David Weber - How firm a foundation

“I don’t think we’re going to get a reply from Vicar Allayn,” he continued now, his tone flat. “I think he’s going to wait to see how things work out, then either take credit for ‘allowing us to use our own initiative’ if it’s anything short of a disaster, or point out our ‘failure to comply with Mother Church’s strategic directions’ if it turns out as badly as we’re afraid it will.”

“Wonderful.” Jahras sighed, puffing out his cheeks, his expression pensive. “I’m almost tempted to go ahead and sail,” he admitted. “Assuming I didn’t get blown up, shot, or drowned I could at least point out that I’d followed orders.”

He turned his head, looking his brother-in-law in the eye, and Kholman nodded soberly. Anything that might lead the Grand Inquisitor or his agents to question one’s determination and loyalty was contraindicated.

“Between the doomwhale and the deep blue sea,” the duke said quietly.

“Exactly.” Jahras nodded back, then squared his shoulders. “But if I have to do this, I’m going to do it as effectively as I can and hope for the best. Shan-wei, Daivyn! Thirsk got himself hailed as a hero for capturing four Charisian galleons, and he’d already lost one of his own! For that matter, he’d surrendered an entire damned fleet after Crag Hook! If we can at least bleed them when they come in here after us, maybe somebody in Zion will be smart enough to realize we did the best anyone could have.”

“Maybe,” Duke Kholman replied. “Maybe.”

“The schooners report no change in their deployment, Admiral,” Captain Lathyk said, saluting as Admiral Yairley arrived on Destiny ’s quarterdeck.

“Not surprising, I suppose, Captain,” Yairley replied. A greater degree of formality had crept into his public relationship with Lathyk-inevitably, he imagined. Given his new rank, he was now a passenger in Destiny, not her master after God, and it was important he and Lathyk make that point clearly for the ship’s company. A warship could have only one captain, and any confusion about who that warship’s crew looked to for orders in an emergency could be disastrous. “I wish they would come out, but obviously no one in Iythria is foolish enough to do that. Barring direct orders, of course.”

Lathyk nodded, and Yairley’s lips quirked briefly. As High Admiral Rock Point had pointed out, to date, the Group of Four had been Charis’ best allies when it came to naval matters. Rock Point had hoped, more wistfully than with any great expectation of its happening, that Allayn Maigwair might issue Baron Jahras direct, non-discretionary orders to sortie and engage the Imperial Charisian Navy at sea. Apparently even Maigwair had more sense than that, however… unfortunately.

“Well,” the admiral said now, “if they won’t come out, we’ll just have to go in.”

“Going to be lively, Sir!” Lathyk observed with that irritating prebattle smile of his, and Yairley shrugged.

“I suppose that’s one way to describe it,” he agreed with a smaller, tighter smile of his own.

Destiny ’s motion was a little uneasy as she lay hove-to in the Middle Ground between Sylmahn Island and Ray Island, but that didn’t explain Yairley’s queasiness. He knew what did cause it, of course. The same odd, hollow feeling which always afflicted him when battle drew near was already quivering inside him, and he suppressed a familiar sense of envy as Lathyk chuckled in response to his comment. He didn’t think Lathyk was any less imaginative than he was, but somehow the captain-like so many of Yairley’s fellows-seemed impervious to the sort of tension which gripped him at times like this. And even he wasn’t all that consistent about it, he thought irritably. It made absolutely no sense for the thought of being splattered across the deck by a cannonball to… concern him so much when the thought of drowning in a storm didn’t cause him to turn a hair. Well, not much of a hair, anyway.

“Signal from Terror, Captain!” Midshipman Saylkyrk called out. He was in the maintop with his enormous spyglass trained on HMS Terror, Admiral Shain’s flagship. “Relayed from Destroyer. Our pendant number, then Number Thirty, Number Thirty-Six, Number Fifty-Five, and Number Eight.” He looked down from the maintop to where Ahrlee Zhones had the signal book open, already finding the signal numbers from the grid.

“Make sail on the larboard tack, course south-by-east, and prepare for battle, Sir!” the younger midshipman announced after a handful of seconds.

“Very good, Master Zhones,” Lathyk said. “Be good enough to acknowledge the signal under the squadron’s number.”

“Aye, aye, Sir!” Zhones was obviously nervous, but he also wore a huge grin as he beckoned to the quarterdeck signal party.

“Master Symkee!” Lathyk continued, turning to the lieutenant who’d become Destiny ’s executive officer in parallel with his own promotion.

“Aye, Sir?”

“Hands to braces, if you please. Prepare to get the ship underway.”

“Aye, aye, Sir! Hands to braces, Bo’sun!”

“Aye, aye, Sir!”

The signal had scarcely been unexpected, and the colorful bunting had already been spilled out of its canvas bags and bent to the signal halliards. The flags went soaring up while bo’sun’s pipes shrilled and the ship’s company went racing to its stations, and Admiral Yairley folded his hands behind him and crossed to the taffrail to gaze astern while his flag captain and his flagship’s crew got about the business of translating High Admiral Rock Point and Admiral Shain’s orders into action.

The other five ships of his squadron-HMS Royal Kraken, HMS Victorious, HMS Thunderbolt, HMS Undaunted, and HMS Champion -also lay hove-to, keeping close company on Destiny, and High Admiral Rock Point had done him proud when he made up the squadron’s numbers. Destiny was the oldest and smallest of the six, but all of them were purpose-built war galleons from Charisian yards, not captured prizes or converted merchantmen, and between them they mounted three hundred and forty guns. Well found, well handled, and (after the voyage from Tellesberg to Thol Bay to the Gulf of Jahras, at least) well drilled, they were a potent force. Especially since all of them carried shot lockers full of the new exploding shells. Royal Kraken and Thunderbolt also carried massive fifty-seven-pounder carronades, short-ranged compared to the new model krakens on their gun decks but capable of throwing much heavier and more destructive shells. The other four carried uniform armaments of thirty-pounders, and unlike the Battle of the Markovian Sea, all of his gunners had been given ample opportunity to train with the new ammunition.

Which is a very good thing, he thought dryly, that hollowness in his middle feeling somehow even emptier, given our part of the battle plan.

The wind was a stiff topsail breeze out of the northeast-by-east, blowing at a speed of perhaps twenty-four miles per hour and raising eight-to ten-foot waves. On her new heading, Destiny would be sailing large, with the wind almost dead on her quarter. That was just about her best point of sailing, which meant she ought to make good seven and a half or eight knots, with just under thirty miles to go. Call it four hours, he thought. Time to get all the men fed a good, solid lunch before they cleared for action, and then…

“All ships have acknowledged, Sir!” Saylkyrk called from above.

“Very good, Master Saylkyrk!” Lathyk called back, then turned respectfully to Yairley.

“All ships have acknowledged receipt of the signal, Admiral.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Yairley replied gravely, and glanced up at the stiffly starched signal flags himself. By hoisting the squadron’s number above Admiral Shain’s signal, Lathyk had repeated it to all of the squadron’s units. When it was hauled down, Yairley’s command would execute it, the rest of the fleet’s sixteen squadrons would make sail in his wake in succession to execute their own portions of the high admiral’s master plan, and the die would be cast.