John Ringo - Emerald Sea

“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.