Airship Nation (Darkworld Chronicles Book 2)

by Tom DeMarco

  Kelly meanwhile was making some improvements of her own. “Everything is a symbol,” she said; making the symbols clear and effective was as important as keeping weapons functional. So as each new war pavilion was completed, she would add her own creation, the flag. The flag she had designed was a wide white stripe down the length of a field of gold. The gold-and-white banners flew jauntily from the sterns of the moored airships over the heights. The sound of their flapping gave a festive air to the place, like a marina in summer.

  She said the pavilions had to have heroic names, not the numbers that Loren and Pease were thinking of. “Who could put her life on the line for the glory of 52?” So Mr. Pease had begun giving names to the pavilions. He named them after the ships that had formed Nelson’s line at Trafalgar: Ajax, Conqueror, Revenge, Defiance, Dreadnought, Leviathan, Bellerophon, Swiftsure, and Téméraire. Van Hooten’s flagship was called Victory.

  After considerable soul searching, Proctor Pinkham had named Van Hooten fleet commander instead of Loren. It had come as a great relief to Loren. Van Hooten, after all, had been a Dutch navy captain and after that captain of a commercial liner. Van had then done Loren the honor of asking him to be Victory’s captain. In private, he had made it known that at the moment of engagement, he and Loren would switch roles, with Van Hooten running Victory while Loren ran the fleet. That suited Loren fine. He lusted to be in charge of the battle, but had no interest in the day to day bother of running a navy. Van Hooten was much better suited for that.

  The diary that Stacey Hopkins was keeping was the de-facto history of the community. She had begun it the morning of their departure from Ft. Lauderdale. Each entry in the diary was headed with the number of the day, starting with Day 1 when Homer had turned on the first Persistent Effector. She never missed a single day. As the entry for Day 420 she wrote:

  Our tenth battle pavilion was launched today and christened “Téméraire.” Dean Maria Olivia Sawyer did the honors. We drank the champagne (I had some too!) and then refilled the bottle with ginger-ale to be broken over the bow. Evidently, other societies never hit on the idea of drinking the champagne first, but just wasted it in the christening. This is another example of how inventive we of Baracoa can be.

  Miss Kelly Alice Corsayer says that we are now the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. We are the only nation with airships and the only one that can shoot down laser beams to split stuff apart with a huge kabooom. I have not actually ever seen the laser beams fired, but have interviewed many for this record who were present at the Bahama Channel Battle (see entry for day 188) or at the Attack on Ft. Belvoir (see entry for Day 217).

  Ms. Keesha Elijah (née just plain Keesha) is with child. The happy mother-to-be is presently in the company of her husband, Mr. Adjouan N.M.I. Elijah, on the scouting pavilion Homeric, which is on station near Puerto Rico. They will be back here within two weeks to begin Mrs. Elijah’s confinement. Baby Elijah will be the first born citizen of our nation.

  One thing that is sad about our nation is that it has no name. I (Miss Stacey Amanda Hopkins) plan to speak to Senator Chandler Hopkins about this very matter one day soon, and to take urgent steps to rectify it. The most powerful nation on the earth ought to have a name, and it wouldn’t just be Baracoa, either, because we now have people as far away as Guantanamo and Santiago de Cuba, including Miss Stephanie Anne McCree, my second best friend, and her parents.

  There is always talk that we may be attacked by a war-like nation to the north, the United States of America. This is most disturbing to those of us who are mature enough to remember that that war-like nation was once the dear old U.S.A. that we loved. But it is also quite thrilling. Of course the children sometimes cry when they think about being attacked. That’s why we have to be most careful not to say anything that will give them nightmares. But I for one would not like to live in a nation that was not at war, because what do people talk about? We talk all the time about zapping enemy ships, and about spies that might sneak up in the night to steal our best secrets. It is thrilling. Only, sometimes I wonder if the Enemy hasn’t got too much sense ever to really attack (to really ever attack?).

  The second great sea battle began almost the same way as the first. Loren was alone in the bedroom of the Alturas command center, drowsing beside the still-warm depression in the bed where Kelly had been only a quarter of an hour ago. There was a crackle from the overhead speaker and then:

  “Hello Baracoa. This is Keesha.”

  Loren jumped up and ran naked into the control room. He grabbed the handset. “Baracoa here. This is Loren. Go ahead, Keesha.”

  “Here they come again, boss.”

  “A fleet of ships?”

  “Oh yes. A big fleet. My man Adjouan is still counting. He is guessing now, one hundred. We tracked them all night on the radar. Then we took up our position…well, you know all about that because it was your plan.”

  “…ten miles from the fleet, up about 3000 feet, near clouds?”

  “Just that. Loren, we set Effectors in three directions so we are as stable as a rock up here in the air. I still can’t believe it. Boy, you are some inventor. We set up a 60 power telescope and it doesn’t even quiver. Sometimes I have to lean over to be sure we are not sitting on a mountain top.”

  “Right. What is your position?”

  “Oh, yes. I have that right here…on a piece of paper. Mr. Tomkis is doing the navigating.” Sounds of paper. “He says we are forty four of those nautical miles southeast of the Mona Passage. They came through the Passage last night. The fleet is on a course of one-nine-zero, making better than six knots.” She pronounced the word as kuh-nots. “They are about thirty miles off shore.”

  “Tell me what you can see.”

  “They are mostly multi-hull boats, like our catamarans, only much longer. They have got cylinders of gas on the decks. The faster boats, Adjouan says, are not going full speed because there is one very large sailing ship they have to wait for. It has got square sails. Mr. Tomkis says it is a brig-an-tine. It is color white with a red diagonal stripe on the bow, more than twice as long as the other boats. A real big one.”

  Loren marked the position of the fleet on his chart as an arrow pointing just west of south. He wrote down the time next to the little arrow, 05:20.

  “Repeat your orders for me now, Keesha.”

  “We stay put and wait for the battle pavilions to arrive. The weather is clear, so we should be able to maintain visual contact for most of the day without moving. When we have light wave radio contact with our pavilions, we give the enemy’s current position. Then we sail north and east to join Captain Klipstein as reinforcement for the backup line.”

  “Yes perfect.” Loren had a terror of some disaster affecting the main body of his defense, so he was leaving a reserve force over the Windward Passage under Klipstein. “Good job. Radio silence from this moment. Out.”

  She clicked off without a final word. Loren took out a pair of dividers and walked off the distance to the contact point he had chosen due south of Santo Domingo. The Baracoa pavilions would have to tack up into the wind on a long leg over the Caicos Islands and then turn due south to approach from over the Dominican Republic. With the wind steady at 14 knots, they should cover that whole distance in about seven hours. It would take nearly twelve hours for Rupert Paule’s fleet to get there, so there need be no hurry about setting out. The last thing he wanted was to make contact early, while the enemy fleet was close enough to the coast for any of Paule’s vessels to escape to shore.

  There was a klaxon alarm mounted over the command center, audible throughout the village. But Loren elected not to sound it. By six thirty, virtually the whole community would be present at the dining hall for breakfast. He would wait till then to share the news. He would collect his tray of food first, then ring on a glass to make the announcement. Then he would sit down and calmly devour a huge breakfast. He wasn’t looking forward to the meal, but it would be worth it for its effect. He decided to
sit near Stacey so that his admirable calm would be recorded for posterity.

  Victory and her nine accompanying battle pavilions made contact with their target in the open Caribbean, more than sixty statute miles from land. They had already started jamming the radio frequencies an hour before. Loren spread out his forces in a long line upwind of the sailing craft, maintaining an altitude of one thousand feet. He picked as his first target, the white brigantine, now in the van of the invading fleet. There were going to be survivors from this battle, so it was worth something to make the psychological impact on them as great as possible. Loren directed Swiftsure and Ajax to join him in firing on the brigantine. All three loosed their laser beams together at his command. There was no possibility of missing at this distance. The vessel was made of steel, and the three bolts made a clang when they hit. It was like ringing a bell. There was just time for a second round before the white ship was gone. After that, it was just a matter of cleaning up.

  The principal memory of the Caribbean battle was how hot it was in the pavilions. Because they flew so quickly, every effort had been made to seal the interiors against the wind. The windows didn’t even open except in the living quarters aft. But during the battle, the pavilions were essentially stopped, limited by the speed of the fleet below them. Victory’s control room quickly became an oven. Loren set some of his crew to work unscrewing the casements that retained the Lucite windows. Anything to let in a little air. But the battle was finished before they got even one window open.

  It wasn’t really a battle, more like an extermination of insects, moving sluggishly to get away. Within fifteen minutes, there were only a dozen vessels left afloat. Loren found his mind wandering. He had looked forward to the engagement, but now couldn’t wait for it to be over. That there were people dying beneath him was barely evident. It was ships that were the target, not people. He was bored. What he wanted to get on with now was redesign of the pavilions with better visibility and with some outside control stations, and, of course, more ventilation. The battle was just a nuisance. Beside him, Kelly watched the whole thing without comment. The engagement was over-planned, mechanical; there was no improvement she could think to offer. She kept her glasses on the surviving craft until there were none left except for lifeboats. By that time her jumpsuit was wet with perspiration like Loren’s own and her hair was plastered against her forehead.

  The final stage of the operation was to drop inflatable rafts down from the pavilions. The battle pavilions were carrying a dozen each. Loren brought the fleet down to about thirty feet over the waves, and then went up topside to watch. Spotters with binoculars directed Captain Van toward concentrations of swimmers. They would inflate a raft and toss it over. The other pavilions were similarly engaged over their assigned sectors. By mid-afternoon all the survivors they could see had clambered aboard the rafts. Then they dropped nylon lines and began dragging long files of yellow rafts slowly toward the shore. The survivors would be safe on the beaches of San Cristóbal by midnight. Some of them, he knew, would eventually make their way back to Rupert Paule and tell what had happened, but it would take them more than a year.

  Not all the survivors were picked up. Since the brigantine Eagle had been hit first of all, and the other vessels had turned immediately to work their way up to windward toward the attackers, her survivors had been left considerably downwind. As they watched the extermination of their fleet, they had drifted further away. So when the rafts were lowered, some of the Eagle’s company had been missed. Among them was Acting Vice Admiral Willard Courtenay, recently appointed fleet commander.

  He clung to a bit of railing that was only marginally buoyant. The alternative had been a mostly empty plastic drum that floated fine but was unstable. He had struggled to stay on top of it for most of an hour before opting for the railing. Further still down to windward, Courtenay could occasionally see others of his company, bobbing on the waves. They too had missed detection by the fleet of airships, and so they were doomed just as he was. There was no hope of swimming as far as the coast, even if they could keep track of what direction they were going. They were done for. He turned the phrase over in his mind, wondering what its original meaning had been. Done for. Done for what?

  There was little sense of personal tragedy over what was about to happen. He considered his own death as he had considered the probable deaths of others under his new command: regrettable but not tragic. They were resources lost, resources that he would rather have had to apply to the mission. Only the mission had mattered. He was floating now with the other wasted resources in the open sea. In his growing distraction, he observed an odd sociological phenomenon among the bobbing swimmers: They could have struck out toward each other to have some company in their final moments, but none did. They were content to be alone at the end, each with his private thoughts.

  Courtenay’s private thoughts were briefly of his family, and then of the terrible wrath of Rupert Paule. He could see Paule’s face looking down on him from above. Rupert Paule above him, floating on the breeze, staring down. How did Paule come to be there at this moment? He should have been a thousand miles away in Washington. But there he was, and he was hopping mad. He wasn’t just mad in general, but mad specifically at Courtenay. He pointed that long bony finger down at the man who had failed him, failed the whole nation in its moment of need. Courtenay, tried to smile up at Paule, to say it would be all right. The other side had had a temporary advantage, that was all. It wouldn’t last, it would pass with the season. In the end, it would be Paule and his forces who won out. They would win because of their secret weapon. They did have a secret weapon, he remembered that for sure. He remembered discussing it with Paule and the others. Only he wasn’t too sure for the moment of what it was. Was it perhaps having God on their side? Or something else. He was sure their secret weapon would save the day. Some day.

  He could have slipped off his heavy boots and dropped the combat knife from his belt. That would have let him stay afloat with less of a struggle. But then, of course, he would have been out of uniform. When he finally let go of the railing, he sank slowly, feet first. He looked up to see the brilliant green of sunlight slanting down through the water. And there, still visible above him, was the furious face of Rupert Paule.

  7

  EVERYTHING IS A SYMBOL

  In the period following the end of World War Two, beginning in August of 1945, President Truman and the American people got a hit of the most powerful political narcotic of all time: Hegemony. The country was more than first among equals. It was not just potent, but near omnipotent, able to dictate its will to the rest of the world. It didn’t do that, of course, but it could have. We Americans got a taste of hegemony and decided we liked it just fine, we were hooked Sadly, it didn’t last long. We were all-powerful during the last half of the 1940s and not much beyond. Who can blame us if we look back fondly at Truman and his time? American history since then can be viewed as one long hegemony-deprivation tantrum.

  The same kind of hit that Truman and America felt in the 40s was washing over the Baracoa community in the days after the battle of the Caribbean Sea. The sudden sense of almost unlimited power is heady stuff. It turns the mind to thoughts of grandeur, of Empire.

  Provost Suzikaya had the floor at council meeting: “…what we need to think of now are the enormous obligations that destiny has thrust upon us, obligations to lead the world in new directions toward enlightenment and prosperity.” He paused, letting the silence fairly drip with significance. “Our small community finds itself suddenly the focus of culture and civilization, the locus of intellectual activity. I choose my words carefully, my friends: locus from the Latin stlocus, meaning ‘place,’ the center, if you will, of the great endeavor of the human intellect.” Suzikaya spoke a full octave lower than his natural voice, the result of years of training himself. It made you want to pinch him suddenly to hear him squeak. He stretched out each word to its fullest, sometimes even pronouncing the spaces between the s
yllables: en-de-a-voare of the hu-min in-tel-leck-t. Homer could go to sleep in an instant when Suzikaya was speaking. “Not only in the field of science is it given to us to lead, but also in enlightened government, global economic management, and, of course, the arts.”

  Across the table from Loren, Ed Barodin was having trouble containing himself. So far, the only evidence of the arts existing at all in the community had been a single evening of amateur skits and occasional songs with Kelly accompanying on her harmonica. He began to slide forward on his seat and slowly vanished under the table, leaving only one groping hand behind. Suzikaya affected not to notice. “As were the ancient Greeks the center of culture and learning, so too, our little nation will reach out and guide an eager and accepting world, eager and accepting, of course, because if they were anything but, they know we have the enlightened power to crush their miserable…”