Against the Tide

Chapter Seven

“Do Jason?” the delphino squealed.

The leader of the Bimi island mer contingent shook his head. Everything was coming apart and the orders they were getting from headquarters were making no sense at all.

“Can you hear Merillo?” Jason asked.

“No,” the delphino said. The human Changed to a dolphin shape had much better underwater hearing than the mer. “Orca squeal, hunting cry, no Merillo.”

“Are they still using the hunting cry?” Jason asked.

“Still.”

The mer looked up at the surface of the water above him and thought. If the orcas had caught the whalo to the north they wouldn’t still be doing the horrible ringing hunting cry. They’d be silent. Feeding.

“Which way are they going?”

The delphino seemed to contemplate the question, turning his head from side to side as if tasting the sounds from the beleaguered whale.

“South. Southeast?” He shrugged as only a delphino can.

“Smart whale,” Jason muttered. His underwater communications apparatus was a small bone in his forehead, located in his nasal passages. It was short-ranged and weak compared to the sonar of the delphinos, but it sufficed for communications. “Call all delphino, all mer, all whalo. Pass call. Fall back. Mer and delphino, move to nearest whalo, protect whalo.”

“Authority?” the delphino squealed.

“Mine,” Jason said. “Just mine.”

Tao had had some hard rides before in his life, but this was ridiculous.

The nearest Army base was over a hundred kilometers away, at the falls of the Gem River. It was a major logistics point, but what was more important at the moment was that it had a communications crystal.

The crystal had the ability to contact a wide range of people who still had access to full technology. They were used for critical messaging, only. And Tao was carrying a critical message.

There was no way that he could have made it in any decent time were it not for the fact that there were messenger stations all along the bad road up the river from the base. He changed horses five times, each time dropping off a blown horse and throwing himself into the next one that was saddled. And then kicking that horse into a trot until it was warmed up and then into a canter.

He hadn’t ridden much in a year. And his body was telling him that before he was a third of the way into the ride. What was that joke the cavalry troops told? Ah, “Forty Miles in the Saddle, by Major Assburns.” Well, he had major assburns, that’s for sure. Forty miles was…

By the time he reached the Army base, after ten hours of hard riding, he had figured out the conversion from the antiquated mile measurement and come to the conclusion that he had more than doubled it. Or something like that; arithmetic was not his strong suit. He dropped off another knackered out horse and got directions to the message center. He pounded up to the low stone building and climbed off the horse, nearly dropping to his knees with fatigue. But he was a Blood Lord, damnit, and he straightened up and tried to knock some of the dust off of his dress uniform, before opening the door and waddling bow-legged into the room.

There were a commander and two sergeants inside playing acey-deucy. They looked up at the dust-covered rider and the commander dropped his cards on the table.

“What’s up, Ensign?” he asked.

“Message from General Talbot, sir,” Tao replied. “For Her Majesty, Sheida Ghorbani.”

“They did WHAT?” Admiral Draskovich shouted.

Edmund looked up at that and stopped perusing the reports in his hand. After he had sent everyone off on various errands he had paid a visit to the fleet intelligence shop and picked up some more light reading. He was just about done with it, having read through most of the day, when the latest report came in.

The admiral was no longer elegant. He looked hag-ridden and his hair had started to come undone from his ponytail. It had been a long day, night had fallen more than an hour ago, but he still had enough energy for fury.

“The mer leader, Jason Ranger, sent out an order pulling all the underwater forces back from their positions and sending all of them to protect the whalos,” the petty officer said, looking up from the report in his hand. “There’s a pitched battle taking place in the Granbas area. Merillo is back online and we’re getting fragmentary reports from the fleet. It looks like Reagan, Washuka and Norland are sunk and there are other ships destroyed as well. Bonhomme Richard is damaged but can make some sail. There are wyverns all over the fleet, sir. When they came back they were landing on any ship or ditching. We’ve lost riders as well, some drowned. Some… thrown by their dragons. No total count on dragons, but it doesn’t look good.”

“Get the wyverns reassembled on the remaining carriers,” Draskovich said angrily. “Send a message to the mer to get back in position. We can assemble another supply convoy…”

“Dragons overhead, sir!” a messenger shouted as he pounded through the door.

“Drask,” Edmund said, walking quickly but unhurriedly to the door. “Get your people out of here.”

“What?” the admiral shouted. “Get out of this room!”

“Just going,” Edmund replied. But he stopped and walked to the admiral, grabbing him by the ponytail and pulling his head down to where he could whisper in his ear. “This is a wooden building, damnit. Evacuate.” With that he strode to the door, jerking it open and leaving it open.

He walked steadily to the stairs and then took them two at a time upwards until he reached the top floor. He stopped, panting, for a moment, feeling every year of his age, then strode into the corridor beyond. At that point he heard a thump on the roof and gave up dignity.

“VAN KRIEF!” he bellowed.

“Here, sir,” the ensign said, popping out of a room down the corridor.

“We are leaving,” Edmund yelled and headed for the stairs as the first smell of smoke entered the air.

He didn’t pause as he headed down the stairs and then thought better of it; that ensign was addicted to research. But as he turned he heard the door bang open.

“Sir?” the ensign shouted.

“Run like hell, Ensign,” he replied and took his own command.

By the time they made it out the doors of the headquarters the top floor was fully engaged and liquid fire was cascading down the walls. He bellowed in pain as a drop of napalm hit his arm and quickly yanked his tunic off, wrapping it around the burning droplet.

“Where’s Destrang?” he yelled, looking around at the scurrying figures outside the headquarters. A bucket chain was being formed down to the river but he took one glance at the headquarters, which was lighting up the night, and shook his head.

“They’ll never do it,” he muttered.

“Here I am, sir,” Destrang said, hurrying through the crowd. “It was a dragon raid, sir. One of them was breathing fire and all of them were pitching napalm. It was targeted on headquarters and the shipyard.”

“Good,” Edmund muttered. “They’ve finally done something stupid.”

“Sir?” Van Krief asked.

“The best thing they could do for our Navy is burn that damned place to the ground,” Edmund growled. “With any luck, Draskovich will choose to go down with his ship.”

“If it’s this bad here, sir,” Van Krief said, “I wonder what it’s like at sea.”

“Get back!” the XO shouted as the wyvern lunged forward.

The CO of the ballista frigate Darya Seyit snarled as the wyvern drove back the net party that was trying to get onto the quarterdeck.

The frigate was rolling in light seas, at the play of the winds. The lost, angry and riderless wyvernÑhe wasn’t even sure if it was one of theirs or the enemy’sÑhad dropped out of the sky and landed on the quarterdeck of the ship before anyone had realized its intention.

The damned thing had immediately seized one of the signal midshipman by the thigh, but they had managed to beat it off of him before the quarterdeck crew evacuated the scene of battle.

Unfortunately, the ship’s wheel was up there. As soon as the two quartermasters had jumped over the side of the shipÑby order, there was no way for them to move forward past the enraged dragonÑthe ship had turned with the wind and now drifted helplessly as most of the crew tried to get in rigging while a party set up a jury-rigged rudder control below.

Most of the rest of the crew, including the ballista crews, were trying to get a net or a rope or something on the damned dragon so that the ship could be gotten back under helm.

“Okay, one more try, men,” the XO shouted.

“Ahoy the ship!” a voice shouted from overside. “I need to see the skipper!”

“He’s busy,” the ship’s master chief said, looking over the side. “Mer overside, sir,” the chief continued.

“I know he is!” the mer yelled from below. It sounded like a female. “That’s why I need to see him!”

The skipper walked to the rail and looked down in the water where a black-haired mer-girl with a bright blue tail was swimming alongside.

“What?” the skipper snarled.

“Well excuuuse me,” the mer-girl said back. “Just trying to help. The problem is that wyvern’s hungry. If you feed it it’ll quit trying to kill you.”

“You have a lot of experience with wyverns, girl?” the chief said, angrily.

“Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” the girl said. “Elayna Farswimmer, Skipper. Lieutenant Farswimmer. I’m the daughter of the late Bruce Blackbeard and was on the Retreat with General Talbot. I have a lot of experience with wyverns and that one is hungry. You can tell by its cry; it’s not angry it’s sad. Because you’re not feeding it.”

“We don’t have any wyvern food,” the skipper temporized.

“As hungry as the poor thing is, it’d eat salt beef right out of the cask,” the mermaid answered, bitterly. “You’ve been treating them horribly.”

“Chief?” the skipper asked.

“We were boiling up lunch when it landed, sir,” the chief replied. “I don’t know how far along it got, but when you sounded general quarters, they’d have put out the fires.”

“Get below,” the skipper said. “Get the cooks up here with whatever they have.”

No more than five minutes later, as the wyvern was trying to figure out how to get past all the rigging to get to the tender sailor snacks below, the chief came up followed by a party carrying joints dripping water on the snowy deck. They carefully crept up to the rear and the chief ran forward, hurling a shoulder of beef onto the quarterdeck.

The wyvern jumped on it as if it were starving, which it was. Wyverns used an enormous amount of energy in flying and they needed huge quantities of food to sustain them. Their normal “field” rations were a mixture of soybeans, cornmeal and oils for fat energy. The only way they could be induced to eat the mess, especially at sea where they were as susceptible to mal de mer as humans, was by liberally lacing it with ketchup powder. The fleet had been out of ketchup for days and the wyverns had been off their feed even before the debacle of the morning.

Ignoring the heavy salt brine that the beef had been pickled in, the wyvern started tearing off strips of flesh, bolting them down as fast as it could. When all the easily removed meat was stripped off, it looked down at the chief and mewled piteously.

One after another of the chunks of beef and pork were thrown up to the quarterdeck until at last the wyvern was barely picking at them. At that point the chief took a coiled line from one of the waiting sailors and walked up the steps to the quarterdeck. He cautiously edged up to the wyvern and ran the line under its halter, securing it with a fast bowline, then tossed the coil of rope to the sailor he’d taken it from. Quickly, other sailors ran up to the deck and tied ropes to the wyvern’s halter, harness and huge, birdlike legs. In minutes the wyvern was secured in place. It didn’t look as if it minded. When it had finished turning over the bones rolling on the swaying deck it tucked its head under its wing and promptly went to sleep.

“Told ya,” the mermaid said, when the wyvern had obviously settled.

“Thank you,” the skipper replied, dryly. “Okay, let’s get these sails trimmed and get back under way!”

“The fleet’s about sixty klicks southeast,” Elayna said. “Them that’s left.”

“Marshal! Great news! The UFS fleet is practically destroyed, they’re retreating on every front!”

Chansa looked up from his paperwork at his chief of staff and grunted.

“How many carriers did we get?” he asked, leaning back in his chair, which creaked.

Marshal Chansa Mulengela was huge, two and a half meters tall and broad in proportion. The small office that he had appropriated in the bowels of the Council facilities made him look bigger. And, despite the news, he didn’t look happy.

“It looks like four,” the chief of staff said, wondering what it would take to get the Key-holder to smile. “The way is open for the invasion fleet!”

“Only four?” Chansa growled. “Damn.”

“Reports are still trickling in,” the chief of staff noted. “We might have gotten the fifth as well.”

“There’s still the Hazhir down in the Isles,” Chansa noted. “You can be sure that even an idiot like Draskovich will recall it.”

“It’s been modified,” the chief of staff noted. “Their Buships does not consider it combatworthy.” The chief of staff shrugged.

“Their Buships is as stupid as you are, then,” Chansa growled. “It’s been modified by that asshole, Shar Chang. If he’s put in modifications, you can guarantee they’re going to make it more combatworthy, not less. What about the strike on the head-quarters?”

“It appears that was successful as well,” the chief said. “It was on fire when the wyverns withdrew. They reported that there was a great dragon there, one that we didn’t know about from intelligence reports.”

“What about intel from the headquarters?” Chansa asked. “What are we getting from there?”

“The chain is long on that source, sir,” the chief reminded him. “We probably won’t have anything for a couple of days.”

“Stay on it,” Chansa said after thinking about it for a moment. “I won’t be happy about launching the full fleet until we’ve run down their last carrier. Where did they retire to?”

“South, sir,” the chief replied, glancing at his notes. “The orcas report that they’ve been driven off, so we’re not sure exactly where it is. And there’s a storm coming into the area so it’s unlikely we can press action immediately.”

“Where’s the Canaris?” Chansa asked.

“Moving north along the Norau coast, headed for the Granbas rendezvous.”

“Signal them to stand off the coast,” Chansa said. “I don’t want someone figuring out a way to take them out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go,” Chansa said, looking at the paperwork on his desk. “I’ve got other things to handle.”

As luck would have it, the admiral could be seen not too long afterwards, circling the madly burning building, his staff clustered around him.

“General Talbot,” the admiral said, approaching him when he noticed him, and the cluster of officers around him. The admiral took in the burned arm and shook his head. “I’d have thought you’d be long gone by the time the first bomb hit.”

“My ensign was upstairs,” the general replied with a shrug. “I wasn’t going to leave her to burn.”

“No,” the admiral said, his jaw working. “But I wonder, how did you divine that there would be an attack on this building?”

Edmund sighed and shook his head wearily. “Remember what I said about studying war? I was doing that when you were going through potty training, Admiral. Attacking the headquarters, given that most of your ships were at sea, was the obvious choice. I’d have probably hit the warehouses instead, but that’s not how Chansa thinks. The first time I saw this building I thought: What a lovely target.”

“How did they manage to find it, then,” General Kabadda snarled.

“Because your whole damned base is lit up like a Yule Tree,” Edmund sighed. “Ever heard the term ‘blackout’?” he asked, then shook his head at the sign of bewilderment on their faces. “Lord, give me strength.”

“General, what we need are some positive thoughts right now, thank you,” the admiral replied, coldly. “Not defeatism.”

“Who said anything about defeatism?” Edmund asked. “We’re not defeated, but we damned well are stung. Stung hard. Not this, the shipyards and the fleet.”

The admiral had opened his mouth to reply when one of the bucket brigade shouted: “Dragon!”

The line scattered as the few crossbow-armed marines looked up into the night sky, trying to get a glimpse of the enemy.

Edmund looked up and sighed, then looked around at the tense marines.

“Belay that!” he yelled. “That one is ours.”

The great dragon descended on the quad in front of the burning headquarters, coming in over the fire so that her wings sucked the flames into swirls and caused them to leap higher.

“God damnit!” the admiral swore. “You just made our job harder.”

“Sorry,” the dragon hissed, swinging her head around to look at the admiral. “My mistake.”

“Hey, Joanna,” Edmund said.

“Eddie!” the dragon shouted, delightedly. “I got two of the bastards. Want I should go look for the ship?”

“No,” Edmund said, just as Draskovich said: “Yes!”

“I didn’t ask you,” the dragon said to the admiral.

“No,” Edmund repeated. “They would have launched from maximum range. Probably each of the dragons was only carrying one, maybe two, bombs. You’d have to do a ground take-off. And they would have hightailed it as soon as the wyverns returned. I doubt you’d find them, anyway. Especially at night.”

“Commander Gramlich,” the admiral grated. “I order you to go find and destroy that carrier.”

“You’re in breach of contract,” Joanna said, easily. “I don’t have to listen to you.”

“That is a violation of military regulations,” the admiral said. “And I have no choice but to place you under arrest.”

“You and what army?” Joanna laughed. The great dragon was nearly sixty meters from nose to tail-tip and both ends, and the middle, were equipped for fighting.

“Drask, give it up,” Edmund sighed. “You’re just making a fool of yourself. What’s the breach?”

“Failure to provide adequate support,” Joanna replied. “Failure to provide specified pay and allowances. And I’m overdue for a vacation.”

“You had a vacation in the Isles last year.” Edmund grinned.

“Fisk you, General, sir,” the dragon said, then laughed. The “vacation” had involved, among other things, being dragged nearly to her death by a kraken. On the other hand, the kraken had lost.

“Commander Gramlich,” the admiral said, furious at being ignored. “For the last time, I order you…”

He paused as an officer approached with two pieces of paper in his hand. He looked at the general and the admiral and then handed one to the admiral and one to Talbot. The admiral took one look at the piece of paper, reading it by the light of his burning headquarters, crumpled the paper up and dropped it to the ground. Then he walked away into the night.

“Sir?” General Kabadda called after him.

“Stay,” the admiral said. “Good luck. You’ll need it.”

Talbot glanced at the paper and then looked at Kabadda.

“This reads, and I quote; ‘General Wallace Draskovich relieved North Atlantis Command, effective immediately, Admiral Edmund Talbot appointed command vice General Draskovich. Signature, Michael Spehar, Minister of War.’ ” He handed the sheet of paper to Kabadda, who took it as if it were incendiary as the headquarters. “Do you acknowledge this assumption of command?”

The brigadier looked at it as if he couldn’t read, then read it and read it again.

“I do so acknowledge your assumption of command…” he said, gritting his teeth. “Admiral.”

“Kabadda, I’ll tell you something,” Edmund said, softly. “I’m about a centimeter away from having you follow the admiral. Do you want to do that?”

“No,” Kabadda said, after a long pause.

“I’ll tell you something else,” Edmund went on. “The position of chief of staff is thankless, because everything he does right the boss gets credit for. And he gets his ass chewed for anything he does wrong. But he’s the guy that makes the weapon, the commander just wields it. Frankly, with tweaking, this base and the fleet are pretty good weapons. Pretty good. Because the damned logistics are on your shoulders, from that point of view, not the admiral’s. That means that not properly serving the dragons was your fault. But if you think you can get your job done the rest of the way, then I’m going to give you a pass. But from my POV, you’ve already had your strikes. One more and you’re following the admiral. Clear?”

“Clear, sir,” the general said.

“Okay, stop the idiotic bucket chain. That place was burning to the ground before the last wyvern flew over and we’re just getting more people burned trying to put it out. Get the wounded tended to, get a headcount, get somebody besides you doing all this and meet me at the docks.”

“The docks, General?” the chief of staff asked.

“The docks,” Edmund replied. “I’m gonna go talk to the mer. Joanna, Destrang, Van Krief, you’re on me.”