaise bodyguard was stepping up into the firing rest beneath the machine guns. His foster-brother slid into the other seat in front of the controls, while Smith showed frightened embassy staff how to snap their seatbelts shut as they took their places along either side of the big biplane.
“Good thinking,” Jeffrey said.
“I like gadgets,” John said. He looked ahead. “I didn’t think the Chosen could get aircraft here to support a landing, though.”
“Neither did I.” He ran his hands over the controls. “Shall I?”
“You’re the expert, Jeff.”
Jeffrey Farr had run up quite a score in the aerial fighting over the Union. It was partly innate talent, but also because Center could put an absolutely accurate gunsight in front of his eyes, one that effortlessly calculated the complex ballistics of firing from one fast-moving plane and hitting an equally elusive target.
The engines bellowed, and the biplane wallowed out onto the surface of Barclon’s harbor. The sun was behind them, still low in the east, but the wind was coming directly down the Gut; the corsairs’ wind, they’d called it in the old days. Right now it meant charging straight into the line of muzzle flashes from the heavy guns of the Land fleet. One landed not three hundred yards away; the undershot produced a momentary tower of white water and black mud, and a wave that rocked the seaplane on its floats.
“Time’s a-wasting,” Jeffrey said, and opened the throttles.
The line of gray-painted warships grew with terrifying speed, closer and closer.
Nice spacing,
Jeffrey thought absently.
Dad would approve.
It wasn’t easy to get warships moving so precisely and keeping such good station in the midst of action. He supposed this
was
action, although he couldn’t see much in the way of shooting back—just an occasional burst from a field-gun shell, militia firing from the harbor mouth streets.
The floatplane skipped across the slight harbor swell, throwing roostertails of spray from the prows of the floats. It was odd and a little unsettling to taxi in a plane that was horizontal and not down at the rear where the tail wheel rested. The craft felt a little sluggish; probably loaded to capacity with all these people, and the fuel tanks were full, too. But it
was
feeling lighter, the salt spray on his lips less as the floats began to flick across the surface of the waves rather than resting fully in the water. The controls bucked a little in his hands, and he drew back on the yoke.
Bounce. Bounce. Bounce, and
up.
He climbed slowly, not trying to avoid the Chosen ships.
Let ’em think we’re one of theirs.
There certainly weren’t any Sierran aircraft in the air today. For that matter there hadn’t been more than a couple of dozen of them to begin with, and he’d bet the Chosen had taken them all out in the first few minutes of the strike, somehow. Infiltrated a strike commando days ago and activated them at a predetermined time, at a guess.
correct. probability 87%, ±5.
The sheer numbers of ships behind the gunline was stunning, and their upperworks were all gray-black with troops.
“Must be a hundred thousand of them,” he said. “That’s a big gamble; over fifteen percent of their total strength.”
John had worries more immediate than strategy. “Fighter coming down to look us over,” he shouted back over the thundering roar of the airsteam.
The biplane swooping towards them had the rounded cowling of a von Nelsing, but the wings looked a little different, plywood covered and with teardrop-section struts instead of the old bracing wires and angle-iron.
“How fast is this thing?” he asked.
one hundred fourteen miles an hour in level flight at three thousand feet,
Center said.
the latest mark of von nelsing pursuit plane has a maximum speed of one hundred forty miles an hour.
“Thank you so much,” Jeffrey said.
No chance of outrunning it. He looked down; they were over the tail end of the Chosen fleet, the last straggle of commandeered trawlers rigged for minesweeping or laying, and a screen of four-stacker destroyers. Ahead he could just make out a line of dirigibles, keeping watch up the Gut. Another thirty miles or so and he’d be in sight of the Isle of Trois, the big island that filled most of the eastern end of the narrow sea.
“How long do you think it’ll take—”
“For the pilot to twig that we aren’t Land Air Service?” John said. “About three minutes.”
Land pilots were all Chosen, trained to use their initiative. Not much doubt about what this one would chose to do.
“You tell Henri,” Jeffrey said. “We’d better be quick about this.”
He pushed the stick forward, putting the big plane on a downward slope. Its weight made it faster thus, and reducing the dimensions the nimble enemy fighter could use also improved the situation. The higher buzz of the von Nelsing’s engine grew stronger. He could almost hear the
chick-chack
sound as the pilot armed the twin machine guns in the nose.
The water came closer, until he could see the thick white lines along the tops of the waves, running west to east as they almost always did in the Gut this time of year. The wind was more variable here, gusting and falling away. His hands were busy on stick and rudder pedals, keeping the big aircraft level. In the rearview mirror the machine-gun position was empty, with the guns pointing backward as if locked in their rest positions.
John came back. “He’s ready,” he said. Reaching down the side of the cockpit, he came up with a pump-action shotgun and held it across his lap. “Whenever you signal.”
Jeffrey wished he could spit to clear the gummy texture out of his mouth. This was like trying to fight while stuck neck-deep down a whale’s blowhole. The fighter crept up from behind them, a hundred feet or so above. He could see the goggled face craning and bending to get a glimpse of them, and waved cheerfully up at him.
Or her.
Who knew, that might even be Gerta Hosten. . . .
probability 3%, ±1,
Center said.
Shut up.
The aircraft grew closer. The Chosen pilot waggled his wings and pointed backward with an exaggerated gesture; he was getting impatient. So—
“Now!”
He banked the plane sideways, towards the enemy. The Chosen pilot acted the way pilots did, on instinct, pulling up sharply for height. Henri erupted out of the open gun mount, slamming the guns up to their maximum ninety degrees. For a moment the bigger biplane seemed joined to the fighter above it by twin bars of tracer, then the von Nelsing staggered in the air and peeled away trailing smoke. John stood in the open cockpit, shielding his eyes with one hand and grabbing at the edge of the cowling to brace the blocky strength of his upper torso against the savage pull of the slipstream.
“Pilot’s dead or unconscious,” he said aloud as he dropped back. Seconds later the fighter plowed into the surface of the water at full diving speed and a seventy-degree angle. It disintegrated, the engine continuing its plunge towards the shallow bottom of the Gut and the fuselage and wings scattering in fragments of wood, some burning.
Henri shouted in triumph, and the passengers cheered. John continued to crane his head backward and around. “Hope nobody saw that,” he said.
Jeffrey nodded. “By the way, brother of mine, where the hell are we headed?”
“I’ve got a couple of trawlers spotted up the Gut with fuel under the hatches,” John said. “All just in case. If they’re not there, there’s an inflatable dinghy in the baggage compartment.”
“And if that doesn’t work, we’ll swim,” Jeffrey said, flying one-handed while he felt in the pockets of his tunic for his cigarettes.
“No, actually, I’ve got a motor launch hidden in a cove on the east coast of Trois,” John said seriously.
Jeffrey laughed. “And a slingshot in your underwear,” he said. More soberly: “I hate like hell being cut off like this. What’s going on, and who’s doing what?”
“I suspect the Chosen are doing most of the doing right now,” John replied. “I just hope we’re not the only ones keeping our heads while all about are losing theirs.”
“If we are, they’ll blame it on us,” Jeffrey said. “I’ll bet Dad’s doing something constructive, though.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Maurice Farr stood at the head of the table in the admiral’s quarters of the
Great Republic,
pride of the Northern Fleet, and stared at the messenger.
The captains and commodores along either side looked up from their turtle soup, some of them spilling drops on their ceremonial summer-white uniforms. The overhead electrics blazed on the polished silver, the gold epaulets, the snowy linen of the tablecloth, and the starched jackets of the stewards serving the dinner. It would take news of real importance to interrupt this occasion.
“Gentlemen,” Farr said, quickly scanning the message, “Land forces have attacked the Sierra. Preliminary reports are sketchy, but it looks like they caught them completely flat-footed. Hundreds of transports escorted by squadrons of cruisers and destroyers have landed troops around Barclon in the Rio Arena estuary, and up and down the coast. Air assault troops are landing in Nueva Madrid, and the mountain passes on the northern and southern borders are under simultaneous attack.”
Another messenger came in and passed a flimsy to the admiral. He opened it and read:
Brothers Katzenjammer have flown the coop. Stop. Never again. Stop. Love, J&J.
Farr’s shoulders kept their habitual stiffness, but he sighed imperceptibly. One less thing to worry about personally . . . and the Republic was going to need both his sons in the time ahead.
A babble of conversation had broken out around the table. “Gentlemen!” Silence fell. “Gentlemen, we knew we were at war yesterday.”
When the news of Grisson’s disaster had come through.
And the politicians will blame it on him.
Two modern ships and a score of relics and converted yachts against a dozen first-rate cruisers with full support. One of the Land craft had made it back to Bassin du Sud with her pumps running overtime, and several of the others had taken damage. All things considered, it was a miracle the Southern Fleet had been able to inflict that much harm before it was destroyed.
“Now we have a large target. Silence, please.”
The tension grew thicker as Maurice Farr sat with his eyes closed, gripping the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.
“All right, gentlemen,” he said at last. One or two of the hardier had gone on eating their soup, and now paused with their spoons poised. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’m assuming that all of you have steam up”—
you’d better
went unspoken—”and we can get under way tonight.”
That raised a few brows; a night passage up the Gut would be a definite risk, even after the exercises Farr had put the Northern Fleet through after assuming command six months ago.
“Steaming at fourteen knots, that should place us”—he turned to the map behind him—”
here
by dawn tomorrow. Then . . .”
Admiral der See
Elise Eberdorf blinked at the communications technician.
“They report
what?
” she said.
“Sir, the entire Santander Navy Northern Fleet is steaming down the Gut towards us at flank speed, better than fifteen knots. Distance is less than forty miles.”
Eberdorf blinked again, staring blindly out the narrow armored windows of the
Grossvolk.
“Sixteen battleships, twenty-two fast protected cruisers, auxiliaries in proportion,” the man read on. “Approaching—”
That
is
the entire Northern Fleet,
she thought. Less the
Constitution,
which was downlined with a warped main drive shaft according to the latest intelligence. They were approaching through the southern strait around Trois; they must have left their base last night and made maximum speed all night, ignoring the chance of grounding or mines. Which meant . . .
She looked out at the chaos that covered the waters before Barclon. The Land’s gold sunburst on black was flying over most of the city’s higher buildings, those still standing. The fires were still burning out of control in some districts, and the forts guarding the harbor mouth were ruins full of rotting flesh. The water was speckled with half the Land’s merchant fleet and about a third of its navy, many of them working shore-support and punching out enemy bunkers for the army.
Two-thirds of the Republic’s navy was heading this way, and the Republic had a bigger navy to start with.
Fools, she thought with cold anger. I told them that we should concentrate on building battleships.
Enough. Duty was duty; and her duty here was clear.
“Signals,” she said crisply. They had waited motionless, but she could sense the slight relief when she began to rap out orders. “To all transports in waves A and B.” Those closest to the dock. “Enemy fleet approaching. Beach yourselves upriver.”
That way the crews and troops could get off the ships, at least.
“All transports drawing less than five feet are to proceed upriver.”
Where they’d be safe from the shells of Santander battlewagons, at least. The animals still held parts of the river not far inland, but that was a lesser risk.
“Waves C through F are to make maximum speed northward.” With luck, most of them would have enough time to get under the protection of the guns of the fortresses that marked the seaward junction of the old Sierran border. Imperial forts, but adequately manned and upgunned since the conquest.
“Order to the fleet,” she said. Sixty miles . . . just time enough. “Captains to report on board the flagship, with the following exceptions. Battleships
Adelreich
and
Eisenrede
are to make all speed north and rendezvous at Corona.” Sending them out of harm’s way; the navy would need every heavy ship it had to keep control of the vital passage.
“Mine-laying vessels are to proceed to the harbor channels and dump their cargos overboard. Maximum speed; ignore spacing, just do it. End. Oh, and transmit to Naval HQ.”
“Sir.”
Her chief of staff stepped up beside her, speaking quietly into her ear. “Sir, the enemy will have seven times our weight of broadside. What do you intend to do?”
Eberdorf’s face was skull-like at the best of times, thin weathered skin lying right on the harsh bones. It looked even more like a death’s-head as she smiled.
“Do, Helmut?” she said. “We’re going to buy some time. And then we’re all going to die, I think.”
“
Watch
it!” someone said on the bridge.
Maurice Farr didn’t look around. He also didn’t flinch as the Land twin-engine swept overhead, not fifty feet above the tripod mast of the
Great Republic.
He was looking through the slide-mounted binoculars of the combat bridge as the bombs dropped. One hit squarely on A turret, the forward double twelve-inch gun mount. The ship groaned and twisted, but when the smoke cleared he could see only a star-shaped scar on the hardened surface of the thick rolled and cast armor. Behind him a voice murmured:
“A turret reports one casualty, sir.” That was to the
Great Republic’s
captain. “Turret ready for action.”
“Give me the ranges,” Farr said.
“Eleven thousand, sir. Closing.”
Farr nodded. They were slanting in towards the Land ships, like not-quite-parallel lines, but there was shoal water between the fleets, far too shallow for his heavy ships, or even for most cruisers.
“Admiral,” the captain of the
Great Republic
said, “at maximum elevation, I could be making some hits by now with my twelve-inchers.”
“As you were, Gridley,” Farr said emotionlessly.
“Yes, sir.”
Two more Land aircraft were making runs at the Santander flagship, both twin-engine models. One was carrying a torpedo clamped underneath it; the other carried more of the sixty-pound bombs. He stiffened ever so slightly; the torpedo was a real menace, and he hadn’t know that aircraft could be rigged for—
The torpedo splashed into the shallow green water. Seconds later it detonated in a huge shower of mud. The Land biplane flew through the column of spray, its engines stuttering. Just then one of the four-barrel pom-poms on the side of the central superstructure cut loose. It was loud even in comparison to the general racket of battle, and the glowing globes of the one-pound shells seemed to flick out and then float, slowing, as they approached it. That was an optical illusion. The explosion when the aircraft flew into a dozen of the little shells was very real; it vanished in a fireball from which bits of smoking debris fell seaward.
The stick of bombs from the next aircraft fell in a neat bracket over the Santander battleship, raising gouts of spray that fell back on the deck. Tentacled things floated limply on the water, or landed on the deck and lashed their barbed organic whips at the riveted steel.
Thud.
Flash.
Thud.
Flash.
The eight-inch guns of the Land cruisers on the other side of the shoal were opening up on him. He smiled thinly, observing the fall of shot. Water gouted up, just short of the leading elements of his seventeen battleships—the eighteenth, the
President Cummings
, was aground on a mudbank back half a kilometer and working frantically to it. The shell splashes were colored, green and orange and bright blue, dye injected into the bursting charges to let observers spot the point of impact. All were just a little short, although the foremost Santander battleship had probably been splashed. Another flotilla of four-stacker destroyers was darting out from behind the Land heavy ships, surging forward over the shoal water impassable to the deeper keels.
For a moment, he abstractly admired their courage. Then he spoke:
“Secondary batteries only, if you please.”
“Yes, sir. Admiral, there may be mines in the channel ahead.”
“I don’t think so; we rushed them. In any case, damn the mines, continue course ahead.”
“Yes, sir.”
The
Great Republic
had her weapons arranged as most modern warships did: two heavy turrets fore and aft, in this case twin twelve-inch rifles, and four turrets for the secondary armament, two on either side just forward and abaft the central superstructure. That meant each of the battleships could fire a broadside of four eight-inch secondaries. They bellowed, the muzzle blasts enough to rock every man on the bridge and remind them to keep their mouths open to avoid pressure-flux damage to the eardrums. Shells fell among the Land destroyers, sixty-eight at a time. Four destroyers were hit in the first salvo, disappearing in fire and black smoke and spray as the heavy armor-piercing shells tore into their fragile plate structures.
One destroyer came close enough to the
Great Republic
to begin to heel aside, the center-mounted three-tube torpedo launcher swinging on its center pivot. Every pom-pom on the battleship cut loose at it, hundreds of one-pounder shells striking from stem to stern of the destroyer’s long slender hull. So did the six five-inch quick-firers in sponson mounts along the armored side. Afterwards, Farr decided that it had probably been a pom-pom shell hitting a torpedo warhead that started the explosions, but it might have been a five-incher penetrating into a magazine. The light was blinding, but when he blinked back his sight and threw up a hand against the radiant heat there was still a crater in the water, shrinking as the liquid rushed back into the giant bubble the shock wave had created. Of the destroyer there was very little to see.
Another salvo of Land eight-inch shells went by, overhead this time.
All along the line of Santander battlewagons the main gun turrets were turning, muzzles fairly low—they were close enough now that the flat trajectories of the high-velocity rifles would strike without much elevation. Farr didn’t trust high-angle fire at long range; it was deadly when it hit, but the probabilities were low given the current state of fleet gunnery.
He smiled bleakly.
I’ve waited a long time for this,
he thought. Aloud:
“You may fire when ready, Gridley.”
Sixty-eight twelve-inch guns spoke within two seconds of each other, a line of flame and water rippling away from the muzzle blast all along the two-mile stretch of the Santander gunline. The
Great Republic
shivered and groaned, her eighteen-thousand-ton mass twisting in protest. The massive projectiles slapped out over the furrows the propellant gasses had dug in the water, reaching the height of their trajectory as the sea flowed back.
Then they began to fall towards the Chosen, multiple tons of steel and high explosive avalanching down. When their hardened heads struck armor plate, it would flow aside like a liquid.
Heinrich Hosten looked out over the harbor of Barclon with throttled fury. The surface of the water was burning, floating gasoline and heavier oils from the sunken tankers still drifting in flaming patches. The masts of sunken freighters slanted up out of the filthy water, among the floating debris and bodies. A few hulls protruded above the surface, nose-down with the bronze propellers dripping into the filth below. Other columns of smoke showed low on the western horizon, where the Santander battleships and their consorts were heading for home. The air stank of death and burnt petroleum, with the oily reek of the latter far more unpleasant.
“At least the enemy are withdrawing,” the naval attaché said.
Heinrich swallowed bile. “Captain Gruenwald, the enemy are withdrawing because they have accomplished their mission and there are no targets left which warrant risking a capital ship. Now, get down there and see what assets we have left—if any. Or get a rifle and make yourself useful. But in either case, get out of my sight.”
“Jawohl.”
The naval officer clicked heels, did a perfect about-face, and left. Heinrich’s head turned like a gun turret to his chief of staff.
“Report?”
“We got about ninety percent of the troops and support personnel off the transports,” he said. “Half the supplies, mostly ammunition. Very little of the food”—it had been in the last convoys—”and only about one-quarter of the motor fuel. We may be able to recover a little more from tankers sunk in shallow water.”
So much for the masterpiece of my career,
Heinrich thought. An operation going absolutely according to plan, which was a minor miracle—until the Santander fleet showed up.
It could have been worse. A day earlier, and they’d have slaughtered the entire army at sea.