William Forstchen - Down to the Sea

They stepped back and saw his companion lying several feet away, arms wide. A Greek woman was kneeling beside the body, already closing the eyes, then making the sign of the cross.

Richard turned his gaze away, looking back out to the sea. The row of battleships were coming straight in. Already some of the frigates were but a mile off shore, opening fire on the city.

We’ve lost, he realized. Everyone dead, and they are here. Hazin is here. I tried to stop him, and it was all useless, bloody useless.

He closed his eyes and, tilting the wine sack up, he drained it.

The wind slashed the length of the deck, the flag of the Republic and the red launch flag standing straight out.

Adam tensed, watching as the last of the Falcons started its roll. The deck beneath them was surging up and down, one second pointing down at the ocean, seconds later pointing up at the late afternoon sky; the red sun almost directly ahead.

The Falcon lifted as the carrier rode up on the crest of a wave, then dropped out from under the aerosteamer.

The launch chief turned, faced Adam, and held his red flag overhead, then twirled it in a circle. Adam rewed up his engines. The chief pointed forward. Adam pushed the throttles the rest of the way. His Goliath, the first in line, started forward.

He carefully watched as the right wing passed within a couple of feet of the bridge. He saw Petronius standing on the open bridge. To his amazement the admiral offered a salute, Theodor by his side, waving.

Adam snapped a salute back, then focused all attention forward, watching the deck surge up and down, speed of his roll out slowing as it pitched up, accelerating as it went down.

His grip on the stick tightened. Even with the wind it was going to be tight. There was no copilot beside him, no top gunner, every pound of weight stripped out except for fuel and what was slung underneath.

Another roll up, then starting down. He tentatively tried backing the stick, hoping to lift as the deck dropped, but he didn’t have enough speed.

The deck continued to pitch down, his own speed picking up, and he rolled right off the end of the ship, heading down toward the foaming sea. Easing back on the stick he leveled out, ever so slowly climbing up to a hundred feet and then leveling off again, heading due west. Overhead the Falcons had formed up, circling around to come in above him. He looked back over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the next Goliath, throttles full out, coming up to fall in on his left wing.

A half mile off was the second formation from Wilderness , and beyond them the flight from Perryville . Looking to starboard, he could see Malvern Hill , valiantly struggling to come up and join the three aerosteamer carriers, which had leapt ahead to gain position. Two more frigates had fallen in with the group during its dash southward to the edge of the Minoan Shoals, and they were now screening ahead of the main ships, yards bare, running on engines alone into the westerly wind.

Thirty miles to the Three Sisters, then a slow arcing turn out to the northwest, and then finally back in low, and out of the west toward Constantine. Two and a half hours of flying time, then an hour back to the carriers, which would run straight in toward Constantine for the pickup.

Fortunately, the lead pilot of the Falcons was a wizard at navigation. All Adam had to do was fly, and then go straight in on the emperor’s ship if he could find it.

“Hazin!”

A Shiv lookout, up on the forward deck, was pointing off to the North. They were far off, on the other side of the shoals, hardly visible in the mist kicked up by the waves driving into the rocks a mile away.

The dots bobbed and weaved, rising and falling in his vision, and he turned away, shaking.

Was it truly a foretelling? Or fantasy, a dream vision of the future that had taken him to this time and place long years ago? Or was it merely his imagination telling him it was so?

He saw O’Donald down on the deck, attention still focused on the other horizon. The first of the transports was just coming into view, the fifty ships holding the umens of the Shiv.

Hazin could see, too, see him as in the dream, and it fascinated him. Am I the master of my fate, he wondered. Or has fate cast me into this moment, this role that would change everything.

The gun in the number one turret began to lift up, steam hissing from the exhaust line. The massive thirty-foot-long barrel stopped, and Yasim half turned, covering his ears. There was a blinding flash of light, barrel recoiling, water going flat from the shock wave.

He raised his glasses, training them on the burning city. Explosions were lifting up, fires spreading. Another explosion blew. It was impossible to tell if it was from his ship; at the range of nearly two leagues it was impossible to track where a shell might land. Closer in to shore the cruisers and frigates were attempting to slam aimed shots into the fortifications on the heights beyond the city. Aft, the number four gun now fired, again the shock wave.

For a human city it was actually rather impressive. On one of the hills in the center of the city was a great golden domed building. Yasim had overheard one of the gunnery officers discussing the rivalry between the gunners in the three turrets as to who would hit it first. The fourth turret, damaged by the suicidal pilot, was still out of action. Water was still leaking in from dozens of buckled plates below the waterline, and all pumps were working hard to keep ahead while the chief engineer directed repairs. He had requested that the flagship cease firing, as the vibration of the great guns firing was making the situation difficult to control, but Yasim would not hear of it. Honor demanded that his ship participate in the initial bombardment. At least the fact that the bombardment required slow cruising had helped, the ship barely moved at a league and a half in an hour as it hovered off its target and pounded the city to rubble.

The sun was low on the horizon, illuminating the clouds of smoke from the gunfire and from the burning city, a beautiful sight, worthy of a hada, a seven-line poem of alternating five and seven words.

He tried to compose one even as he watched the billowing explosions, the first spreading across the city, a secondary explosion in what one of the gunnery officers described as most likely the Republic’s main shipyard.

It was a glorious, beautiful sight-and yet he felt that something was not correct, not in place.

Was it Hazin?

There had to be a reason why, always the game within the game, like the toy he had had as a child; a golden ball that when opened revealed another within, and then another within that, and then yet another.

He had ordered his chamberlain to go through the ship’s roster yet again, to have his chief protector question yet again any who might be suspect, who might be of the Order and concealed in the ranks. Yet they had found nothing.

Something was wrong, marring this moment, and then another explosion caught his attention, a cheer rippling along the deck. The golden dome had been hit, disappearing in a shower of flame and smoke, which glowed in the late afternoon light.

Then the alarm sounded.

Adam leveled out, pulled up his goggles to wipe the sweat from his eyes, wiped his hand on his pants leg, then gripped the stick again.

It was stunning. The city had been their beacon for fifty miles, smoke and flames as they flew a circular approach far behind the fleet, swinging around to the west before coming down to wave-top level and then flying straight in for twenty miles.

“Low, sun at your backs and in their eyes,” Petronius had said. “The bastards will all be looking the other way, focused on the burning city, enjoying themselves, figuring the battle is won.”