by John Ringo
“I guess we both had our secrets,” Elayna said, looking at Herzer oddly.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t make it a lot easier in the deeps of the night,” Herzer said, his jaw working. “I was looking for a weapon, anything solid, but I got back after they were… done. I helped Dr. Daneh, and Rachel, on the way to Raven’s Mill and then joined the Raven’s Mill military at the first chance I got. I’ve always been into war games; I used to do enhanced reality before the Fall. But… I won’t say that my demons weren’t on my back about it, either. I’d gotten very good at being angry at that point. I wanted to kill something, to gut something, preferably McCanoc, but anyone like him would do.
“A few months later, lucky me, McCanoc turned back up at the head of a small army. We’d been training hard, but we were still outnumbered ten to one and most of the army was Changed, who are no joke to fight. They’re strong, aggressive and very hard to kill. But we beat them, mostly by maneuvering them onto fixed positions and slaughtering them; McCanoc was no tactician. In the end, though, he attacked, himself, and he had powered armor and some sort of draining nannite field. I tried to stop him, and got this,” he said, holding up the prosthetic, “for my pains.”
“I tried to stop as well,” Bast said. “Armor was too tough. Sword, any sword, just bounces off field. I hate powered armor. Unless I’m wearing it.”
“Anyway, Edmund took him out,” Herzer said.
“How?” Jason asked. “Powered armor, nannite field? What the hell did he do, drown him?”
“Ever hear of Charles the Great of Anarchia?” Herzer asked with a sly grin.
“Took over Anarchia, oh, a hundred years ago or so?” Jason asked, to a nod. “Ruled in peace for ten years, set up a representational government and left, disappeared?”
“He didn’t disappear,” Herzer said. “He took his dead brother’s name. Edmund.”
“Holy shit,” Jackson said. “You’re joking!”
“Nope, you’ve been dealing with him every day,” Herzer chuckled. “Let’s just say that the greatest master-smith in the world was not going to be fighting with unpowered armor and weapons. Bast, how would you take out Duke Edmund?”
“Strong crossbow,” Bast replied seriously. “Two hundred meters, minimum. From behind. Only way be sure to live.”
* * *
“Well, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into,” Daneh said.
“That it is, love,” Edmund muttered, “that it is.”
They had parked themselves in one of the swim-throughs and now watched the suddenly much more nervous mer moving around in the square as the antenna of crayfish waved at them from just too deep under the ledges to reach.
“The ship’s late,” Rachel said.
“That’s not what has me worried,” Edmund replied.
“And dealing with orcas, in the water, is not going to be easy,” Daneh said.
“And that’s not what has me worried,” Edmund replied.
“All right, Solomon,” Daneh said, in an exasperated tone, “what does have you worried?”
“When I got here, I knew the name of Bruce the Black, but not what he looked like,” Edmund replied. “I knew none of the other mer by name. And I didn’t know that New Destiny was sending a mission.”
“Damn, I didn’t catch that,” Daneh said. “He knew Bruce by sight. He knew Jason’s name. He knew about Herzer and me.”
“That indicates one damned effective intelligence agency,” Edmund said. “And intel is half the battle. I’d let Sheida handle that end, assuming that she was doing as well as the enemy. No such luck. Damn!”
“What are you going to do about it?” Rachel asked.
“Not much I can do from here,” the duke replied. “Except prove that it’s only half the battle. But when we get back I’m going to be asking some hard questions, and not trusting the answers. They knew about the carrier. They were able to intercept it. On the other hand, they’ve made damned poor use of their intel so far. Letting slip that they knew that much was just stupid.”
“Maybe there’s even more that they know,” Daneh said.
“I’m sure they do,” Edmund said. “But that’s not the point. How did they know that the ship was taking the northerly route? How did they know where it was? Intercepting a ship at sea is not easy, even if you know where it’s going to be in general.”
“You mean there’s someone on the ship passing them information?”
“Has to be,” Edmund said. “As well as sources on the land. And someone piecing them together and passing on the useful bits.”
“Two guesses who the one on the ship is,” Rachel said, bitterly. “And only one counts.”
“If you mean the rabbit,” Edmund replied, “you might be right. But don’t jump to the conclusion. Admittedly, it fits its programming. But I’m not sure of the means. Does he have an internal sensor? If not, how did he know where they were? What was his means of communication? Why destroy the ship if he’d directed it in?”
“So, who?” Daneh asked.
“I’m not a mind reader,” Edmund said. “But we’ll do some discreet investigating when the ship gets here. We know that it’s close, if the orcas were there and then here. That might, admittedly, be disinformation. But given the way they used the information they had, I doubt it. You can’t always count on your enemies being stupid, but it’s nice when they are.”
* * *
Shanol coasted to a stop above the swim-through and then paused as if taking in the seascape.
“They brought dragons,” a voice pulsed out of the darkness below.
“We were informed they would,” the orca replied. “That’s not a problem.”
“That’s what you think. They swim and can hunt underwater. The big one’s developed a taste for bull shark; she bites them in half.”
“Nothing that’s bred for the air can match us in the water.”
“Nothing is to happen to Elayna,” the voice said.
“As promised, you can have your pick of the mer-women when we are done. Although, I must admit she is a toothsome morsel.”
“Elayna and Antja then,” the voice said. “Although Elayna doesn’t have the best taste in the world; she’s been swimming out with that jerk Herzer.”
“An interesting datum, to be sure,” Shanol mused.
“Where are the rays?”
“Nearby, waiting for my signal. If we can resolve this little problem peacefully we shall. If not… other measures must be taken. I’ve tarried too long. Be ready when the time comes.”
“Just make sure the rays know who the good guys are,” the voice said. “I don’t want to get caught up in that.”
“Oh, they know who the good guys are,” the orca pulsed in humor. “That’s who they’re aiming at.”
* * *
Bruce had called both of the representatives to a meeting in the town square. He looked at both of them and shook his head.
“You’re like two children scuffling in a schoolyard,” Bruce said. “All around you is beauty, and all you can see is your conflict. Well, I will not let it come to us. I have sounded the feeling of the community, and I hereby give you my decision: The mer will have nothing to do with either of you. We need nothing from either of you that is worth the trouble it would bring. This is my decision. It is final and irrevocable. I request that both groups leave and not trouble us again.”
“For myself,” Shanol said, “your neutrality is all that I sought. My work here is done and I and my pod will leave immediately.”
“Well,” Edmund said. “We’re waiting on our ship. We request to be allowed to stay until it arrives. I have some details to work out with Jackson anyway; I still think that you need more materials and I’m working on a list that I’ll pass to traders. But as soon as the ship arrives, we’ll leave.”
“Very well,” Bruce said. “You can stay until the ship arrives, it will be here soon?”
“Within a day or two, I hope. It is already overdue.”
“Enough,” Bruce said. “This is what I want far from here. Shanol, go now. Edmund, as soon as possible.”
“Very well,” Shanol replied. “I hope to see you again in better times.” With that he gave a flick of his tail, which blew water across Edmund, and headed out to sea, whistling for his pod.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The next day dawned clear again and before the mists were off the ground, the dragons were aloft searching for a school of sizeable fish.
Koo and Vickie had stayed on land, so the only rider with Herzer was Jerry, who was the strongest swimmer. In the detritus from before the Fall, Jackson had dug up a set of fins and a conformable mask and snorkel, which fit the rider, and he intended to participate as much as possible in the hunt. Elayna had stayed back at camp, but the group included Jason, Pete, Jackson and an older mer-man named Bill, all of whom planned on working the net. Bast had also chosen to stay back at the town.
They spiraled upward, the dragons having to work for altitude with neither thermals nor wind, and looked for anything moving. But the surface of the ocean was glass smooth for klicks and there was no sign of migrating pelagics to be seen.
“I guess it’s reef fish, today,” Jerry said.
“Whatever,” Joanna complained. “I’m damned hungry.”
“If we can take just a little time,” Bill said, “sometimes schools wait for the ebb tide by Roberts Inlet. It’s not far down the coast.”
“By where we went fishing the first time,” Jason said.
“We can try it,” Joanna grumbled. “And if they’re not there we either eat reef-fish or mer-men that send us on wild goose chases.”
Herzer looked back to the east, squinting into the rising sun, and saw a flash on the surface.
“Hang on,” he said, spinning Chauncey practically on his own tail. “There’s something back there.”
“Dolphins,” Jason said, as Nebka banked around to follow Joanna. “Or maybe delphinos.”
“Delphinos,” Joanna said. “I can see the rounded foreheads.”
“From here?” Pete asked. He was riding behind Jerry and squinting to try to see what everyone was looking at.
“I can adjust my eyes for enhanced distance vision,” the dragon said. “They’re delphinos. But…”
“Why are they just standing on their tails?” Herzer asked. It was apparent the pod was not moving, just thrashing at the surface. As if they were trying to attract attention.
“I dunno,” Joanna said. “But there’s something closing on them from the direction of the town. Something underwater.”
“Commander,” Herzer said. “Will all due respect, I suggest we proceed immediately back to the town.”
“It’s an orca,” Joanna growled. The whole group had been gliding in the direction of the delphinos and now the great dragon started flapping her wings, accelerating. “It’s hunting them.”
She entered a steep glide then pulled out as she swept over the delphinos. She stayed on level flight, wingtips just above the ocean, until she passed over the orca. She had timed the strike, by luck or planning it didn’t matter, perfectly and just as she swept over the unsuspecting orca broached the surface. As it did, all four talons shot down and sunk into its skin.
She had banked upward as she struck and had nearly forty kilometers of forward momentum so the massive marine mammal was plucked from the waters as neatly as a fish being caught by an osprey.
But the massive orca weighed a good percentage of her own weight and Joanna quickly discovered that getting him out of the water was not the same as keeping him out. After a few desperate wing beats she released the whale and let him drop, bleeding, back into the water.
The orca, however, seemed to have had enough, and dove for the reef below, heading out towards deeper water and away from the delphinos.
“Just peaceful diplomats, huh,” Joanna said as she gained altitude. She banked towards the village but took a look back at the trail of blood from the wounded orca. “Buh-bye, buh-bye now.”
“We need to get down there!” Jason shouted.
“Let me and the dragons handle this,” Joanna replied. “Herzer, the birthing cavern.”
“Shit!” he said, banking Chauncey towards the land as the rest of the dragons thundered into the shallows. “I’ll be back!”
* * *
Rachel was watching her father, who was talking to one of the older mer-folk in the shadows of a ledge. The mer-man was nodding his head as Edmund talked, clearly agreeing with what the general was saying. Edmund had been doing the rounds ever since Bruce had ordered them to leave, late into the last night and was at it again even before breakfast this morning. He seemed to reach some sort of agreement and was just starting to swim away when there was a shrill screeing in the distance.
Rachel had become inured to the constant low-level noises of the sea. There was a constant snapping, which she had been told were shrimp although she rarely saw them. And there was the semiconstant pinging of the delphinos that hovered near the periphery of the town. But this was different, it set her teeth on edge and made her want to get up and run.
When Edmund heard it he seemed to recognize it and headed up above the enclosing coral with Rachel following.
When she got above the coral she spun around, looking for what was making the noise but what she saw was a line of raylike forms heading in from the direction of the rising sun.
“Attack!” Edmund bellowed, just as the rays swept across the crowded square.
The creatures, Changed humans, were the size of manta rays, nearly three meters from wingtip to wingtip. But instead of the soft, plankton-gathering mouths of manta rays they had vertically slit mouths lined with sharklike teeth. Rachel saw a line with a bony harpoon head dart down from the belly of one of the leading ixchitl and strike the mer-man that Edmund had been talking to. The mer-man struggled for a moment then went flaccid as the line began to accordion back up to the ray. When the still-twitching mer-man reached the belly of the ixchitl the beast tore into his body, tearing off great strips of flesh as the shallow water turned red around it. More of the darts were dropping among the mer as those that could dashed for the relative safety of the ledges and swim-throughs.
Bruce the Black suddenly appeared from one of the swim-throughs, a bone-tipped spear in his hand, and shot up into the crowd of ixchitl. He caught one of the beasts in the maw and the hard-driven spear penetrated through its mouth and up out of the back in a welter of blood. But even as he took that one out, another speared him and the leader of the mer shuddered as its neurotoxin ran though his veins.
“Get under cover!” Edmund bellowed at her, drawing his knife.
Rachel ducked under the ledge but continued to watch her father, sure in her heart that he was as doomed as the former mer-leader. But Edmund seemed to dodge the ixchitl’s darts as if he had been fighting them all his life. She saw him cut one that came at him and swarm up the retracting organ that dangled from the belly of the beast. When he reached the ixchitl he drove the knife into its anus and cut upward, gutting it from bottom to top. As the ixchitl thrashed in its death agonies the general shoved his arm into the slit and grasped something in the interior, dragging the ixchitl’s body around to block another cloud of descending darts; he had created a giant shield out of the ixchitl’s body.
The shield was unwieldy in the extreme but Edmund had not planned for simple defense. His free hand darted out and grasped the retracting cord attached to Bruce and let it raise him, and his shield, up to the ixchitl that was preparing to feast on the mer-leader. The ixchitl apparently divined his intent because it began to flap wildly, but because of the drag of the dead ray that Edmund grasped couldn’t pull at any speed. It apparently had no conscious control of the retracting harpoon cord. Edmund was inexorably drawn up to the belly of the beast. He gutted it with another of those powerfully driven thrusts then cut the cord loose, le
aving Bruce free to drift to the bottom.
More of the rays were gathering around him, though, and all the mer that were left had darted for safety. He managed to kill another of the beasts, who could seemingly only fire their darts straight down, but the crowd around him was eventually going to get a dart past his defenses. It seemed only a matter of time before the beleaguered general would be killed when a shadow passed over the square and Nebka dropped out of the sky into the midst of the rays, Bast hitting the water beside her like an avenging angel.
The dragon turned its head like a snake and caught one of the rays on the wing. The wyvern’s broad, crocodilian head shook like a shark and ripped most of the wing off, leaving the mortally wounded ray to writhe in a death spiral to the reef below.
But the dragon was nothing compared to Bast. The elf moved with an unnatural grace and blinding speed, like some knife-wielding demon. She disdained the gutting technique of Edmund, instead whispering in from above and slicing along the back of the rays, cutting the muscles to their great wings, her knife slicing through their tough skin as if it were paper. She had taken out two of the rays before the rest of the dragons appeared, swimming over the reef edge like great birds of prey and descending upon the suddenly outgunned ixchitl.
The rays, at the appearance of the dragons, turned for deeper water and put on a burst of speed until the last one vanished over the reef edge, chased by the wyverns as Joanna coasted to a stop over the square.
“Commander Gramlich,” the general said, tossing aside his ersatz shield, “get the dragons back; those damned rays can overwhelm them if they get their act together. And the orcas are going to be around somewhere. Daneh!” he bellowed as he drifted down to the twitching body of the mer-leader.
Rachel darted out of her shelter and to the side of the mer-leader who lay on the sand by the coral head at the center of the square. The mer-leader was still alive, twitching in the grip of the neurotoxin but Rachel could think of nothing to do for him. Suddenly, her mother was beside her.