It was a glorious, beautiful sight—and yet he felt that something was not correct, not in place.
Was it Hazin?
There had to be a reason why, always the game within the game, like the toy he had had as a child; a golden ball that when opened revealed another within, and then another within that, and then yet another.
He had ordered his chamberlain to go through the ship’s roster yet again, to have his chief protector question yet again any who might be suspect, who might be of the Order and concealed in the ranks. Yet they had found nothing.
Something was wrong, marring this moment, and then another explosion caught his attention, a cheer rippling along the deck. The golden dome had been hit, disappearing in a shower of flame and smoke, which glowed in the late afternoon light.
Then the alarm sounded.
Adam leveled out, pulled up his goggles to wipe the sweat from his eyes, wiped his hand on his pants leg, then gripped the stick again.
It was stunning. The city had been their beacon for fifty miles, smoke and flames as they flew a circular approach far behind the fleet, swinging around to the west before coming down to wave-top level and then flying straight in for twenty miles.
“Low, sun at your backs and in their eyes,” Petronius had said. “The bastards will all be looking the other way, focused on the burning city, enjoying themselves, figuring the battle is won.”
Petronius was right. The seven battleships were lying four miles off the coast, the frigates and cruisers lined farther in, with only two frigates several miles out on picket to the west of the battleships.
In the lead, Adam led his flight of eight Goliaths wide of the frigates, and not a shot was fired until he was abeam the second ship. A few shells detonated, and then they were past, the battleships four miles ahead.
It was another mile in before he sensed that the Kazan were finally reacting. The battleships were moving slowly, guns firing, and then finally the last ship in line began to turn off the firing line to starboard, heading south, trying to run straight out into the open sea. Perfect, for it set them abeam, the widest target possible.
The second ship in line began to turn as well, still lumbering along. Adam grinned. Petronius had predicted that as well. Ships of that size would take ten, fifteen minutes to build up to battle speed, and by then it would be over.
He raised his glasses, scanned the first ship, then the second and the third, which was continuing straight on course. The fourth ship in line. That was it, the red banner.
He looked to left and right. The other Goliaths were roughly in position to either side.
He finally caught the eye of the pilot off to starboard. He.pointed at the battleships, held up four fingers, and then pointed forward. The pilot nodded. He tried to get the attention of the man to port, but he was completely focused on the spectacle ahead.
He started to bank out, moving to swing beyond the range of the guns of the last battleship in line. It would add several dangerous minutes to the flight, but the emperor’s ship was the one he wanted.
The first battleship was directly abeam, a mile and a half to port and still turning. One of the Goliaths on his port side banked up and started to turn in on the ship.
“No damn it, no!”
There was no way he could reach him. If he tried to turn to catch him, the others would follow and assume they were going in.
He flew on, cursing even more when a second Goliath rolled out to attack. Several of the Falcons flying above them broke to follow the two planes.
Adam looked back to his right and saw the groups from Wilderness and Perryville off to his left, a mile or two farther back, spreading out slightly, focusing on the first two battleships.
Far off to his left, close in to the burning city, the cruisers were breaking out of the firing formation, beginning to speed up.
Finally the shooting started, breaking the tension. Every gun on the aft battleship seemed to go into action, medium-caliber weapons letting loose. Seconds later an explosion ripped the sky directly ahead, several hundred yards off, fragments slashing the water.
The agonizing seconds dragged out; the third ship was abeam, beginning to fire as well, and then a half mile farther on and a mile off his port side was the target. A minute and a half he realized, a minute and a half and either its sinking or I’m dead, or perhaps both.
He lightly touched the release lever. He was tempted to pull the safety pin out, but decided against it, fearful that something might go wrong. He forced himself to continue on, watching the ship, gauging its speed, trying to calculate where it would be in another minute.
It was beginning to turn, swinging like the other ships, southward.
He looked back at the pilots to starboard; they were still with him. He raised a clenched fist, held it aloft, then jerked it down even as he kicked in the rudder and pushed the stick over.
The move was a little too aggressive with the half ton weight slung underneath, inertia wanting to push the plane along the path it had been following. Wings straining, he began losing altitude, dropping down to less than twenty feet. Leveling out, he felt he was off, aiming too far astern, and pulled the stick back slightly, gaining a few precious feet. He slipped in a touch of rudder, correcting the approach, and then everything broke loose.
Gatlings opened up from the deck of the battleship. The rounds fell short by several hundred yards as they arced up high and plunged down, but they appeared before him like a visible wall that he would have to fly through.
Amazingly the Falcons, which had been there to provide top cover if any Kazan aerosteamers were about, went in as well, going up to full throttle to move ahead of him. He wondered if they should have been ordered to carry a light load of bombs as well, but it was too late now for that. The first one went through the curtain of fire and seconds later was in the sea, wings snapped off, a second Falcon going down a hundred yards farther on.
Their actions brought him precious seconds of time, diverting fire from the slower attack planes. He spared a quick glance to starboard again; his remaining three Goliaths were still with him.
Looking to his left, he saw chaos. The aerosteamers from Wilderness and Perryville were boring in on the two battleships astern. Smoke was coiling up from a dozen or more wrecks dotting the sea, while tracers slashed back and forth. The lead Falcon was already over the battleship, soaring past it, his gun still firing.
A jolt snapped his attention forward. Another jolt came as a tracer slashed past his windscreen. A stream of tracers from a gun aft was snaking around, following him. Yet another jolt, and the sound of glass shattering. He was glad he didn’t have a copilot, because the man would have been dead.
Range was half a mile.
An explosion. To his right, the Goliath on his wing was gone.
He focused forward.
Water sprayed up, slashing through the broken window. His ship dropped, as if the spray from the explosions would push him down into the sea. He surged back up, over correcting, losing speed. Pushing throttles to the wall, he nosed over and leveled out, then another jolt shredded the wing just inside from the port engine.
Six hundred yards.
Another round hit the forward windscreen, more glass shattering. Something tore at his right arm.
He reached down, wrapping his hand around the release lever.
More spray, tracers crisscrossing. A Falcon flew directly across his path, nearly colliding.
Four hundred yards.
He touched the rudder in, leaning into the sight, judging the angle. He pulled the lever.
Nothing happened.
He pulled again. And still nothing. The damn safety pin!
Fumbling, he reached around to the side of the lever, found the pin, and yanked it out.
Another jolt. He looked up and realized that he was off alignment, turning out and away. He jammed the rudder back in, realizing he was crabbing, that the torpedo would strike the water at an angle, and not nose straight in. I
f it didn’t break up, the fuse might not arm.
Stick over, coordinate with rudder, straighten back out.
Three hundred yards.
He grabbed the lever and pulled.
His airship surged up. Now what?
Bank to port, starboard. He had never thought to discuss it, to plan it, he might pull across right in front of someone else. He pointed straight at the enemy ship and pressed in. The seconds passed, fire crisscrossing. He pulled up, skimming over the deck, too terrified to look to either side. Cleared of the ship, he nosed down slightly and raced out for several hundred yards without a shot being fired, then finally several of the guns on the enemy’s port side opened up, tracers splashing the water around him.
He started to jink, still running low across the water. A half mile out he finally began to turn, for the enemy cruisers in close to shore had all come about and were speeding toward the beleaguered battleships.
As he turned, he finally looked back toward his target. The torpedo should have crossed the three hundred yards. A lone Goliath was zooming over the stern, a Falcon directly above it.
And then the bow of the ship seemed to lift, a massive column of water, several hundred feet high, a blinding flash sweeping over the deck, seconds later another explosion farther aft. As he continued to climb, he saw both battleships, sterns blazing, the farthest aft with its bow blown clear off, the ship already settling.
It had worked! By all the saints, it had worked. Now the only question left was how to get his crate home.
Yasim stood in stunned silence. Damage control parties raced past him without ceremony, dragging hoses. Flames swirled up from the foredeck, the ship all but dead in the water.
A thunderclap of fire burst across the western horizon, the battleship Yutana going up. Behind it, Motaka had rolled over, keel pointed heavenward.
“Sire.”
He stirred from his thoughts and dark contemplations. It was Admiral Ullani.
“Sire, I suggest that you transfer your flag.”
Yasim nodded, saying nothing.
“Sire, we can save this ship, but come dawn they might strike again. It would be best if you were on a vessel that can maneuver.”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
He looked back to the burning city. All this to achieve what? He wondered. This contemptible place, for what?
It was time to turn about, to find Hazin, to find out the real reasons for all of this, and then to kill him.
Minutes later a cruiser slowed, lines snaking out to the stricken flagship, swinging in close so that a chair could be run across to bring the emperor over.
Word had flashed through the ship that the emperor was leaving, from his third bodyguard, to a message runner, straight to an ammunition handler in the main magazine.
Twenty years prior he had taken the Oath of the Novitiate of the Third Order, had taken his assigned task and lived it across all the years, in a dozen battles, two hundred feet aft of Yasim and forty feet below him. He had even received, from Yasim’s own hand, a commendation for heroism at Tushiva. And all that time he had waited, never knowing when the order would come or how it would come. It had arrived only the night before and only if the ship had already been hit seriously, otherwise he was to do nothing.
The ship had been hit, the emperor was fleeing, and the word had come.
He silently said the blessing of parting as he walked into the main ammunition locker. Powder bags for the great guns lined the walls, each in its own rack, sealed inside a wooden container. He had done the routine a thousand times, in drill and in battle. Lift the wooden container out of the rack and walk with it out of the powder locker room, the door guard opening and closing the barrier. An assistant loader would take the container and run it into the ammunition hoist; then he would turn, go back, and do it again.
This time he tore the lid off one of the containers, drew a concealed folding knife out from under his shirt and flicked the blade open. The hilt of the knife was cunningly made; a simple twist and a small container popped open, a simple wooden match falling into his open hand.
With the knife he slashed open the powder bag, a cascade of black powder spilling out. He pulled another lid open, did the same, and then a third. The door opened, one of the assistants putting his head in.
“Pava, what…?”
The Novitiate of the Third Order held the match up, and with his thumb flicked it to life. Smiling, he touched it to the stream of black powder pouring out of the torn bag.
Richard Cromwell sat on the beach, drunk from the wine, watching as the fireball soared a thousand feet into the air. The civilians around him had been cheering the spectacle of the air battle and its aftermath as if it had been a chariot race. The explosion sent them into a new frenzy of celebration.
He was disgusted with the whole affair and felt no qualms about relieving them of another sack of wine, which they were more than happy to provide to the hero.
The emperor was dead, and somehow he knew it was Hazin who had done it.
They came just after sunset, five aerosteamers, soaring in from the northwest.
Togo, as always, heard them first. The men around Keane began to stand up, incredulous, several of them laughing, saying it was only a hallucination.
But it was not.
The first aerosteamer, a Falcon, winged over, swooping down on the ravine to the west, stitching it with gatling fire. Men who were so parched that they had not spoken for over a day, cheered hoarsely, pointing, laughing as the tables were turned. The next two were Goliaths, flying straight toward the butte. They came in low, throttling back, and for a second Abe thought that they were going to try some mad landing.
The lead ship skimming barely a dozen feet above them started releasing bundles, the first one almost hitting Abe, the second and third dropped near the hospital area. The fourth one sailed over the edge and disappeared.
The same performance was tried by the second Goliath. The first package fell short, but the second and third and fourth landed safely.
They made three passes, the men scattering with each pass, cursing when one hit too close, but then cheering and waving.
The last two aerosteamers were Falcons as well. They swept around the butte, tracer fire pouring down. One of the Falcons broke away and started back west, engine misfiring, but holding to its course. The two Goliaths buzzed back over one last time, wagging their wings. The men cheered. The bundles were already being broken open, discipline breaking down for a moment as the men leapt upon the full canteens bundled up inside, tearing them open, then gulping down the water. Abe saw cartridge boxes, rations, and a package stamped with the green insignia of the medical corps.
The last Falcon circled back in, a small package with a red streamer tumbled down, landing in the middle of the butte. One of the troopers hobbled over, picked it up and brought it to Abe. The Falcon continued to circle.
Abe tore the red streamer off and opened the package. Inside were half a dozen cigars, weighed down with a package of forty cartridges for a revolver, and a note.
To the commander of the beleaguered force near Carvana Pass,
My sincere apologies, sir, and please consider the cigars enclosed a small token of respect. We have been searching for you for five days. The airship that passed near you this morning reported your presence, the pilot wisely refraining from coming too close out of concern that it might trigger an assault to finish you before help could arrive. I hope its flying by without notice did not adversely affect the morale of your command.
Abe chuckled and shook his head.
A relief column has been dispatched, supported by a company of land ironclads, and should arrive late tomorrow. Airship support will return at dawn and maintain watch over you and also bring in additional supplies.
I must request, sir, a reply, which I believe you will understand given the nature of the situation. If Lieutenant Abraham Schuder Keane is with your command and still alive, would you please respond by wav
ing the red streamer attached to this package. I apologize, sir, for singling out one particular trooper for concern when so many lives are at stake, but I hope you understand my reasons.
I look forward to meeting you, sir, and to personally congratulating you for what has obviously been an heroic stand.
I remain, sir, your ob’d and humble serv’t,
General of the Armies Vincent Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Abe handed the letter to Togo and waited for him to read it.
“I’m tempted not to wave it,” he sighed.
Togo looked at him, grinned, and shook his head. He picked the streamer up from the ground and started to wave it over his head. The Falcon banked over, wagged its wings, then circled back out, turning to the west.
Abe handed the cigars to Togo.
“I don’t smoke,” he announced.
Togo pocketed four of them, fumbled for a match in his haversack, and struck a light, puffing two of the cigars to life. He handed one to Abe.
“You do now.”
Abe sat on the ground, canteen in one hand and a cigar in the other and watched the sun set.
NINETEEN
“My God, Abe, you look like hell,” Richard exclaimed as the door into the waiting room swung open and the newly decorated major slowly hobbled in.
Both Adam and Richard came to attention and saluted, the proper ceremony, regardless of rank, for a holder of the Medal of Honor.
Abe, still embarrassed with the whole routine of it all, returned the salute, and then came forward extending his hand.
“Both of you deserved it far more than me.”
“Well, we aren’t president’s sons,” Adam replied.
A hard look came to Abe’s eyes.
“Abe, just joking, that’s all.”
Abe relaxed slightly.
“I told my father I would refuse, but Hawthorne had already written it up and released the news to Gates’s papers.”
Richard Cromwell looked over to the door leading into the reception room of the White House, where a mob of senators and congressmen were gathering to be seen and photographed with the first heroes of the Kazan War. Other knots of officers and enlisted personnel nervously walked about the room: nearly all the surviving Goliath pilots, a sergeant with the 9th Cavalry who had led an action similar to Abe’s, and Rear Admiral Petronius, now admiral of the fleet.
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