John Ringo - Emerald Sea

“Dragon signaling, sir,” the sailor called. “Number twenty-four, and four dips!”

“Enemy in sight,” the signal midshipman read off. “Five ships.”

“Bloody hell,” the skipper growled. He had the weather gauge of the ships and more speed than they, either with or against the wind. But the position they had chosen was a narrows that he had the choice of passing through or beating around for another two or three days, maybe a week. And there was another thing.

“Damnit, XO, they’re waiting for us,” the skipper snarled.

“Maybe, sir,” Mbeki said, with a shrug. “But this is the logical path if we’re taking the southern route. They might have another force on the northern turn as well.”

“I don’t buy it, XO,” the skipper said, shaking his head. “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”

“Yes, sir, nuke Mars now,” Mbeki said, completing a joke so old its genesis had been lost. “But this is only twice.”

“No, that damned kraken as well,” the skipper said. “Well, it doesn’t matter, one way or the other. We have to pass through. But we’re still below the horizon to them. Bring the ship into the wind, I need to talk to Warrant Officer Riadou.”

Evan knocked on the door of the wardroom and entered without permission to the frown of the skipper.

“What?” Chang snapped.

“I heard that there are more ships ahead,” the engineer replied, seeming not to notice the rebuke. “I was looking for Jerry. Herzer asked me to make something for him, but in all the bustle we never got to test it.”

“What?” Jerry asked.

“Well, the skipper was saying that he wanted the ship to be more offensive.”

A leather-and-wood device had already been strapped to the breast of a protesting Shep when they reached the deck. It was mostly wooden box, with three partitions, and some leather reins and wooden levers, apparently to open the partitions.

“I’m afraid it’s… somewhat dangerous to the ship, sir,” Evan said. “Loading is the worst part. You see, each of the compartments has a pottery jug of jellied gasoline in it.”

“Ouch!” Jerry said. “But…”

“Oh, it also has a fuse,” Evan said. “It was that that took me so long to make. The first few designs tended to detonate prematurely.”

Jerry had a sudden clear image of what it would be like to be riding a flaming wyvern and closed his eyes against it.

“They’d better not prematurely detonate on my ship, Mr. Mayerle,” the skipper said angrily.

“Well, I’m fairly confident in this design,” the engineer said with an abstracted expression. “There’s a vial of sodium and a vial of water in the base of the jar. When the two hit something solid, the sodium ignites and that, in turn, ignites the gasoline. As long as they’re not dropped… That was why I was commenting on the loading.”

“We’re going to need to come up with some very careful procedures, ” the skipper said in a definite voice.

“Yes, sir,” Evan replied. “But, there they are.”

“I just pull the straps?” Jerry said, looking the device over. There were three straps and three boxes. He noticed that the boxes had pins through their covers; until those were released, they couldn’t be opened. The pins had white pieces of canvas on them that fluttered in the wind. If they hadn’t been pulled, it would be evident.

“Well, I suspect that hitting the ships will be harder than you anticipate,” Evan replied. “Wind drift, differences in speed. But… yes.”

“Skipper,” the dragon-rider said with a feral grin, tightening up his gloves. “I think we’ve got us a strike carrier.”

“As long as we have something to sail to,” the skipper noted, looking to the north where the ship was now pointed. “Okay, I’m going to stay below the horizon; it’s up to you riders. Go show them why they don’t mess with the UFS.”

The ixchitl had been lying doggo in the sand but one of the delphinos just ahead of Joanna spotted them and raised the alarm. However, before it could turn to run back to the ring of defenses one of the ixchitl erupted from the sand and passed over it, firing down with its nematocysts.

Joanna reacted immediately but even as she clamped her jaws shut on the ray it was too late; the harpoon had done its work and the delphino rolled over on its back as the neurotoxin coursed through its body.

The group was suddenly surrounded by a white cloud as the school of ambushing rays erupted out of the sand, filling the water with their wings. They rushed the bristling hemisphere but could neither penetrate the shield of spears, nor get above the group to fire down.

The dragons, meanwhile, were ravaging through their school, chopping at the rays. Ridden by Bast, Edmund and Herzer, they kept near the surface where the ixchitl’s rays could not reach them, but they could bite downward. The ixchitl found themselves trapped between the dragons above and the hemisphere of spears.

Finally they backed off and one of the larger ixchitl turned on its side, its normally white underbelly flashing through a range of colors. At apparent command two of the rays on the far side broke off and then came back at speed, leaping high into the air and into the midst of the crowd of mer-maids and huddling delphinos.

They arrived with a tremendous splash and the impact momentarily broke the spear line. They also fired their harpoons immediately, and apparently at random, hitting one of the mer-girls and a delphino.

Even this did not avail them much. The spear line reformed before the ixchitl to the outside could do anything to help their comrades and at a squealed command from Herman two of the delphinos grabbed the nematocyst cords, practically before they could begin pumping poison, and rolled with them, like great crocodiles, until the cords were ripped from the bellies of the beasts.

Furthermore, the mer-women were not unarmed and they fell on the ixchitl with the fury of anger and desperation. Two of them were badly bitten but the steel and bone knives jabbed and fell and before long the ixchitls’ carcasses drifted downward on the light current.

At this the ixchitl leader flashed his belly again and the whole group broke off the attack, heading for deeper water.

Herzer directed Chauncey up to the surface with his knees and pulled back his mask for a breath of real air. They had attached sailcloth collars to the dragons, even Joanna, and the riders held onto them while riding. But the dragons spent most of their time under water, like a dolphin, and it meant spending all his time breathing through the mask. Since the battle with the orcas he’d developed a distaste for the mask, all mental he well knew, but real for all that. So he took every opportunity to get a breath of real air.

Jason surfaced beside him, lifting himself on Chauncey’s wing to blast out his lungs as Joanna, Bast and Edmund popped to the surface.

“Well, breakfast for the dragons was catered,” Joanna said, swallowing the last of an ixchitl.

“You’d better hope that neurotoxin is digestible,” Herzer said, looking around at the placid sea. The wind was from the north and with the islands blocking the breeze there was barely a chop where they had been attacked.

“We need to rest,” Jason said. “And we’ve got wounded.”

“Well, we can’t rest in the middle of the water,” Edmund said. “Those damned orcas will be back sooner or later and they can break the spear line if they’re willing to take some casualties. Break up the hemisphere and we’re done.”

“The mer can pull themselves out on the beach,” Herzer said. “But the delphinos can’t.”