Down to the Sea

by William R. Forstchen

  Several people on the plaza, recognizing Andrew in the window, began to shout, and he drew back, shaking his head and pulling the curtains shut.

  “I wonder how many days Lincoln had like this,” he sighed. He fixed his attention back on Richard, as if the commander had just suddenly materialized in the room.

  “Yes, Mr. Cromwell. Please consider what I just said.”

  “I think it would be best all the way around, sir, if I followed through on what I volunteered for.”

  “A statement, is it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right. I know what it means to you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Andrew took his head. “Son, I think in a month’s time this Republic will be in the most desperate struggle it has yet faced. This foe, unlike the old Hordes, is far more insidious, far more seductive, and thus far more treacherous. The Hordes, no matter how hateful their practices, were warriors of honor in their own right. Jurak added a new element, though still honorable in his attempt to split us politically. The message of this Hazin, however, will appeal to far too many. But beneath it, there is a cruelty unimagined.”

  “Yes, sir. I knew that from the beginning. I only wish O’Donald had seen it as well before he was trapped.”

  Andrew nodded sadly. “Stay alive, Cromwell. This might drag out for years, and I’ll need you.” Andrew let go of his hand.

  Saluting, Richard left the room, briefcase clutched tightly in his hand.

  Andrew, watching him leave, could only shake his head in weariness and then returned to the preparation of his speech before Congress, asking for a full mobilization to war.

  “Did you see the copy of the president’s speech last night?” Flight Lieutenant Adam Rosovich asked, looking over at the chief engineer from Republic Aerosteamer Company.

  Theodor nodded. “Hard to see how anyone could argue against it. Hell, he laid it out clearly enough. These Kazan are insane, and they are coming this way. We have to fight.”

  A sharp, steady breeze whipped the two as they walked across the plank deck as the armored cruiser Shiloh came up to full speed. This was its first test run. Men scrambled around the two. An engineer came up to Theodor and pointed to the single smokestack, which had been shifted from center line to the starboard side.

  “That thing is leaking like a sieve. The fittings below deck are a mess, sir,” he shouted.

  Theodor smiled and simply nodded. “We can fix it later. The purpose now is to see if this damned idea really works. Then we turn around and head back to Suzdal.”

  The engineer shook his head wearily and walked away, shouting oaths at several crew members who had stopped to gawk at the spectacle that was about to take place.

  Adam approached his airship, a brand-new single engine Falcon. The engine was already ticking over, propeller a slow-moving blur. The crew chief, in the cockpit, scrambled out as Adam approached, and saluted.

  “Everything ready, sir. Engine temperature at two hundred and forty, I’ve revved her up to twelve hundred, all controls checked. Just remember, sir, she’s got no ammunition on board and only ten gallons of fuel, so she’ll settle in real light.”

  Adam smiled, nodding his thanks. His chief, an old Roum aristocrat who had joined the air corps because he was fascinated with aviation, was obviously delighted that his young pilot had been selected for this first experimental flight.

  “Just bring her in nice and steady now, sir,” Quintus continued, a bit nervous. “Remember that you’re trailing that ugly-looking hook. Just let it catch.”

  “Quintus, leave the boy alone. He’s already practiced this on land half a dozen times,” Theodor shouted, his own tension ready to explode.

  The two fell into an argument, Quintus though a sergeant, still maintained a certain bearing of nobility and refused to be disciplined by anyone, even the chief designer for the Republic’s entire air fleet.

  Adam ignored the two, gave his machine a quick walk around, and then climbed up into the cab positioned just forward of the propeller.

  The Falcon, the latest model to come out of the Republic’s design shop, had a curious twin boom fuselage that swept to either side of the prop, with rudder and elevators aft. Its bi-wings were sleek, canted back at a ten degree angle, missing the tangle of support wires, which had been replaced by single vertical support booms out near each wing tip.

  Adam pulled down his goggles, slipped his feet up against the rudder pedals, and looked down at Quintus, who broke off from the argument in mid-sentence and gave a thumbs-up. Adam swung the rudder back and forth, then checked the elevator control by pulling the stick back and then forward. and finally the ailerons.

  He revved up the throttle, watching the temperature gauge, which dropped slightly then held steady. The new revolutions per minute gauge ticked up over a thousand. It felt like the machine was about to surge forward with a jolt. The only thing holding it in place were the wheel clocks and tie-downs.

  He edged the engine back down and gave a thumbs-up in reply.

  The launch crew, urged on by Quintus, scrambled around the plane, freed the wheels, and released the tie-down straps. With two men holding each wingtip, Adam gingerly edged the throttle back up, slowly letting the plane roll forward.

  He caught a glimpse of Theodor holding both hands over his head, clenching them together in a victory salute, and then he focused his attention forward.

  Shiloh was up to full speed at fifteen knots. Over the last week a crew of half a thousand men had hurriedly covered over the entire topdeck with wooden planking, while shifting the exhaust stack to one side, then built a small wooden bridge forward of the stack. It was, without a doubt, the strangest ship Adam had ever seen, designed for one purpose only, to carry and launch aerosteamers, not just two as were now carried on the armored cruisers for scouting purposes, but twenty Falcons and two-engined Goliaths.

  The President had cut through all the years of debate with a direct order: convert the three armored cruisers to aerosteamer carriers and have them ready to fight within a fortnight. His argument was straightforward and simple. If the report about the Kazan battle cruisers was true, the armored cruisers of the Republic were obsolete and to continue building them was a waste. Besides, the change over to a plank decking on the hulls was far simpler than the two months of fitting out that would be required to install the guns and other equipment for the three cruisers.

  Admiral Petronius, who was slated to command the new flotilla of cruisers, had resigned in protest, but his resignation was refused by the president, who ordered him to take command regardless of his personal feelings. Adam looked up at the bridge and saw Petronius’s baleful gaze, and he wondered if the admiral was praying to his pagan gods for him to crash on takeoff.

  Just forward of the small wooden control tower the launch crew stopped and at Quintus’s command stepped back. Adam looked down at Quintus, who was gazing at the ship commander’s bridge. He wasn’t really sure what to do next and decided it was best to salute. The admiral returned the salute.

  Adam settled back in his seat and slammed the throttle forward. The engine seemed to hesitate for a second, RPMs suddenly began to climb and the Falcon ever so slowly began to roll forward. With only a hundred and fifty feet of deck, the takeoff distance seemed impossibly short.

  There had been talk of putting steam catapults forward, but there simply wasn’t enough time to rig them up. The engineering crew would have to work on the conversion after the ship had sailed. Adam wondered if all the mad haste was going to cost him his life in the next ten seconds.

  The Falcon continued to build speed. The edge of the launch deck was only feet ahead as he pulled back on the elevator…and nothing happened.

  Once over the edge, the rumbling of the wheels on the rough wooden deck stopped. In the strange silence, the aerosteamer began to fall. Instantly he reversed controls, pushing the stick forward. He had forty feet to drop, the cruiser had been moving at fifteen knots, the wind had bee
n light but steady at just under five knots. All he needed was another fifteen knots to hit minimum flight speed.

  He waited to the very last second as the Falcon drove toward the water. He pulled back and it leveled out, wings holding him aloft; so close that the wheels actually skimmed the water. Heart pounding, he lifted up half a dozen feet and let her build up speed.

  He flew on straight for half a mile, letting his speed build up to sixty knots, then eased back on the stick. Putting in a touch of airelon, he brought the Falcon slowly upward in a banking turn. Looking over his left shoulder, he could see the cruiser and the antlike figures scrambling on the deck.

  He laughed with childlike delight. If ever he’d felt totally alive, this was the moment. Being the first to try this mad scheme, to be soaring alone into the heavens, the world drifting away beneath his wings.

  Climbing through a one hundred eighty degree turn, he leveled out, setting altitude at three hundred feet. In less than a minute the Shiloh was off his port wing a half mile away.

  Ungainly and strange as it looked, to him the carrier was a beautiful sight. Such a vessel had been discussed in advanced design school, but never had anyone attempted to make one. Admiral Bullfinch and so many others on the Design Board had firmly blocked it, claiming it was a total waste of effort. Aerosteamers were scout planes, and all that was needed was one or two float planes on a cruiser.

  Well, all that debate was gone forever, and he was ecstatic to be the one to prove it. If he’d crashed, the scheme would have been canceled, and Petronius would have gotten his old tub back.

  Adam grinned, not today, dear sir, not today.

  A mile aft of the Shiloh he began his slow banking turn. Nothing fancy, though he knew he could put the Falcon up on its wing and still maintain control. The Falcon was the first aerosteamer ever to be rolled and looped, at least deliberately, and still hold together, but for today, it was slow, gentle, and steady flying.

  He came out of his turn at two hundred feet and lined up straight on the landing deck. He felt a momentary ripple of fear. The damned thing looked so impossibly small, just three hundred fifty feet long and thirty-five wide. He was glad he was trying this first with a Falcon rather than a Goliath. With its fifty-foot wing span, a pilot would have to land off center to the port side in order to avoid clipping the bridge.

  Concentrate!.. he screamed at himself. This wasn’t quite as easy as he had boasted it would be. Lining up on the fantail of the ship, he closed in. Then he watched his target slip ahead. He’d forgotten for a second that the place where he wanted to land was steadily moving forward at over twenty feet a second.

  He raised his nose slightly, edged in another hundred RPMs, saw that he was coming in a bit high, and dropped the RPMs back down again. Right hand on the throttle, he gripped the control stick tightly. One of the things he liked about the new Falcon was that just before stalling there’d be a slight shudder on the stick from the airflow breaking up over the wings.

  He edged the nose higher, the plane dropping as it lost flying speed. Watching from the comer of his eye, he saw the creamy wake rolling away from the ship, then the edge of the landing deck. He cut the throttle back, felt the shudder on the stick. The metal wheels hit the deck with a clattering shriek. Panic flashed through him as the nose dropped. It seemed that he was racing straight at the bridge. Then, with a snap, he was jerked to a stop. The tail hook had snagged the cables laid across the deck, which were weighted down with sandbags.

  He chopped the throttle back completely. As he pulled off his helmet and goggles, he was suddenly aware that he was sweating profusely.

  He unstrapped the safety harness, stood up, climbed out of the cockpit, and dropped to the deck. Instantly he was surrounded by a shouting, joyous mob—engineers from the design team, Theodor leading the way, Quintus and the launch crew swarming in around him. He caught a glimpse of the admiral up on the bridge, who, though looking a bit glum, formally saluted.

  “What do the Yankees say?” Adam laughed. “A piece of cake. Now let’s try the Goliath.”

  He tried to walk, but suddenly his knees felt like jelly, and he had to sit down. The crowd around him broke into appreciative laughs.

  Theodor shooed them back and took a seat beside him. “How does it feel to be the first man to take off and land on an aerosteamer carrier?”

  “A what?”

  “That’s what we’re calling them. Aerosteamer carriers.” Adam smiled, afraid to speak, the sudden surge of fear still holding him. So much could have gone wrong. He should have simply fallen over the edge of the deck and then drowned. He could have come in too high and slammed into the bridge, or too low and crashed against the fantail. What sounded so easy in late-night arguments, or when first tested only a week ago on a regular landing strip, now seemed little short of insane.

  “Scared?” Theodor asked.

  Adam smiled, shook his head, then, looking into Theodor’s eyes, he slowly nodded in agreement.

  “I was petrified every time I went up,” Theodor said. “Flew eighty-two missions during the war and afterward and near peed myself on every one. In fact, if I remember correctly, I did pee myself when we started to burn and crashed at Hispania. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “It’s not as easy as we boasted it would be,” Adam whispered.

  “I know, I could see that. If we don’t have fifteen or more knots of wind, it’ll damn near be suicide unless we get those catapults in place.”

  Theodor sighed.

  “The president wants these three ships ready to sail within the week. We’ve got to train sixty pilots to do this, and then”—he hesitated—“and then fly straight into their fleet and attack.”

  He looked back at Adam.

  “We’ll bring the Goliath up from below. Do you feel up to trying it, or should we call it a day?”

  Adam smiled. “No problem. Let’s get it done.”

  Theodor clapped him on the shoulder. “Take a break, son. It’ll be a half an hour or more before we have it topside and ready to fly.”

  Adam refused Theodor’s help as he stood up and walked toward the bridge. He smiled again as dozens of men surrounded him, shouting congratulations and slapping him on the back. He waved good-naturedly, a bit of a swagger in his walk, reached the edge of the wooden top deck, found a ladder, and scrambled down to the main deck below.

  What had once been intended as the main deck upon which the superstructure, turrets, and mounts for the three masts were to be placed had been covered over with yet more planking. The flight deck, twenty feet above, ran the entire length of the ship, vertical support beams to hold the deck hastily bolted into place. What was now the lower deck acted as the storage and maintenance deck, which would be filled with aerosteamers, their munitions, and supplies. It was presently occupied by a lone, Goliath twin-engine plane, wings folded in, rudder detached.

  A steam whistle sounded, the alert signal that the ramp was about to be lowered. The deck overhead just forward of the fantail suddenly opened, powered by half a hundred men on pulleys. The hinged deck ponderously dropped down to form a ramp to the lower main deck.

  A crew scrambled around the Goliath, hooking a hoist cable to the nose. Topside, fifty men began to pull, and ever so slowly the ungainly-looking aerosteamer rolled up the thirty-degree incline, crew chiefs shouting orders.

  As Adam watched, the entire show seemed somehow unreal—and also far too slow. It might work here, on the calm Inland Sea, with no enemy in sight, but a better way would have to be found. A ship would have to be designed from the keel up for this job. But for now this was all they had, and in thirty minutes he was going to have to fly that thing, bring it back, and land it.

  Turning, he rushed to the railing, leaned over, and vomited.

  It all seemed like a dream.

  Sean O’Donald stood on the foredeck of Ulgana, the Kazan ship of the line named after the third keeper of the underworld. Looking aft, he was awed by the sight, the sense of power the ship co
nveyed. Its three forward turrets, each carrying a massive ten-inch gun, barrels raised to maximum elevation, were pointing broadside to starboard in salute as they passed the emperor. The entire starboard railing, from bow to stern, was lined with the crew, clenched fists raised in salute.

  His view of the emperor’s flagship was blocked by the massive bulk of the Kazan sailors, and he turned away, attention turning to the harbor. Over a hundred transport ships filled the great bay. Since the day before yesterday, five umens-of the Shiv, three legions of imperial troops, a full division of land cruisers, and another of heavy artillery had been loading up, and the ships were starting to weigh anchor, ready to fall in astern of the main battle line, comprised of eight main battleships like Ulgana, a dozen heavy cruisers, and more than twenty frigates.

  Even the lightest frigate would be a match for anything the Republic could put to sea, and that realization chilled what little doubt still lingered in his heart.

  Am I really a traitor as Cromwell said? he wondered.

  He could see Hazin up on the bridge, rendering the proper ceremonial salute as they passed the emperor.

  So unlike anything I ever imagined of their race, he thought. Always my father called them beasties; barbarians fit only for extinction. Yet in the brief time he had spent among them, he had seen things never imagined.

  Suzdal, even Roum, when compared to the glittering capital city, were but stink holes. Smoke-belching factories surrounded Suzdal, sometimes blackening the sky even at midday, and Roum was but a shadow of her former glory, a fair part of it still in ruins from the Great War.

  Even the poorest of Kazan lived better than many in Suzdal. None were left to starve. Food and shelter were given by the emperor, and entertainment provided. While in Suzdal many still worked twelve-hour days in stygian darkness in the mines or choking in the great foundries.