Seas of Venus

by David Drake

  Seconds later, the wake surged in a feeding frenzy more violent than a grenade going off.

  Johnnie relaxed. If that was meant to impress me . . . he thought.

  He'd almost put two rounds of his own through the head of the fish before it went under; but he had a task to carry out for Uncle Dan. This wasn't the time or place to show off.

  Haynes holstered his weapon without reloading and gave Johnnie a satisfied smirk. "I'm under orders to bring you along," he repeated, "but that doesn't mean you'll be present during the negotiations. I'm not taking a chance of some untrained kid blurting the wrong thing and putting the whole deal at risk. Do you understand?"

  "Yes sir," Johnnie said. He even agreed. After all, a deal with the Angels would be the best proof possible that the Blackhorse wasn't attempting some phony game to fool Senator Gordon.

  "And don't try to scare me with what your father's going to say," Haynes continued in a rising voice. "The deal I cut with Admiral Braun will prove that the Blackhorse has been negotiating in good faith."

  "Yessir," Johnnie said. He wondered if Haynes was stupid—unlikely, given his position—or whether the captain just thought that everybody he disliked was stupid.

  "There'll be bars open at Paradise Base," Haynes continued. "Or you can stay with the boat if you like. Just keep out of trouble or I swear it won't matter who your relatives are."

  "Yessir."

  Haynes strode past him, back to the cockpit.

  Johnnie rubbed his right palm on his thigh. His uniform had been soaked with spray on the high-speed run, but the hammering sun dried the cloth in minutes after the M4434 dropped off her foils.

  He really wished he'd showed up Haynes' clumsy marksmanship; but there'd be another time. . . .

  He wiped his gunhand again and returned to the bow while the torpedoboat rocked and waited for the outer net to open. He could just as easily have waited where he was, but then somebody might have thought he was afraid to chance the narrow catwalk amidships.

  Johnnie reached the bow in time to steady himself against the gun tub when the auxiliary thruster accelerated M4434 through the minimal opening which the net-tender drew for them.

  Reverse thrust slowed the hydrofoil again. A derrick on the net-tender's bow slid the folds of net forward again to mate with the line of buoys holding up the fixed portion of the meshes. The water was a deep blue-green, slimed with wastes discharged from the base installations.

  Something else had entered with M4434. A paddle-tipped tentacle as big around as a pony keg curled out of the water and wrapped itself around the net-tender.

  For an instant, all the chaos and violence was of the squid's doing. A second long tentacle encircled the little vessel. There was a flurry of foam and a mass of shorter tentacles, writhing like Medusa's hair, drew six feet of the squid's mauve body up the net-tender's starboard side.

  The vessel bobbed. Waves lapped its starboard rail.

  Three, then a dozen guns opened up from the hydrofoil and the net-tender itself. Explosive bullets dimpled the sea, the net-tender's hull, and the squid. Johnnie snatched out the automatic rifle as the gunner spun his twin-sixties to bear.

  "Not those!" Johnnie shouted. "You'll sink them!"

  When the big guns continued to rotate, the side of Johnnie's fist slammed the sailor's helmet hard enough to knock the man out of his seat. There was no time for delicacy.

  "Use solids!" he warned, but he didn't have a commo helmet so nobody could hear him over the gunfire . . . and anyway, nobody would've listened to a young ensign-in-name-only.

  But he was right.

  A young officer leaned over the net-tender's rail with a sub-machine gun and fired most of the forty-round magazine straight down into the squid. Sparkling explosions blew the eyes to jelly and raised a cloud of lime dust from the huge parrot beak.

  Sepia flooded the water around the squid; pigment darkened its flesh from mauve to greenish black.

  A pair of tentacles unhooked from the rail and seized the Angels' officer. A third twisted the gun from the youth's hand as skillfully as if the squid still had eyes.

  Johnnie switched his rifle to solids and fired a three-shot burst between the monster's eyes. He began walking down the squid's torso with further short bursts, probing for the ganglia. Bullets that exploded on the skin couldn't possibly kill the huge invertebrate.

  The creature suddenly spasmed and blushed a pinkish white color. Its tentacles went slack, though the long pair still crisscrossed the net-tender amidships.

  The young officer dropped onto the squid's sagging body. Its beak closed reflexively over his waist, but his bullets had powdered the hooked tip which would otherwise have punctured his intestines and crushed his spine.

  One of the net-tender's crewmen with more courage than sense jumped into the roiling water and grabbed the stunned officer. In three frog-like kicks he made it back to the vessel's side. Four pairs of hands reached over desperately to pull him and his burden back aboard.

  There was a quiver of movement from deep within the water.

  "Look out!" Johnnie screamed as he pointed his rifle at where the newcomer would break surface—directly under the struggling men. It was no use trying to shoot through the water, but the target would appear jaws-first. . . .

  A net-tender crewman, bleeding from a pressure cut on his cheek and forehead, tossed something that looked like a six-pack of beer over the side.

  It must have been a bundle of rocket warheads with a short time-fuze, because it went off with a blast that was still bright orange after being filtered through the water.

  The gout of water slammed the two vessels apart and lifted their facing sides. Johnnie fell down, but the net-tender's crew used the surge to help them snatch their fellows safe aboard.

  A fragment of the squid's tentacle floated near M4434.

  The other creature must have been a fish with a swim bladder to rupture in the explosion. It sank to the bottom, unseen save for a flash of terror through the bullet-spattered water.

  "Cease fire!" roared Captain Haynes over the cockpit public-address system. "Cease fire! We're not here to waste ammunition!"

  Johnnie's left hand was patting the magazine well of his borrowed rifle. He had ejected the empty magazine by rote, but he didn't have a full one with which to replace it.

  11

  Oh stay with company and mirth

  And daylight and the air;

  Too full already is the grave

  Of fellows that were good and brave

  And died because they were.

  —A. E. Housman

  "Sure you don't wanna come, sir?" said Walcheron. Instead of being angry, the sailor seemed pleased that Johnnie had knocked him down in order to save the Angels from the tender mercies of his twin-sixties. "There's an officers' club if you don't wanna . . . ?"

  Johnnie forced a smile and waved. "No, I'll just wander. I—I've been in bars, but haven't had a chance to look at a fleet's base before."

  "Hang on," warned the Angel driver as he engaged the torque converter of his prime mover. The flat-bed trailer, loaded with sailors from the hydrofoil in place of its more normal cargo, jerked at the end of its loose hitch toward the base cantina.

  Captain Haynes and the two staff lieutenants who made up the negotiating team had already been carried two hundred yards to the Administration Building in a slightly-flossier conveyance, an air-cushion runabout. That left Johnnie and a single disconsolate sailor—the watch—alone with the M4434.

  Johnnie nodded to the sailor and walked down the dock, coming as close to a saunter as the hot, humid air permitted him.

  Paradise Base was a smaller, less polished version of Blackhorse Base. The Blackhorse torpedoboat was docked at the destroyer slip; the Angels had no hydrofoils of their own. The next facility around the circumference of the harbor was a drydock holding a dreadnought. The combination of concrete walls and a battleship completely hid everything else in that direction.

  Johnnie wa
lked past, looking interested but nonchalant. Dan had told him to observe everything, but not to make any notes or sketches until M4434 was at sea again. Johnnie didn't know what his uncle wanted—and he couldn't imagine that it made any difference, since the Angels' precise strength would become a matter of record as soon as the deal was done.

  But Johnnie had his orders, and he was going to carry them out.

  He reached the land end of the quay, facing the Admin Building and a series of barracks. He turned left to pass the drydock.

  There were twelve destroyers in the slip. All of them seemed to be combat-ready—but that was the full extent of the Angels' strength in the class. Though destroyers weren't capable of surviving the fire of heavier vessels for more than a few seconds, they provided the inner screen against hostile torpedoboats—a particularly important mission for the Angels, who didn't have hydrofoil gunboats of their own.

  Johnnie walked on. The drydock had been cast from red-dyed concrete, but under the blasting sun it seemed to glow a hazy white. Sweat soaked the sleeves of Johnnie's cream tunic, and he could feel the skin on the back of his hands crinkle.

  One side of the quay beyond the drydock was given over to cargo lighters hauling supplies to the dreadnoughts anchored in mid-harbor. Traffic was heavy, and there were several railcars backed up on the line leading to the quay from warehouses within the base area.

  Two cruisers were drawn up in the slip to the other side. They were middle-sized vessels, armed with rapid-firing 5.25-inch guns rather than the heavier weapons that might have been able to damage a battleship. In effect, they were flagships for the destroyer flotillas; and the pair of them were the only vessels of their class in the company.

  Mercenaries have been called the whores of war. Like many prostitutes, the Angels found specialization the best route to success.

  The Angels specialized in dreadnoughts.

  There were four of the mighty vessels anchored in deep water. They quivered in the sunlight like gray flaws in the jeweled liquid splendor. The ships looked as though they had just crawled from the jungle which ruled the shore encircling most of the harbor.

  The most distant of the battleships, the Holy Trinity, was huge even by the standards of her sisters. Her armor could take a battering as long as that of any vessel on the seas of Venus, and shells from her 18-inch main guns would penetrate any target they struck.

  By themselves, the Angels were suicidally out of balance. The company had no scouting capacity of its own; its light forces were insufficient to screen its battleships; and the handful of submarines Johnnie saw moored to a rusting mothership might be useful to test the Angels' own antisubmarine defenses during maneuvers, but they certainly weren't a serious threat to another fleet.

  None of that mattered now: Admiral Braun could have the deal he wanted, because the Angels' five dreadnoughts would be the margin of victory in the coming fleet action.

  A man on a two-wheeled scooter—nobody at Paradise seemed to walk when they were out of doors—had left the cantina and raced up the quay from which Johnnie had come. Now the vehicle was back, revving high and leaned over at sixty degrees to make the corner onto the harbor road.

  Johnnie stepped to the side. There was plenty of room for a truck, much less the scooter, to get around him, but he didn't trust the driver to have his mount under control.

  He was probably over-sensitive. There were no personal vehicles in the domes: the slidewalks took care of individual transportation. He'd have to get used to—

  The scooter broadsided to a curving halt in front of Johnnie.

  The driver jumped off, leaving his machine rocking on its automatic side-stand. He was young, Johnnie's age, but his skin was already burned a deep mahogany color by the fierce light penetrating the clouds of Venus. He wore ensign's pips on his collar and the legend "Holy Trinity" in Fraktur script on the talley around his red cap.

  "Is your name Gordon?" the Angel ensign demanded.

  "Ensign John Arthur Gordon," Johnnie said. His mind was as blank and white as the sky overhead.

  We regret to inform you that your son, John Arthur Gordon, was executed as a spy. May God have mercy on . . .

  The other youth smiled as broadly as a shrapnel gash and thrust out his right hand. "Right!" he said. "I'm Sal Grumio, and you just saved my brother's life!"

  "Huh?"

  "Tony, you know?" Sal explained as he pumped Johnnie's hand furiously. "He was in command of the Dragger, you know, the guard boat?"

  "Oh," said Johnnie as the light dawned. "Oh, sure . . . but look, it wasn't me. One of his own people jumped in after him. That took real guts, believe—"

  "Guts, fine," Sal interrupted. He waved his hands with a gesture of dismissal. "We're all brave, you bet. But you're the one had brains enough to use solids and kill the squid. That was you, wasn't it?"

  "I, ah . . . ," Johnnie said. "Yeah, that was me."

  Sal jerked a thumb in the direction of the cantina. He gestured constantly and expressively. "Yeah, that's what your gunner said in there. Said you're screamin' 'Use solids, use solids!' and shootin' the crap outa the squid with a rifle. Tony'd 've been gone without that, and hell knows how many others besides."

  "Well, I . . . ," Johnnie said. "Well, I'm glad I was in the right place."

  "Hey, look," Sal said with a sudden frown. "You don't want to wander around out here in the sun. Come on, I'll buy you a drink or ten."

  "Well, to tell the truth . . . ," Johnnie said. "Look, I'm so new I haven't been in the Blackhorse a full day. I've never really seen a base or any ship but a torpedoboat. I'd just—"

  "Hey, you never been aboard a dreadnought?" the Angel ensign said, grinning beatifically. "Really?"

  "Never even a destroyer," Johnnie said/admitted.

  "You got a treat coming, then," said Sal, "because I've got one of the Holy Trinity's skimmer squadrons. Hop on and I'll give you a tour of the biggest and best battleship on Venus!"

  Sal swung his leg over the saddle of his scooter and patted the pillion seat.

  "Ah," said Johnnie, halting in mid-motion because he was sure Sal would take off without further discussion as soon as his passenger was aboard. "Look, Sal, is this going to be OK?

  . . . your son, John Arthur Gordon, has been . . .

  "Hell, yes!" the other youth insisted. "Look, nothing's to good for the guy who saved Tony's life, right? And anyway—"

  Johnnie sat, still doubtful. The scooter accelerated as hard as it could against the double load.

  "—you guys and us 're allies, now, right? Sure it's OK!"

  12

  There is never a storm whose might can reach

  Where the vast leviathan sleeps

  Like a mighty thought in a mighty mind. . . .

  —John Boyle O'Reilly

  "Fasten your belt," Sal ordered, stuffing his cap in a side pocket as he dropped into the pilot's seat of the skimmer bobbing like a pumpkinseed at the end of the ferry dock.

  He latched his own cross-belted seat restraints and added nonchalantly, "It won't matter if we flip—there won't be a piece of the frame left as big as your belt buckle—but at least it'll keep you from getting tossed into the harbor when we come off plane."

  "Right," said Johnnie, realizing that the scooter ride was going to be the calm part of the trip.

  The skimmer had a shallow hull with a powerful thruster, two side-by-side seats, and a belt-loaded 1-inch rocket gun mounted on a central pintle. The weapon could either be locked along the boat's axis or fired flexibly by the gunner . . . though the latter technique meant the gunner stood while the skimmer was under way.

  Other recruits had learned to do that, so Johnnie figured he could if he had to. For now, it looked tricky enough just to stay aboard.

  Sal touched two buttons on his panel. First the thruster began to rumble; then the bow and stern lines unclamped from the bollards on the quay and slid back aboard the skimmer as their take-up reels whined.

  "Hang on!" Sal warned unneces
sarily. He cramped the control wheel hard, then slammed it forward to the stop in order to bring the drive up to full power.

  The skimmer lifted; its bow came around in little more than the vessel's own length. Within the first ten feet of forward motion, almost nothing but the thruster nozzle of the tiny craft was in the water. A huge roostertail of spray drenched the dock behind them.

  "Yee-ha!" Sal shrieked over the sound of the wind and the snarling drive.

  The seat back and bottom hammered Johnnie as the skimmer—the ass-slapper—clipped over ripples in the harbor surface that would have been invisible to the eye. He braced his palms against the armrests, letting his wrists absorb much of the punishment and—incidentally—permitting Johnnie to look forward past the vessel's rounded bow. The Holy Trinity was expanding swiftly.

  Johnnie knew Sal was giving him a ride as well as a lift—but he was pretty sure that the pilot would have been running in a similar fashion if he'd been alone in his ass-slapper. What Dan had said about hydrofoil crewmen was true in spades about the skimmers.

  But it was true at higher levels also. The battle centers of the great dreadnoughts were buried deep below the waterline and protected by the main armor belts. All the sensor data—from the vessel itself and from all the other vessels in the fleet—was funneled there.

  The battle center was as good a place from which to conduct a battle as could be found in action. The muzzle blasts from the ship's main guns jolted the battle-center crews like so many nearby train-wrecks, but even that was better than the hells of flash and stunning overpressure to which the big guns subjected everyone on the upper decks. Enemy shell-hits were a threat only if they were severe enough to endanger the entire vessel.

  In the battle center, hostile warships were a pattern of phosphor dots, not a sinuous dragon of yellow flashes and shells arching down as tons of glowing steel. Friendly losses were carats in a holographic display rather than water-spouts shot with red flames and blackness in which tortured armor screamed for the voiceless hundreds of dying crewmen.