Carnifex

1/5/467 AC, BdL Dos Lindas, Marguerita Locks

The carrier almost filled the lock chamber. They'd had to remove the lighting on one side of the locks to allow space for the angled flight deck. The ship was held fast in position by extremely heavy locomotives called "burros," as water poured out to drop the inside level to match that of the sea. The burros would actually pull the carrier out of the locks before it could proceed under its own power.

All but a few of the carrier's aircraft sat topside for the transit. Those that were down below, in the hangar deck, were in for routine maintenance.

The escorts had already formed at Puerto Lindo and would meet the Dos Lindas a few miles out to sea.

Fosa fumed, and it wasn't because of anything having to do with the locks, the aircraft, the escorts, or his Yamatan supernumery, Commodore (by courtesy bumped up for the duration) Kurita. It had nothing to do with the speed of transit and it had nothing to do with the efficiency of the entire operation. Fosa's mood wasn't based on leaving behind his home, nor even his wife and children.

No; what had him ready to shit nails was that for the duration of his ship's transit someone else—a Transitway Pilot—was commanding his ship.

"Roderigo-San," Kurita said, with that same serene smile he almost always showed, "if it makes you feel any better, when I was a real captain I'd have given anything to have taken my ship, Battlecruiser Öishi, though the Transitway, even if I had to put her under someone else's command."

"Huh? Why is that?"

The serene smile, as it sometimes did, turned feral. "Because that would have meant my country won the war."

Fosa immediately recalled that there were worse things, much worse things, than having to let some stranger con one's ship. "It was pretty bad losing, wasn't it?"

Kurita's smile went from feral to serene to nonexistent. "It was worse than bad. We couldn't surrender; we didn't even know how to surrender, really. We were staking everything on being able to make the Federated States pay an unacceptable price in blood so that they would give up before we did. Then they nuked us and for a brief period of time we thought they would not have to pay that price and so we considered surrender. But then the UEPF nuked them and we knew they could not bomb us into surrender and would have to invade."

Kurita shook his head, very sadly.

"We were wrong. Unable to convince us one way, they took a different, and far more brutal, way. They imposed a total blockade and, just as with cities under siege, they refused to let anyone escape. They came in with defoliants and attacked the rice crops. They bombed and burned any food stockpiles they could identify. They attacked the roads and rails so that what food there was could not be moved to the cities."

Kurita shuddered, as he said, "Over twenty million people, almost all civilians, and mostly the very old and very young, either starved to death or died of starvation-related causes. Then we surrendered."

"God, you must hate them," Fosa said. "The FSC, I mean."

The serene smile returned. Kurita shook his old and dignified head. "No . . . no, I actually don't. We'd have done no less. And they tried to give us an easy out by using the atomic bombs. What a bargain it would have been if we had been able to surrender after only losing a couple of hundred thousand instead of twenty million."

"No, Roderigo-san; if I hate someone over it, I hate those who prevented the FSC from following through and making us surrender when it was possible and cheap. I hate the UEPF."