Safehold 10 Through Fiery Trials

by David Weber

  And as Gahrvai had just pointed out, that was because they hadn’t acted before Fangzhin was firmly enough ensconced to play middleman for Zhyou-Zhwo.

  “Since we let Zhyou-Zhwo back in, we have a responsibility to do something about it,” the general pointed out.

  “Blockading his weapon shipments would be one way to do that,” Duke Rock Point growled. He’d made the same argument before.

  Repeatedly.

  “Yes, we could,” Cayleb agreed now, with more patience than he actually felt. “If we want to piss off the Border States. And maybe the Republic. You did notice that Snow Peak was clever enough to go through Siddarmarkian shipping agents and drayage firms to move his guns, didn’t you?” Rock Point made an exasperated sound over the com, and Cayleb’s lips twitched. “I think we can be pretty sure how the Border States would feel about our seizing their ships as contraband during peacetime. But how do you think the anti-Charis part of the Republic would react if we started seizing or destroying those ships’ cargos—the ones they’re responsible for—the same way.”

  “Damn, I hate diplomacy,” Rock Point growled.

  “Granted. And I’m not saying I wouldn’t prefer a nice, simple blockade myself,” Cayleb acknowledged a bit sourly. “That’s not on the table, though, and the whole purpose of Merlin’s little trip is to do what we can do to help the Valley. What we’re talking about now is getting the United Provinces involved, and that brings us back to the fact that if it comes to direct combat between the United Provinces and Spring Flower, we’re looking at two wildcards. First, we have no idea how that will play out politically, given that Star Rising and the others could no longer claim they’re simply acting in self-defense. Oh, they would be, in a lot of ways, but this time around they’d be engaging in combat with an intact grand duchy and a grand duke sworn to the Crown and fully supported by the emperor. That’s a can of worms we haven’t opened yet.

  “And the second wildcard is that we don’t know how the UP would make out against Spring Flower’s and Qwaidu’s new army. It could get really ugly, especially if they wound up having to fight their way through Cliffwall in the face of dug-in opposition.”

  “Can’t answer the first one,” Gahrvai said with a shrug. “I know what would happen with the second one, though.”

  “What, Koryn?” Sharleyan asked, brush paused in mid-stroke as her mirrored eyes met Gahrvai’s across the com interface.

  “Spring Flower and Qwaidu would get their arses kicked,” Gahrvai said flatly. “And that would be even without us providing artillery support. With our artillery, it’d be a massacre.”

  “Really?” Sharleyan laid down the brush, and Gahrvai chuckled.

  “Kynt? Care to weigh in on this one?” he asked.

  “You seem to be doing adequately without my input,” Duke Serabor said dryly. “I think you may be grossly pessimistic about how well the United Provinces would make out, though.”

  Several people chuckled, including Serabor, but then he sobered.

  “The truth is, the UP could probably take anybody out there short of Wind Song’s troops or the better Army of God divisions. Personally, I think they’d have a pretty good chance against Wind Song, and I know they’d go through Spring Flower and Qwaidu like shit through a wyvern. Might be a little ugly in the mountains, initially at least, but once they were through to the other side of Cliffwall?” He shook his head. “If they wanted to keep going west, they’d have Fangkau and Maichi within a five-day.”

  “Which really would send Zhyou-Zhwo ballistic,” Nimue Gahrvai put in, hugging her daughter. “Mind you, I’m not convinced that would be a bad thing. I’m just saying he’d reach orbit without benefit of a recon skimmer.”

  “Damn, I’d pay good money to see that!” Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk observed.

  “Shut up and stop encouraging them,” his wife advised sweetly. He looked at her, and Irys shrugged. “They don’t need your encouragement, and while I’m sure they’re both right about the military aspects, Cayleb’s right about the potential political downsides. And they may not see things quite as clearly as we do.”

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Merlin observed. “And whatever Star Rising and his friends decide,” the seijin’s expression hardened, “I think our friends in the Chynduk Valley deserve a little help. Besides,” his tight facial muscles relaxed and he smiled again, “it’ll be wonderful experience for us down the road, too.

  “Assuming, of course, that it works.”

  AUGUST YEAR OF GOD 913

  .I.

  Chynduk Valley, Tiegelkamp Province, Central Harchong.

  “Might want to get those signal fires lit, Commander Syngpu,” Merch O Obaith observed.

  Tangwyn Syngpu cocked his head, glancing at the dark-haired, blue-eyed young woman. In sunlight, that hair had auburn highlights, and he’d never imagined eyes as darkly blue as Seijin Merlin’s had been that first night.

  This was Merch O Obaith’s third visit to the Valley, however, and she had eyes of exactly the same shade. He couldn’t have seen them in the darkness, even if she hadn’t been peering upward, but he knew that. And although she was also a good foot shorter than Seijin Merlin, there was no doubt in Syngpu’s mind that she was just as deadly. And she was just as good at mysteriously appearing places. Syngpu still didn’t know how Merlin—or Seijin Merch—came and went with such blithe ease and without a single one of his highly experienced and motivated sentries ever seeing a single thing.

  Yanshwyn’s right about that, he told himself. Stop worrying about it and just be glad they’ve decided they’re on our side.

  Although he would like to know how the seijin knew it was time to light the fires. The night sky was crystal clear and calm, with a torrent of stars blazing gloriously overhead through the thin mountain air, but it was also moonless and the only sounds he could hear were insects, birds and wyverns, and the gentle stir of the breeze.

  He thought about asking her if she was sure about that. Then he shook his head mentally. Probably not a good idea. Instead, he looked over his shoulder at the grizzled old sergeant waiting patiently.

  “Heard the Seijin,” he said with a shrug. “Best be lighting them up.”

  * * *

  “I would love to know whose brilliant idea this was,” Lieutenant Krugair growled as HMAS Aivahn Hahgyz bored through the night sky. He sounded a little strange, thanks to the bulky apparatus strapped to his face. “If I did, I could go break his kneecaps.”

  “It is sort of exciting. In a boring, frozen to death, can’t-see-crap sort of a way,” Lieutenant Ahzbyrn pointed out in an equally muffled voice, and Krugair glared at him.

  The good news was that Aivahn Hahgyz was brand-new; the bad news was that they’d taken Synklair Pytmyn away from him—away from his entire crew, really—when they were assigned to the new ship. She was the first of the new Moonraker class: much longer but proportionately a bit slimmer than Synklair Pytmyn, with an aerodynamic fabric cover stretched over braided wire stringers around the cells of her gas envelope. With her newly up-rated Praigyrs (every Praigyr was up-rated from the one before it … and obsolete the moment it was installed), more efficient shape, and larger size, she was both faster than Synklair Pytmyn had been and structurally tougher. Her gas volume was over three times that of Krugair’s earlier ship, and even though the stiffening inside her envelope and an extra pair of engines consumed precious weight, she could lift up to fifty passengers and almost thirty-five tons of cargo at her designed fuel weight. If she loaded her maximum fuel allowance, that fell to only twenty-seven tons.

  She and her two sisters were also the first airships to be fitted with oxygen for high altitude operation, which imposed its own weight penalties, and Krugair had been very much in two minds when he heard about that! Instead of the nine to eleven thousand feet at which Synklair Pytmyn had operated, Aivahn Hahgyz could carry her crew to as much as twenty-two thousand. And Delthak was experimenting with something called a “pressurization syst
em” which would draw power from her Praigyrs and—in theory, at least—mean the crew of Aivahn Hahgyz’ follow-on classes might be able to operate that high without oxygen masks.

  Frankly, Krugair would believe that one when he saw it. Although, he admitted, it would be nice.

  At four miles, the air might reasonably be described as “thin,” he thought now, rubbing irritably at the rubber mask. He hated the damned thing, although he had no intention of taking it off at the moment. Although, to be fair, they were nowhere near Aivahn Hahgyz’ maximum ceiling, because rugged as the Chiang-wu mountains were, they averaged considerably lower than, say, the Mountains of Light. Mount Olympus, for example, was almost 38,000 feet high, whereas the tallest peak in the Chiang-wus was barely 19,000. The average peaks were substantially lower than that—enough so that a mere 17,000 feet of altitude sufficed quite nicely … as long as Lieutenant Braiahnt didn’t run them into any of the handful of mountaintops at or above their current height. There were only three of them within forty miles of their planned course, but with no moon, visibility was limited, which imposed a lower-than-usual speed. And the lack of moonlight made navigation interesting, too. Star shots were easy enough this high, as long as Braiahnt didn’t freeze to death taking them—which was a genuine risk, since the air temperature at their current altitude was about one below zero—but picking out landmarks was not.

  To say the least.

  Oh, quit bitching! he told himself. This is the most advanced airship in the world, and all you can do is complain because you’ve been assigned a mission?!

  He shook his head, although the possibility of encountering a mountain top wasn’t the only reason he was less than delirious with joy. Even with the arctic clothing borrowed from the Army and the exhaust-based heating system built into the airship’s cabin, he was colder than Shan-wei’s heart. But at least they must be almost to their destination.

  Of course he’d been telling himself that for the last forty-odd minutes. But if he kept on telling himself, then sooner or later he’d be right and—

  “There, Skipper!” Ahzbyrn thumped him on the shoulder and pointed, and Krugair held up a heavily gloved hand with the upraised thumb the Empire’s aeronauts had borrowed from Seijin Merlin as he saw the brilliant glow of the bonfires spreading across the valley floor below them.

  “Good!” he said. “Start the spiral and let’s start venting some gas.”

  * * *

  “You were right, Seijin,” Syngpu acknowledged as an eye-tearingly brilliant pinprick of light flashed against the stars.

  After the signal lamp attracted his attention, he could actually make out the faint loom of the enormous airship as it obstructed the stars above it. During the intervals between signals, that was. He couldn’t see anything but the damned lamp whenever it was flashing.

  He waited out the current round of blinking, then looked expectantly down at the seijin. He had enough trouble reading printed words.

  “They’ll start the drop in fifteen or twenty minutes,” she told him with a grin. “They need to get a little lower first, since we’d rather not break anything we don’t have to. They’ll pop a green flare when they start the drop and a red one when they stop.”

  “Good of them,” Syngpu grunted.

  He’d come to the conclusion that Seijin Merch was considerably younger than Seijin Merlin. She certainly possessed a more … impish sense of humor.

  On the other hand, it was best if they took the warning to heart, and he pulled out his whistle and blew a deafening blast.

  None of his ground crew lingered when they heard the whistle. The Charisians’ ingenious new “parachutes” sometimes failed. Even when they didn’t, they came down fast and hard with their loads, and the cargo pallets were heavy. Since it would be difficult to dodge parachutes they couldn’t see coming in the dark, as soon as they heard his whistle all of the groundmen darted under the heavily braced overhead cover of the shelters Seijin Merlin had suggested they build.

  Syngpu himself waited, watching the huge airship’s blot against the stars circle as it dropped steadily lower. It was a fascinating sight—one he knew he would never tire of—although it was far more spectacular when there was a moon. He was always a little nervous while they circled, too, he admitted to himself. True, the valley floor was over twenty-five miles wide at this point, and the walls were nowhere near as sheer as they were at other spots. The Charisians probably had more like thirty-five miles to play with at the altitude from which they made their drops. But if the wind took them or they drifted into the mountainside.…

  They dropped lower and lower, spiraling downward. Then the spiral stopped and they headed straight down the long-axis of the valley, directly along the line of bonefires. Those fires had largely burned down by now, but they must still be plenty bright enough from that high up, and—

  A green flare arced away from the airship and blazed against the night.

  “After you, Seijin,” Syngpu invited rather pointedly, indicating the shelter behind the two of them, and Obaith chuckled. Then she gave him a pantomimed curtsy and scampered—undeniably, she scampered—under cover.

  He’d started down the steps behind her, shaking his head.

  * * *

  “Airspeed twelve miles per hour, Skipper,” Lieutenant Ahzbyrn said, and Lieutenant Krugair nodded in satisfaction. He didn’t want to drop any more speed, because that could cause handling issues, especially during abrupt weight changes. But he didn’t want to be moving too quickly when they dropped, either, because that would scatter their load all over Shan-wei’s half-acre. Besides, there was a river down there.

  “Commencing drop in one minute, Sir!” Chief Petty Officer Tymyns announced, straightening from the voice pipe that connected him to Lieutenant Braiahnt’s position, which was rather farther from the bridge than it had been aboard Synklair Pytmyn.

  Lieutenant Krugair nodded again, then checked his harness to be sure it was clipped to the safety ring. Aivahn Hahgyz was about to get a lot lighter. He’d lost twelve thousand feet of altitude during his circling approach, which had brought his command down to no more than three thousand feet above the Valley floor before he’d ordered the vents closed again. Not that they were going to stay closed. He’d hated giving up the hydrogen, but that was only reflex. He’d really like to be a little higher than five thousand feet, too, given the height to which the Valley’s walls rose, but the maximum altitude for the ICAF’s parachutes was only twelve hundred feet and he needed a little margin to work with, given what was about to happen to his ship’s buoyancy. Even with two parachutes, the pallets would hit hard from this altitude. As for the hydrogen they’d dumped, it wasn’t like they were going to need it for the trip home! In fact—

  “Stand by to vent!” he ordered.

  “Aye, aye, Sir. Standing by to vent.”

  “Very good.”

  Krugair’s hand tightened on the bulkhead handrail, and then—

  Despite the altitude, the flight from the United Provinces had been absurdly short by Aivahn Hahgyz’ standards, and she’d loaded less than a quarter of her designed fuel load. The weight savings had been used for extra cargo, and now the first pallet dropped cleanly from her keel. The trio of parachutes opened quickly, and the heavily strapped pallet went floating downward.

  “Commence venting!” Krugair commanded as the enormous airship bounced upward and the sudden added buoyancy slammed against the soles of his boots. His knees flexed, hydrogen roared as the vents opened wide, and he felt the shock as the next pallet dropped. And the next.

  Theoretically, they could have dropped up to six tons on a single chute. That was what they’d trained do to back in Old Charis, but those drops had been at or near sea level. At five thousand feet the air density was little more than half what it was at sea level, and they were taking no avoidable chances with this load. Each of those pallets weighed approximately five tons, and Aivahn Hahgyz dropped four of them at one-minute intervals. During those three minut
es, she traveled just over a half mile along the line defined by the signal fires.

  Krugair ordered the vents closed again as the third pallet dropped, but Aivahn Hahgyz kept shooting upward. She simply couldn’t vent gas rapidly enough to compensate for such a sudden, massive loss of weight without climbing, and she swept steeply higher, surging back to an altitude of sixteen thousand feet in a matter of minutes while her structure creaked and groaned about them. It probably would have been alarming as hell to a groundsman, but Krugair was delighted with the entire process. This was a stress his ship was specifically designed to withstand, and he’d experienced conditions just like it on the practice drops. And, for that matter, on the two he’d already made here! Besides, any aeronaut knew there was no such thing as too much reserve lift. He’d much rather have extra lift in hand and have to vent more gas than be forced to dump ballast to maintain altitude as they crossed the Chang-wus back into Boisseau.

  And it was so damned much fun, to boot!

  “All pallets away,” PO Tymyns announced from the voice pipes as the airship began stabilizing at her new altitude. “Secured from cargo-dropping stations, Sir!”