Against the Tide

Chapter Nineteen

“Time to mix it up,” Jason signaled, starting to ascend.

When Jason was given the go ahead to begin attacking the orcas and ixchitl, he’d already had a plan in mind. And, so far, the plan was working.

Finding the orca pods and ixchitl schools was almost the hardest part. But the delphinos were in tentative contact with natural schools of skimmer dolphins, the deep water dolphins that roamed every major ocean on earth. They were, in particular, capable of reading the skimmer’s language, at least to the extent of their alarm calls when orca or ixchitl, which the skimmers had discovered were threats, were sighted.

Whenever such a call went up, delphino skimmer pods moved in close enough to determine if the pod was natural orcas or Changed. The differences, other than in the small pseudo-hands of the Changed, were slight, but generally they could tell without moving in close enough to be prey. And with ixchitl there was no question at all. Then they would take up positions around the pod or school and send out their alarm call.

Jason had shifted forces and had the selkies take over most of the inshore work of the underwater forces. With the mer thus freed up he had scattered “killer teams” around the ocean. When a target pod or school was sighted, more often than not there was a killer team somewhere in the vicinity. As soon as the course of the target was plotted the mer would move into position.

By and large, mer were shallow water creatures. But they were designed to handle deep diving just as well. They also were water-breathers, so they could stay down, as long as they got enough food to stave off hypothermia. Orcas and ixchitl, though, almost invariably moved in the top hundred meters of water. Ixchitl could and sometimes did stay deep. But they generally, like the orcas, traveled near the surface. Thus the killer team would dive deep and silently await the passing target.

In this case it was a small pod of Changed that was, apparently, moving in to try to localize one of the carriers. Edmund had said that it was a high priority that they not do so. Which made this group a double target.

They couldn’t see, or otherwise detect, the pod from their current location, nearly three hundred meters below the surface of the water. But the skimmers were still sending out their broadcasts and they could more or less fix the location of the pod that way. The skimmers had taken up points of an equilateral triangle around the Changed pod and as the triangle moved over their location, Jason sent his force silently upwards.

As he did he checked, again, that the supply ship was in position, sixty klicks to the southeast. He often thought that the supply ships were the real heroes of the plan. The small, fast schooners carried food and weapons for the mer and delphinos, moving around the ocean, unable to defend themselves from attack and depending solely upon the immensity of the ocean to protect them. Each of them also carried a medic and a hold that was partially flooded with seawater. In the, very likely, event of injury to the delphinos or mer, they could be evacuated to the schooner and if the injury was bad enough, but not too bad, they could be shipped to the shore.

He knew that they’d probably take some casualties this day and just had to hope that they wouldn’t be too severe.

As the school of mer ascended they started to pick up very faint clicks from above. The orcas mostly ran silent when they moved but this group had lousy tactical discipline. On the basis of the sounds, Jason shifted their ascent slightly and increased speed. There was some danger to the change in speed. As they got into lower pressure water their tailfins could begin to “cavitate,” creating low-pressure “holes” where the water would rush in and make a sound. So far so good, though: he could still hear no sound from his school.

It was becoming dark above and it was hard to pick out much in the water, clear as it was. But then he saw shapes above and to the left of the school so he shifted direction again, quietly extending his lance. When it was clear the orcas still had no inkling they were about to be ambushed, he put on a final burst of speed and sixty mer-men followed him into the attack.

Irkisutut was bored, angry, tired and afraid all at the same time. They had been running around the damned ocean on one wild goose chase after another for the last week. Headquarters didn’t seem to know which way to send them so first they went one way then another, always in a fruitless search for the enemy’s carriers.

What made it worse was that they had heard, both directly from distant alarm calls and from scuttlebutt from other pods that casualties had been enormous. Not only were the carriers sending out dragon patrols to hunt down the orca but the ever-be-damned mer had shifted from skulking around the harbors to attacking the pods. Most of his fellow pod leaders had been lost over the last week and he wondered how long it would be before it became his turn.

On top of that were the damned skimmers. He knew he was bracketed by skimmers, they were sending out constant chatter. But while orcas were fast, skimmers were damned lightning. He’d shifted track a couple of times trying to catch the damned things but they just greased away, laughing at him. Then when he turned back they got right back into position. All that chasing them did was wear out the pod.

And the pod was already pretty worn. They hadn’t had a resupply in three days and there hadn’t been much they could catch with the damned skimmers squealing along to either side. The open ocean was mostly desert anyway so the orca normally followed the currents, hunting at their edges where food was most abundant. This mission had had them chasing all over the ocean, though, and that meant where the food wasn’t. They’d called for a resupply ship to rendezvous with them and gotten nothing but bullshit assurances that “something would come along.”

And as he was thinking about that, something did.

The team of mer had spread into a pike-wielding hexagon, the underwater equivalent of a phalanx that they had worked out as the most efficient attack formation in these circumstances. It spread wider than the pod of orcas and engulfed it like a rising, metal-tipped, seine net. The first orca to be spitted was a youngster that had dived below the main pod and squealed an alarm just before he was struck between his pectorals by a pike.

The pod reacted quickly but in an undisciplined manner, some of them darting ahead to try to escape the enveloping mer and others diving to the attack. Most of the ones that dove ran into a solid wall of spear-points. Unwilling to brave the wall of metal they turned and darted for the surface. A few dove into the phalanx and were pincushioned for their bravery. Despite this the mer were careful to avoid opening up holes in their formation; they shifted position to maintain a solid, and ever narrowing, formation as teams stayed behind to finish off the wounded orcas.

Irkisutut darted ahead as the alarm call went up but quickly saw that he was going to be cut off by the mer. He turned to the side and realized that the pod was surrounded. After darting back and forth for a moment he did the only thing that made sense, building up speed and then leaping into the air to clear the ring of mer.

As soon as he hit the water he turned back towards the mer, darting in and capturing one in his conical teeth. He didn’t stay around to be attacked by the rest, instead backing away as the ribcage of the mer crunched in his teeth. He dropped the dead mer-man and turned to attack again but the phalanx had shifted to half attacking inward while the rest covered their backs. He, too, was facing a wall of spears. There was nothing he could do but watch the rest of the pod slaughtered mercilessly.

“Damn you!” he bellowed as the last of the pod was finished off. “Freaks!”

“Go home, little orca,” one of the mer taunted. “Go home and tell the rest of your fellows that you’re no longer the top of the food chain!”

As the mer darted towards him he turned away and headed towards the east. Somewhere out there were other pods and a supply ship. Somewhere out there was safety.

There was nothing left for him here.

“Where in the hell are we?” Zora said as she mounted her wyvern.

“I don’t know, Sergeant Fink,” Herzer replied with a grin. “Somewhere in the middle of the Atlantis Ocean, but that’s just a guess.”

The carrier had been sailing for four days. And not in any sort of straight direction. She tacked, she turned, she sailed west, she sailed east, she sailed north and south. None of the tacks had been of equal lengths and given the state of wind and current they could be anywhere. Well, anywhere in the northern Atlantis.

Currently they were on a generally easterly course, as far as Herzer could tell. They’d been on it most of the day, but that didn’t mean anything. He knew there were New Destiny forces to their north and south so either way they turned they were going to be going into battle.

He and Fink weren’t battling today, though. The majority of the dragon-riders were brand new and today they were engaging in bombing practice. The ship’s launch had been sent out three hours earlier and was now towing a target slowly to the east, falling behind the carrier with every minute. The target wasn’t all that large and it bobbed around on the waves quite a bit. But that didn’t answer why none of the riders had managed to hit it yet.

Herzer walked Lydy to the catapult and settled himself in position as the wyvern got a good grip on the launching balk and leaned forward eagerly. It took a bit of practice to get the wyverns used to the launching catapult but once they acquired the knack they loved it.

The catapult accelerated the wyvern to almost forty kilometers per hour in its short traverse and as it reached the end the wyvern flapped open her wings and took flight. The wings of a wyvern were enormousÑthey had to be to support the weight of the dragon’s body and riderÑand the mechanics of them were impossible without a large number of changes from the birds of prey they were based upon.

The first and most noticeable change was in materials. The wings and flight-bones were threaded through with a mesh of bioextruded carbon nanotubes, a monomolecule that was enormously strong for its weight. But beyond that there were subtle additions throughout the wyvern’s body. The energy of flying meant that they got extremely hot, hot enough that their own body heat could cause brain damage. To reduce the dangerous build-up there was a small channel in their head that took in air at the front, blew it over the skull and released it at the back. This ensured that while they might become overheated it would not affect their brain. It also was a noticeable portion of their total body cooling, since it was lined with water releasing membranes. The changes went on and on. Normal muscle could never support their flight, certainly not for any length of time, so they borrowed from bumblebees a special “reflexive muscle” that only had to flex in one direction. Internal tubules acted as springs to bring their wings back into “gliding” position automatically so they only had to “flap” and then release.

Despite all of the changes they could only stay aloft for a few hours so Herzer headed for altitude and then glided, waiting for the sergeant to catch up. As soon as she had formed up on his wingtip he headed for the distant dot that was the launch.

The launch had a crew of twenty oarsmen and a coxswain but at the moment most of the oarsmen were leaning on the side of the boat, watching the show. A previous division had formed up on the target and were dropping practice bombs. Herzer watched as, one by one, they all missed. Well, it was a small target. They were getting close. Most of them would have hit a ship.

The problem being that with the relatively small bombs, and the increasing ability of ships to fight the fires with foam agents, the ships had to be hit multiple times to ensure the fire got out of control. And in some cases dropping the bombs in precise locations would help, such as taking out the quarterdeck.

So being able to hit the three meter by three meter target was not an option, it was a standard. A standard the riders were not meeting.

He saw Joanna coming up from the ship with the small figure of Bast perched merrily on her neck. Only Bast would be crazy enough to ride a dragon without any safety straps. He wondered how she held on.

Then he thought about her leg strength and chuckled. He knew damned well how she held on.

He lined up on the target and nosed the wyvern over, making small corrections. The target wasn’t moving in a regular pattern since it was being towed. It jerked forward and then slowed, then jerked, then slowed. He made small corrections on the dragon and then, when he felt he was at the minimum altitude, released his first bomb. He continued below the “floor” however to watch it drop. It hit just forward of the target with a small splash.

He pulled the wyvern back up to where the sergeant was waiting and signaled to her.

“Watch your first drop. Go below floor to watch. Floor on other drops.”

She looked at him in incomprehension and signed back. “Watch drop?”

He slid the wyvern over until he was just above her.

“You can watch your first drop and go below the floor for the exercise!” he shouted. “You have to stay above the floor on the others.” More signing lessons were clearly in the future.

“Okay!” she shouted.

He watched as she lined up and dropped and could tell she wasn’t going to get anywhere near the target. The practice bomb landed more than ten meters to the side and well to the rear.

He waited as she flapped back to altitude and Joanna slid into his wing position.

“Not going so well, is it XO?” Joanna bellowed.

“No,” Herzer signed, stooping over and lining up the target again. He tried to correct for its tendency to jerk but even as he dropped his load he was aware he’d missed. As he pulled the dragon up and over he glanced back and, sure enough, it landed behind it. Close, but not on target.

“This is damned near impossible,” Herzer signed as he got up to altitude.

“Others do it,” Bast signed back with a humorous fillip.

“I’m a lover, not a bomber,” Herzer signed, fast so Zora wouldn’t catch it.

Joanna turned over and lined up, her wings pulled back so she was correcting with only the tips. She spread them slightly halfway down to catch up to the target then continued on, looking more like some giant arrow than a dragon. When she released, she had her own controls, she didn’t even look, just pulled out and used the momentum to carry her up on a controlled climb until she was just at stall speed and started flapping. The bomb hit the center of the target and exploded.

“That was amazing!” Zora yelled.

“Yes,” Herzer signed back. “Now we have to figure out how to be amazing!” he added with a yell.

“Herzer,” Joanna bellowed as she flapped back up to their position. “Don’t start your dive, yet. Spouts to the south.”

Herzer looked in the indicated direction and just caught the sight of a plume of breath. They’d had other sightings, but they had all been regular whales. Each sighting, however, had to be checked.

“You and Zora form on me,” Joanna continued, winging over to the south.

He laid Lydy over and formed up on Joanna’s wing then hooked the reins off and took out his semaphore paddles. He waved to the flagship until he saw a pennant raised with his number then signaled that they had spotted plumes to the south and were investigating. As he looked back he saw the ready dragon lift into the air as another came up from below and one of the Silverdrake dropped off the main-sail crosstree and headed towards the indicated sighting.

He shook his head and signaled for the Silverdrake to go high and give the fleet some cover. The Drakes had a tendency to go haring off after anything that struck their fancy. With the training group gone the fleet was without a reconnaissance cap, not to mention that when they reached the whales they were going to be below the horizon from the carrier. The Drake rider waved his arms in reply and headed upward in a steep climb as the three-dragon patrol continued towards the spouts.

Joanna was slowly climbing with occasional wingflaps and the other two dragons followed her. Herzer was careful to monitor Lydy to make sure she didn’t tire; being out in the middle of the ocean when that happened would be bad.

It only took them about twenty minutes to get over the spouts and the black and white patterns showed them, clearly, to be orcas.

“How do you want to handle this, Commander?” Herzer signed.

Joanna continued to watch the orcas for a moment then winged over in a sharp, spiraling, dive. When she was at about five hundred meters she lined out again and spiraled the orcas, turning her head to the side as their shadow passed over the pod.

“I’m gonna let ’em go,” Joanna bellowed. “They’re naturals.”

“You sure?” Herzer signed.

“No,” Joanna admitted. “But they didn’t bolt when we swept over them. I’d say they’re dumb brute animals. And, anyway, they don’t… move like Changed. There’s just something different with the way that Changed act. I’d say these are nomads, so they’re a danger to our selkies and delphinos. But they’re not a danger to the fleet. So I say: Leave ’em be.”

“Your call, Commander,” Herzer yelled. “Besides, we’re well away from the task force.”

Bast suddenly cocked her head to the side and leaned out on the dragon’s neck to yell something.

“You sure?” Joanna bellowed, turning her head around on its long, snakelike neck, to look at the elf.

“No!” Bast yelled. “Closer look!”

“Stay up here,” Joanna said, looking at Herzer, and then she dove towards the water.

She lined up behind the pod and passed over it, fast, her wingtips nearly touching the water on either side. The whole time her head was moving from side to side and when she passed the pod she began beating for altitude, hard. As she did the pod made a radical turn to the north and dove.

“Changed!” Joanna bellowed. “I was wr… wr… not right. Herzer, you and Zora head back to the ship. Get another dragon and get up here with some wyverns. I’ll shadow these. Signal hostile orca to south as soon as you get in range.”

“Will do, Commander,” Herzer said, gesturing at Zora.

“Wait,” Bast called. She stood up on Joanna’s back and began stripping off her clothes. She had left her bow but she was carrying the saber. When she was done she was wearing her baldric and the saber and nothing else. She looked over at Herzer with the bundle of clothes and armor in her hands and then shook her head.

“You’d never catch it,” she said, toeing at Joanna.

“Are you crazy?” Herzer yelled. She was balanced on tiptoe on the back-ridge of a flying dragon nearly two thousand meters over the cold waters of the North Atlantis.

“Yes!” she yelled as Joanna lifted up and over Herzer’s mount. Bast leapt lightly onto Joanna’s wing-root, catching the uplift and then off into midair, landing with feet together on Lydy’s back.

The wyvern reacted to the sudden impact by swinging from side to side as she tried to see who was running up her spine and it was all Herzer could do for a moment to keep her in control. Bast handled this much like a rodeo performer or an experienced sailor running out a crosstree, walking up the spine of the dragon, feet in line, until she dropped down on Herzer’s back.

“Hold this, will you, lover?” she asked, lightly licking him on his ear.

“You are insane.” Herzer chuckled, then pulled up slightly on the reins, getting Lydy above Joanna.

Bast repeated the performance, jumping off of Lydy’s wing-root and onto Joanna’s back. As soon as she was in place, Joanna dove for the water.

“Head for base,” Herzer gestured at Zora.

“Help?” she asked, gesturing down.

“No,” Herzer waved. “Base.”

He passed an outbound flight as he headed for the carrier, his eye fixed on the Silverdrake high above. There were six wyverns, two with riders and four without. He really felt sorry for those poor damned orcas. For that matter, it was an even bet that Bast and Joanna were going to have finished off the pod by the time the rest of them got there.

The carrier had turned northeast, away from the potential threat, and they were already headed into the wind. He let Zora head in first, watching her air control. Experienced wyverns could almost land themselves, but the fleet had neither experienced wyverns nor experienced riders. Thus it was up to the riders to direct the wyverns on landing.

An innovation since his first carrier experience was a set of lines on the landing platform. The idea was for the wyverns to land between the second and third line, squarely in the middle of the landing zone. Another innovation was a net at the rear of the platform. He really hoped he never ended up in it.

After initial carrier development books had been found that, while not textbooks on naval aviation, per se, had many of the techniques that ancient peoples had developed for aircraft carriers. Most of the books were fiction and few of them were good, even to those who could read the ancient and baroque dialect in which they were written. They were loaded with acronyms the definition of which were often lost: SOL, SNAFU, and, frequently, FUBAR. But many of the terms and mythos had infected the naval dragon-riders. The stripes, for example, were referred to as “wires” which confused people that saw them. Landing between the second and third was a “three-wire.” Signaling that you were prepared to land was referred to as “calling the ball” even though even Evan had not been able to get a Fresnel lens to work for dragons. The one ability that ancient aviators had that Herzer wished for at moments like this was the ability to fly straight on if they were going to miss their landing. If he tried it he’d smack into a net. And if the net wasn’t rigged, he’d smack into a mast, which was worse. Actually, he’d probably plow into pri-fly.

He put that out of his mind, lining Lydy up and keeping his eyes on the paddles in the hands of the landing signal officer. He was pretty clean on the way in, corrected for the dead area behind the ship, got a last minute wave up and then slammed down dead between the two and three wire.

“Report,” Skipper Karcher said as soon as he had walked his wyvern down to the maindeck.

“Spotted plumes to the south and went to investigate. Jo… Commander Gramlich thought they were normals at first but when she went down for a close inspection, on Bast’s suggestion, she changed her mind. Last I saw, she and Bast were headed down to engage.”

“Just the two of them?” Sassan said, aghast.

“Yes, Major,” Herzer replied, somewhat tightly. “I’ve seen both Commander Gramlich and Bast in action in the water. I’m not worried about them, just whether there’s anything left for the follow-on flight.”

“That good, huh?” Skipper Karcher chuckled.

“Yes, ma’am,” Herzer said, tossing the bundle in his hands up and down. “Bast jumped from Joanna to Lydy to give me these. Then jumped back. She’s that good.”

“What is that?” Sassan asked.

“Her clothes,” Herzer said, dryly. “She didn’t want to get them wet.”

At a signal from the approaching wyverns that the orca were no longer a threat, Karcher turned the task force south to pick up Joanna and Bast; the returning dragon-riders had stated that when they got there all they found were five orca carcasses floating on the surface.

They were directed to the returning dragon by the cover riders and when they were finally sighted Bast was standing on Joanna’s head, swaying from side to side as the dragon snaked through the water. Wyverns swam by using their wings but Joanna was long and thin enough that she found it easier to scull from side to side like a snake, her virtually invulnerable wings wrapped around her body as armor.

As the dragon passed the side of the ship Bast leapt off her head and onto the deck. Joanna had given her a bit of an assist but it should have been impossible for her to not only clear the bulwarks but land near the middle of the deck. When she saw Herzer she trotted over to him and leapt through the air again, landing, stark naked except for her sword, with her legs wrapped around his middle and one hand hooked in his collar.

“That was fun,” she said, grinning and swinging back and forth, much like an orangutan hanging on a tree branch. “Let’s find some more.”

Skipper Karcher looked at her, obviously about to ask a question and then shut her mouth as Joanna climbed over the side of the ship. The starboard rear rail of the maindeck was removable and mats were laid in place for this exact purpose and Joanna slithered up onto the deck without incident.

“What happened, Commander?” Karcher asked.

“Oh, well,” Joanna said, spreading her wings and shaking the water off as politely as she could, “they came at us in the same old way and we, you know, beat them in the same old way. What a terrible business.”

“That’s it?” Sassan asked.

“More or less,” Bast said, jumping down from Herzer and taking her clothes. “Wellington and all. They tried to fight, and they couldn’t win. And they tried to run, and they weren’t fast enough. Felt sorry for them towards the end, really, until I remembered what they were like in the Isles.”

“You could go pick them up,” Joanna added. “As a wise delphino once quipped: Orca meat. Taste sweet.”

“I… don’t think so,” Skipper Karcher said, shaking her head. “I think we have enough meat in the freezer. I need to get the task force back on course.” With that she strode back up onto the quarterdeck.

“Well, I had my fill anyway,” Joanna admitted. “Time for a lie-down.”

“I don’t think so,” Herzer said. “I’ve got some paperwork for you to sign.”

“You know how hard it is for me to hold a pen!” Joanna complained as she walked through the hatch. “I really don’t get paid enough for this.”