William Forstchen - Down to the Sea

“All the more reason to leave her.”

“Get out.” Her words were soft, but filled with confidence. She slowly stood up, and Richard had difficulty concealing his shocked embarrassment at her nakedness. Yet he was fascinated as well by her beauty, and by her calm, casual ease.

The fact that he and Sean had been talking in English and she had spoken in the same language caught him completely off guard.

How stupid, he realized. If Hazin knew English, he should not have been surprised that a woman sent to O’Donald knew it as well.

He looked back to the Shiv who stood in the doorway. For the first time he detected an emotion on their part. It was amusement.

He slowly turned back to face Sean. “You’ll regret this the rest of your life, Lieutenant O’Donald.”

Sean seemed to stir from his hazy distant world, and for a brief moment, Richard saw an old friend from the academy, the cadet who was always so quiet, studious, even withdrawn, and yet sharply capable in any task he set himself to. He tried to smile, to somehow reach that friend and roommate, to remind him of his duty, of who he was, an officer of the Republic.

“It won’t work, Cromwell. I’m past such appeals,” Sean whispered and turned away.

The airfield was dark, and a light, hazy mist was drifting in from the midnight tropical sea. Richard suddenly realized just how tired he was, and now he faced a flight of unknown distance across an unknown sea.

He slowly walked around the airship. The design was not unlike some of the machines from the last war, bulkier in the fuselage to contain the hydrogen gas bags, a broad, single mono-wing rather than the bi-wings of the Republic’s airships. It was three engined, two on the wings and one forward.

He could see where there had been gun emplacements at the tail, above and under the belly. All had been stripped out, as was the gun forward.

No one spoke to him, and somehow the entire scene seemed like a dream. He looked at the rough chart that had been thrust into his hand. It was precious short on details, including only the coastline of the island they were now on and a sketch of where he assumed the Gettysburg had been lost, which was off to the northwest.

From that point he knew where he was. That was over thirteen hundred miles from the Republic’s main base on the coast at Constantine. The question was, how far was it from where the Gettysburg was lost to here? Four hundred miles, six hundred? He believed they had sailed four days after he was captured. That could make the distance just a few miles away, on the other side of a long island, or more than a thousand miles.

Yet he knew as well that Hazin would not send him out unless he had a reasonably good chance of succeeding.

No one spoke to him, but by the way the ground crew turned to look at him, he knew they were waiting. He scrambled up the outside ladder and into the forward cockpit. One of the Shiv followed and, without saying a word, waited while Richard strapped himself into the oversize chair. Stretching his legs out, he could barely reach the pedals. Pressing down on them, he could tell when he looked aft, worked the rudder.

The controls were basically the same: a stick for banking and climbing. The Shiv simply took hold of three knobs mounted side by side on the forward console, and pulled them back. The engines then began to turn over faster. The Shiv leaned back out of the cockpit and climbed down the ladder.

“Thanks, you son of a bitch,” Richard grumbled.

Straight ahead he could see two distant bonfires, undoubtedly marking the end of the landing strip. Without any hesitation he pulled the throttles full out. The ship lurched forward and clumsily gained speed.

It was far slower on takeoff than the planes he knew, and he sweated out the final seconds, the bonfires racing past before he felt the wings lifting and he edged back on the stick.

The airship seemed to hang in the air, and he nosed it over slightly, hoping that there were no hills ahead. Then ever so gradually he pulled back, trying to master the feel of the machine, wondering if it would give the telltale vibration through the stick just before going into a stall. He flew on for several minutes, heading due south before he finally ventured a turn, carefully banking the machine to port, watching the stars as they wheeled.

The Southern Triangle seemed higher in the sky by a good hand span, and he tried to work out the calculation, a rough estimate of just how much father south he was. Sean could have done it.

Damn him. He tried to feel pity for his friend, to understand. Hazin had seduced him first through terror, then the drugs, and finally the woman. Could I have resisted? he wondered.

He tried to believe he could have, that Hazin had seen that and decided to use him instead for another purpose. This thought also angered him. I’m escaping, but in escaping I am somehow serving his purpose as well. He toyed with the random thought of somehow trying to find the temple of Hazin’s Order, or the imperial palace, and crash the plane into it; a final defiant act that just might throw them all off balance.

And yet if I do that, he realized, the Republic will never know what is coming.

Why do I even care? he wondered. What has the Republic given me? The Yankees speak of it almost as if it were a religion, yet for millions of us it has brought nothing but anguish. If the Yankees had never come, the Hordes would have ridden on. Far fewer would have died, my mother would have never been a slave, and I of course never would have been born.

What does it offer me now? He could predict the reaction when he returned alone, the son of a traitor, bearing a fantastic tale of an empire, a race of humans bred to serve it, of Hazin, and of the betrayal by the son of a legend.

Worry about that later, he thought as he leveled out, trying to gain a fix that would guide him due north. He was distracted, though, by the sight off his starboard wing. A vast gleaming city spread out in a moon-shaped crescent around a dark bay.

He banked over slightly. In training he had flown over Roum twice, and he could tell that the largest city of the Republic would fit into but one comer of what lay below him. A sparkling pavilion, covering acres of ground, was terraced up the side of a steeply rising hill. Its columned boulevard shone from the light of a thousand torches and bonfires, and he knew that this must be the imperial residence. This single dwelling place was nearly as big as all of old Suzdal.

He was tempted to circle but decided against it, for every gallon of fuel was precious. The city slipped by beneath him, and he was still low enough to detect the smell of the fires that illuminated it.

Out in the bay, by the dim light of the Great Wheel of stars and the first of the two moons rising to the east, he could see the silhouettes of the battle fleet. The sight of it filled him with awe. He leveled out and even dropped down a few hundred feet, throttling back slightly. He counted eight great ships. Each of them, he had judged, to be three times, perhaps even four times greater than the Gettysburg . They rode the anchor, deck lights fore and aft marking them in two lines abreast. Bright, almost festive looking lanterns hung suspended from the pagoda towers. Surrounding them were dozens of other ships, smaller and yet still a match for anything the Republic could offer. The sight chilled his heart. He banked over, circling twice, trying to count the ships, to judge their size, the weapons on board.

This was the reason he had to return home. It had nothing to do with Hazin and his game of power. Here was a threat that could annihilate the service to which he had given his oath and that had given him a home in spite of his blood.