Down to the Sea

FOURTEEN

Andrew opened the door, then extended his hand, greeting Varinnia and the other members of the Design Board as they came into his office and sat down around the table.

Fortunately, the secretary of the navy had been diverted and was down at the naval yard for an inspection. The old Greek autocrat, a political compromise announced before the election to ensure holding that state, was far more interested in drink and the pursuit of young Rus beauties than business, so there would be no inane questions and delays. The 1st Aerosteamer Group was sailing at nightfall and final plans had to be checked.

Varinnia opened without delay, clicking off the details of the conversion of the three armored cruisers.

“The last of the aerosteamers are being loaded even now,” she concluded. “The major problem is one of space and moving them around. The ramp to the lower deck is simply too slow and cumbersome. One of the workers suggested installing a steam-powered lifter, or elevator as he called it. If we had another week, we could do it.”

“If the wind goes up to twenty knots,” Theodor interjected, “we should be able to put all the planes up on the main deck before going into action. With wings folded and packed in, they’ll occupy two hundred and twenty feet of deck space. That will give us a hundred and thirty feet for takeoffs. Falcons go first, then the Goliath, thus giving the heavier aircraft just over three hundred feet.”

“How about landings, though, with all those planes?” Andrew asked.

“Well, they’ll all take off. With luck, they’ll all come back.”

She fell silent, the implication clear. Part of the plan was based on the fact that not all the planes would be returning.

“As each plane lands,” she finally continues, “it gets pushed to the front, clearing the aft deck for the next one.”

“Sounds doubtful. You’ll have damaged aircraft, wounded pilots.”

“Actually, it’s rather insane, but that’s the only way we can get them up in some semblance of a group, which will be the key to making the attacks work.”

“Their weapons?”

Varinnia sighed. “They were designed for launching from our frigates at a range of five hundred yards. Rosovich tried dropping one yesterday, and it damn near killed him when it exploded on impact with the water. He brought the plane in, but it was junked.

“We figure the fuse was too sensitive. My people are modifying them now. Impact with the water snaps the safety on the detonator. The next impact, against the target, sets it off.”

“How many do we have?”

“Forty-three.”

“Damn,” Andrew gasped. “Can’t you get more? I think you’re telling me there isn’t enough for those boys to do some practice runs first, even to test the damn things out.”

“I suggested that Mr. Rosovich do a demonstration run as the ships cruise down to Constantine, but for the rest of the pilots, we’ll just have to rig up drums filled with sand to simulate the weight.”

“Just great.”

“It’s all we have, sir,” Theodor replied. “Remember, we had moments like this back in the last war as well.”

“Damn it,” Andrew snapped, “that was the last war. We’ve had fifteen years knowing the Kazan were out there, and now we are sending boys up with sand-filled barrels so they can practice getting killed? Damn all of it.”

He lowered his head for a moment. If I had complete control, he thought, we’d have pushed the edge back with the Kazan, found out what was beyond the treaty barrier, and the hell with the stay-in-our-own-boundaries majority.

He closed his eyes, thinking about the telegrams piled up on his desk, each of them screaming for attention; messages from senators and congressmen telling him that their constituents were blaming him for provoking a war, that we should go out and meet the Kazan and make a deal, that the entire thing was a contemptible hoax to get money for the navy, which would be spent in Suzdal.

“Is there anything more that we can do between now and when we might expect their fleet?”

The members of the board looked at one another. “Precious little,” Varinnia replied. “We’re trying to upgrade the frigates with rapid-fire one-inch gatlings. If they can dodge in close, it might be effective. Some of the new steel-tipped shells will be distributed to the armored cruisers, and Theodor here promises he can push us up to the production of two aerosteamers a day. That could give us upward of two hundred and forty airships by the end of the month.”

“Not counting the ones on the three aerosteamer carriers?”

“That includes them.”

He nodded sadly.

She shuffled some papers, which an assistant had pulled out of a briefcase. “Here you’ll find our proposals for next year’s appropriations.”

“Next year?”

“Sir, we have to assume that somehow we will fend off the first attack. That’s the only possible way we should be thinking, both privately and in public.”

He noticed the slight edge of rebuke in her voice, and he accepted the briefing that she passed over, printed on the new typing machines.

He scanned through the last page and whistled softly. “You are asking for one hundred and fifty million dollars?”

“For the navy alone,” she quickly inteijected. “Air corps is another hundred million and the army another hundred and fifty million.”

“Good Lord, Varinnia, that’s nearly ten times this year’s budget for ordnance development and procurement. Where the hell are we supposed to get that kind of money?”

“The same way you did last time,” she ventured.

“Last time? We had no money. It was, for all practical purposes, a military dictatorship in spite of what trappings we made about the Republic. People worked and somehow we got them food and shelter. The country has changed now.”

“Do we want to survive?”

“Of course we do.”

“Then this is what I think we need.”

Andrew felt his stomach knot, and a fearful voice whispered that suppose Pat was right, suppose this entire thing was a mad cooked-up story by Cromwell. There was even the underlying fear that Cromwell might very well believe he was telling the truth, but Hazin had fooled him. No invasion, just the threat of it to trigger a political crisis. My God, if they did wait, we might very well collapse on our own accord. It seemed as if the crisis had already triggered a frontier war with the Bantag. Reports had been coming in since late yesterday of skirmishing all up and down the frontier, and the Chin were howling bloody murder.

He closed his eyes, feeling a monumental headache coming on. “Explain this to me,” he sighed, rubbing his closed eyes.

“First, we have to settle within the navy the question of emphasis. Do we go for the larger ships to match the battleships of the Kazan, or do we build aerosteamer carriers? The first path will take at least eighteen months to launch the first vessel. We had rough designs and calculations worked out. The Suzdal yard could be converted to handle two of them within six months, and two more within a year. I’m proposing as well the expansion of the yards at Roum and Cartha. That should lower the political heat a bit.”

He nodded.

“If the aerosteamer scheme actually works, and the war nevertheless continues, remember the old formula, that for every offensive maneuver a defense will be found. If they have both the heavy ships and aerosteamer carriers a year from now, we are trumped. I’d suggest both.”

“What I figured you’d say.”

“Then to the second point. The controlling of fire.”

“What do you mean?”

“Cromwell said something that stuck with me. I asked Petronius and even he agrees. Our guns can fire to over fifteen thousand yards. On rock-solid land they could expect to hit a stationary target the size of a Kazan battleship at that range. But put those guns on a ship, even one sailing in a dead calm, and all bets are off. Right now we’re lucky to hit at a mile, and Cromwell estimated they were hitting at three thousand yards. If we could figure out a way to control the firing out to maximum range, we would have them.”

He could sense the edge of excitement in her voice. “Go on.”

“Working with several of my naval gunnery team, I’ve come up with several basic problems that have to be solved.

“First there is range finding. That is simple enough and might explain those pagodalike towers Cromwell said are on their battleships. If you knew precisely, to the inch, the distance between those two towers you would have a base line.” As she spoke she traced out a triangle on a sheet of paper.

“Once you have the baseline, you measure the relative angle to the target from the top of the two towers. You know the width of the baseline, you know the angles. Combine that knowledge and you can figure the range.”

“So then you shoot. That sounds easy enough.”

Several of the men and women sitting around Varinnia chuckled softly. “That’s the easy part. We need to coordinate all the guns together, then rig them to a single trigger. I’m thinking of some sort of liquid mercury switch. You have to fire when the ship is level in its pitch and roll, because the mercury inside the tube completes the electrical circuit only when it is precisely level, and then the guns fire.”

“I suspect there’s more,” Andrew announced.

She smiled crookedly. “We’ve just started. The farther away we are from the target, the longer the shell takes to get there. At ten thousand yards it’s over twenty seconds. In that time, the target could move a couple of hundred yards. Add into that the relative angle of travel of the target in relationship to you. What we need to be able to then do is calculate where the target will be, not where it is at, when the shells land. There are some other factors as well, wind speed, for example, and then finally our own motion and angle of direction in relationship to the target. If two ships are running parallel to each other, it isn’t all that bad, but both will be maneuvering, turning, and thus relative angles and distances will change second by second. We’re calling it the rate of change, and that component makes it very difficult to predict. All of that has to be calculated within seconds, then recalculated again, and yet again, while at the same time observers are calling down the splashes and correcting the range.

“You want to build a machine to do this, don’t you?”

“Sir, it is the only way. I doubt if I could explain this to most of the senators on the appropriations committee- they’ll have to trust me, or you, on it-but I can tell you it might take years and it will cost money, lots of money. But if we can figure this thing out, if we can shoot at ten thousand yards and they can’t, we have them. Also, there’s an advantage to hitting at greater ranges.”

“And that is?”

“Plunging fire,” Theodor interjected. “Ships have always had their heaviest armor on their sides. But when you start hitting them out at ten thousand yards the guns are at maximum elevation. That means the shell travels a couple of miles high, pitches over, then comes screaming straight down, through the more vulnerable top part of the deck.”

“What about just making old-fashioned monitors? They’re low to the water, and difficult to hit.” But even as he asked the question, he could see the heads shaking.

“That might work here on the Inland Sea, but this is the Great Southern Ocean. Even on a good day you’ve got six-foot seas. Any kind of blow, and it’s suddenly twenty-five-foot seas. No monitor can survive that.”

“All right then,” he sighed, “what else?”

“Improved shells, harder tipped for penetration. We’ve been talking about researching this new type of explosive refined from boiled cotton. It’d make our guns a lot more powerful, and the bursting charge in shells would be devastating.

“There’s a lot more. Our experiments in making laminated armor, both for ships and the newer class of land ironclads, recoil absorbers for artillery, new rations that are packed in cans, it’s all there.”

“You’ve dredged up everything you could think of over the last five years, haven’t you?”

“And a few new ones besides.”

“Varinnia, I almost think you are enjoying this.” Though her burned features were a mask, he could see a flash of anger and instantly regretted his foolish statement.

‘ “I want this country to survive. Last time around it was men my husband’s age who were doing the fighting. Now we have boys. It’s far harder now watching them go out.”

“I know,” Andrew sighed.

“We’ve got to get to work, Mr. President. Theodor is sailing with the Shiloh. I want to check some last-minute details. Will I see you down at the naval yard later?”

“I’ll try to make it. I’ve got meetings with congress all afternoon, but I’ll try.”

As the group stood, the door to the office opened. Andrew looked up, annoyed, wondering who would be barging in. Kathleen stood in the doorway, features pale, a piece of paper in her hand.

She saw who was there, but couldn’t contain herself. “One of the telegraphers from the War Office brought this over,” she announced, her voice tight, struggling for control.

Andrew took the sheet of flimsy paper, slowly read it, read it again, then stuffed it into his pocket.

“What is it?” Varinnia asked.

“Our son’s regiment,” Andrew whispered. “Half of the regiment was surrounded yesterday. Last report indicates they were wiped out. Abe was with them.”

“A lovely sight, my emperor.”

Emperor Yasim nodded in agreement. He looked over at Hazin, who had come up to the railing, and like him was leaning over, hands clasped. The two of them were alone on the imperial bridge, the rest of the watch respectfully having withdrawn to the starboard side. Hazin had transferred over to the emperor’s flagship the day before, and the emperor was obviously nervous about him being aboard his own ship.

The fleet of the Red Banner seemed to fill the ocean.

Looking astern, Yasim could see the other seven battleships following in the wake of their flagship, each one perfectly positioned a quarter league astern of the next. Flanking outward, encircling the battleships, were the dozens of cruisers and frigates.

They were still well inside the waters of the empire, but years of continual warfare had trained them well. The transports carrying the imperial legions and the Shiv were far astern, for it was not proper that such vessels sail with the elite.

Yasim looked over at Hazin and smiled. “The sickness of the sea, how do you fare?”

Hazin nodded, and Yasim chuckled.

“I for one am rarely bothered by it. Strange how that is.”

“Perhaps because you were bom to this, my lord, and I was not.”

“That’s why I thought the cruise would be good for you.” Hazin looked over warily.

“You know, I could but snap my finger”-Yasim motioned to one of his guards, who was standing at attention, gaze fixed at them-“and that warrior would come over here, break your back, and toss you over the railing.” Yasim laughed softly.

“No one would ever speak of it. We could simply report you lost by accident. Then we could turn these ships about, sail back through the transports, and sink every one of those laden with your Shiv. That would finish the Order.”

“Would it?”

“Is it the sickness of the sea, or a sudden nervousness I detect in your voice.”

“The sickness, damn it,” Hazin snapped.

“I’m not so sure. That was a plan suggested by more than one before we sailed.”

“How interesting. I’ll have to run inquiries when I return.”

“I figure you already have.”

“Yes, it was discussed with me. Shall we discuss your amusing plan?”

“By all means, Hazin.”

“Which of these guards is tmly yours?”

“I actually might be innocent enough to believe that all of them are.”

“That would be unworthy of you. That, my lord, has always been the base of the power of the Order. No one ever really knows who we are.”

“At times I wonder if it is all a hoax. You have your disgusting Shiv that you’ve bred, a few foolish priests in their white robes, and actually little if anything else.”

“If that was the case, why did you venture fifty million in gold to us against your brother? Why did you ensure my elevation in order to have that debt canceled. If you did not fear us, you would have slain the last Grand Master, slain me, and burned our temples, but you did not. Why?” ‘Yasim looked back over the railing. Yes indeed, why? he wondered. Why not kill him now? I know he plans eventually to kill me and seize the throne.

“You’re thinking about killing me because you fear that I am plotting to kill you.”

Yasim looked at Hazin and then slowly extended his hand. “For once, just for once, a moment of peace between us.”

“You were the one who started this line of conversation, my lord.”

“Enough, Hazin.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I know what would happen if I slew you. The needle would find me.”

Hazin said nothing.

“Damn, how we slaughter each other,” Yasim sighed. “My brother. I remember our youth, my first teacher, the eunuch Galvina. How I loved him.”

Hazin laughed softly. “Sire, he was one of us.”

Startled, Yasim looked over at him.

“There was some serious bidding for a while between those who wanted him to kill you and those who did not. Obviously those who did not won.”

“Damn you,” Yasim whispered.

“Go on, though, sire, your story.”

The emperor nodded. “Galvina tried to teach me never to love those of my blood. That all my brothers, my cousins-we would turn upon one another in the end. It had always been that way, for our race will tolerate nothing less than the strongest, the most ruthless upon the golden throne. The weaker barbarian clans to the north might allow an eldest son to rule and force the others to bow, but we of the Kazan needed ruthlessness.

“In my heart I rebelled, for I loved my brother Hanaga, and I knew there was a time when he loved me. Remember the incident when we were but cubs out sailing in the harbor and the boat overturned?”

Hazin nodded.

“I got tangled in the sails and went under. It was Hanaga who saved me. He could have left me to drown and thus have one less rival, but he saved me.”

“He was honorable in his way.”

“What was it like to kill him?” Yasim asked.

“It was the task assigned by the Grand Master. It was not for me to have feelings about it. I did as the Order required of me, an act that you were to pay for. So do not look at me that way, sire. It was you who, in the end, held the knife. I but gave him his release.”

His words cut deeply, and Yasim lowered his head. “Galvina the eunuch was right: love no one.”

“It has always been that way, it must always be that way.”

“Tell me, what have my surviving cousins offered you?”

“To kill you?”

“Yes?”

“Not as much as you have to keep you alive.”

“Damn all this. It is waste, contemptible waste.”

“Sire, it is our way. Show weakness, and you will die.” Yasim looked at him in surprise, wondering if here, for an instant, was genuine counsel, advice freely given, without calculation.

“Go on, I sense you wish to say more, Hazin.”

“Sire, we have been trapped on our islands for thousands of years. Until two hundred years ago, we did not have the knowledge, the ships capable of spanning the vastness of this sea, until the coming of the Prophet and his companions. They gave us the knowledge to begin the revolution that has taken us, in a hundred years, from ships of wood to ships of steel, from ships of sail to the power of the great engines below these decks.

“Now we can expand, and we must. I believe something has happened with the Portals. There were the Prophets, and now we find that the leader of the Bantag, their Qar Qarth came from another world-I suspect the same as the Prophets. This place is the meeting point between worlds.

“Sire, that I will tell you is part of the plan of the Order, to gain the Portals, to unlock them, to control them. For whoever does that first will survive. Whoever fails will perish.”

“And whoever controls them will have the power to rule,” Yasim interjected.

. “The Order answers to you, sire. They would be yours.”

Yasim smiled. “And the Shiv?”

“It started as an experiment, nothing more. We bred pets for our amusement, even our affections. We bred beasts to give us milk. The barbarians to the north bred horses that came from the human world to fit their size. Why not breed humans as well?”

“There is something I have never felt comfortable with concerning that.”

“Why?”

“They are intelligent. You’ve read the writings of Ovilla.”

Hazin laughed. “That they just might have souls? Nonsense.”

“They are self-aware, Hazin.”

“Perhaps horses are, too, but horses do not make guns, ships, machines that fly. The humans to the north breed wild, like beasts. I seek perfecting them and then the harnessing of them to our needs.

“With the Shiv we present two things to the humans who defeated our cousins. The first is the threat of them. They are unstoppable in battle and will fight with superior cunning. Second, they offer a hope that will weaken the will to resist.

“It will appear that we offer a way to end conflict. A way for humans and our race to live together.”

“Under your order.”

“Which answers to you,” Hazin replied quickly.

Yasim smiled. “Go on.”

“As the Republic is defeated and the Hordes to the north are placed under your banner, your cousins will be diverted, and in that time your throne will be secured. The internal wars will be forgotten in an external war of conquest. That has been the bedevilment of the Kazan for a thousand years.

“Prior to the coming of the Prophet, the wars were at least contained, the destruction limited, but even you will admit that within the last two generations, the carnage has become unsustainable. The weapons have become too destructive, too powerful.”

“Yes, I know that. I believe my brother Hanaga did, too.”

“What happened at Bukara, for example.”

Yasim wondered if there was an accusatory tone in Hazin’s voice. He had leveled Bukara, which had gone over to his cousin Tagamish. Over two hundred thousand had died.

“They had given a sacred pledge of support and then betrayed it. That was always our custom.”

“Before, you would have slain but the leaders of the city and their retainers. The entire city, though?”

“War changes. The city was a base. Its factories in the hands of a rebellious cousin unacceptable, and we could not hold it. Destruction was the only answer.”

“That is my point,” Hazin replied. “You did what was necessary, but that necessity is destroying us, while eventually the Republic of humans will expand until it is too late.”

“Visha started the change. We have reached the limits within our empire. So we expand.

“Your Shiv, though, I wonder what they will lead to.”

“Perhaps we should try the same experiment with our own race,” Hazin said, his voice barely a whisper.

Yasim felt a wave of revulsion, and he wondered if his reaction showed.

“Seriously, my lord. Why not? Allow our strongest, our most fit, our most brilliant to breed.”

“The rest?”

“There are ways to discourage them, or if need be prevent them.”

“Impossible.”

“Is it?”

“You’ve contemplated this?”

“I contemplate all things possible,” Hazin said with a smile.

Yasim slowly shook his head.

“You might see differently someday. But as for the Shiv, we have several alternatives. They were simply an experiment that has proven fruitful. Now we shall unleash them upon the North. If the Republic breaks apart, which I suspect it will after the first onslaught, they can rule. Then, if we actually achieve a gate, we can push them through and see what the results are.”

“Or slaughter them all,” Yasim said quietly.

Hazin smiled. “Yes. Once they’ve served their purpose, that might be necessary. You see, there is always the prospect that the experiment will work too well, that they just might be superior. That is why I suggest what I do as to our own race.”

“My original thought, Hazin, was to kill you now, to sink the transports. Your words push me.closer to doing it.”

“Majesty, never whisper your inner thoughts too loudly.”

“Damn you.”

“We are locked in an embrace, sire. You fear me and that is wise. I need you, for never would the families of the blood accept a base-born bastard such as me as emperor. If we understand that, together we can have our arrangement.

“Believe me, sire, kill me, slaughter all the Shiv, and there will still be another such as I, and yet another behind him, or her. Always remember the old adage that it is better to have an enemy that you know beside you than an enemy that you do not know behind you.”

Yasim turned away, hands clasped behind his back, and walked to the far end of the bridge. The staff who had been gathered there respectfully withdrew through a hatchway into the cramped quarters of the weather bridge.

The scum is right, he thought. War is the eternal nature of the race, but if it continued internally, we would eventually annihilate ourselves while the humans to the north inherit the planet. If I ever breed a son, I want to hand him an empire, not a smoking ruin.

Yet will he ever rule? Will there be a Hazin standing behind his shoulder with a hidden needle of poison? If I have more than one son, will they slay one another as I’ve slain my brothers?

He looked back at Hazin, who was leaning over the railing, back turned.

This war against the Republic, I must win it swiftly, he realized. Let my cousins be in the forefront, kill off as many of them as possible, and let the others think it was for glory, promising the survivors more and yet more to drive them forward.

And then annihilate the Order once the war is won.

As Emperor Yasim of the Kazan contemplated these ideas, little did he realize that his rival, standing but forty feet away, was contemplating the exact same path.

“You did what?”

Qar Qarth Jurak flung down his cup and stood up to face the courier.

“My Qarth wishes to report that a regiment of the Yankee horse riders has been destroyed.”

“By all the Ancestors, that is not what I ordered. I said, hold them at a distance.”

“My Qar Qarth, they were within an hour’s ride of our column of yurts. It was either that or submit to slaughter. I was there. They deployed into battle order, weapons drawn, and were preparing to attack.”

“Which regiment?”

The courier, bowing, went back to his lathered mount and pulled out a flame-scorched yellow flag and handed it to Jurak.

“Third Regiment, Army of the Republic,” Jurak read. He balled the flag up and tossed it to the ground.

That was Keane’s regiment. He remembered the brass number on the boy’s collar. If the boy was dead, then the full fury of the father might very well be unleashed.

“Did you kill all of them?”

“Not yet all. Some of them gained a hilltop, but surely they are all dead by now. We could see that the only ammunition they had was what they carried on their horses. The wagons were taken. The other half of the regiment came up to support them and fell into the second trap. All of them died.”

Jurak looked around at those gathered about him. More than one was grinning with delight, a few venturing to approach the courier to slap his shoulders. One of them ceremonially offered him the gift of his knife, the traditional present for a bringer of glad tidings.

“This means we are at war,” Jurak announced.

“We were never at peace to start with,” one of the Qarths growled. “We merely waited until a new generation could be bred to avenge their fathers.”

Word of what the courier had reported was spreading like wildfire through the encampment. A shaman began a chant to the heroic dead, calling on the Ancestors to greet them with drink and the flesh of cattle, a chant not heard in the camp for over twenty years. The chant was picked up, other voices joining in. A nargas sounded, its deep brazen tone chilling, awe inspiring.

Jurak stared at the fire, kicking the glowing embers with The toe of his boot.

So it has begun, he realized. In the morning they might think differently, though. We must push hard, outrun their pursuit and gain the mountains, then pray that the ambassador of the Kazan spoke the truth, that an army will land bringing with it the weapons we need to survive.

He lowered his head. He had liked the boy. A pity he was dead. A pity for this entire damned world. He wondered what the elder Keane was actually thinking. Would he be motivated now by hate? Would he seek out his old foes, but this time slay them all? Or would it now be the other way around, that the Bantag shall join with the Kazan and slay the Republic and all who lived there?

Either way, he felt, I shall lose, and my people, the Bantag, shall lose.