Down to the Sea

by William R. Forstchen

  “Take Mr. O’Donald as your navigator and spotter. The boy needs to go back up, shake some of the fear out of him after that crash.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Putting the mug down, Cromwell saluted even as Gracchi turned away to other tasks. Getting the heading and location, which was, as usual, just a fair guess, Richard jotted the numbers down and went forward to where his crew waited.

  “Alexi, light the engines.”

  “Sire?”

  “Damn it, Alexi,” Richard snapped, “it’s ‘sir,’ nor ‘sire.’ Light the engines. Yashima, make sure the fuel is topped off and ammunition is aboard. Zhin, open the line to the steam piston.”

  He spotted Sean standing next to his empty catapult, launch crew gathered listlessly around him, watching Cromwell’s team at work. He casually walked over.

  “Sean, would you mind going below and getting my flight gear and yours?”

  “Mine?”

  “The old man says you’re going up with me.”

  “I’m flying?”

  Richard nodded, and in the starlight he could see the look of confusion mixed in with excitement at the realization that they were about to do a night launch.

  “Richard, we’ve never done this before. I mean, a night launch and recovery.”

  “You’re telling me?”

  Sean forced a smile and took off, returning several minutes later with flight overalls. Richard slipped into his and buttoned it halfway up. The night was still warm, but aloft it would cool down a bit. He strapped a revolver around his waist, then pulled on a leather cap, goggles up on his forehead. Sean did the same, and the two waited as his crew continued preparations. Alexi, who normally would have gone up as his gunner and spotter, was obviously glad to be relieved of the assignment and said nothing.

  “Top off the airbags?” Bugarin asked.

  Richard nodded, unable to speak for a moment. Bugarin broke open the hydrogen generator box, carefully put on gloves, leather apron, and face covering, lifted out the five-gallon glass jar of sulphuric acid, and poured the contents into the lead-lined box filled with zinc shavings. Sealing the box, he connected the gas hose to the aft air bag, which was built into the tail assembly of the ship. It would provide just enough additional lift to get the scout plane aloft.

  Richard started to pace back and forth nervously as his crew sprang to work. Then, chiding himself, he stopped, and put his hands behind his back, though he was still clenching and unclenching his hands.

  The hissing of the caloric engines, which took only a few minutes to generate power, caught the attention of the gun crews. A chief petty officer came over to Richard.

  “Going up, sir?”

  Richard, not sure if he’d have control of his voice, simply nodded.

  “Well, good luck.”

  Again, only a nod.

  The petty officer backed off.

  The minutes slowly passed. Richard, finally breaking free from his statuelike pose, moved slowly around his airship; careful to avoid the single propeller aft, which was beginning to windmill. Alexi was up in the nose hatch, pulling the canvas hood off the forward gatling, which would be controlled by Richard once they were aloft. Zhin, carefully closing off the gas, then joined Bugarin on the traverse gear, which pointed the launch ramp off at a ten-degree angle from the bow so that the plane would not snag on the jib bow at launch.

  It was time.

  His crew, finished with their tasks, stepped back, staring at Richard and Sean, illuminated only by the dim starlight.

  “She’s all set, sir,” Zhin announced, his English soft and precise.

  Richard nodded stoically and, without comment, clambered up the ladder hanging from the side of the launch ramp and into the forward cab. Sean, following, climbed up past Richard into the observer/gunner’s position amidships. Richard handed back the paper with their coordinates, and Sean slipped it onto the clipboard holding his navigation chart.

  The instruments were all but invisible in the darkness. He knew the bearing, but seeing the compass was all but impossible…damn.

  Get a bearing on the Southern Triangle once aloft, he realized, then reverse it on the way back. He passed the suggestion back to Sean, who announced he had already thought of it.

  Richard tapped his rudder pedals, looking back over his shoulder to glimpse the tail, then checked his stick. Next came the throttle. The engine hummed up smoothly. No way to check the gauges—he had to do it by sound and feel alone.

  “All ready, sir.”

  Alexi—Cromwell could sense his excitement—was standing up on the side of the plane.

  “Ready.”

  “I’ll get you off on the uproll, I promise it, sir.”

  Richard, annoyed by Alexi’s fussing, said nothing.

  There was no way to delay longer, though he had a sudden longing to get out of the plane and let Sean do the whole thing by himself.

  He raised his right hand out of the cockpit, clenched fist held up, signaling the crew that he was ready.

  What happened next came as a shock. Alexi, misreading the signal in the darkness, hit the steam release valve, slamming the launch piston forward.

  Cursing silently, vision jarred by the unexpected blow, Richard clutched the stick with his left hand, pulled back too far and pitched the plane into the edge of a stall; propeller howling, the plane hung above the waves. He shoved the stick forward. For a gut-wrenching second nothing happened, and then the nose finally slipped down, leveling out.

  He caught a glimpse of the jib boom to his right, then it was gone. His heart still thumping, he leveled off, putting the plane into a shallow banking turn.

  Gettysburg stood out faintly in the starlight, her sails drawn in, her mast bare. He swung around her, mainsail yardarms at wing level. Something caught his attention. The wake of the ship glowed with a rich phosphorescent green that stretched back for a mile or more. The sight was stunning and revealing, as well; a clue as to how to spot a ship at night.

  He swung out behind Gettysburg more than half a mile, then gingerly circled back in, lining up on the wake of the ship, and started to climb. He flew straight up the line, taking his bearing on the Triangle, which was off the starboard wing, bisected by a forward strut.

  Directly ahead the glow of fire drew him as he winged up over Gettysburg, mast tops now a hundred feet below. Figuring it was best to gain altitude, he continued on his slow climb, pushing forward at nearly fifty miles an hour, climbing at two hundred feet a minute.

  As the long minutes passed, wind slipped past his windscreen, heavy with tropical warmth and rich with salt scent. The glow on the horizon began to spread out, a clear indicator that it was close, not more than forty or fifty miles.

  An errant breeze caused the plane to buck, rise up, then steady back out.

  “Smell that?”-Sean shouted.

  Richard raised his head up…smoke.

  He pressed on. They slipped into a wisp of cloud, the temperature instantly dropping, then came back out. He descended slightly, leveling out, or at least tried to level. With less than twenty hours of flight time on scout planes, half of it gained over the last three days, he was still amazed that he had survived the launch. The thought of landing was more than he wanted to contemplate at the moment.

  Bracing the rudder with his knees, he raised his field glasses, tried to find the fire, then gave up.

  “Sean, use your glasses. Tell me what you see,” Richard shouted.

  “Already on it.”

  Richard looked back over his shoulder and, in the starlight, saw the outline of Sean above him, elbows braced on the upper wing.

  “Damn big fire. Can see buildings. Damn big. It’s a harbor.”

  They flew on for several minutes. Sean remained silent, half standing, elbows braced on the upper wing, scanning forward. He lowered his glasses and slipped back into his seat.

  “Ships!” he cried. “I see ships burning, there’s shooting…there, a gun flash, you could see the ship.”
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  Richard, peering forward, wondered how Sean did it. He could see the flashes, the fire, but only as pinpricks of light.

  “Richard, I don’t like this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Those aren’t pirates or raiders. Those ships are too big.”

  “We better get in closer.”

  Richard edged the plane up, taking it into the bottom of the clouds; dodging out, slipping back in again. Soon he could pick out individual flashes of light, forward of the city. Rippling lights erupted, flashes of fire that climbed heavenward, then winked out. Seconds later splashes of silent fire detonated, brilliant yellow lights that winked out as quickly as they ignited.

  “You see that?” Richard cried. “Like rockets.”

  “Hundreds of them,” Sean shouted excitedly.

  More and more flashes were visible, spread out for what he estimated to be miles to either side of the burning city and forward of it.

  He tried to brace the rudder again and raised his glasses. This time he caught glimpses, startling glimpses of fire, explosions that danced and weaved in his vision, one so brilliant that he was temporarily blinded.

  “Richard, may I ask that you just fly? I’ll look.” Richard, surprised by Sean’s commanding tone, almost fired a quick retort, but then realized that his observer was right. His job was to fly, O’Donald’s was to look.

  He reset the glasses in their rack. He had a momentary shock when he realized that he had drifted from what he had hoped was an arrow-straight course. The Triangle was directly off his starboard wing.

  He banked over sharply, embarrassed and a bit frightened by his lapse. How long had they flown thus? Would he be able to find Gettysburg now?

  A brilliant flash erupted, towering upward, expanding out.

  “By all the gods,” Sean gasped. “I think an entire ship went with that.”

  Several minutes later, a dull rumble washed over them. Watching the pattern of lights, Richard sensed that this was not an attack by some alien fleet on a city. Rather, it was a battle between two fleets. The burning city was merely a backdrop.

  The dull distant rumble of the battle grew in intensity. Another detonation, as brilliant as the first one; the flash so bright that it lit up the sea as bright as day, and Richard could actually see other ships.

  “Never seen anything like them,” Sean cried. “No masts, round things on top instead.”

  “Turrets, like monitors?”

  “Like giant monitors, four round turrets on one. Damn, did you see that one shoot?”

  Richard had caught the flash of the guns, but in the confusion and distance he wasn’t sure.

  “Just hold her steady, Richard, take us straight on in.” The sound of’gunfire was continuous, the shock waves rippling over them with sharp intensity.

  There was no longer any doubt in his mind that two fleets were in action. He caught glimpses of sparkling shells arcing upward, disappearing into the darkness, then seconds later causing flashes on the water as the shells exploded. The only question left now was who, and in his mind there was no doubt.

  It was the Kazan.

  He had to make a decision. Continue to press in, get a close-up look, or come about and carry the precious information back. The Kazan had been found at last, and, given the similarity of the ships engaged, they were at war with one another.

  “Damn!”

  Richard saw it a second later, flashing by underneath, illuminated by the flash of an explosion…a flyer.

  Startled, he pulled up, looking back over his shoulder. Behind him Sean had unfastened the lock holding his gatling in place and started to swing it around.

  “Don’t shoot!” Richard shouted. “He might not have seen us.”

  “We suspected they could fly, but did you see the size of that thing?”

  Richard wasn’t sure. It was hard to judge in the darkness.

  He headed upward, but there were no clouds nearby.

  Three more flyers slipped underneath. Watching carefully, he judged them to be five hundred or more feet below. Then one of them started to turn.

  O’Donald shouted a warning even as Richard pulled into a sharp climb.

  “It’s lining up on us!”

  Height or speed? He hung on to the stick for several seconds, frozen with indecision, and spared a quick glance back. He spotted a flicker of movement, starlight illuminating the white wings. It was hard to judge the distance, but a guess told him it was several hundred yards back. The plane was within range if they had machine guns, and given the carnage going on straight ahead, it was idiotic to assume otherwise.

  He nosed over, going into a steep dive that in seconds put the scout plane up to its maximum speed of ninety miles an hour. The ocean, though several thousand feet below, seemed to rush up, and the raging battle seemed perilously close.

  “Where is he?” Richard cried.

  “I can’t tell, lost him when you dived. Next time warn me!”

  A flash of light snapped past.

  Time seemed to freeze. He remembered lectures at the academy, talking with old sailors, veterans of the Great War, about what it was like. The shock of realization that for the first time someone was shooting at you, trying to kill you…and that in another instant the world would continue to spin on in its grim course, and you would not be part of it.

  Another flash shot past. Sean cursed, steam hissing as he opened the cock. The’gatling spun to life, spitting flame, the vibration blurring vision. Richard wondered if the chocks that shut the gun down would work if Sean should happen to swing it due aft, where his shots would shred the propeller.

  He still couldn’t see the instruments in the darkness. Sense alone told him that he was pushing the plane beyond any speed he had ever flown before. Chopping back the throttle, he pulled up sharply, the control stick shaking a violent tattoo, wires humming, one parting with a riflelike crack.

  “Where the hell is he?”

  There was no reply.

  Richard spared a quick glance back over his shoulder and was stunned by the sight of Sean hanging half out of the plane, arms locked around the breech of his gun.

  Richard leveled out, and Sean swore wildly, swinging his legs back into the plane.

  “Damn it, why aren’t you strapped in?” Richard screamed.

  In the starlight, he could see Sean’s terrified grimace.

  “Where is he?”

  “How am I supposed to know?” Sean gasped.

  Completely disoriented, Richard looked around. There was a flash directly below him, a mushrooming cloud of fire spreading out across the sea, the explosion soaring up, the shock of it rocking his plane. He felt a shuddering shriek, the nearby passage of a shell sounding like an out-of-control train rushing past.

  He nosed his plane over, banking sharply, putting the fire of the city directly behind him.

  “We’re getting the hell out of here.”

  He continued to dive, the wind shrieking, pushing the plane. He looked aft, caught a glimpse of the Triangle.

  Looking forward, he saw Gavala, the star that was the point of the Hunter’s Spear, low on the horizon, and two points off to port.

  He raced back out for the open sea, pulling up to clear a ship that suddenly appeared out of the darkness and in seconds disappeared astern. It was a ship without masts, he realized, turrets mounted fore and aft.

  The ocean seemed to spread out to either side, and with a start he realized that he was only feet above the water.

  “Five more degrees to port,” Sean cried.

  “What?”

  “You’re about five degrees off.”

  Sean had always scored highest in their navigation classes, so Richard followed his order without comment.

  But after a few minutes something else caught his attention.

  A fire glowed on the horizon, not as big as the one he had been approaching less than half an hour ago. It was simply a pinpoint, flashes of light that popped, flared, and disappeared.

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nbsp; A thought crossed his mind. From the position of the Great Wheel, which showed intermittently through the scattering of clouds, he judged it was little more than halfway through the first watch. Less than three hours ago he had come awake and wandered to the galley for a cup of tea and biscuits before going on watch. Three hours ago he would have had no idea of what it was he was now seeing, or how to judge it.

  Ahead there was another fight, ship to ship, and someone was burning. Was it his ship dying? Were they now alone a thousand miles from home?

  THREE

  “My lord.”

  Hazin stirred, momentarily disoriented. He had always hated ships, the constant movement, the stenches coming up from below.

  “My lord, there’s a .ship.”

  Hazin sat up, nodding, wearily rubbing the back of his neck. The captain’s bunk was far too small for his towering frame. At nine feet he was tall even for one of his race.

  He stretched, nearly losing his balance as the deck beneath his feet dropped and rolled. He looked over at the messenger, a’ novitiate of his order, but one obviously accustomed to the sea; he balanced easily, shifting comfortably.

  Though the sea was the theater upon which the game of physical power was played out, it was an environment he secretly feared. It was an environment one could not control, the way one could so easily control the minds of others.

  Once aboard a ship, one’s fate was in the hands of too many unknown variables. In spite of all the elaborate plans, the games within games, there was always the possibility that an hour hence a storm could send one to the bottom. Or a raider of the Orange Banner, who acknowledged no power, could take and hold them for ransom. Or a rival with a fleet of a hundred vessels might suddenly appear where he was not supposed to appear.