by Tom Kratman
Of course, it's bad news, he thought. Here I am enjoying a peaceful moment and pleased that I won't have to butcher ten thousand allied troops so, naturally, there is bad news. God, someday I hope to have a long talk with you about your sense of humor.
He took the proffered radio microphone and announced, "Carrera."
The radio operator at the other end acknowledged and said, "Wait one, sir, while we connect you to the classis."
The classis? My bad news is from the classis? This is going to be really bad.
There was a series of beeps, and then a voice, distorted by the encryption devices and with odd, unrecognizable sounds in the background, said, "Fosa, here." The voice seemed to Carrera to contain an infinity of sadness and weariness.
"Carrera, here. What is it, Roderigo?"
"Patricio . . . I don't know how to tell you this, so I'll just lay it out for you. We got hit this morning, hit hard. I don't even have a final count of the dead and wounded, but both numbers are going to be high. I lost just about half my fixed-wing aircraft and two thirds of the helicopters. I'm holed, though—thank God—it's not below the water line. Even so, I'm taking water at the stern and the hole is close enough to the water line that a big storm could put us down. One elevator is totally out. My drives are down . . . well, one is down. The other was blown clean off. My flight deck is warped, but not so badly we can't loft and recover aircraft. I've no radar. And I lost one of the escorts."
"Holy shit!" Carrera said, though he didn't key the microphone. My brave sailors; where will I find your like again? When he keyed it, he asked, "What happened, Rod?"
"It was an ambush in the Nicobar Straits. Somehow the wogs managed to assemble about a dozen speed boats, half a dozen cruise missiles, two torpedoes, and one big fucking suicide ship. We took one cruise missile hit, plus a near miss that did for the radar, a torpedo hit at the stern, and then the suicide ship . . . Pat, it must have been about a two-kiloton explosion . . . anyway, it went off about a klick away." Fosa hesitated and then added, "Well, it didn't actually go off. One of my escorts, the Santisima Trinidad, rammed it at full speed. That set it off. Pat, if they hadn't rammed it, we'd have been obliterated.
"Pat, I want authority to award gold crosses, four steps, to that crew, and three to it's sister, the Agustin. Three and two just wouldn't be enough."
"Given," Carrera answered. "Is your ship recoverable? What about the wounded?"
There was doubt in Fosa's voice, mixed in with determination. "If I can get her to a port . . . maybe. But getting her back in order will be expensive. The wounded we're flying off with whatever I have that can carry a man or two."
"All right. I'll assume you're flying your hurt men to some safe port. As for the expense; damn the expense; a ship like that doesn't come along every day." In fact, I haven't a clue where we could find another one. Rebuild the static training ship? Probably a lot more expensive. And besides, the ship that survived an attack like that has mana. It has soul. Men will adore her and fight all the better for her. Some other ship just wouldn't do as well.
BdL Dos Lindas
"Captain, we've found something you ought to see."
Fosa nodded his head and said, "Pat, I've got to go. I'll report in around sunset. I might have a better idea of our chances then."
"Before you go, put me on the speaker," Carrera ordered.
Fosa looked over at the communications bench and gave the nod. A sailor flicked a switch. "Go ahead, Pat. Wherever the intercom still reaches, you'll be heard. Fosa, out."
From the speakers, echoing across the length and breadth of the carrier, came, "Duque Carrera to the officers, centurions and men of the classis, and of the tercios Jan Sobieski, and Vlad Tepes: Men, listen; don't stop working to save your ship, but listen. You've taken a hard hit . . . "
* * *
Fosa didn't really listen to Carrera's speech. It wasn't much more than the same generalities he'd been spreading, himself: We've done well . . . they threw the worst they had at us and we took it and came back punching . . . we'll save the ship. He just hoped it was all true.
At the base of the tower he turned around and looked out over the flight deck. Already crews with cutting torches were slicing away the warped sections and forcing some of the underdecking back into position. There was plywood and perforated steel planking, down below, that they could use to make some temporary patches, enough for the Crickets and maybe even a lightly loaded Finch.
From there, he descended down the double stairs to Deck 2. A balcony off that deck overlooked the hangar. He went to the balcony and looked down. The hangar was filled not only with burned and blasted airframes; it had become a morgue, as well. Even now, parties of crewman, some of them hurt themselves, brought in corpses and laid them out respectfully in rows. Some of his crew, Fosa saw, were curled up in fetal positions, their charred limbs eloquent testimony to the fire that had killed them.
You will not throw up, Fosa gave himself the order. Even so, he turned away.
The sailor who had summoned the captain from the bridge said, "This way, sir. By where we took the hit near the stern."
"Lead on."
The way led through the officers' quarters at the stern, past Fosa's and then Kurita's cabin.
What am I going to do without that old man to guide me? Fosa wondered. For, though he had put out the call to find the commodore, no one had as of yet seen a sign. The nearest thing to a report was the mutterings of a now legless and semi-comatose sailor in sickbay, a gunner on one of the port rear platforms. He'd said something about going "back for the commodore."
Fosa rested his hand lightly on the cabin's hatch, then continued on forward and past the filter room and the two rocket storage rooms.
"We found it out here, Skipper" the sailor guiding Fosa said as he pointed to the twisted scrap that had been a gun platform.
Fosa stepped gingerly out onto the ruin of the platform. It seemed solid enough. There was a ruined forty-millimeter gun there, as well. Fosa turned and . . .
"My God," he whispered.
There, against the hull, to all appearances a part of the hull now, was the outline of a small man. He might not have known who it was except for the ancient, once reforged katana that was apparently welded to the hull, and joined to the body's outline by the shadow of a thin arm.
Fosa crossed himself and said a small prayer for the soul of Tadeo Kurita, along with the wish that he now be reunited with his wife and children. For, Lord, he was a good man, and a good sailor, and did his duty as he saw it . . . to the end.
* * *
Fosa looked ahead to where the two corvettes were being rigged to tow the Dos Lindas to port. Astern, they'd managed to get the one remaining AZIPOD working, but it was non-steerable. The corvettes would pull the bow around to steer the ship, with the AZIPOD providing the bulk of the forward drive. He guessed he'd be able to make at least ten knots that way, maybe even twelve, which put the nearest useful and trustworthy port, in Sind, a good eight or ten days' sailing away.
"We're going to make it, Pat," Fosa told Carrera, later that night via secure radio. "We may be pumping like madmen all the way, and we're toast if were attacked at sea, or hit a really atrocious storm. But barring those, we'll make it."
"I've alerted Christian back in Balboa to push to make good your personnel losses," Carrera answered. "A freighter will be sailing in three days with replacements for your lost Crickets and Finches. It will be a month and a half before we can replace your Yakamovs. I've given orders that a cruiser be readied to sail ASAP. That, and that another escort be sent along. But, Rod, we don't have another Patrol Torpedo until we can have some built. Will a corvette do?"
"It will," the captain answered. "Pat, has the cruiser been rechristened yet?"
"No, why?"
"Because I'd like it to bear the name of Tadeo Kurita, if that works for you."
UEPF Spirit of Peace
In the limited confines of his quarters, Robinson paced furiously. N
othing works; he fumed, nothing fucking works! It didn't even help to take a belt to Khan's ass because she likes it.
Wallenstein sipped coffee shipped up from below. To all appearances, she was calm and composed. Inside, though, she was worried. An unhappy High Admiral is a High Admiral who is less likely to get me a caste lift. This will not do. But . . . still, I have to tell him or he'll be even less likely to give me the boost I need.
"Martin, we've got a decoded message we intercepted between the mercenary fleet and its commander. Not only is the ship not going to sink; it's going to be reinforced."
"With what?"
"A heavy cruiser. I believe it's the only heavy cruiser in commission in any wet navy down below. Good armor, ten six-inch automatic, long range guns in five twin turrets. It's also nuclear powered, just like the carrier. I'm sorry, Martin, but the mercenary fleet is not only not substantially weakened, except in the very short term, it's growing. Worse, the Yamatan Zaibatsu appear to be so eager to get it back on station that they're paying two thirds of the cost of restoring and refitting the carrier. I'm afraid that using piracy to both raise funds for the Ikhwan and to undercut the economy down below is . . . " Wallenstein hesitated.
"Doomed to abject failure?" Robinson supplied. "Tell me something I don't know."
15/6/468 AC, BdL Dos Lindas, Hajipur, Sind
"I don' know, skipper," the master of the ship fitting company said, shaking his head. The master was an old man. Underneath his turbaned head, Fosa thought, his hair was likely as gray as his beard.
The Dos Lindas rode at dock, Cazadors guarding from the landward side while corvettes and the Agustin watched to seaward. Getting her here? Through one of the worst storms in the history of the Sea of Sind? With waves battering at the temporary patch welded over the spot where the Ikhwan cruise missile had struck home? That would take a volume. Suffice to say that there were a lot more Cruces de Coraje earned by the crew. Some heroism was never recorded. For that, for those unknowns washed over the side, Carrera had issued the first unit citation in the history of the Legion del Cid.
"I don' know," the master repeated, tapping the temporary patches on the flight deck with his cane and he and Fosa toured the ship with an eye to damages and estimates. "It gonna cost."
"That's not the point," Fosa said. "I don't care what it costs, as long as my fleet isn't being cheated. The point is, can you repair my ship?"
"We do flight deck, hull, hangar deck" the master shipfitter, answered, with a shrug. "Those . . . easy. Cut sections from old ship up coast; drag down. Weld into place. Paint. My people tell me can replace lost AZIPOD, if you buy, and fix other. Have to wait for dry-dock open up but . . . no sweat. Form and weld on new gun tubs? Also, no sweat. Replace guns? You get guns, we replace. Radar? You get radar; we replace. Same, same; laser up top. Got nephew at SIT, Sind Institute Technology. He good with shit like that. Him got friends good, too."
"Buuut?" Fosa asked.
"But got build new fucking elevator from scratch. Hard. Tough. Expensive. Never do before."
"Hmmm. What if someone made an elevator and shipped it here?" Fosa asked.
"Like other shit; you get elevator; we replace."
17/6/468 AC, Kamakura, Yamato
"Kurita did request, in his last will and testament, that we continue to support the ronin as much as possible," Yamagata said.
"I know," Saito agreed, "and it's hardly that grand a request. The problem is that nobody here has made or designed an elevator for an aircraft carrier in decades. Many decades. And the ronin need their elevator now. Between design, tooling up, and actual production, we're looking at half a year to a year."
"And no one makes elevators like this anymore, do they?" Yamagata asked, rhetorically.
Saito shook his head in the negative. "The nearest thing to what the ronin need—or, in any event, could use—is a side mounted elevator the Federated States put on some of their amphibious carriers. The ship, however, is not designed for that."
"Could it be modified?"
"I have sent a naval engineer to enquire. There is also one other possibility that gets them an elevator quickly and gives us time to have one custom designed and built."
20/6/468 AC, Isla Real and Bay of Balboa
The waters quaked with the pounding of newly christened BdL Tadeo Kurita at gunnery practice a few miles away. From the bridge of the conning tower of the spare carrier, never given a name but referred to simply at BdEL1(Barco del Entrenamiento Legionario Numero Uno, Legionary Training Ship Number One), the exec of the Classis Don John could see the top of Isla Santa Josefina, the artillery impact island. The place was wreathed in smoke and flame, only the crest of the central massif visible, and that not all the time.
Overhead came a near continuous freight train rumble as Tadeo Kurita lobbed salvo after salvo toward the impact area island. If the classis exec cared to, he could have climbed topside and seen the cruiser as she fired. Even in daytime, the clouds above flickered with an orange glow with each broadside.
On the bridge, the exec studied diagrams of the ship. The schematics were old and the paper crisp and yellow with age. Worse, they were in Portuguese which was more or less intelligible to Spanish speakers, but always a strain.
"Ah, well," muttered the exec. "Could have been worse. Could have been in something uncivilized . . . like English."
And with that, the exec set himself to solving the problem of how to disassemble a major component of one ship, the elevator, get it loaded aboard another ship, somehow, and move it to a foreign harbor wherein sat a third ship, the Dos Lindas.
Fucking Fosa; thought the classis exec. What kind of miracle worker does he think I am? Worse, how the fuck am I supposed to train replacement crew here with only one working elevator?
The exec heard something very soft behind him. He turned and saw the Yamatan engineer, Keiji Higara, pensively tapping his lips while looking out across the bay at where a seaborne crane was in the process of removing turrets from one of those Suvarov Class cruisers not schedule for refit.
"I am idiot," Keiji announced.
"Why's that, Hig?" the exec asked.
"I been worried . . . you know . . . getting this ship someplace where is crane powerful enough lift the elevator assembly out from hull. That was problem since docking facilities in Ciudad Balboa under . . . enemy control. Then, too, ship immobile. And whole time I been worrying . . . there was that." He pointed at the crane ship.
"You mean we can do it."
In answer, Higara snapped his fingers.
33/6/468 AC, Quarters Number 2, Isla Real
"Look, it only makes sense, Patricio," Jimenez said, punctuating with a snap of his fingers. "I'm shipping over to Pashtia with the Fourth Legion in the not too distant future. So I'll have no use or need for this big old white elephant. Even when I come back, what do I need? A bedroom? An office? Someplace to eat? Artemisia and Mac can give me all that, right here. And they'll have a place to stay suitable for their position."
Jimenez, Lourdes, and Carrera sat on the upper balcony, looking over the parade field. On the table between them was a bucket of ice and some scotch. The air was heavy, both with the natural humidity and the smoke of Xavier's and Carrera's cigars.
"Have you mentioned this to them, Xavier? Mac's a serious stickler for protocol and propriety." Carrera asked, wearily, flicking an ash over the railing and onto the lawn. He'd just flown in this morning from Pashtia with the tail end of 1st and 2nd Legions and was clearly feeling the toll of both the long flight and the time zone change.
"No," Jimenez admitted. "Why should I? It's your house and your Legion; you get to decide."
It does make a certain sense, Carrera admitted to himself. I get to billet my best friends and number one and two subordinates right next door where I can harass them mercilessly. Mac gets a house to go with the wife he's getting. Artemisia—God, she's achingly good to look at, isn't she?—gets the house she probably deserves. Probably? No probably about it. Sh
e makes my sergeant major happy and she deserves whatever I can give her.
Jimenez continued, "Besides, Pat, Mac's living in the senior centurion's bachelor quarters. That's no place to raise a family and if you want your sergeant major happy you had better make his wife happy . . . and Arti wants a family. Soon. As soon as possible."
Jimenez smiled and then began to give off a most unmilitary giggle.
"What's so funny?"
With some difficulty, Xavier got control of himself and answered, "I was just thinking about how badly Arti wants to bear Mac's children. It isn't like they didn't start work on that months ago."
So much for Lourdes giving them the use of a room for privacy, Carrera thought, drily, looking over at his wife. She, too, was laughing, even while she tried hiding her face with her hand.