Emerald Sea

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Martin.”

Martin had been taking a nap in his cabin when Conner’s projection appeared. He had suffered from seasickness at the beginning of the voyage, not to mention getting bounced around in the unhandy vessel. But in time he’d gotten his sea legs and now was enjoying the rocking of the waves, wishing that he’d had the sense to bring a woman along to pass the time.

He opened his eyes and rolled up to sit on the edge of the cot, but didn’t get up since he had an unfortunate tendency, still, to hit his head on the rafters of the low room.

Conner’s projection, normal sized, was “standing” with his head just under the rafters and his feet stuck through the floor up to his thighs.

“I made contact with the orcas and ixchitl,” Martin said. “Thanks for rounding up Rob. He was useful in establishing my credentials.”

“So I heard,” Conner said with a dry smile. “Shanol is not going to be happy.”

“Shanol thinks he’s the biggest fish in the sea,” Martin replied with a shrug. “Disabusing him of that notion was useful. What’s up?”

“We have a new source in the UFS ship,” Conner said. “Obviously I won’t say who; need-to-know and all that. But I can now tell you of their position and plans in something like real-time.”

“Very useful.”

“Indeed. They still don’t have anything like offensive capability; they’re not sure the dragons can get on and off the ship for that matter. There are only a couple of dozen marines on the ship and the crew is hardly trained in combat. You should be able to take the ship, or at least sink it, with only one of your own vessels, much less all six.”

“Good to know,” Martin mused. “That way I can spread them around. I’ve been talking to the captain and even with their position and plans known, finding one ship at sea is, apparently, not an easy task.”

“I’m sure you’ll be up to the task,” Conner replied. “This is using energy I sorely need for the other tasks I’ve been set. If you need me, use the data crystal to contact me. Keep it with you, that way I’ll know where to find you.”

Herzer was up before dawn to the twitter of bosun pipes and the cry of “All hands weigh anchor.”

He picked an out-of-the-way position, he thought, to watch the crew set sail. Most of it was a mystery, but he was fascinated by the way that the sails were raised.

Much of the crew was up in the rigging letting the sails out, which looked like lunacy from the deck, and another group was engaged in raising the anchor. Since the sails had to be tightened up, this left a relatively small group to do that. And he could tell that the sails were going to be pulling hard, really hard. No matter how many blocks and tackles were involved, and he quit counting at fifty, there was no way that the ten or so men could pull the sails tight.

But most of the ropes attached to the sails ran back to a position by the last mast. And there was the answer; a small, low-power steam engine. At the end of the engine was a metal pulley that was creating a constant turn. Each of the lines was taken, in turn, around the pulley and used for tensioning, sometimes two at once. In a relatively short time, and with very few hands, the sails were set, the anchor was up and the Bonhomme Richard was sailing out of the harbor. As the ship got under way he could see the first of the wyverns lifting off from the beach, accompanied by Joanna.

He walked back to the stern of the ship and climbed a ladder to a position at the rear. The skipper was up there bellowing orders at the crew to get the ship “into the wind” whatever that meant, and Herzer gave him, and the ship’s wheel, a wide berth. But at the very rear of the deck there was another position with a pintle-mounted chair and board table. The XO, Commander Mbeki, was there, occupying the chair and sipping on a cup of sassafras tea, along with Duke Edmund and Evan Mayerle, all of them watching the approaching dragon.

“Welcome to primary flight operations, Lieutenant,” the XO said as he walked up. “We’re going to try to recover them in the bay; if they can’t get onboard in this mill-pond there’s no way they can land at sea.”

Joanna had lined up to try first and the line of dragons half-hovering in the light wind was a sight to behold; he could only imagine what it would be like when the ship got a full wing. Herzer watched her come gliding in but he knew, instinctively, that she was too fast and too low. As she got to within a hundred meters of the craft she realized it as well and tried to correct but she was still too low and almost crashed into the water before flapping upward and spiraling off to their right.

Jerry tried it next and he was too high. He tried to correct at the last minute as well but fell out of the proper glide path and also nearly landed in the drink. Herzer thought he might be riding Chauncey, but the wyverns still looked the same to him.

“This isn’t working,” Mbeki growled.

“I don’t think they can figure out what’s right from where they are,” Edmund muttered.

“No, sir,” Herzer said. “Sir, it occurs to me that it’s got to be something like catching a running prey and I don’t think wyverns do that. We might be going too fast for the first time. If we could slow the ship down, maybe turn it towards the wind…”

“Skipper,” the commander called. “Request you come into the wind, make minimum sail for steerage only.”

“All hands! All hands!”

The sailors, once again, climbed the rope ladders and this time pulled in all the sails but one of the triangular ones on the front. The boat slowed noticeably and the wind now seemed to be coming from directly in front of the ship.

“We can’t point directly to the wind, can we?” Edmund asked.

“No, but we’re still making about four klicks,” the commander noted. “There’s not much wind today so it feels like it’s from right in front of us. But the wyverns will be pushed to one side as they come in.”

Herzer watched Jerry start to line up again and quietly backed away from the group. There was a ladder up to the platform at the rear of the deck and he rapidly ascended it. The ladder was on the outside of the platform and the deck so he found himself precariously dangling over the water three stories below.

When he reached the top of the platform he found it open with no recesses or obstructions of any sort. He moved to the rear of the platform and waved his hands over his head, looking up at the approaching wyvern. After a moment he saw Jerry’s head come up and was sure that he was looking at him. When he was he lowered his arms until they were outstretched and then waved them upward; the wyvern was well below the “right” glide angle to make a landing. There was a moment’s pause then Jerry coaxed the beast upward. The movement got him out of line and Herzer directed him left, then held his arms out straight. As the wyvern neared he, again, dropped low so Herzer ordered him upward. Jerry followed the command and as he swept in in a flurry of wings Herzer dropped to the platform and shielded his head. He was rewarded with a massive “thump” and the platform shook under his body.

Herzer rolled over and looked up at the wyvern, which was eyeing him like dinner.

“There is no way to tell the right way to land from up there,” Jerry yelled. “None!”

“We figured that out,” Herzer replied as the rest of the party from below made their way up the ladder.

“Great landing, Mr. Riadou,” the commander said, smiling. “I thought we weren’t going to be able to get you in.”

“I wouldn’t have made it if it weren’t for Herzer,” Jerry said. Handlers had come forward and were attaching traces to the wyvern. The center-rear of the platform suddenly slanted downward and the handlers walked the wyvern down the slope and into the broad hatch to take it below.

“What did Herzer do?” the commander asked, looking at the lieutenant.

“He waved me down,” Jerry replied, artlessly then looked at the group who were all eyeing Herzer. “It worked, sir.”

“Yes it did,” the commander admitted. “Do you think you can do it again?”

“If the riders follow the commands, sir,” Herzer temporized. “It might be better if Mr. Riadou did the ordering; they’re more likely to follow him.”

“But he hasn’t seen it from the ship side,” Commander Chang said. “Has he?”

“The next one up is Vickie,” Jerry said. “Sergeant Toweeoo that is. I think that she’ll follow Herzer’s directions and I can follow through. One thing, though.”

“Yes?”

“It was hard to see his arms; I was catching more glints from his hook than seeing his hands. Could we get some hand flags or something?”

“I’ll have them brought up,” the XO said after a moment’s thought. He looked up at the circling wyverns and shook his head. “We need to set up a signaling system. Why didn’t we think of any of this in advance?”

“We thought it would be easy,” Evan said, his eyes glazing as he got caught in thought. “We’re working on a flag signaling system for the fleet; the dragon signals can be worked into that.”

“Work on that later,” Chang said. “I’ll get some hand flags up here and then you get those other dragons down.”

The others descended while Herzer and Jerry waited on the top-deck. Herzer noticed that despite the fact that it was October and there was a faint breeze it was damned warm up here; controlling the landings in the summer would be unpleasant.

Finally they heard the ladder squeaking and Chief Brooks’ head appeared at deck level; he had two flags grasped in his right hand.

“Here you go, sirs,” the chief said, holding the flags out. “Have fun.”

“Will do, Chief,” Herzer said with a chuckle, taking the flags from the chief who, clearly, wasn’t coming any closer to the landing deck than that. He took one flag in his right hand easily enough but found that the rounded handle of the flag was one of those surfaces his clamp had trouble with. Finally he slid it into the interior of the clamp and applied slight pressure of the cutting surfaces against it. It was awkward but it would work.

Finally he had it juggled in place and looked up at the group of circling dragons until he spotted the one that he thought was Vickie.

“Is that Vickie just turning out?” he asked Jerry.

“Yeah, I think so,” the rider muttered. “Another thing to add to the list: binoculars.”

Herzer took the flags and pointed them outward at Vickie, tracking her around the sky until he saw her wave, then pointed them down at the deck and spread them outward.

He saw immediately that she was lined up badly so he waved her off to the right. Then she was too far over that way so he waved her back to the left.

He continued to coax her down but she was all over the sky. Too low, too high. As she came in on final it was clear that she was far too low and he waved her off wildly but she still came in until the wyvern with a gobbled cry backwinged right at the stern of the ship, nearly hitting the pri-fly deck. It backwinged hard but didn’t have enough airspeed to recover so, with a tremendous splash, it landed in the bay.

Jerry and Herzer ran to the rear, fearing the worst, but from the curses emanating from below Vickie was fine. The wyvern, when they got there to look down, actually seemed to be having a good time paddling around in the water.

“What do I do now?” Vickie yelled. “This water is bloody cold! By the way, thanks for the steer, Herzer!”

“His steers were fine,” Jerry replied, angrily. “You were all over the sky!”

“Whatever!” Vickie snarled back. “What now?”

“Away the longboat!” Colonel Chang yelled, then leaned over the transom to look at the rapidly receding dragon. “I was informed those beasts could swim!”

“They can,” Jerry said. “Vickie, swim Yazov back to the ship!”

The ship was turned even closer to the wind so that it was practically standing still, but Herzer noticed that it was drifting off to one side. The wyvern was swimming powerfully, though, occasionally ducking completely under water and swimming that way so his wings could give him a fair semblance of flying. He made such good time underwater that the last burst was entirely submerged and when the dragon finally emerged next to the ship it gave a pleased burble as if it was having fun.

“Oh, yeah, sez you,” Vickie choked; she had had to hold her breath for the entire swim. “Get me out of here! This water is freezing!”

Sculling his wings on the surface the dragon could easily keep up with the slowly drifting ship, and the longboat, which had launched immediately on the crash, was able to recover the rider easily. The dragon was another matter.

“Recovery team, over the side!”

With the longboat standing by, four seamen, three males and a female, wearing close-fitting full-coverage clothing, went over the side. They were followed by a large cargo net which, with difficulty, was slipped under the wyvern. Through it all Yazov was fairly placid, poking at the divers as if they were some sort of interesting sea life provided for his amusement. But when the sling pulled up on him he was anything but amused. The net, though, closed his wings into his body so all he could do was protest as he was raised up via a derrick and swung across and then down into the hold. Only an idiot would allow an angry wyvern loose on the surface of the ship.

“We definitely need to work on this plan,” Jerry mused.

“Do you want to call the next one down?” Herzer asked, aghast at the effort necessary to recover a downed dragon.

“Nope, you’re doing fine,” Jerry said. “That was entirely on Vickie’s hook.”

“Says you,” Vickie snarled as she reached the landing platform. “You were pointing me all over the sky!”

“That’s because you were overcorrecting,” Jerry snapped. “And when he waved you off you tried to land anyway. I was there, Vickie, don’t try to snow me.”

“Just because you got put in charge it’s going to your head!” the female rider snarled. “I don’t have to put up with this shit!”

“You can leave if you want,” Jerry said, coldly. “I’ll get you a boat back to shore. But Yazov stays and you’re not going to be flying a wyvern ever again in your life.”

“You can’t do that,” Vickie said, softly. “You know what that means to us!”

“And that, Vickie, is the point,” Jerry replied, much more calmly. “We need you. I don’t want you grounded. But you have to learn that there are things that you’re going to have to do to retain what is now a privilege, namely dragon riding. And if you’re going to be flying off of carriers, you’re going to have to learn to take steers. Or I’ll have you trucked back to Dragon Home and you can fly off of nice steady aeries that don’t move around.”

“Are we done?” Herzer asked. “Because we’ve only got so many hours of daylight left and I really don’t want to be waving torches around.”

“We’re done,” Jerry said. “Vickie stay up here and watch.”

“Which one do you want?” Herzer asked.

“Take Koo, the one just turning this way,” Jerry answered.

Herzer again pointed at the appropriate rider until he waved back then motioned him down. This rider, though, took the steers well. The ship had barely gotten back underway so the slower speed might have helped but the most important thing seemed to be that he reacted immediately to each of Herzer’s waved commands. He came in on final and Herzer waved him down, then the three of them hit the deck.

“That was a blast!” Koo yelled happily.

“I see what you mean,” Vickie said unhappily. “You can’t trust your instincts, or your beast’s, up there.”

“No, you can’t,” Jerry said. “And that means you have to turn over control to the guy with the flags.”

“That sucks,” Vickie said. “I don’t trust anybody that much.”

“You’ll have to,” Herzer said.

“And I bet there’s one that has even more trouble,” Vickie suddenly said with a malicious note.

“I think we’ll land Joanna last,” Jerry said, dryly.

The last wyvern, Donal, ridden by Vida Treviano, had pretty much the same problems as Vickie but Vida took the wave-off better, probably because he’d seen what would happen if he didn’t. He tried twice more but each time came in off-path and had to be waved off.

“Donal’s getting tired,” Vickie said. “I don’t think they can do it. I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Herzer, try to tell him to head for the beach,” Jerry said. “I have to get back there somehow and pick up Shep. I don’t know if Donal will be up for another try at landing by then or not. Hell, we’re going to have to ferry in and out, those of us that can manage landings, bringing out the verns.”

Herzer pointed his flags at Donal and then waved in the direction of land. He had to do it twice before Treviano either understood or was willing to agree. Finally, Donal turned to the south and headed for the beach.

“What happens if we’re out of sight of land?” Vickie mused.

“Water landing,” Jerry said. “And, yeah, if the water had been colder that would have been a problem. We need a better method of recovery for the dragons. Herzer, time for Joanna.”

“Okay,” Herzer said, “but the two of you get below. If she actually manages to hit this thing I’m not sure there’s going to be room for me much less you two.”

Herzer pointed the flags at Joanna until she waved a talon at him and lined up for a landing. She had good correction for the drift of the ship but she had a hard time maintaining height; she kept sliding under the glide path. Herzer realized when she was halfway down that the ship was just going too slow for her to easily land. She either had to start by pointing forward of the ship and hit the landing point as it passed through her glide or the ship had to be going faster so she could increase the glide angle without going into a stall. There wasn’t anything to do about it, now, but it bugged him that she had to keep flapping her wings to stay on the landing slope.

She had a good angle, though, on the final run. Herzer, looking up at the immense, and rapidly approaching, dragon realized that there was a very good chance that he was going to get squished like a bug. The platform wasn’t much larger than the body of the dragon and if she deviated in the slightest at the last she would land right on him. He put the thought out of his mind, though, and gave her final corrections. As she started to flare out on final he waved her down and dove to the ground.

The air was filled with blasts of wind but they went on far longer than they should. He jumped to his feet just in time to see Joanna, flailing wildly off to the left, dip her wingtip into the water and pinwheel into the bay.

“Joanna!”

Herzer wasn’t the only one bellowing but the dragon’s head quickly popped up above the light chop and shook from side to side.

“Sorry about that, Herzer!” the dragon bellowed. “Frankly, I lost my nerve at the last second. I was going faster than the ship and I didn’t think I’d be able to stop on that little platform. Oooh, this water’s cold.”

The dragon’s body submerged but her head stayed above the surface as she swam to the boat. Instead of using her wings, as the wyverns had done, she sculled her body back and forth like a snake. When she reached the side of the boat she disdained the recovery team, instead extending one claw-tipped wing and grasping the side of the ship. Using this leverage she got her forward talons dug into the wood of the bulwark and hoisted herself upwards.

Herzer was nearly pitched off the landing deck as the ship heeled hard over to one side. The dragon quickly writhed over the side, leaving a trail of splintered wood behind her.

“Sorry about that, Skipper,” Joanna said, sticking her head into the quarterdeck. “I think we need to work on the design of that area if we’re going to be recovering me very often.”

“I hope we won’t have to, Commander,” the skipper said, furiously. “That’s several thousand credits of damage!”

“Make the rail removable,” Joanna said, reasonably. “Reinforce the wood. Maybe give me some handholds. For that matter, maybe a lowerable ramp. If it’s good enough we might be able to use it for crashed wyverns.”

“We’ll see,” the skipper said.

“It’s not my fault if your ship’s a little fragile,” the dragon said, then shook herself hugely, spreading out her wings so that a fine mist settled over half the ship. “Ah, that’s better.”

Herzer had climbed down from the landing deck and looked around at the group at pri-fly and on the quarterdeck.

“What now, sirs?” Herzer asked.

“I have to get back to the shore,” Jerry said. “I need to see if Vida can land Donal. If not, we either go for a water landing or I’ll leave him on the beach and bring Donal out myself. If I bring Donal out someone else will need to bring out Shep.”

“I’ll go in with you,” Vickie said. “I need to figure out how to do this right.”

“No,” Jerry said after a moment. “You’re more familiar with Yazov and you’re not comfortable with landing yet. I’ll take Koo. His landing was better than mine.”

“But…” Vickie said, coloring up.

“Sergeant Toweeoo?” Edmund said.

“Yes, Duke Edmund?” Vickie replied, icily.

“You’re beginning to grasp what it means to be under military discipline, and why it’s sometimes necessary. We do not have all day to discuss this. Warrant Officer Riadou, accompanied by Sergeant Franken will go to the shore and fly out the two wyverns. You, in the meantime, will observe their landings and try to ascertain how to improve your performance. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Vickie said.

“Koo, you can fly Shep,” Jerry continued. “I’ll bring out Donal. If I have to I’ll put him in the drink. They don’t seem to suffer for it, except the lifting out part.”

“How are you getting back?” Edmund asked. “We need to get moving.”

“They can take the longboat,” the skipper said. “Or the cat. Both have sails. If we don’t make full sail they can catch up. But it will be late today.”

“No, I’ll take them,” Joanna said. “I want to find out if I can take off from that ramp you have set up. They don’t add much weight.”

That stopped everyone as the image of the dragon running out the lever stuck on the side of the ship struck them. Herzer dredged up the term “turning turtle” to what it might do to the ship.

“I’m… not sure that’s a good idea,” Commander Mbeki said.

“It… will be,” the skipper said. “We’ll turn so the wind is from the port quarter. That will give her more wind to work with and it will heel the ship to starboard. It’ll be interesting, but we’ll survive it.”

“And then there’s the catapult,” Evan said happily.

“What catapult?” Joanna growled.