Against the Tide tcw-3

by John Ringo

  He knew for a fact that the Intelligence Coordination Committee did not suspect him. But this other “Group” might. In which case, he should bolt.

  The problem was, now he saw what used to be called a “main chance.”

  “The problem is,” the stupid woman babbled, “Sheida’s sent me off like I’m some soldier of hers but without even that much briefing. I don’t know any of these people.”

  “I know General Lanzillo,” Harry said, soothingly. “A good man, a good academic. He’s the local area commander but since most of what he handles is schools, he was chosen for his experience in military history and military sciences. He is a bit… uhm… gruff…”

  “The problem is that Sheida is expecting me to handle some of the military aspects as well,” Elnora said, frowning. “I don’t know a battalion from a legion. This has to be held very closely you understand. I really need…”

  “I’m free at the moment,” Harry said, smiling. “And… used to this sort of harum scarum military operation. I can leave a message that I’ve been called away on Council business. That won’t be questioned. If you would like me to accompany you and help…?”

  “That would be wonderful.”

  * * *

  Rachel fingered the blade in the candlelight. It was somewhat like a long knife, a surgical blade designed for deep cutting in amputations. Good dwarven surgical steel, it was sharper than any dagger, with a razor-sharp point. She had made a scabbard for it under the noses of her guards, the guards now surrounding her tent, and slipped it into her bosom while in the latrine. It was her court of last resort.

  The battle would probably start around dawn. By noon her father would have probably beaten the New Destiny forces, given what she had communicated. But win or lose, Conner would be able to take her back to Ropasa. And she wasn’t going to let that happen.

  She placed the point of the scalpel at the top of her neck, just under the skull. She’d considered several options but all of the rest depended upon bleeding, something that could be fixed relatively quickly. No matter how good Conner was, he was going to be hard-pressed to revive her with a severed third vertebra. It was an interesting question in neural transmission and muscle flexion. Could she cut her spine before the signals to her arms became scrambled. A modern physician certainly had the strength to cut their own spine. But was it possible?

  She thought she would probably find out tomorrow.

  She pressed the scalpel in a bit harder and flinched as she felt the fine tip cut into her skin. She could find out now.

  She withdrew it from her thick hair, a problem that she’d already considered, and wiped the tip off on a cloth. Then she slid it back into the scabbard and down into her bosom.

  Tomorrow would be soon enough. As the thief said, maybe the pig would sing. As long as she was still on this side of the portal, there was hope.

  * * *

  “Too many things to go wrong, boss,” Herzer said as Edmund mounted the wyvern.

  “If some go right, we’re no worse than we’d be otherwise,” Edmund said. “If most go right, we’ll be better. If none of them go right, we’re up a creek.”

  “Well, we’ll be there,” Herzer said, saluting. “Good luck.”

  “Same to you,” Edmund replied, then tapped the wyvern-rider on the shoulder. The dragon hopped onto the catapult and was launched into the sky, the leader of the UFS now headed to join the First Legion.

  Herzer went down into the wyvern bay, which was crowded with extra dragons, and passed through it to the flight ready room. The riders were crowded too; it was standing room only on the last dragon-carrier in the UFS fleet. The riders were joking, the sound was good but… strained. Many of them were from carriers that were burned, sunken, wrecks. And all of them had been at sea for too long in the crowded ships. They also felt the tension of the day that had yet to dawn. Everyone knew that throwing the enemy back was important. None of them, besides Herzer and Joanna, knew how important.

  “Settle down,” Herzer said, stepping up in front of a plywood-covered map board. “Everyone know the mission?” They’d had the initial brief the night before so there was a scattered chorus on the varied theme of yes.

  “Sergeant Fink?” Herzer said, pointing at the junior rider.

  “We take off in…” Fink looked at the bulkhead-mounted clock and gulped, “one hour. Assemble off Wilamon Point. Wait for first engagement then, on signal from Commander Gramlich, split into two echelons and bombard the New Destiny field force. Return by divisions and continue sorties until exhaustion or defeat of the New Destiny force. In the event of retreat on the part of our own forces, we cover the retreat.”

  “Very good,” Herzer said, nodding and looking around the room. “Everybody got that?”

  “Yes, Major,” one of the riders from the Richard said. “It’s easy enough.”

  “And known throughout the ship, right?” Herzer said. “Meg… Mistress Travante swept this room for technologicals before this meeting. All the corridors around us are being secured by marines, unobtrusively. Why? Because everything that Sergeant Fink just said is… let us call it a lie. This is your real mission brief…”

  * * *

  “First call!” the sergeant bellowed, pounding on the doors. “Boots and saddles!” He continued down the corridor, pounding on the door of each of the Blood Lords that were stationed at Raven’s Mill. He was charge of quarters and it was time to face the bright new day. In another hour he’d be off-duty for twenty-four hours, after having been on-duty for the same, and he intended to be deep in the arms of Morpheus in two.

  Behind the sergeant the platoon sergeants of the Blood Lord battalion spread out, passing the word they’d just been given.

  “Drop the PT uniform,” the triari said, shaking his head. “Full armor and weapons. Draw starts in fifteen minutes.”

  “What the hell?” the private said, dropping the light cosilk uniform back in his footlocker and pulling out a field uniform. “Why?”

  “The damned general’s called a surprise inspection for 0800 hours. There’s time for chow at least…”

  * * *

  Malcolm D’Erle was dogged. There was no other way to describe it. His feet were burning, his chest was on fire and he was dog weary.

  The archer corps had debarked at Wilamon on schedule and, after collecting some sketchy transport, had headed for the battlefield. It was sixty-five kilometers by road from Wilamon to the hilltop they were intending to use and they had a bare fourteen hours to make the movement. They’d marched in a standard series of quick march and double-time with breaks every hour. But the breaks seemed shorter and shorter as the time went on. The transport was mostly carrying water and the general had passed brutal messages on intake and usage of same. Food could wait. Rest could wait. The only thing that mattered was getting the majority of the archers, in some half-living condition, to the hill, on time.

  And they’d made it. It was two hours before dawn when a group of green-clad, longbow-toting Rangers stepped out into the road and waved a bullseye lantern at the archer corps.

  “Looking for General D’Erle,” the lead Ranger said.

  “Here,” Malcolm gasped as the group was brought to a reasonably quiet halt. He could hear the archers falling out by the wayside but that could wait.

  “Lieutenant Aihara, Fifth Rangers,” the Ranger said, his voice pitched to carry but soft. Not a whisper, that could be heard at a greater distance. “We’ve been scouting the New Destiny force for the last two days. We have your approach lines marked out and had wagons brought down with food from Tarson. No fires, obviously, but the food is bread loaves and meat. Casks of water and some wine if you wish to issue it. Chow line’s set up.”

  “Lieutenant,” the general chuckled, “you are a sight for god-damned sore eyes.”

  “Sir,” another figure said, coming out of the gloom. “I’m Ensign Destrang, General Talbot’s aide.”

  “Yes, Ensign?” the general said, raising an eye at a d
ress uniform covered in greenery.

  “I need a quiet word with you, sir,” the ensign replied, softly. “Soon. I have a dispatch from General Talbot and supplementary orders.”

  “Let me get this clusterfisk under control,” D’Erle said, frowning and looking over his shoulder at the collapsed archers. “Then we’ll talk.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “I can put this on myself, you know,” Herzer said, extending his arms backwards.

  “Us to do,” Bast replied. “Hold open, Megan.”

  The ancient Romans had put an enormous amount of thought and practical research into making field armor that a soldier could wear day in and day out and Edmund Talbot had seen few reasons to ignore them. The loricated legionnaire armor was made of overlapping steel plates, lorica, that were effectively thin steel bands held together by small fittings on the inside. They were bent to go around a human body and open on the front. There they were tied with leather bindings. They had to be bent back to be put on, but other than that the armor could be donned like a coat and was, for armor, remarkably comfortable and cool.

  Herzer had already donned the cosilk undershirt, with wide half sleeves to prevent chafing from the edge of the lorica, the steel-faced leather kilt and the thick cosilk scarf that wrapped around his neck and folded across his chest. The latter was to prevent the armor from digging into the neck and also acted as a slight protective collar against rebounds.

  Herzer tied the front of the armor as Bast and Megan put on his shin, knee and thigh guards. Then he held his arms out, smiling faintly, so they could attach the bracers. On his right, his only, hand he slipped on a leather glove backed with steel inserts on the outside. Last, Megan placed his helmet on his head. The original Blood Lord helmet had been a barbute, a solid helmet of steel with a thin “T” on the front for breathing and sight. Recently, the legions had gone to the original Roman design. It was far more comfortable and gave much greater vision in battle. Of course, the face was essentially unprotected, but nothing was perfect.

  He looked at the two of them standing side by side, the childlike beauty of the ancient elf with her long, curly, blue-black hair and cat-pupiled green eyes standing next to the much more subtle beauty of the councilwoman and shook his head.

  “Do I get to keep both of you?” he asked, holding out his arms.

  “Friends are,” Bast said, accepting and joining in the group hug. “Friends will stay. All and always.”

  “I won’t kick her out of bed, mind you,” Megan said, trying to smile.

  “Will help with armor?” Bast asked Megan.

  “What armor?” Herzer said, frowning.

  “Going with,” Bast replied, slipping out of her bikini top and bottom. “Hard fight have. Back will cover. Ride Joanna. Won’t mind.”

  “It is going to be a hard fight,” Herzer said, frowning harder. “A bloody shambles fight. You’re as good as anyone in the world, better than me, but you’re going to need armor and I don’t know any in this ship…” He stopped as the elf produced a square of fabric the size of a handkerchief from her apparently bottomless pouch. She started unfolding it. And unfolding it. When it was fully unfolded the deck of the compartment could be seen through a long, grayish bodysuit.

  “Hard to put on,” Bast said, sitting down on the deck and shoving one leg in. “Megan to help?”

  “What is that?” Herzer asked. He always tended to get a bit… horny before a fight. Just one of his many demons. And the sight of the elf writhing on the floor putting on that… cat-suit combat-nightie, was a bit more than he was prepared to handle.

  “Carbon nanotube,” Bast grunted, shoving an arm into a sleeve that ended in an integral glove. “Not very stretchy. Think have gained weight.”

  “Carbon… what?” Herzer asked as Bast got up and stretched, hard, finally getting all her digits into place.

  “Carbon nanotube,” Bast said, posing with her arms in the air. She looked from one blank face to the other and then pouted. “Diamond? Girl’s best friend?”

  “You mean that’s a suit of carbon nanotube?” Megan said, aghast.

  “Yeah,” Bast said, simply, pirouetting in place so the zipper at the back was presented to Megan. “Zip me?”

  “That’s the stuff that they used to put in tourney armor to make sure nothing could get through it, right?” Herzer said.

  “And in wyvern wings.” Megan nodded, zipping up the back. “That’s why they’re impenetrable.”

  Bast folded up her hair in a quick bun and slipped a cover over her head. Like the rest of the suit it was nearly invisible.

  “What do you think?” she asked, posing again and then turning in place.

  The suit was essentially transparent except in carefully selected… mildly opaque spots.

  “Put your eyes back in your head, Herzer,” Megan said, dryly. “Besides, you’ve seen it.”

  “But this is… different,” Herzer said, wonderingly. The suit glittered faintly in the lamplight and he remembered what Bast had said about diamonds. That was, essentially, what the suit was, a flexible covering of solid diamond.

  “Third floor,” Megan said, chuckling, “combat lingerie…”

  The elf ignored the byplay and picked up her bow and saber.

  “Ready?” she asked Herzer.

  “Sure,” Herzer replied, bemusedly. “Why don’t you always wear that?”

  “Doesn’t breathe very well,” Bast said, frowning. “Gets hot. Hard to take off in case want fun.” Her eyes grew distant and she frowned, then looked at Megan and reached out to stroke her face. “Say no goodbyes, yet.”

  “Why?” Megan asked, tilting her face to the side.

  “Is not time,” Bast replied, frowning. “Gaslan is… -shifting…”

  * * *

  “Message from station one-three-seven, Mr. J,” the messenger said, handing over a sealed envelope.

  “Thank you,” Joel said as the messenger left. He slit the -envelope open and frowned at the contents. One cheek twitched for a moment and then he stepped quickly into his secretary’s anteroom and opened up a speaking tube.

  “Communications,” a voice said when he whistled into it.

  “Operational Immediate to all stations…” he said.

  * * *

  Brice Cruz had been a Blood Lord when most of the pussies going through the chow line hadn’t heard the name.

  Sure, he’d had his problems. Been up the ranks, been down the ranks. But kicking him out of the corps over a few miserable bandits had really pissed him off. At first. Herzer had been the one to bring him the news. He’d known Herzer since right after the Fall, when they were both apprentices in Raven’s Mill. And he knew that Herzer would go to bat for him.

  So when Herzer had told him that Herzer’s recommendation had been a full court-martial, well, he had to think.

  He’d spent a good bit of the next year thinking. Besides starving there wasn’t much else to do. Gunny Rutherford had recited a poem one time, something about Black Sheep. One of the lines was about “slipping down the ladder, rung by rung.” That was his life in a nutshell. When you’re too dangerous to be a soldier, and too honorable to be a bandit and a lousy farmer, there wasn’t much going but “slipping down the ladder, rung by rung.” The only thing that kept him from thinking about it was what wine and beer he could afford working as a wandering laborer.

  They’d found him in a miserable slop of a tavern, drunk as an owl on bad wine and near half dead. They’d sobered him up and then started asking questions. After a while, he realized that if the answers were wrong, he wasn’t walking out of the hut they’d taken him to. But the answers were right. And so he’d been given a new job. It wasn’t as good as being a Blood Lord and really getting it stuck in. But, and this was the key point, they’d promised him that if he was a good boy and played by the rules, he’d occasionally get to kill people. The flip side being that if he fisked with them, even once, he’d be visited by unpleasant gentlemen with similar abilities
and then there would be no more Brice Cruz.

  He’d thought they were crazy when they put him back in Raven’s Mill. But it was remarkable what a change of hair and skin color along with a few things you could do with a face could do. Nobody had twigged. And, after all, he knew the town and the Blood Lord Academy inside and out. He’d been there before half the buildings were built. Had built a third of them.

  He’d taken a job in the kitchens and done a professionally middling job. Never so good that he could get promoted, never so bad that he got fired. And he kept his ears open. From time to time he passed on bits of information that he’d picked up. Nothing much, Raven’s Mill in a lot of ways was a backwater.

  This morning was unusual, though. The commandant had called for a surprise inspection. And he’d heard one of the headquarters guards that was coming off duty saying that Councilwoman Sill and some undersecretary from the War Department were in the building. Just a surprise inspection wasn’t too odd; the commandant was a right bastard about them. But put it together with the visit, though, and something was happening.

  He glanced at the clock and looked out the window. Right on time.

  “Spell me,” he grunted to one of the assistant cooks. “I had too much coffee.”

  He stepped out back to the latrines and opened up the door to the third stall.

  “Clearly we need better facilities,” he said to no one in particular.

  “It’s clear,” a voice answered from the next stall.

  “Councilwoman Sill and an undersecretary from the War Department are at headquarters,” Cruz said, conversationally. “And there’s a surprise inspection. Maybe dog and pony show for them. Lots of tenseness going around.”