by John Ringo
“Hmmm.” The engineer frowned and nodded. “When avatars, or any manifestation of Net energy, are formed, they give off a minute electromagnetic field. It’s caused by the not quite perfect intratransmission of data among the nannites or fields that are formed. And in the case of straight projections, because it’s a quantum field projection, the energy is actually quite high. In cases where they pass through grouped pieces of metal or other conducting materials they tend to create a static charge area that is similar in some respects to Saint Elmo’s fire…”
“Okay, okay,” Daneh said. “You don’t regale me with the physics and I won’t tell you about DNA interactions.”
“You’re a genegineer?” Evan said, delighted.
“No,” Daneh replied. “Before the Fall, I fixed their screwups. But the point is, if he, the spy that is, is using a transmitter or being visited by an avatar, there should be traces.”
“Well… yes,” Evan said. “But very faint ones. I don’t know how…” He paused and murmured to himself. “Perhaps if I…”
“I’ll leave it to you,” Daneh said, patting him on the knee. “But this is between us. If you find anything, report it to Rachel or me. No one else. Clear?”
“Not even the skipper?” Evan said.
“Not even the skipper.” Daneh paused and then shrugged. “Whoever it is, they always appear to know our exact position. If they’re not using a position locator, and I don’t see why they would have access to one, then it has to be someone who has access to the updated navigational charts. How many members of the crew does that make?”
“Oh.”
* * *
It was nearly midnight before the work was done and all the gear of the mer was loaded on the ship or on their backs. The group at the surface waved to the women and children on the ship in farewell. The younger mer, even those that could free-swim, had been loaded on board as well, most of them protesting furiously. Finally all preparations were complete and the ship raised anchor, filling its sails with the dying landwind, and moved off to sea.
“The faces of the women aren’t something to take with you on the ship,” Herzer muttered.
“What?” Jason said at the apparent non sequitur. “They’re the ones on the ship.”
“ ‘Bird of Prey March,’ ” Herzer said. “I really need to teach you some Kipling.” He paused and frowned as they swam back to where the dragons were gathered. “Actually, there’s one that’s more fitting.”
“Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling,
From glen to glen, and down the mountainside.
The summer’s gone, and all the flowers are dying.
’Tis you, ’tis you must go, and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow.
’Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow,
Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.”
As he sang the clustered delphinos echoed the song back in weird harmony, the siren song drifting across the dark waters until finally it died away.
“That’s a damned sad tune to start this journey on,” Jason said.
“It’s a damned sad journey,” Herzer replied, taking his place in the protective hemisphere. The plan was to have Joanna take the point with dragons near the surface on all four sides and the armed mer-men in a hemisphere with the unarmed women and a few of the older males in the middle. The latter weren’t there just to be guarded. The landsmen and the dragons needed fresh water and they were dragging along barrels of it. The fresh water was denser than the salt so the barrels tended to float but it was still going to be hard going. The delphinos were ranging out as scouts, but at the first sign of trouble they were to enter the protective bubble; there was no way for them to fight either the orcas or the ixchitl. Much less the reported kraken.
“You know a lot of songs like that?” Jason said as the group moved off.
“I love war,” Herzer admitted. “It’s a damned sad thing, but it’s the one thing that I’m really good at. And if you love war, you have to know its face, the good, the bad and the ugly, and there really are all three faces. War has a beauty that is almost addictive, winning or losing. An ancient general said: ‘It is good that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.’ Music is to war what food is to sex, a very nice accompaniment. So, yeah, I know a lot of songs and poems about war. For that matter, I’m a pretty good cook,” he added with a chuckle.
“You’re weird, Herzer.”
“So I’ve been told,” the lieutenant admitted. “On the other hand, there are some that aren’t quite so dreary. Old Ireland was called the land of sad war songs and happy wars. But Norau was the land of sad, or at least unwilling, wars and happy war songs. Let me teach you one of those.”
And so, with the delphinos echoing back the tune through the night-dark seas, he taught the group of mer-warriors the words to the song “March of Cambreadth.”
The ixchitl struck at dawn.
* * *
The day dawned clear with scudding winds from the north. On them the clipper rolled south under nearly full sail at almost forty klicks per hour.
“Great day to be sailing, sir,” Jerry said as he scrambled up the ladder to the bridge. “Do you want to launch?”
“Hell, yes,” the skipper said, bellowing for all hands to turn the ship into the wind. When the crew was engaged he turned back to the rider. “I want constant top cover. Keep an eye out for that damned kraken. And, of course, any New Destiny ships. We’re not going to bother parleying; I am not willing to be Mister Reasonable with this cargo.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the warrant said, saluting. Shep had already been brought from below so Jerry settled his gloves, glad for the first time in nearly a week to be in proper gear, and loaded her on the catapult. As soon as the wind was off the port quarter he launched for the dawn patrol.
* * *
Jerry had been recovered and Koo was aloft when the lookout called down to the bridge.
“Dragon signaling, sir,” the sailor called. “Number twenty-four, and four dips!”
“Enemy in sight,” the signal midshipman read off. “Five ships.”
“Bloody hell,” the skipper growled. He had the weather gauge of the ships and more speed than they, either with or against the wind. But the position they had chosen was a narrows that he had the choice of passing through or beating around for another two or three days, maybe a week. And there was another thing.
“Damnit, XO, they’re waiting for us,” the skipper snarled.
“Maybe, sir,” Mbeki said, with a shrug. “But this is the logical path if we’re taking the southern route. They might have another force on the northern turn as well.”
“I don’t buy it, XO,” the skipper said, shaking his head. “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”
“Yes, sir, nuke Mars now,” Mbeki said, completing a joke so old its genesis had been lost. “But this is only twice.”
“No, that damned kraken as well,” the skipper said. “Well, it doesn’t matter, one way or the other. We have to pass through. But we’re still below the horizon to them. Bring the ship into the wind, I need to talk to Warrant Officer Riadou.”
* * *
Evan knocked on the door of the wardroom and entered without permission to the frown of the skipper.
“What?” Chang snapped.
“I heard that there are more ships ahead,” the engineer replied, seeming not to notice the rebuke. “I was looking for Jerry. Herzer asked me to make something for him, but in all the bustle we never got to test it.”
“What?” Jerry asked.
“Well, the skipper was saying that he wanted the ship to be more offensive.”
* * *
A leather-and-wood device had already been strapped to the breast of a protesting Shep when they reached the deck. It was mostly wooden box, with three partitions, and some leather reins and woo
den levers, apparently to open the partitions.
“I’m afraid it’s… somewhat dangerous to the ship, sir,” Evan said. “Loading is the worst part. You see, each of the compartments has a pottery jug of jellied gasoline in it.”
“Ouch!” Jerry said. “But…”
“Oh, it also has a fuse,” Evan said. “It was that that took me so long to make. The first few designs tended to detonate prematurely.”
Jerry had a sudden clear image of what it would be like to be riding a flaming wyvern and closed his eyes against it.
“They’d better not prematurely detonate on my ship, Mr. Mayerle,” the skipper said angrily.
“Well, I’m fairly confident in this design,” the engineer said with an abstracted expression. “There’s a vial of sodium and a vial of water in the base of the jar. When the two hit something solid, the sodium ignites and that, in turn, ignites the gasoline. As long as they’re not dropped… That was why I was commenting on the loading.”
“We’re going to need to come up with some very careful procedures,” the skipper said in a definite voice.
“Yes, sir,” Evan replied. “But, there they are.”
“I just pull the straps?” Jerry said, looking the device over. There were three straps and three boxes. He noticed that the boxes had pins through their covers; until those were released, they couldn’t be opened. The pins had white pieces of canvas on them that fluttered in the wind. If they hadn’t been pulled, it would be evident.
“Well, I suspect that hitting the ships will be harder than you anticipate,” Evan replied. “Wind drift, differences in speed. But… yes.”
“Skipper,” the dragon-rider said with a feral grin, tightening up his gloves. “I think we’ve got us a strike carrier.”
“As long as we have something to sail to,” the skipper noted, looking to the north where the ship was now pointed. “Okay, I’m going to stay below the horizon; it’s up to you riders. Go show them why they don’t mess with the UFS.”
* * *
The ixchitl had been lying doggo in the sand but one of the delphinos just ahead of Joanna spotted them and raised the alarm. However, before it could turn to run back to the ring of defenses one of the ixchitl erupted from the sand and passed over it, firing down with its nematocysts.
Joanna reacted immediately but even as she clamped her jaws shut on the ray it was too late; the harpoon had done its work and the delphino rolled over on its back as the neurotoxin coursed through its body.
The group was suddenly surrounded by a white cloud as the school of ambushing rays erupted out of the sand, filling the water with their wings. They rushed the bristling hemisphere but could neither penetrate the shield of spears, nor get above the group to fire down.
The dragons, meanwhile, were ravaging through their school, chopping at the rays. Ridden by Bast, Edmund and Herzer, they kept near the surface where the ixchitl’s rays could not reach them, but they could bite downward. The ixchitl found themselves trapped between the dragons above and the hemisphere of spears.
Finally they backed off and one of the larger ixchitl turned on its side, its normally white underbelly flashing through a range of colors. At apparent command two of the rays on the far side broke off and then came back at speed, leaping high into the air and into the midst of the crowd of mer-maids and huddling delphinos.
They arrived with a tremendous splash and the impact momentarily broke the spear line. They also fired their harpoons immediately, and apparently at random, hitting one of the mer-girls and a delphino.
Even this did not avail them much. The spear line reformed before the ixchitl to the outside could do anything to help their comrades and at a squealed command from Herman two of the delphinos grabbed the nematocyst cords, practically before they could begin pumping poison, and rolled with them, like great crocodiles, until the cords were ripped from the bellies of the beasts.
Furthermore, the mer-women were not unarmed and they fell on the ixchitl with the fury of anger and desperation. Two of them were badly bitten but the steel and bone knives jabbed and fell and before long the ixchitls’ carcasses drifted downward on the light current.
At this the ixchitl leader flashed his belly again and the whole group broke off the attack, heading for deeper water.
Herzer directed Chauncey up to the surface with his knees and pulled back his mask for a breath of real air. They had attached sailcloth collars to the dragons, even Joanna, and the riders held onto them while riding. But the dragons spent most of their time under water, like a dolphin, and it meant spending all his time breathing through the mask. Since the battle with the orcas he’d developed a distaste for the mask, all mental he well knew, but real for all that. So he took every opportunity to get a breath of real air.
Jason surfaced beside him, lifting himself on Chauncey’s wing to blast out his lungs as Joanna, Bast and Edmund popped to the surface.
“Well, breakfast for the dragons was catered,” Joanna said, swallowing the last of an ixchitl.
“You’d better hope that neurotoxin is digestible,” Herzer said, looking around at the placid sea. The wind was from the north and with the islands blocking the breeze there was barely a chop where they had been attacked.
“We need to rest,” Jason said. “And we’ve got wounded.”
“Well, we can’t rest in the middle of the water,” Edmund said. “Those damned orcas will be back sooner or later and they can break the spear line if they’re willing to take some casualties. Break up the hemisphere and we’re done.”
“The mer can pull themselves out on the beach,” Herzer said. “But the delphinos can’t.”
“A bay,” Bast said. “One with a narrow entrance but enough water in it for the delphinos to float.”
“There’s one up the coast,” Jason said after a moment’s thought. “But… it’s a ways.”
“No help for it,” Edmund said, pulling his mask down over his face. “The orcas and ixchitl will be dealing with fatigue, too.”
“Fatigue!” Jason said. “We’ve been fighting or swimming since yesterday afternoon! And we’re out of food.”
“We just keep going,” Edmund said, pointing Nebka into the water. “That’s all we can do.”
“Fight until you die and drop,” Herzer said, looking at Jason steadily as he pulled his own mask down. “Now you know what it really means.”
“What are you? Iron?” Jason snarled. Even though Herzer had been on the dragon most of the way, he knew that the landsman had been doing more than his share of fighting.
“No,” Herzer said, “I’m a Blood Lord. Works out to the same thing, though. Blood to our blood, steel to our steel.”
* * *
Jerry waved Koo back to the ship and took up station overlooking the black-sailed caravels. Koo, though, flew alongside and made a questioning sign at the device slung under Shep. Jerry thought about it, realized that they were going to have to come up with a sign for “bomb rack” and made the sign for “weapon.” Then he added “Weapon Yazov. Send Yazov,” and waved Koo away.
He watched the ships as he waited for the other dragon to first be readied and then reach his position. They were tacking back and forth across the narrow passage in a ragged line, clearly intending to block the passage. Since the only boats they had seen were local fishing boats, and none of them near here, they were clearly waiting for the clipper. And the war between New Destiny and the UFS was already declared. But he still felt uncomfortable about what he was about to do.
By the time Vickie and Yazov had reached him, he had come up with a tentative plan. He had been watching the boats and noticed that besides going forward, they had a nasty tendency to crab sideways away from the wind. The term “to leeward” came to mind from conversations among the ship’s officers. So he had to account for that when he was dropping his… bombs. Fire bombs, technically. When Vickie reached his position he waved her closer so they could talk.
“I’m going to make my runs,” he said. �
�Watch what I do and we’ll try to figure out the best way to work this.”
“Okay,” she yelled. “Is it just me, or does something feel wrong about this?”
“It’s not just you,” Jerry yelled back. “But that’s why they call it war.”
He lined up to come at the front of the boat, high enough that arrows wouldn’t reach the wyvern. He had to mentally judge the drift of the boat, and the dragon, and released his first bomb when it was where he thought it would hit the ship. He had lined up long-ways on the ship, since that made for a bigger target area, and the bomb dropped clean but over the windward side; he’d made too much correction. The ship was also closing too fast, so he lined up from astern this time and tried again. This time the bomb fell off to the leeward side. Finally, he came to the conclusion that he needed to get closer to the ship. He banked around and got back up to altitude again, but this time he waited until he was almost over the boat and then put Shep into a steep dive, pointed right at the mainmast.
He could clearly see figures in black armor on the deck, pointing crossbows up at the dragon. But most of them loosed far too soon and the arrows hissed back down into the sea. He dove to well below his previous point and then released, pointed just forward of the mainmast, and pulled Shep up and to windward.
The dragon could not pull out of the dive immediately and he ended up banking out and to the side, nearly at the level of the mast. A flock of bolts from the crossbows followed him as he banked up and away, but most of them struck the nearly invulnerable wings. Jerry could distinctly hear the guttural cries of the orc marines and the shouts of the crew, as well as several awful screams but he waited to see the effect until he got the dragon up to altitude again. Shep was whimpering and Jerry craned around but couldn’t see any damage.