John Ringo - Council Wars 02 - Emerald Sea

by Emerald Sea(lit)

  "Dragons, wyverns for that matter, tend to sleep a lot," Jerry yelled as they headed back down to the quarterdeck. "They use high energy when they have to and try to sleep most of the rest of the time."

  True to Herzer's mental prediction the wind seemed to be moderating and with it the seas. And with Joanna's weight to the rear of the ship, along with whatever stores had been moved, the bows were now sweeping over the waves instead of digging into them.

  They headed down into the hold again where a team of sailors, with Vickie and a female PO directing, were cleaning out the wyvern stalls. With the materials available the sketchy cleaning didn't take long and Jerry directed the feeding afterwards as the hands, most of whom were probably from an off-duty watch, walked out of the compartment grumbling. Some of the wyverns barely poked at their food but most of them ate as if they were starving. Some of their distress must have been hunger because by the time they were done most of them had settled down. And, just as Jerry predicted, those that had fed almost immediately tucked their heads under their wings and, swaying with the ship, went to sleep.

  "Good," Jerry said. "That's the first decent rest they've gotten in two days." He frowned at Chauncey and Yazov, both of whom had ignored their food. They were still mewling piteously although they'd quit the metal-bending shrieks.

  "If we found something tastier for them they might eat," Herzer suggested.

  "Yeah, and then the next time they didn't like their food they'd wait until we gave them something better," Jerry said. "No, they're just going to have to eat it or not."

  Chauncey looked through the bars of his stall and mewed piteously at Herzer.

  "I'm sure the cook has some scraps left over," Herzer said. "What if we just gave them a few? That might make them hungry enough they'd eat their slop."

  "I dunno," Jerry said. "It goes against the grain."

  "If I'd been puking," Herzer said, mentally adding which I have, his throat was still raw with it, "I wouldn't want something that looked like puke."

  "You have a point."

  Herzer, getting lost only one time, made his way to the main kitchen, which the sailors insisted be called a "galley," of the ship and caught the eye of one of the NCOs.

  "A couple of the dragons are badly off their feed," he said. "We're hoping some scraps will get them eating again."

  "All the edible garbage goes in those pails," the petty officer said, pointing to a line of buckets lashed to the wall. "Take whatever you want; we just pitch it over the side."

  Herzer went over and checked them over. Most of the garbage consisted of ship's bread and vegetables, but one bucket had a fair amount of stew from the evening meal in it. He untied that one and started to carry it back to the dragons.

  "Hang on, sir," the petty officer said. "Johnson, carry that for the lieutenant, then head back here when you're done. Bring the bucket."

  Herzer wasn't sure if the petty officer just wanted his bucket back or if he was getting another class in "enlisted men do, officers supervise" but he followed the sailor, who didn't get lost, back to the dragon deck.

  The scraps, when added to their slop, were a big hit with the two dragons. They got enough meat that they started sucking on their slop right afterwards.

  "Sir, if you don't mind," Johnson said. "We can try to segregate the meat that gets thrown away. And there's bones and things that don't get used, too."

  "As long as the PO says it's okay, that would be great," Herzer said. "Johnson, wasn't it?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Thanks for your help," Jerry said. "If you ever want a ride, assuming we can get them back in the air..."

  "That would be great, sir." The sailor grinned. "I'd better get back."

  "Thanks again," Herzer said. When the sailor had left, Herzer grinned at the rider. "I think you've got a convert."

  "Oh, we've had plenty of people ask us about rides," Jerry said. "Or even becoming riders. Especially since we're down two."

  "One of them being me," Herzer said. "Sorry."

  "Not a problem," Jerry replied. "Duke Edmund has been fairly clear on that. As soon as the weather calms down, and assuming as I said that we can take off and land in this mess, we'll see about getting you trained. But I warn you, landing on this thing is not easy."

  "You need at least one more rider than you have dragons," Herzer said. "Or, at least, dragons in the air."

  "Why?"

  "For the LSO. I don't know that I'd have been able to do it if I hadn't had that one experience with riding. It gave me a grasp of what I was doing."

  "Point," Jerry said. "Well, since we've got the wyverns settled and there's not much going on, I might as well start with giving you the ground school portion."

  "Ground school?" Herzer said.

  "You have no idea."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  For the next two days, as the weather continued foul, Jerry and Vickie between them tried to cram all the theoretical aspects of dragon riding into Herzer's aching head. At night he went to bed with terms like "yaw" running through his head and every morning it started all over again.

  He discovered what had been happening in his brief flight when he'd been trying to move the dragon around in the air. He learned about optimum glide paths, methods of spotting thermals, and the anatomy of the wyverns. The wings were not, as he'd thought, just flesh, blood, skin and bone, but were a complex web of far more advanced materials including biologically excreted carbon nanotubes.

  "It's the only way the wing bones could support their weight and powered flight," Vickie explained. "There's no way that bone and skin alone could do it. The largest previous flyer was a fraction of their size. And there's some indication that overall air pressure was higher in the Jurassic."

  "So Joanna's got this in her, too?" Herzer asked, looking at the sketch. "They've got to be some of the strongest 'natural' material on earth."

  "They are," Vickie said, frowning. "We try not to make too much of a point of it."

  "I can imagine why," Herzer said, frowning in his own turn. "There's a lot I can imagine to do with wyvern wings." The bones would make excellent weapons and the primary skins would make tremendous armor. Assuming you could figure out a way to cut it."

  "As to Joanna, yes," Vickie said. "But more so. How do you think she keeps her head up in flight?"

  "Bloody hell," Herzer said. "That's... a lot of nanotubes."

  "It's one of the reasons they grow so slowly," Vickie said. "And they're continuous filament monomolecules. One of the strongest substances ever made."

  "Cutting them would be a stone bitch," Herzer said. "Which means their wings aren't going to be subject to puncture in combat."

  "Trust you to think of that." Vickie chuckled. "But they can be dislocated. It's one of their big weaknesses. But, no, they don't break wing bones or tear wings."

  "If they were fighting on the ground the thing to do would be to wrap their wings around them," Herzer thought. "Nothing would get through it."

  "They can be superficially scratched," Vickie said. "And that takes a long time to heal. But their wings are, for all practical purposes, invulnerable. On the other hand, they take a lot of care and feeding."

  Which they did. On active days they required several feedings per day, totally nearly their own body weight. On inactive days they required far less, but every day it was excreted.

  "Fortunately, they tend to let go in air," Jerry said, as he was covering that aspect. "But with them cooped up as they are..."

  "It gets messy." Herzer grinned.

  "That apparently was passed on, and Evan the Ever Efficient planned for it," Jerry said. "The ship really does have enough stores to support them for a hundred days, but that's at the cost of crew. This is a really skeleton crew for a ship this size."

  "I'd noticed," Herzer said.

  And the skeleton crew was kept busy. While Herzer was cramming his head with information about dragons the crew was busy fighting the storm. Again and again the sails had to be t
rimmed as the wind backed around, died down and then blew back up.

  It was rough and nasty and apparently the life of the Navy. Herzer decided that they could keep it.

  * * *

  Working the night shift was not helping with Joel's mission. He'd picked up a rumor that the head cook was peculating, probably with the help of some of the victuallers that supplied the ship. But that didn't make him a spy, although Joel would include it in his report.

  The problem with working the mid-watch was that he had minimal interaction with the officers. If there was a New Destiny agent on-board, the most damaging position would be among the officers. And although they rotated shifts so he'd been around each of them, if any of them were communicating with New Destiny, it wasn't clear.

  As he came on watch he picked up another jug of herbal tea and some mugs and stuck his head in the wardroom on his way to the quarterdeck. Commander Mbeki was standing at the rear of the wardroom table, just turning away from, apparently, contemplating the forward bulkhead.

  "Get you anything, sir?" Joel asked, holding up the jug and mugs. "Nice shot of herbal tea for a cold night?"

  "Thank you, Joel, I'd like that," Mbeki said, his face wooden.

  "You okay, sir?" the steward replied, frowning. "You look pretty down."

  "I'm fine, seaman," the commander replied, taking the mug that was poured for him. "Just wish this storm would abate."

  "Well, if wishes were fishes, sir," Joel replied with a patented young and stupid grin. "Storms don't listen to wishes is my experience. You just ride with 'em or turn into 'em and ride 'em out."

  "You've sailed before?" the commander asked, surprised.

  "Sailed small fishing boats in Flora, sir," Joel said, taking a mug of tea for himself. "Then took a packet up the coast and joined the Navy. Seemed like the right thing to do."

  "What did you do before?" the commander asked. He didn't have to say "before the Fall."

  "Before" was always the same, before the world came apart.

  "Mostly sailed," Joel said, shrugging his shoulders.

  "Family?" the commander asked, sitting down.

  Joel paused and then nodded. "Wife and daughter, sir. Miriam, I'd guess she was home in Briton. We had a place on the coast. My daughter... she was visiting friends in Ropasa. Near the Lore." He shrugged. "I try not to think about it. No more than, oh, a hundred times a day."

  Mbeki nodded sadly. "Don't tell anyone that, if you take my advice."

  "That I think about it?" Joel asked.

  "Where they were," Mbeki said, his face hard. "You really don't want New Destiny finding out. Trust me on that."

  "I will, sir," the steward said, mentally filing the datum. And the face. And the body posture. And the radiating anger. "I surely will."

  * * *

  Finally, on the fourth day after they had left the bay, Herzer emerged in the morning to a strong, cold north wind and beautiful clear skies. The seas were rough but he'd acquired some of the knack for moving on the pitching deck and he made his way down to the dragon deck gathering no more than two new bruises on the way.

  "It's a good day to fly," Vickie said as he came down the ladder. She and Koo were engaged in feeding the wyverns and they, too, seemed to think it was a good day to fly since they kept looking up from their feed and cawing at the overhead.

  "If you can get off the ship," Herzer said. "And back on. If you thought the water was cold before..."

  "What's it like?" Jerry asked. "I still haven't been topside."

  "Cold," Herzer said, opening his coat in the warmth of the stables. "Windy. Really windy."

  "I'm willing to give it a try," Joanna rumbled, from forward. She had moved down after the first night when all the stores possible had been moved aft and the dragon deck cleaned up. Now she stretched to the limit possible and rustled her wings irritably. "And if I've got to hit the water, I can handle the cold."

  "I'll go see Commander Mbeki," Jerry said, shrugging into a fur-lined jacket.

  "See if you can at least get the hatch open," Joanna said. "I'm tired of being cooped up down here."

  Herzer and Jerry made their way aft to the quarterdeck where Commander Mbeki was striding up and down, reveling in the breeze.

  "Good morning, sir," Jerry said.

  "Morning, Mr. Riadou," the commander replied. "I suppose you want to see about getting off the ship?"

  "Commander Gramlich does, sir," the warrant officer replied. "She feels that even if she can't land, she can make a water landing and hoist herself aboard."

  "And a joyful moment that will be," the XO said with a grin. "The skipper is taking a much needed nap; he was up through most of the storm. I have the con, but generally evolutions like air operations would mean his presence."

  "I understand, sir," Jerry replied. "The commander requested that at least the main hatch be opened so she can get on deck and stretch her wings."

  "That I can comply with," the commander said after a moment. "And I would suspect that by this afternoon the wind will have moderated somewhat and the skipper will be awake. We might be able to commence air operations then."

  "Thank you, sir," the warrant officer replied. "I'll go see about getting the hatch removed."

  * * *

  The commander was as good as his word. By the time Herzer was finishing his lunch he heard the command "All hands, prepare to come about!" followed shortly by "Prepare for air operations!"

  By the time he got on deck, Joanna was on the catapult. The ship had been turned with the wind off what he now knew to be her port bow. Jerry was on the launch lever and Evan was fussing with the new launching mechanism. The detachable balk of timber had been removed and a fixed device had replaced it. Joanna had shown that she could release in time and they were trying the less wasteful system for the first time.

  "Are you ready, yet, Mr. Mayerle?" Commander Mbeki called impatiently. The primary flight operations had been moved to a new station on the rear-mast, high enough that it could see to the rear of the ship but low enough that it wasn't in the way of the sails. From that perch the commander could see both incoming dragons and the launching catapult.

  "Ready, sir," Evan replied with a wave.

  "Commence launching operation," the commander called.

  Jerry looked at Joanna, then leaned into the lever. The combination of the cold air, which Herzer had learned was also denser, the strong wind and the rapid rate of movement of the ship caused the dragon to practically leap into the air.

  Joanna ascended rapidly and Herzer hurried to his landing station. But when he got there, Vickie was already in the station.

  "You're late," she said with a grin. She held up the flags and pointed them at the dragon as Joanna came around into the landing pattern.

  It was clear that Joanna was having a hard time with the crosswind. She nearly made it on the first try but was blown off course by the effect of the sails at the last moment and banked off as Vickie gave her a wave off. Herzer could tell that it troubled the rider as well and he patted Vickie on the shoulder.

  "You're doing fine," he said, realizing with a start that he had far more experience at this than she.

  "Do you want to take over?" she asked, uncertainly. "This is pretty rough conditions." That landing the greater dragon was far harder than the wyverns she didn't have to add.

  "No, you're doing fine," Herzer said. "She can either land or she can't. If she can't, she goes for a swim."

  The second time the dragon almost made it but was too low on her approach. The wave off was late and frantic and the dragon almost caught a wingtip again but managed to recover and stagger into the sky.

  "That time you were late," Herzer said, neutrally. "And it was clear that she wasn't going to be regaining the altitude she needed. Don't be afraid to wave off, even Joanna. Better a wave off than a crash into the ship. Remember, you're her eyes in this."

  "I'll remember," Vickie said miserably and pointed at the dragon again.

  The third t
ime the dragon was high, but Vickie got her on glide path at the end. However, on final a wave lifted the rear of the ship and Joanna had to beat her wings frantically to clear the rear of the ship. She did, however, make it onto the platform, well forward, nearly pitching off the end.

  "Well, that was pretty awful," she growled.

  Jerry had reached the station by then and touched Vickie on the arm.