Against the Tide

Chapter Twenty

“You know, they don’t pay me enough for this,” Edmund -muttered.

The ship was passing through what the meteorologist euphemistically termed “a disturbance.” Edmund called it a storm. Shar called it “good sailing” which Edmund had come to realize was the navy version of “good training.”

And, as usual, his seasickness, under control in normal seas, was rearing its ugly head.

“Message from the mer, sir,” a seaman said, handing him a form.

He unfolded it and frowned. “When did we get this?”

“Just now, sir,” the messenger replied.

“What?” Shar asked, looking out at the tossing horizon. “Or can’t I know?”

“There’s a message tube on the way in,” Edmund said. “Only I or… someone else can be the deliveree. I’m the closest.”

“Must be hot,” Shar commented. “From where?”

“That I can’t tell you,” Edmund admitted. “Looks like it should be here in about an hour. I’ll be below in the meantime, praying to the porcelain god.”

At the repeated knock on his door Edmund finally crawled to his feet and made it to his desk.

“Enter,” he shouted over the creaking of the hull. Surely it wasn’t supposed to make those groaning noises?

“Message tube, sir,” the communications officer said. “Sir, there’s a possibility this could be a booby trap. Do you want one of my people to open it? We have procedures…”

“No.” Edmund sighed, turning the bronze cylinder over in his hands. “I’ll take my chances.”

Once the officer had left he twisted the knurled top and slid out the paper inside.

“Eyes Only Edmund Talbot, Joel Travante, Sheida Ghorbani.

“Agent M established contact, Paul Bowman’s harem. Contact Megan Travante, daughter of Joel Travante.”

Edmund laid his head on the desk for a moment and groaned, then looked at the rest of the message.

“Identity positively confirmed by visual recognition and transmission of counter-signs. Subject presented with name ‘Travante’ on a ‘new line’ of materials. Responded with words ‘Paul is very fatherly to us,’ ‘material will be given forensic examination’ and ‘could lead to an inspection.’ Terms, while ambiguous, taken together indicate positive contact. Unable to effect any intelligence transfer in first meeting except warning that Paul has intelligence source in UFS at the highest level. Words to effect: ‘any passage of information up your corporate chain will (subject’s emphasis) get to Paul.’ ‘Your new line will go nowhere (subject’s emphasis) if anyone else is informed.’

“Assume from demeanor subject has further information of similar caliber. Risk to subject if information passed considered high. All communications can be considered monitored. Absent orders will contact subject one week from date of message.

“M”

Edmund looked at the date, looked at his calendar and groaned again. Agent “M,” whoever he was, would contact the “subject” in one more day.

And he’d thought seasickness was bad.

Megan was staring blankly at the distillery apparatus when Shanea walked in the room.

“What are you looking so unhappy about?”

“Shanea, where does Paul keep his Key?” Megan said, then froze. “I didn’t just say that.”

“I can’t believe you had to ask,” Shanea chuckled, happily. “You don’t go down on him enough.”

“What?” Megan snapped. “I… what does that have to do with it?”

“If you did, you’d know, silly,” Shanea replied. “It’s in a pouch up behind his balls. Sort of a slit in the skin. You can feel it sometimes. If you put your hand in the right places,” she added, laughing again.

“Thanks, Shanea,” Megan said, distantly. “I was just curious.” She stuck out her hand and picked up a bottle, handing it to the girl without turning around. “Try this new perfume.”

“Okay, thanks!” Shanea said. “You want me to keep an eye on stuff for a while?”

“No,” Megan replied. “I think… I think I’ll do some -mixing.”

“She’s what?”

Sheida had never actually seen Joel Travante upset. She didn’t like seeing it now.

“Megan is a member of Paul Bowman’s harem,” Sheida repeated. “Through truly remarkable coincidence, your agent has made contact with her. He is going to make a second contact, and attempt to get more intel from her, two days from now.”

“Bloody hell,” Joel said, visibly forcing himself to be calm. “Oh, God damnit!” And failing.

“She’s alive,” Sheida said, brutally. “Concentrate on that fact. What she is going through, women have survived for countless generations. And she already got out one bit of intel. She said that any communication that wasn’t to you or Edmund, for some reason, was going to be intercepted. We have a very high-level leak somewhere.”

“I know Megan,” Joel growled. “She’s not going to just spread her legs and smile. She’s going to try to find a way to get back at Paul. I don’t trust her as a source, mainly because she will take risks and get burned. Also known as killed or more likely Changed!”

“Do you want me to try to get to your agent?” Sheida asked. “Tell him not to make contact? To abort the mission?”

Joel looked at her projection and closed his eyes, hard.

“No,” he said after a moment. “If Paul has let slip that there’s a high-level source, he’s telling her other things. Things we need to know.”

“I’m not so sure,” Sheida said. “I mean, yes, she’s getting the information. But getting it out is another thing. She’s bound to be closely monitored in any communications. I don’t see how she could get information out that couldn’t be detected. Wouldn’t be detected. Under the circumstances I’d tell any agent to blow off the contact, much less contact with Megan. At least until we could figure out a better means of communication.”

“Martin is good,” Joel said. “A weasel, but a good weasel. And I hold his strings. Megan… I don’t know. I don’t know her anymore, not after four years of… that. Could she get something out? Maybe. Coded somehow, possibly. And I don’t see any way to abort the contact in time, not and keep Martin operable. There aren’t any hard methods that will work fast enough. No time.”

“So we go with it?” Sheida asked.

“For now we have to,” Joel replied. “Damnit!”

To say that Megan was conflicted would be the understatement of the millennia.

She had long ago gotten over wanting to kill Paul. About the time she had fallen in love with him. But she had taken it upon herself as her duty, as soon as she could do it and know that she could seize his Key. With the Key she had a way out, for herself and the other girls. With the Key she could summon a personal protection field and be safe at last. With the Key… she could survive.

But now… she had a contact. Would it be better to stay as an agent in place? Could she even get any information out? Paul didn’t monitor the harem, she knew that now after blurting out the question she had asked of Shanea. If there was even a dumb monitoring system it would have picked up on that question and at the very least she would be being questioned. But any communication was going to be scanned and analyzed, even Paul wasn’t that stupid. And she knew where that would lead. To a life as an automaton like Amber. If she was lucky. Or unlucky. More conflict.

She had brought two urns of wine and a beautiful glass, with a long stem of a light shade of pink and a lovely clear crystal bowl. One of the urns was white, one of the urns red. Life, and try to get out the information? Or death, and take her chances? It might not work. If it didn’t, she hoped that Paul would at least allow her a clean death.

She was halfway tempted to take the first sip herself.

“You seem troubled,” Paul said as she rearranged her scanty clothing.

“Too much on my plate I think,” she said, smiling. “The harem was very boring when I arrived. Now it seems I don’t have enough hours in the day for all the things I’m working on.”

“Maybe you should delegate,” Paul said, grinning at her. She had suggested it to him often enough.

“Maybe I should,” Megan said, picking up the glass and reaching for the urns. Life. Or death? Her hand hovered and she picked up an urn, filling the glass.

“Troubled, Major Herrick?”

Herzer looked over at the skipper, turned around and leaned back against the railing.

“Just the same troubles as the rest of the crew,” Herzer admitted with a grin. “I wish I knew where we were. I wish I knew what we were doing. And I wish I knew what we were going to face, wherever we are going.”

“Well, I’ve got at least half of that,” the skipper admitted with a chuckle. She leaned her forearms on the railing and looked out at the passing ocean.

“I’ll admit that this isn’t the first time this has happened to me,” Herzer said. “The duke is always like this; he never tells anyone anything he doesn’t absolutely have to. I even know the historical model he’s drawing it from. So I have an idea what he is doing. I still don’t have to like it.”

“I have no idea what he is doing,” Chansa said. “And I don’t like it.”

“We have reports on attacks on orca pods all over the ocean,” his aide replied, setting up an easel with a map on it. “Some of them have been from dragons, presumably, given the ranges, from carriers. If so, his carriers are wandering all over the ocean.”

“North? South? Where are the carriers? Which way are they going?”

“Other than from the attacks we can’t be sure,” the aide replied. “No orca has been able to get in range of the UFS fleet to see. But there is one attack that has occurred south of the anticipated path of our battle fleet and one that has occurred just south of the invasion fleet. There was even one that was in sight of Hibernia. Like I said, all over the ocean. And they’re slaughtering the orca.”

“Say that again?” Chansa growled.

“They’ve taken out about thirty percent of our orca, as well as about forty percent of the ixchitl. The dragons also appear to be attacking natural orca. The orcas are running scared, too. If they even get a hint of a dragon in the air, or a mer killer group moving in, they move out. They just can’t fight them in the water.”

“He’s trying to take out our eyes,” Chansa said. “What about communications from the agents in the Fleet?”

“They have no idea what is going on,” the aide admitted. “Nobody is being told where they are or what they are doing. Nobody, not even the officers. The captains of the carriers have orders, everyone else just follows.”

“I don’t trust it,” Chansa said. “When Edmund Talbot does something that doesn’t make sense, he’s planning something subtle. But what can he do? We’ve got him outnumbered with the combat fleet, and the invasion fleet has enough anti-dragon frigates to give his dragons a very nasty time. What in the hell is he planning?”

“What in the hell are you planning?” Shar asked.

“Not even to you, Shar,” Edmund replied with a faint smile.

“I’ve got forces scattered all over the ocean,” Shar pointed out. “We’re inviting defeat in detail.”

“Not as long as we know where their forces are,” Edmund pointed out. “And we do.”

“So do they,” Chang replied. “Every time we take out a group of orca, it gives them a location for a carrier. Why are you telling them where we are?”

“Not even to you, Shar,” Edmund repeated. “But you might want to catch up on your reading.”

“Okay, we’re going to have to do something about this,” Chansa said after a long moment’s thought. “We can’t lose all our orcas. Detach… detach three carriers from the Blackbeard task force,” he continued, rubbing his chin and looking at the map. “Send a large orca group, three pods, towards this southernmost attack. Tell them to find the carrier, find the dragon outriders, and lead them back to our carriers.”

“That will only leave two carriers for the attack on Blackbeard,” the aide pointed out.

“Blackbeard doesn’t have any dragons to speak of,” the marshal replied. “And there are more than enough Changed to destroy the company of Blood Lords there. Send out the orders. There’s a lone carrier out there. Find it. Destroy it. I’ll teach him to play games with me.”

“You wanna play games?” Herzer asked the wyvern deck leading PO. “I’m a master of playing games.”

Saturday morning had become the traditional day for the skipper to inspect the ship. And as with all such inspections, there was a preinspection conducted by the ship’s XO. And a pre-preinspection conducted by the various officers and NCOs in charge of different areas of the ship.

In Herzer’s case that meant an inspection, just after dawn, of all the areas relating to the care and feeding of the wyverns and their riders. He’d inspected the riders’ head, the food storage areas, the food preparation areas, the ground crew quarters, the riders’ quarters and the riders’ officers’ quarters. And he’d made clear that no matter how early, when he came through, shit had better be straight. He was a product of the Blood Lords and Blood Lords accepted no excuses.

Most of them had needed some minor improvement. The enlisted head had some trash hidden they thought he’d miss. He didn’t. The enlisted quarters had nonregulation materials they thought they’d hidden well enough. They hadn’t. A few of the crew had thought that a properly made bunk meant dirty linen and sloppy folds. That was being corrected. But that was all minor. It was important at a certain level to nitpick; if they were sloppy about something as simple as making a bed, they were liable to think they could be sloppy in important areas. That was the point to inspections.

A point that had apparently been lost on the wyvern deck division.

“Look at this,” Herzer said, dragging the PO into one of the wyvern pens and pushing the dragon to the side. In the corner was a build-up of filth with a nasty yellow fungus growing on it. Wyverns were generally polite enough to let go of their messes when they were in flight. But when they were penned up for too long, such as during a storm, that wasn’t possible. And when they succumbed to seasickness, and they were nearly as susceptible as humans, all hell broke loose. At both ends.

There were pumps and drains to handle the mess; Herzer had learned about them the hard way on his previous cruise. But it left quite a bit of junk in its wake. Mostly secreted in hard to reach places. However, those places were supposed to be cleaned as soon as practicable.

“Sir, it’s hard to get in the pens when…”

“That’s been there for weeks, PO,” Herzer said. “You can tell by the build-up. I’m upset with myself for not having already found it. And this isn’t the only pen.”

The wyvern took that moment to let out a mew and poke at the PO, who practically jumped out of her skin.

“Sir…”

“Petty Officer Riebech, this wyvern is recently fed. It is not going to eat you. Pet it on the head and then push its muzzle away and it’ll leave you alone. Whap it on the nose if it doesn’t take the hint.”

The PO rubbed at its head briefly and then pushed it away, backing herself into a corner more than pushing.

“PO,” Herzer sighed, “this fungus can get into dragon skin that has been damaged, such as from enemy action. It’s a damned hard to stop fungal infection. These pens have to be clean. Not just swabbed outÑcleaned out down to the wood. Every time it is possible. Which means when we’re on operations. And if you can’t do it then, then lead the wyverns out and do it. They can stand in the corridor or you can move them on deck.”

“Yes, sir,” the PO said miserably.

“Clean enough to eat off of,” Herzer said. “Which is what you’re going to do.”

“Sir?”

“For the next week, every member of your division will be taking their meals in the wyvern stalls.”

“Sir…”

“I’m dead serious, PO. I think that that will give you an idea of how clean they have to be. I’d suggest that you get started with this one before the CO sees its condition. And you just might want to use some bleach…”

“Bein’ kind of harsh to my troops, ain’t you XO?” Joanna asked quietly as the crewmen led the wyvern out and began recleaning the stall. Of course the deck would then have to be sanded. Herzer hoped like hell that they’d clean all the stalls then sand the decks; they didn’t have time for them to do it any other way.

“That’s what the XO is for,” Herzer pointed out. “Actually, that’s what the leading PO is for. Which is why I’m going to have a Talk with PO Riebech after this. I’ve been concentrating so much on the riders that I haven’t had time to make sure everything on the ground crew side was functional.”

“Not quite correct,” Joanna said. “You’ve been focusing on the riders. What you needed to do was ensure that everything else was functional at the same time. If that meant the riders had to do some training on their own, that meant they had to do some training on their own.”

“Too controlling?” Herzer asked.

“Maybe,” Joanna admitted. “What do you think?”

Herzer considered it for a moment and shrugged.

“I’m being chewed out for micromanaging, aren’t I?”

“By me?” Joanna replied. “Everyone knows that when I chew someone out you can hear it in the next fleet.”

“Unless you think there’s a better way,” Herzer said. “Okay, take a light brush with the whole crew for a while? I really want to land with both heels on the ground side.”

“No, I’d say that ground side needs a shaking up,” Joanna admitted. “My weyr has been a pigsty. I was just waiting for you to notice it.”

“Because that’s my job,” Herzer said. “Sorry.”

“Just don’t let it happen again,” Joanna replied, mildly.

“You’re good at this,” Herzer chuckled.

“Son, you got any idea how old I am?” Joanna said with a snort. “Everybody is always aghast at how old your girlfriend is. Nobody bothers to ask how old I am.”

“How old are you?” Herzer asked.

“None of your business, sonny,” Joanna replied with a chuckle. “How are we otherwise, for the inspection I mean?”

“Pretty shipshape,” Herzer said. “We’ve got three more hours. Should be up to snuff by then.”

“Do another round,” Joanna said. “Go do the evil XO thing. I’ll just take another snooze.”

It was Saturday and damned if Edmund was going to kill his ass on paperwork on a Saturday. So after getting up and making sure everyone knew he was awake, he lay back down for a light snooze.

Which was broken by a tap on the door.

Edmund considered acting like he’d been at his desk and then decided to just blow it off. Admirals were supposed to have their perks. He rolled onto the side of the bed and said: “Come.”

“Mer message, sir,” the signal midshipman said. Usually a runner brought the information so it had to be something special.

Edmund took the parchment and looked at it and then nodded. He consulted his calendar and frowned.

“Pass the word to Admiral Shar,” Edmund said, lying back down. “Initiate Operation Front Royal.”

“Front Royal, sir?” the midshipman squeaked.

“Front Royal.”

“Major Herrick,” the skipper said as she walked down Broadway. She opened up one of the wyvern stalls and stepped in, tapping the wyvern on the nose when it nuzzled at her and checked in the corners.

“Clean as a whistle,” she said, walking down to where Joanna was curled. “Commander.”

“Skipper,” Joanna said, nodding her head and lifting one claw in what might be considered a salute.

The skipper walked around the dragon and looked at her area, then spoke to Major Sassan who wrote something in his notebook.

“Not bad,” she said, stepping to the aft corridor hatch. “But either Commander Gramlich is going to have to stop shedding so much or you’re going to have to get on your leading PO.”

“We’ll take care of it, ma’am,” Joanna growled.

“Make signal to all units of the Fleet,” Shar said, coming on deck. “Immediately open sealed packet marked ‘Stonewall.’ Open sealed packet marked ‘Front Royal.’ Open no other packets. Report when all captains have completed their first reading.”

“Yes, sir,” the officer of the deck said.

“Where’s the skipper?”

“Conducting the Saturday inspection, sir.”

“I’m sure the crew will be delighted that it’s now cancelled. Go get him.”

“Skipper,” the signal messenger said, skidding to a halt and pausing to catch his breath. The skipper had made it as far as the kitchens and had just informed the mess officer that he was a disgrace to the uniform. “Ma’am, mer message. Open packet Stonewall. Open packet Front Royal.”

“Well, XO,” Skipper Karcher said. “Looks like we’re done.”

An hour later the skipper came on deck and looked at the telltale on the mast and then at the compass.

“Officer of the deck,” she said. “Prepare to come about, heading one-three-five. Call all hands.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” the lieutenant called as the bosun pipes shrilled.

“Can I ask what’s happening?” Major Sassan said.

“You can ask,” the skipper replied with a growl. “But it doesn’t mean I know the answer.”

“Do you know what is happening?” Destrang asked Van Krief as the ship heeled over and headed south.

“Yes,” she answered, shortly. Since boarding the ships they hadn’t had much to do and she had had too much time to think about the messages she had written for the fleet.

“So tell,” Destrang said.

“Can’t,” she said. “I will say this; if anything goes wrong we’re all screwed.”