Seas of Venus

by David Drake

  Given enough time—and not a long time at that—railguns could blast through anything on the surface of Venus, whether a dreadnought or a mountain. But, though they could destroy a target in orbit, they were unable to engage anything over the horizon from them. Furthermore, the power requirements of a railgun in operation meant that only dreadnoughts had the generator capacity to mount such weapons.

  They were lethal and efficient within their limitations; but those limitations made railguns primarily defensive tools, the shield of the battleships slashing at one another with the sword of their big guns.

  There was another enclosed companionway leading up the exterior of the shelter deck superstructure to the bridge whose wings flared out beyond the line of its supports. Sal opened the hatch, then paused.

  "Those," he said pointing to the railguns, "would have to be ungodly lucky to hit us in the ass-slappers."

  They can hit a plunging shell, Johnnie thought, so they could damn well hit a skimmer if they wanted to waste the ammunition.

  "And those," Sal went on, indicating a turret holding twin guns of the dreadnought's secondary armament, "the five-point-two-fives, they couldn't hit us if they had angels riding on every shell. Sure you don't want to transfer to us and ride ass-slappers, Johnnie? Safest job in the fleet, I tell you!"

  "Aw, my uncle's a big-ship man," Johnnie lied with a grin as the two of them began echoing up the slotted treads of the companionway.

  The skimmers weren't safe even when nobody was shooting at them. The bow wave of a friendly vessel—or the back of a surfacing fish—could either of them flip one of the little pumpkinseeds in the air like a thumbed coin. If that happened and the ass-slapper's own speed didn't kill the crew, the life teeming in the sea would finish the job in minutes if not seconds.

  No, skimmers were romantic—and now that Johnnie had seen a dreadnought close up, he realized that the big ships surely were not. But battles were decided by the smashing authority of the dreadnoughts' main guns. Everything else, necessary though it might be to a successful outcome, was secondary to big-gun salvoes.

  Everything but perhaps strategy was secondary to the big guns. Uncle Dan hadn't risen to his present position simply because he knew how to press a firing switch.

  Johnnie had thought he was in good shape . . . and he was, for the purposes for which he'd trained. He hadn't been running up and down staircases on the planet's surface, though. His legs were so rubbery that he used his grip on the handrail to boost him up the last few steps to the hatch marked: "Bridge/Access Controlled."

  "It's closed," Sal explained as he touched the switch, "because they've got the air-conditioning on inside. Scratch a big-ship man," he added, smiling to take the sting out of the words, "and you find a pussy."

  A puff of cool air spilled down the companionway as the immensely thick hatch cycled open. It revived Johnnie like a bucket of cold water. He wasn't sure that the constant change from Venus-ambient to artificially-comfortable wasn't a lot less healthy than acclimating to the natural temperature—

  But for now it sure felt good.

  There were six men already present on the bridge. One of them was the senior lieutenant acting as Officer of the Day. The armored shutters were raised so that Johnnie could look out at the harbor area through glazed slits; but it seemed to him that the banks of displays, both flat-screen and holographic, gave a better view.

  The OOD was talking to a control console. He looked up and frowned as the ensigns entered the bridge. "Roger," he said as his right hand threw switches. "Roger. Out."

  "Just showing a visitor the Holy Trinity, sir," Sal said cheerfully, before the lieutenant could ask.

  "Well, keep out of the way, will you?" the senior officer said sourly. "Base wants us to help with the yard work."

  "Turret Eye-Eye live, sir," said a technician at another console.

  "Bring it to seventeen degrees until they give us final corrections," the OOD instructed. "They'll pipe them in, they say. And load with incendiaries."

  "That's the forward starboard five-point-two-five turret," Sal explained, though Johnnie had already figured out the reference. "There's four secondary turrets on either side amidships."

  "Want me to ready Beta Battery, sir?" called a junior lieutenant from the far wing of the bridge.

  "No, I do not want you to light the main drives, Janos," the OOD snapped. "Besides, for what they want, the secondaries'll do a better job than the railguns would."

  There was a horrible squeal of dragging metal, through the fabric of the ship as well as the air. The turret's superconducting gimbals had not come up to full power before the mechanism started to turn.

  "That ought to be repaired!" the OOD said.

  "It has been, sir," replied the man at the gunnery board. "That mount, it always does that. I think it's the power connections to—"

  "Mark!" said the OOD.

  A pattern of lines overlay a map display on the active gunnery screen. They shifted suddenly without any action by the tech at the console. The ship vibrated as gears drove Turret II a few seconds of fine adjustment.

  Johnnie stepped to the window. The glazed slit was eight inches high, but the thirty-two-inch bridge armor it peered through made the opening seem as narrow as the slots in a jalousie.

  The Holy Trinity was deep within the bay and closer to the northern side than the main occupied area on the south. That was desirable for the present purpose, since the mile or more the shells had to travel would give them a chance to stabilize, thus limiting the chances of a wild round. The 5.25-inch guns were only secondary armament for a dreadnought, but their shells were big enough to cause real problems if they landed among the base defenses they were firing to support.

  The bridge was forward of the secondary battery amidships, but holographic displays inset every two yards beneath the viewslit showed the entire vessel—a quick reference for purposes of damage assessment. Seven of the eight secondary turrets were aligned with their twin guns perpendicular to the ship's axis. The front turret on the right side pointed just off the bow.

  "Fire one," said the OOD.

  The right-hand of the pair of guns in hologram flashed and recoiled. The Holy Trinity rang like a railroad collision, and a ball of orange powder gases hid the viewslit for an instant.

  If these are the secondaries, what happens when the big guns fire?

  The spark of the shell landing was almost lost in the jungle beyond the gash of bare No-Man's-Land, but it bloomed into a cloud of devouring white smoke. The consoles twittered inaudibly with exchanges between base control and the guard units engaged with the non-human threat.

  Johnnie turned to Sal, standing beside him, and asked, "Are the turrets manned, then?"

  "All automatic," Sal said with a shake of his head. "You only need people if there's a problem—or if director control goes out."

  If the superstructure is a flaming ruin, with sensors and communications disrupted and scores of dead . . . then the turrets could fight on alone.

  "Fire for effect," said the OOD.

  For a while.

  The guns began to belch flame at a rate of a shot every five seconds, WHANG WHANG WHANG WHANG WHANG—

  A pause.

  WHANG—

  "Cease fire!"

  The target area was a roiling mass of smoke. A huge root burst out of the soil halfway between the jungle and the human defenses; it writhed and died before flamethrowers were able to bathe it.

  "Sir, the left tube has a stoppage," announced the man at the gunnery console.

  "I know it's got a bloody stoppage!" snarled the OOD. "I can bloody hear, can't I? Get a crew to clear it."

  There were patterns of compression and rarefaction rippling across the algae which slimed the dreadnought's forecastle. The marks were vestiges of the muzzle blasts.

  "Ah, shall I wake the off-duty watch?" the technician asked.

  Something huge leaped from the jungle where the shells had landed. It was a mass of flames. A tra
ck of yellowing leaves followed it for hundreds of yards through the forest.

  "No, dammit, go yourself," said the OOD. "I'll have Rassmussen send somebody from the engine room. Two of you ought to be able to handle it."

  He turned to another technician. "Graves, bring up Turret Eye-Vee in case they need—"

  The OOD broke off as his commo helmet spoke to him. He looked at Johnnie. "You," he said. "Are you Ensign Gordon?"

  Johnnie drew himself up stiffly. "Yessir."

  "Then you're about to go home," the OOD said. "They're bringing your hydrofoil alongside in the few minutes."

  The man beamed. For the first time, Johnnie saw him looking cheerful.

  "I think," the Angel lieutenant added, "that we've got a deal!"

  13

  Venus looked on Helen's face,

  (O Troy Town!)

  Knew far off an hour and place,

  And fire lit with the heart's desire;

  Laughed and said, "Thy gift hath grace!"

  —Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Sal pushed the hatch control. "Come on, Johnnie," he said. "You up to a fast ride down?"

  "Elevators at last?" Johnnie asked. "Sure, I'm up to anything."

  "Bring 'em around to the starboard quarter, Lieutenant Hammond," the Angel ensign called back to the OOD as the hatch closed behind them. "Anything it is, my friend. You're going by the skimmer winch."

  They clanged down the companionway from the conning tower more easily than they'd come up it, and perhaps a little faster; but a part of Johnnie's mind kept imagining his uncle sneering, "Arthur, your idiot son broke his neck running down stairs. . . ."

  The air was thick with powder fumes. The breeze riffling across the harbor brought with it faint hints of burned vegetation and phosphorous—though that might have been Johnnie's imagination.

  Voices cursed from the forward 5.25-inch turret. The men sent to clear the stoppage began to hammer, an uncontrolled sound that struck Johnnie as a doubtful way to deal with high explosive.

  Sal opened a coverplate on the starboard foredeck and lifted up a folded, telescoping derrick. The cover was cross-dogged, but even so Johnnie doubted that it would survive the muzzle blasts of the 18-inch guns firing above it. After a battle there would be considerable damage to all the dreadnoughts, whether or not they'd been struck by enemy shells.

  Sal spread the extensions that were meant to clamp the lifting points of a skimmer. "Hop in," he said. "Your limousine awaits."

  His face turned serious. "Ah—but if you think you might slip, we'll go by the regular landing stage."

  M4434 had pulled away from the dock and was curving toward the Holy Trinity. Flotsam and the opalescent stains of oil wobbled in the hydrofoil's wake; the motion brought bright flashing teeth to life in the harbor as well.

  "I'm fine," said Johnnie, setting one boot on either clamp and gripping the hinge where the arms joined. He was sure he'd be all right; and he'd rather drop into the watery killing ground below than admit to Sal he was afraid. "Lower away!"

  With a loud squealing—from the winch brakes rather than the monocrystalline cable—Johnnie dropped smoothly toward the harbor. Sal waved from the control box.

  As the dreadnought's gray-green hull slid past, Johnnie looked down—and rotated dizzyingly as the motion changed his center of mass. A skimmer would be held by three arms, not two and the hinge. He braced himself erect again, as though he were preparing to be shot.

  "I don't want us staving our sides in with this nonsense!" Captain Haynes shouted from close by. "Be ready to fend off forward!"

  Strong hands caught Johnnie by both forearms and pulled him in, over the amidships rail. "Step back, sir," said Walcheron.

  Johnnie obeyed. Because the sailors were holding him, he didn't fall back into the cockpit when his heel stubbed the coaming.

  "I'm okay," he gasped, realizing as he spoke that he really was.

  "Bring us around, Watkins," Haynes ordered the torpedoboat's commander. "Let's get home, man!"

  The cable hummed its way back onto the take-up reel. Johnnie looked up. Sal was peering down past the pronounced flare that directed waves like a plowshare instead of sweeping them into the superstructure when the dreadnought was at speed.

  The young Angel officer waved. Johnnie started to return the gesture, but he had to grab the rail as the M4434 accelerated in a tight turn.

  "Good hunting, John!" Sal shouted past the rumble of the auxiliary thruster.

  Johnnie started forward toward the gun tub.

  "Ensign Gordon," Haynes ordered. "Come into the cockpit with me."

  The guard boat, more than a half mile away, had already drawn back the net's inner layer. The hydrofoil headed for the gap at all the speed the hull motor alone could provide. The little vessel bucked and pitched as it crossed the vestiges of its own wake.

  Johnnie swung his legs over the low bulkhead, trying not to kick any of the five men already in the small enclosure. "Yes sir?" he said. He wondered if he ought to salute.

  Haynes, seated at one of the paired control consoles, looked up at him. "Who told you to go buggering off on your own, Gordon?" he demanded. "It would've served you right if I'd just left you to find your own way back, you know."

  The hydrofoil's helmsman and the commanding officer—an ensign—kept their eyes studiously on the business of running the boat, but Haynes' two staff lieutenants stared at Johnnie with sycophantic amusement.

  "I—" Johnnie began, but this was a test too—life was a test—and he wasn't going to tell this man what directions he'd gotten from Uncle Dan.

  "Sir," he resumed, "I thought this was a good opportunity to familiarize myself with the Angels' operation, seeing that we may be acting in concert with them in the coming action."

  "Did you think that indeed, Ensign?" the captain said with a sort of heavy playfulness. Even his initial attack had lacked the anger Johnnie would have expected to underlie the words. "That we'd be 'acting in concert' with Admiral Braun?"

  "Yessir," Johnnie said.

  The helmsman throttled back as the torpedoboat entered the netted lock area. Crewmen had rifles and grenade launchers ready in case there was a repetition of the excitement when they locked through from the open sea.

  The guard boat's hull bore a line of fresh patches where stray bullets had raked her. All the visible members of her crew were waving.

  "Well, Gordon," Haynes said, "you're right. Perhaps I shouldn't judge you by the maternal side of your family."

  Johnnie kept his lips pressed together. Uncle Dan didn't need a junior ensign to defend him, and anyway—don't be sorry. Be controlled.

  The hydrofoil's commander muttered an order. M4434 speeded up again. The bow slapped, then rose, and the outriggers began to extend in iridescent domes of spray. Johnnie gripped the coaming behind him with both hands.

  To his amazement, Captain Haynes squeezed deeper into the console and motioned Johnnie down onto the corner of the seat beside him.

  "Admiral Braun is calling a company meeting right now, Gordon," the captain said. "He and Admiral Bergstrom will handshake by radio, probably before we've gotten back to Blackhorse Base. Would you like to know how I arranged it?"

  "Ah, yessir." He had to put his mouth close to the pick-up over the ear of Haynes' commo helmet to be sure the captain heard him.

  "Not more money," Haynes said, gloating over his triumph and his captive audience. "That's what your uncle would have tried, but I know Admiral Braun. I offered him the chance to merge his fleet with the Blackhorse on favorable—though reasonable—terms."

  Johnnie waited for more. "Yes sir?" he prompted when he saw Captain Haynes' face darken at what he was reading as dumb insolence.

  "Yes . . . ," Haynes said, purring the word like a zoo-fattened lion. "Quite reasonable. All the Angel officers and men in the rank of lieutenant or below transfer with an additional ninety days in grade for the purpose of bonus distribution. That's fair, isn't it, Ensign? For an additional five battleshi
ps plus supporting units?"

  "Yes sir," Johnnie said. "That seems a very fair deal."

  It did. Johnnie didn't see where the catch was, unless Haynes were simply preening over his success . . . and there seemed to be more in his tone than that.

  The hydrofoil had risen to full speed. With a load of torpedoes aboard she would have been a few knots slower, but the additional weight might have damped some of the high-frequency vibration Johnnie noticed now that he was out of the wind's buffeting.

  "And as for Admiral Braun himself," Haynes continued, "he receives the rank of captain and moves into the number three slot in the Blackhorse. Director of Planning."

  "That's Uncle Dan's position." Part of Johnnie's mind was amazed by the cold lack of emotion with which his tongue had formed the words.

  "It was Commander Cooke's position," Haynes smirked. "He'll move, I think—obviously Admiral Bergstrom and I need to work out the internal details—Commander Cooke will become Commodore of Screening Forces. . . . A position of expanded responsibility since Blackhorse is being reinforced by the Angels in that category too."

  "Sir," said Johnnie's ice-cold tongue. He was speaking loudly to be heard, but he wasn't shouting; he was sure he wasn't shouting. "The Angels are heavy in capital ships. not destroyers. Their adjuncts to our screening forces are insignificant."

  And the water beneath is wet and full of hungry things, Johnnie's mind gibed at him, since we're stating the bloody obvious now.

  "Yes, well, Ensign," said Captain Haynes. "Our first duty is to our employers, Wenceslas Dome, you know. I'm sure your father could explain that to you if you don't understand it already. If some individuals have to pay a price in the accomplishment of that duty, well—soldiers have to be willing to pay the price, don't they?"

  "Sir," said Johnnie. "I request permission to join Seaman Walcheron in the forward gun tub."

  Haynes made a contemptuous shooing motion with the backs of his fingers. "Go on, then, Gordon," he said. "Maybe your uncle will take you with him to Flotilla Blanche—if he really has an offer from Admiral de Lessups the way he claims. And if there's anything left of Flotilla Blanche after we engage them!"