by John Ringo
“Didn’ need to do that, mon,” the man called. “Push ee back off. I’d guess you want to be get someplace else and I’ve fishing to do.”
“Okay,” Martin said, pushing the boat back into deeper water and scrambling aboard. The fisherman expertly brought the stern around and set the sail and the boat skipped back towards the distant reef.
“Man, am I glad you came along,” Martin explained. “Got any water?”
“Jug at your feet, mon,” the islander said. “The rounder gourd dere. The tall one’s me rum. Thomas don’t be sharing his rum wit’ any old castaway.”
The bottom of the boat was half full of empty baskets made of woven palm fronds. But by the mast were two stoppered gourds, one of them much rounder than the other.
“Well, thank you for the water, Thomas,” Martin said, taking a solid slug but leaving plenty in the jug. “The packet I was traveling on sank off-shore four weeks ago. I’ve been trying to signal someone to stop ever since.”
“Don’t many be coming this far south,” Thomas replied easily. “Plenty of fishing up thee coast. But Thomas he likes it down here. Plenty of good big fish, plenty of hogfish on the reef. Thomas, he like hogfish.”
“Never had it,” Martin replied, leaning back against the side of the boat. The sun was beating down and it was positively hot. Of course, a couple of times in the last week the wind had been downright vicious at night. He’d made a miserable job of weaving some palm fronds for cover, but they weren’t much against the wind. He’d take the heat.
“Be grabbin’ the boat hook, mon,” Thomas said after about a half an hour. “Be pickin’ up the gourd in the water.”
Martin found what was probably the boat hook, a solid pole of wood with a withy on the end bound into a crook by what looked like tree bark. The boat was rapidly approaching a floating gourd and Martin, after an initial hook that missed, pulled it over the side. The gourd had a rope tied around its narrow end and Thomas came forward, dropping the sail onto the deck with an expert twist of the halyard and grabbing the rope.
“Thomas will pull,” Thomas said, pulling in the rope hand over hand. “You be yankin’ out the fish.”
As the rope ascended it was clear it was attached to a net. As soon as the net cleared the bulwark Martin saw his first fish. The fish, about twice as long as his hand, had a whitish body with a blue stripe and a bright yellow tail. Its head was caught in the openings of the net by the gills. Martin grabbed it and tried to pull it out backwards but the gills were firmly caught. The whole time he was wrestling with it, Thomas continued to pull in the net.
“Pull it through, mon,” Thomas said, somewhat angrily. “It small enough.”
Over the next hour, or so it seemed, Martin pulled one fish after another out of the gill net. Thomas slowly told him what they were; the yellow-tailed ones were snapper as was a red-colored one. Hogfish had three tall spines on their back. There were at least three kinds of grouper. Scamp, bar jack, after a while he stopped trying to memorize them.
Finally they were done with the net, the fish in one of the baskets and the net piled untidily in the bottom.
“Thomas could have done it nearly as fast without help,” the sailor grumped, raising the sail and setting the boat into motion.
“Hey,” Martin said, slumping in the bottom of the boat and looking at the direction they were going. “Isn’t that north?” He pointed to the rear.
“Thomas don’t have just one net, mon,” the captain chuckled.
Thomas, in fact, had five nets out, and it was very near dark before they turned to the north. Martin was exhausted, and all he had done was pull the fish out. His hands were covered in fish slime, and no matter how many times he washed them over the side they didn’t seem to come clean. For that matter, most of his body was covered in one sort of filth or another. And he had been badly stung by some sort of jellyfish.
This was for the birds. He loved work, he could watch it all day, but this was just ridiculous.
The sun set fast and the tropical night was as black as pitch. The stars overhead shone down clearly, but at the surface of the sea it was like being in a cave. But the wake of the boat was filled with green phosphorescence. It was so bright, Martin swore he could see by it.
The captain was a barely glimpsed figure at the rear of the skiff and Martin couldn’t for the life of him figure out how he could see.
“You know where you’re going?” Martin asked.
“Oh, yeah, mon,” Thomas replied. “You just be lying back. Thomas get us home safe and sound.”
He had enough in his pouch to pay his way to the mainland. Once he was there, well, something would come up. It always did. With that thought, Martin lay back and looked at the stars until he fell asleep.
The change in motion of the boat woke him and he rolled over, stiff from lying on the bottom of the skiff. They were entering a harbor that could be dimly glimpsed by the light of occasional torches and lanterns. There was a rough stone dock but the boat headed for a low shoreline. As it grounded, Martin got out stiffly and grabbed a painter, pulling the boat up onto the shore as far as he could go.
“How did it go?” a voice said from out of the darkness.
“Rather well,” “Thomas” replied in a much more cultured tone. “Duke Edmund Talbot, meet John James the Third, aka Martin Johns, aka Martin St. John, aka… well I won’t do the whole list.”
Martin darted away from the voice on the shore and into the darkness. He had covered three steps when he ran into a metal-covered mass that picked him up by his hair until his feet dangled off the ground. His eyes immediately filled with tears of pain and he found himself still trying to run in place. It had been a really bad day.
“What you want I should do with him, boss?” the metal-clad figure asked grimly. The muscle-bound moron was apparently supporting Martin’s full weight with one extended arm. Effortlessly. At that, Martin quit trying to run. Fighting had been out of the question all along.
“Oh, don’t harm him, Herzer,” Talbot chuckled out of the darkness. “There are so many things we want to ask him.”
Author’s Afterword
I’ve gotten into the habit of these; I really need to start breaking it. But I thought that a few items in this book needed attention.
I had too much fun writing this novel, in case it’s not clear. My normal “output” is something on the order of a thousand words a day, when I’m “cooking.” At times I was writing ten or, once, eighteen thousand a day on this novel. The underwater sequences, in particular, practically wrote themselves. Eight hundred hours of “down time” (last time I bothered to update my log, which was in the early ’90s) will do that for you; blood really is emerald green at about sixty feet and turns black as you go deeper. And the Blackbeard trip to the Bahamas last January certainly didn’t hurt. Indeed, it was on the deck of the sloop that the basic outline of the book came together. Then there are the dragons.
I’ve never really been interested in dragons; I’m certainly not one of those people who go around with an online persona of one. In fact, to the extent that I have an online persona it is “DaGiN” which stands for “Da Guy in Nomex.” I have to wear Nomex because I like to bait the online dragons. (And, yes, that’s what the rabbit was wearing. Asbestos, actually.)
But I’d evolved the idea of what was first called “The Caves of the Mer-folk” and as it developed in the back of my mind, dragons became more and more integral to the story. I’ve had many problems with fantasy dragons over the years and it gave me a chance to point out some of the unlikelihoods. At the same time, I’m of the opinion that almost nothing is unbuildable that mankind can envision. And, someday, someone is going to genegineer a dragon. Count on it. And it’ll probably be Disney. Take a close look at the pictures around their “Safari” attraction if you don’t believe me. Disney thinks big.
But they are still going to be constrained by the problems of aerodynamics and biology. Birds of prey are the closest current analogue
to dragons (indeed, they will probably be the template for them when they are created, as they were for the wyverns in this book) and birds of prey have to eat an enormous amount of food, relative to their body weight. Given the much greater size of flying dragons, they are going to be a logistic nightmare if used militarily and I strongly doubt that they would be able to survive in the wild. Not to mention that muscle and bone will not permit the stresses involved in normal flight for such enormous wings. Build up the bone too much and the wing is too heavy. Etc. So they’ll have to have some very artificial materials involved, such as the “biologically extruded carbon nanotube.” And if you can figure out how that works, call Dupont and they’ll make you a billionaire.
Still, I had this image, glorious and terrible, of dragons fighting orcas (go watch Blue Planet: The Open Oceans to see where that came from) and I had to get them to where the book was based. The world did not permit a base in south Florida (yes, this all takes place on Earth in the far future) so they had to be transported there by ship. But… why not have it be a ship that they could take off and land upon?
You begin to see the ugly truth of how stories are created, at least by me. Kind of like legislation and sausage.
Thus was created the dragon-carrier. And that’s when I really got carried away.
I grew up on tales of naval aviation; my late uncle was a Navy fighter pilot in WWII. And while I’d never care to be a crewmember on one, much less a pilot (a bigger bunch of suicidal adrenaline junkies cannot be found), carriers are fascinating.
Carriers are the most complex system ever created by man and it is only with enormous difficulty that they function at all. (As the French, Chinese and Russians all have learned to their dismay.) Packing all the planes; people, fuel and parts to support the planes into a ship — much less having it all arrive where and when it is needed in a carefully choreographed dance — has taken the U.S. Navy generations to perfect. Just so that airplanes the size of WWII bombers can leap into the air and return to decks not much larger than WWII carriers with regularity. It’s an amazing feat and makes me proud of my country and my countrymen. Yes, even the Airedales. (Slang term for Navy pilots.)
So it is with the dragon-carrier that I have taken the greatest liberties. Many of the items in this book were not invented until late in the development of carriers. Yet all of them were imagined and then engineered by the bright characters in my book in the space of a few short weeks. I’d considered having the different groups of carrier operations personnel wear different colored uniforms, but I felt that was pushing it.
I also played fast and loose with many of the seascapes. There are no specific inlets as described, but there are places very like them in the Berry Islands. Big Greenie is real, but it’s by Bimini, not in the Berrys. Nor is the entrance to the Bahamas Banks on the east side exactly as described, but it is very close. And, who knows, in a few thousand years it might be exactly as described; hurricanes, erosion and the continuous build-up of the Bahamas Banks change things drastically in decades much less millennia. Whale Point Drop, however, is real, and much as I described, minus the spring and the cave. If you don’t believe me, go check. The lighthouse, however, is private property. I wish it was my private property, but I haven’t sold that many books yet.
So, permit me the liberties that I take, and I hope you enjoyed the book. That’s, really, all that matters.
As usual, I’d like to thank the people who aided me in this book, either through information or by providing the characters that make it so rich.
Evan Mayerle, who is indeed a very inventive aviation engineer.
Bast, who, while not quite the character in the book, can see it on a clear day.
Hank Reinhardt for chopping pork shoulders so artistically.
Chief Robin Brooks, the best damned chief in the Navy.
Elayna for heroic baby-sitting beyond the call of duty.
Pete Abrams for the rabbit. If you want to know where the rabbit came from, google “Bun-bun” and prepare to lose two weeks of productivity. Start at the beginning, read the first month, and then prepare to laugh yourself sick, probably at work with your boss watching.
And, most especially, I’d like to thank the crew of the Blackbeard Cruise Ship, Pirate’s Lady: Antja the Deck Wench, Jason the Divemaster, Jackson the engineer, Pete the cook, Bill the mate, and, yes, Bruce the captain, owner of Blackbeard Cruises. All of whom put up with such truly insane questions as “If you were a mer-man, where would you live?”
If you’re a diver and stout of spirit, I recommend the Blackbeard Cruises for the fun, price and the rum punch. Especially if my brother is directing the ratio of rum to punch. Although, sorry Bruce, not in January. Yes, the hypothermia was from experience. As was the seasickness. Including the thyme. On the other hand, if you’re a Canuck, go for it. Scopolamine patches are over-the-counter in Canada and sixty-four-degree water is, apparently, positively balmy to our northern neighbors.
Thanks for reading my books and I hope to bring you more adventures with Herzer, Edmund, Bast and Daneh in the near future.
Who knows, maybe even the homicidal rabbit.
John Ringo
Commerce, Georgia
July 2003
[email protected]
WARNING: ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE!
The following story, while not pornographic, does contain erotica. If it were a movie it would probably be rated NC-17, possibly X. Since as an author I’m best known for my combat science fiction and “closing the bedroom door,” I thought this warning in order. The erotica, for reasons that should be obvious in the story, is necessary and central to the development of both characters and plot. I’ve previously posted “Megan’s Tale (The Harem Girl’s Story)” so that a large group of fans could comment. (On Baen’s Bar which can be accessed via the Baen website, www.baen.com. I’m there pretty much every day in Ringo’s Tavern. Trolls will be ejected at waist height.) Their comments ranged from “this was a bit much for me” to “flesh it out.” (Pun intended.)
Megan is an important character whose experiences in this story will shape her, and the world of the Council, for some time to come. I think that the majority of my readers are mature enough to not have a problem with the following story. I don’t exactly read these things as bedtime tales to my own kids. To those of you who do, my apologies and be glad for the warning.
In a Time of Darkness (Megan’s Tale)
PROLOGUE
The girl washing clothes by the side of the rushing stream might once have been pretty. Now, with the exception of her forearms, she was filthy and skinny, her long, brown hair hanging in tendrils around her face. She wore the remains of a fine, blue cosilk tunic, which had been tied up in the heat, and matching pants that had been cut off at midthigh. She was barefoot and her feet were heavily calloused.
Less than a year before Megan Samantha Travante, like all the humans of her time, had lived the life of a god. Before the Fall, with the omnipresent Net to care for every need, humans wallowed in almost inexhaustible luxury. A person could live anywhere, even under the sea or in the photosphere of the sun, Change themselves into almost any form. Food was available with a word, replicated in any form. Safety was guaranteed by personal protection fields capable of surviving in any possible conditions.
Megan’s life had been slightly different from the norm. Her father was one of the few remaining “police” of the era, a man who tracked the limited criminal element that sprung up even with enormous luxury. And he was very good at his job. Good enough that he had pressed his only daughter into studying more than was normal for the period and developing a high degree of personal paranoia, not to mention defensive capabilities, which made her strange to many of her friends. Joel Travante knew that even in Paradise the serpent always lurked in the human breast, and he was sure that his daughter knew it as well.
With pressure from her father, and her mother who was an expert on preindustrial art, Megan had used the resources of
the Net to develop herself in ways strange to many of her peers. She attended few of the innumerable parties; she, in fact, had very little social life. Her life had been dedicated from an early age to intensive mental and physical training. Teaching methods had advanced along with every other art and science. Besides audio-visual systems that practically hammered knowledge into the young mind there were direct input methods available. Between the two, no realm of knowledge was closed to even the youngest. At first under her parent’s pressure, and then on her own for the acorn does not fall far from the oak, Megan had used them to amass an education that would have astounded most professors of previous eras.
The Fall, though, had caught almost everyone by surprise. The Net was managed by the Council of Key-holders, thirteen people who between them held the keys to the program that managed the Net. They had fallen out, the reasons given ranged from their own statements to wild rumors, and started a civil war that had drained the power from the Net and thrown the world into a state of instant barbarism.
Megan had been seventeen at the time of the Fall, not yet officially “released” by her parents, but free to wander at will. She had been visiting a friend in Ropasa when the Fall came while her mother was, presumably, home in the Briton Isles and her father on assignment “somewhere” in the world. Thus she had been left to her own devices. She had managed, through the smarts and paranoia that her father had inculcated, to avoid the worst aftereffects of the Fall. She hadn’t been raped, unlike some of her friends, and she hadn’t been one of the women chosen as “consorts” to the Changed legions of New Destiny. But it hadn’t been easy to avoid either. Finally, she had found work as a washing girl and general servant for one of the elders of the local town. It wasn’t a great job, but she had plans. She had skills that were rare in the post-Fall world. Most of those skills required an industrial base that was sorely lacking in the small town she had stumbled into. So she bided her time, watched for opportunities and kept her head down. In time, she’d work her way out of squalor.