Against the Tide

Chapter Ten

“Hello again… Major,” Edmund said. “Have a seat.”

“Thank you,” Joel said, sitting down languidly.

“I’ve blocked out most of the afternoon,” Edmund continued, getting a cup of coffee from the samovar. “Want some?”

“Please,” Joel replied, opening up his briefcase. “I suppose I don’t have to tell you about need-to-know.”

“Not really,” Edmund replied. “But do I decide that or you?”

“I suppose we’ll have to discuss it,” Joel answered with a grin.

“What name are you using at the moment?” Edmund asked.

“Kolata,” Joel said. “When I’m in my official capacity I generally just go by T.”

Joel Travante had been one of the few police in the pre-Fall era. The Council Inspectors were independent operatives and most of them worked part-time. But among the group was a smaller core, the Special Inspectors, who were the elite. You became a Special by solving the toughest cases in the best possible fashion. Joel Travante had been a Special Inspector for forty years prior to the Fall.

Just prior to the Fall he had been in the Asur Islands trying to find a serial rapist and murderer. Either was difficult pre-Fall since everyone was protected by personal protection fields. The perpetrator would seduce young women into lowering their shields and then keep them too occupied, mostly by pain, to be able to raise them again.

Joel had been close on his heels when the perp disappeared, apparently off the face of the earth. The inspector had finally found information that indicated the murderer had turned himself into a kraken and was hiding somewhere near the bottom of the sea. The question being, which bottom? He had managed to trace him to the Asur Islands and had been preparing to go hunting in the depths when the Fall hit.

After the Fall he had worked fishing boats. Then, when New Destiny took over the islands, he had taken his small boat and sailed two thousand kilometers to Norau. From there he had reestablished contact with Sheida Ghorbani and gone back to work. This time not as an inspector, but first as a member of her burgeoning intelligence apparatus and then as its head.

He liked his job for several reasons. One of them was that he got to see the real information about the world, messed up as it was. The other reason being that his wife and daughter had been in Briton and Ropasa, respectively, and his position was the only one he could imagine where he might get some inkling of their fates.

“Any word on your wife and daughter?” Edmund asked, handing him a cup of coffee. “I’ve got cream and sugar.”

“Black, sir, thank you,” Travante replied. “And no, unfortunately.”

“Well, if we can ever get back to Ropasa, hopefully we’ll find something out,” Edmund said, glad that both his wife and daughter had managed to make it home after the Fall. He could imagine what a hell it must be for Travante. “So, what do you have for me?”

“The anti-dragon frigates were a known weapon,” Joel started. “I’d sent both a description and schematics to Naval Intelligence who apparently decided that it was an ‘unconfirmed report.’ I’ve also developed intel on their carriers. There are some differences from ours, some significant ones I believe.”

“Such as?”

“Shorter legs,” Joel said, extracting a sheet of paper. “They’re only good for about forty days at sea. Furthermore, the training of the dragon-riders is, my analysts believe, sub-optimum. That is confirmed, I feel, by their lack of success.”

“They took out four carriers,” Edmund pointed out.

“Yes, sir, but given the number of dragons they can loftÑthey carry forty-five, which is one reason they are short-leggedÑthey should have been able to sink the entire fleet. Their aim was rather poor.”

“Okay, point.”

“They currently have six, unfortunately. I’ll admit that the additional carrier caught me by surprise. I’ve been concentrating my gathering efforts in the northern ports and they apparently used Bassay to build and field that one. Their fleet is currently headed for home ports, including the one from Bassay, which is headed to attach to the main fleet. They were caught by the storm and badly battered around; they also don’t appear to have as good quality of sailors as we do. Some of their light units and one anti-dragon frigate are reported as lost.”

“How many frigates did they have?”

“Ten, which explains our losses,” Joel replied. “It’s not my place to ask, but are you going to be able to replace those?”

“I’ve got wyverns flying in from all over,” Edmund replied. “Training them, and their riders, will take some time but not as much as you’d think. Once they make a carrier landing, I’ll have the ships do further work-ups at sea. And I think I can do some work on the supply issues. But the shipyards are going to have to work like demons.”

“You can anticipate them doing a fast turn-around on their end,” Joel pointed out. “I don’t have any intel on their intentions. So far I’ve been able to establish a fairly good intelligence group in Ropasa, but penetrating their high level positions is a slow and dangerous business.”

“Well, keep at it,” Edmund sighed. “What else do you have?”

“Quite a bit, actually…”

Edmund was leaning back in a comfortable chair, a glass of wine in his hand and his feet propped up when there was a knock on the door.

He looked at it irritably and sighed. It was after midnight and he had been meeting with one person or another all day and most of the day before. He certainly was in no mood for more company. But there was no one else to answer it. He’d sent Herzer and the rest off when he got back to his quarters.

He set the cup down and walked over, mentally grumbling to himself. It seemed as if no one on the entire base, possibly in the entire Navy, had the slightest clue how to organize and manage a military force. Oh, they could move food around and they could sail ships. But that seemed to be as far as they’d thought. No one that he had encountered seemed to think in terms of bringing harm to the enemy.

For Edmund, who thought about it even when there wasn’t an enemy to bring harm to, it was like being the one-eyed man in the country of the blind.

He jerked the door open, intending to ream a new asshole, and then smiled when he saw it was Shar Chang.

“I can come back later,” the general said. He’d gotten a new uniform and washed up but he still looked worn out from the long flight.

“No,” Edmund said, waving him into the room, “I said as soon as you woke up. One of the things I’m trying to get this cluster of school boys to understand is the concept of doing the work when it needs to be done.”

“Sailors generally understand that,” Shar pointed out. “A storm doesn’t care what time it is.”

“Most of these guys were sailors when you knew exactly when there would be a storm,” Edmund pointed out, pouring another glass of wine. He handed it to Shar and sat back down, waving at the chair across from him.

“Point,” Shar said. “Do you know how the senior officers were chosen?”

“No. I know they all come from that same sailing club.”

“Every year the club has a regatta, a race,” Shar said, taking a sip of wine and looking at the ceiling. “Quite the do. Yachts come in from across the world. It was one of the big events right at the end of the yachting season. Anyway, absent any other way to choose, the senior officers were chosen from the captains that had the best time in last year’s race. Draskovich was the winner; the man really can sail. Kabadda was in second place, by a nose if I recall correctly. Et cetera.”

“That’s just peachy,” Edmund said. “And I suppose their XOs are in their usual place?”

“Oh, yes,” Chang replied. “If they were around. Trahn, now, the second guy in Logistics, is a pretty good guy. I don’t know if he knows diddly about logistics, though.”

“We’ll see,” Edmund replied. “I’ll admit that they are good at moving food and spares. But we have to teach them to fight. Did you know there wasn’t an at-sea commander? That each of the carrier skippers was in charge of their own battle-group and Draskovich was in command of the fleet?”

“Well, he’s the fleet commander, isn’t he?” Shar asked.

“No, he’s the North Atlantis commander,” Edmund said. “Was. He’s not supposed to oversee the entire battle. That’s what a fleet commander is for. And the skippers of the carriers are the skippers of the carriers. They’re not there to run a battle group. It’s like the entire concept of chain of command is gibberish to them. Micromanagement raised to the nth degree.”

“Is that what you called me up here for?” Chang said, motioning with his head at the new stars. “To be the ‘at-sea commander.’ ”

“Fleet commander,” Edmund corrected. “And to pick your brain. But you’re no more prepared for it than any of the rest of the captains. So what you’re going to be doing, in your munificent free time, is read. There’s a library here and from what I’ve been told by one of my ensigns, it’s brimming with good biographies. I want you to cram every biography of every fighting admiral you can read over the next week or so. And I mean every waking moment that you’re not working on something more important. I’d give you a list, but I don’t know what they have. Halsey, Nelson and Provock at the very least. Oh, and Ensign Van Krief has Slim’s biography. He’s a soldier, not a sailor, but I think you can learn some things from him. You up to it?”

“Reading biographies has never been at the top of my choice of how to spend my free time,” Chang said with a shrug. “But if you think it will help.”

“Immensely,” Edmund replied. “Now, I want to pick your brain. Not about the battle, but about managing the fleet. First of all, do we have to feed everyone salt beef? We’ve been starting to can stuff at Raven’s Mill and the legions are going in the direction of all canned materials. It’s coming on to harvest time; if we can set up a canning facility we should be able to can just about anything we want.”

“Well, canning for vegetables would be a good idea,” Shar replied. “But on the Hazhir we’ve got even better for meats; we’ve got a sub-zero freezer.”

“A freezer?” Edmund said. “Doesn’t that require electricity? And doesn’t the Net just suck it off?”

“No electricity involved,” Shar grinned. “Refrigeration just involves compressing gasses. All you need for that is pumps and piping. Evan found a good source for the pumps, right up the Gem River, and the piping is coming out of factories in quantity. Refitting the ships isn’t even particularly hard. You just insulate two holds and, presto, you’ve got refrigeration. Keeps meat for a treat. Even for the dragons.”

“Which reduces the volume of material they need,” Edmund said, nodding. “And you can keep your beer cold.”

“That too,” Chang grinned.

“What else?”

“You remember the flamethrowers we had on the Richard?” Shar asked.

“I was never there when they were used,” Edmund said, -shrugging.

“Well, wooden boats are a fire trap,” Shar replied, shuddering. “When that jellied gasoline gets started, its almost impossible to stop. Evan developed an automated extinguishing system that uses a foam that puts the fire right out. Also hooks to the fire-fighting pumps. The Hazhir also has underwater ‘wings’ mounted on it. It’s an old racing trick; it keeps your ship from drifting to leeward. We’ve redesigned the catapult so the dragons actually take off faster but don’t have so much of a jolt at the start. And we’ve got a new arrester system so they can land better. Natural gas stoves so we can have fires during a storm and don’t have to eat cold food, bleed-off vents from the refrigerators that help keep the quarters cooler in the heat, plenty of little innovations that make the ship work, and fight, better.”

“Why don’t all the carriers, hell, all the ships, have some of that?” Edmund asked.

“Buships hasn’t ‘approved’ the changes,” Shar snarled. “In fact, when we sent them reports on what we were doing, they told us to rip them all out as ‘unauthorized modifications.’ ”

“I take it you told them to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine,” Edmund grinned.

“No, we told them there was currently a lack of dockyard space and as soon as we could schedule the work we’d remove all the ‘unauthorized modifications.’ Of course, the Blackbeard dockyards can’t even handle a carrier and we could have done it all with the crew. Which they pointed out. So I sent another excuse. And they found fault with that one. So I sent another memo. And so on and so on.”

“Well, I’ll send the next one,” Edmund replied. “Telling them that I intend to ‘upgrade’ all the carriers presently here to match the Hazhir. If we have time.”

“Will we?”

“I don’t know,” Edmund sighed. “You think the Hazhir can take on six carriers?”

“No,” Shar said, sighing. “Even with me in command.”

“Well, you might have to find out,” Talbot replied. “The Hazhir is going to be the only carrier we have for a while. The Hazhir should be here in no more than three more days. When it gets in I want Evan to get with the guys over at the dockyard and start setting up to convert the fleet carriers to the Hazhir’s configuration.”

“You’re going to get a lot of complaints,” Chang pointed out.

“Let ’em,” Edmund replied. “As long as they do it. And if they don’t, well, we need workers in the yards. We may convert these ‘dreadnoughts’ in the meantime. Or we might use them for something else.”

“You’ve got that look in your eye,” Shar said, chuckling. “How much time do you spend thinking about how to mess with New Destiny?”

“How much time does a teenage boy spend thinking about sex?” Edmund replied with a grin.

“You summoned me, O mightiness,” Herzer said, walking in Edmund’s tent. “By the way, you look awful. How much sleep are you getting?”

“I can sleep when I’m dead,” Edmund growled. “Why are you so chipper? Finally laid Van Krief?”

“No,” Herzer said. “But I have been working with the marines. You know they don’t have any formal training facility?”

“Yes, I do,” Edmund replied. “That’s what I wanted to see you about. There’s not a single training facility in the entire navy.”

“None at all?” Herzer asked. “How do they learn their jobs? I mean, how do the officers learn anything?”

“By and large, they haven’t.” Edmund sighed, throwing his pen down on the desk where it promptly squirted ink all over the papers. “Shit. I barely know where to start with this damned place. Incompetents are mixed in with really good people. Trahn in G-4 is sharp as hell, but of course his boss was an idiot. I talked with Babak the G-3. You are hereby frocked major and appointed G-3 schools. One of the mostly completed dreadnoughts is being permanently moored for the time being; you can use that for skills training. We’ve got personnel that want to be sailors, they just don’t know what they fuck they are doing and all the training so far has been on-the-job. Find some facilities. Right now all I’ve got for you is the dreadnought, but scrounge up some trainers. Start a basic training facility for the seamen. Military lifestyle, basic seamanship, fire-fighting, water survival at a minimum. By the time they’re trained in basics you’ll need to have found advanced instructors. G-1 has a list of ‘specialties.’ You’ll have to find trainers for those schools as well. For the time being, from here on out, anyone who wants to be an officer has to have served at least one deployment with the fleet or have prior experience. Verifiable prior experience. And then they go to O course where they learn everything about being an officer on a ship. I have no idea what that means, but figure it out.”

Herzer opened his mouth to ask where in the hell he was supposed to find instructors but closed it. Edmund clearly didn’t have time to deal with pro forma protests.

“I want Van Krief,” was all he said.

“You’ve got her,” Edmund replied. “Find somebody to ramrod it for you by the time the fleet is ready to sail. Shar’s going to be in command but I want you out there, too. Oh, and a training facility for the marines as well.”

“I’ll need personnel from the fleet,” Herzer pointed out. “And they’re not going to want to release them. I’ll need good personnel from the fleet. And dragon-rider training as well, don’t forget that. And there should be personnel designated to handle the dragons; the riders have got enough on their plate. This is going to have to come under the Navy manning table. Bupers is going to have to approve the slots.”

“Come up with a list,” Edmund sighed. “I’ll handle Bupers. You just get the school started. Get going.”

“Hey, Shar,” Evan Mayerle said as he walked into the cramped office. “You wanted to see me?”

Shar’s desk was just about covered in paper and he was -reading a memo with a furious expression. It was clear that he was in dire need of killing someone. But he smiled at the engineer and waved to the sole spindly chair.

Evan Mayerle was of medium height, a brown-haired young man with bright blue eyes that were almost perpetually looking at something invisible. That was because he usually had his mind on three or more items other than whatever conversation he was engaged in. Chang knew that so he waved to get his attention.

“Focus for a minute,” the admiral said. “You’ve got a job in front of you.”

“I was thinking about the mess system on the Hazhir,” Evan replied. “I think we can rearrange it so thatÑ”

“Evan,” Chang said with a chuckle. “Focus.”

“Oh, right,” Evan said, looking at him and widening his eyes. “You called me here, didn’t you?”

“Right,” Shar replied. “Look, Edmund wants all the carriers upgraded to match the Hazhir. The shipyards can work on that while they’re doing the repair damage, right?”

“I suppose,” Evan temporized. “But putting in the refrigeration system will require tearing out some deck. Nothing that can’t be fixed but it’s at least a three-day job.”

“Get with the shipyard. Show them the changes. They already have the word that they’re going to be doing it. Expedite it. Focus on that, not more changes. We need them turned around fast.”

“What about the other fleet units?” Evan asked.

“If there’s time,” Shar replied. “I hope there’s time.”

The fleet was decidedly limping when it came in. The ships entered the harbor in a straggle, hooking off to their prescribed buoys in any old way. Patched sails, braided rigging, bright patches of new wood for which the ships had run out of paint all told the story of a group that was worn out. Out of morale, out of energy and out of patience.

The wyverns that could fly had already landed and Edmund had been there for their arrival. The wyvern “weyr” was a long series of sheds with a graveled area about a hundred meters across running the entire length. The edge of the graveled area had been lined with chunked up beef carcasses for their arrival and then the work parties had cleared the area with the exception of three handlers, drawn from the marines, for each wyvern. The marines, in full armor, had helped the riders get their gear stripped off the dragons before they were let loose on the carcasses. There had been a few fights and some of the wyverns were going to require medical attention, but with food in their bellies the half-wild dragons had calmed down and let themselves be led into their sheds.

And a good quarter of the meat was still lying out in the sun; less than a third of the wyverns that had sailed with the fleet had been capable of flying off.

Now Edmund watched as the carriers carefully jockeyed up to the piers. The dragons that hadn’t been able to fly off were in bad physical shape. He could only hope that with food and some medical attention they’d be fit to fight by the time the fleet sailed again. He had been calling for wyverns from across Norau, and they were trickling in in ones and twos. But the fleet had already drawn down the available population. He wasn’t sure he could fully man even the remnant that had straggled in.

Lighters with fresh food were moving out to the ships at anchor. The crews had been instructed to stand down and stay on board overnight. In the morning they’d be brought in with full assembly scheduled for just before lunch.

The captains were putting off, though, coming in by small boats. They had been instructed to leave their executive officers on board and come ashore for a preliminary meeting. In the case of the carrier captains, with their senior dragon-riders. He had to prepare for that meeting. He didn’t think it was going to be pleasant.