On the Oceans of Eternity

by S. M. Stirling

  It was good to see the ships in order again; after a week of hard effort they looked nearly as trim as they had setting out from Portsmouth Base. And no word of the Farragut, or the Severna Park, either. Still, only two lost out of nearly forty…

  The frigates lay in a line, their battleship-gray hulls with the red Guard slash rocking slightly at anchor beneath furled sails, a slim lethal elegance. Two of the schooners-Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman-were on patrol well out to the west, invisible against the setting sun, and an ultralight buzzed through the sky above, tiny against the fading blue and the few sparse white clouds. The rest of the fleet were closer in to shore, at last with the full complements of masts, spars, and sails.

  It was just chilly enough to make the wool of her uniform jacket welcome, and the thought of dinner enticing. They deserved one day of rest before putting to sea again.

  "Ma'am, the captains will be arriving soon," a middy murmured.

  "Thank you, Mr. Rustadax," she said quietly.

  She glanced over to the quarterdeck gangway, where the flagship's accommodation ladder led down to the water. The captain's gigs from the warships were standing in toward it, oars rising and falling. The first of them slid out of sight, and the bosun's pipe twittered. The immaculately uniformed side boys-and girls, her mind prompted wryly-came to attention. There were five of them, the number due to a commander. In the first age of sail senior officers had come aboard in a bosun's chair, and the number needed to haul on the line had been an indication of rank… and hence physical weight, which in those days tended to grow with age and importance.

  There was a rattle of rifle butts on the deck as the Marine guard snapped to attention. The quarterdeck bell began to sound, a measured bronze bong-bong… bong-bong… four strokes in all as the visiting officer walked up the ladder.

  "Lincoln arriving!" the bosun barked, saluting with his left hand and bringing the little silver pipe to his mouth with the other.

  At the weird twittering sound the Marine guard near the rail moved in a beautifully choreographed stamp-clack-clash as they brought their rifles to present arms, the twenty-inch blades of their bayonets glittering like polished silver. Alston gave a slight nod. Although compulsively tidy herself she had no use for spit and polish, not when it was just for its own sake. But ceremony had a very definite, very necessary place in any military organization. It taught-at a level well below the conscious mind-that they weren't a collection of individuals, but a community with a common purpose more important than any single member. And that was as functional as a bayonet or eight-inch Dahlgren; so was the habit of obedience. Both were particularly needed in the Republic's military, where so many members were only a few years-months, sometimes-from a Bronze Age peasant's hut. Constitutional government was pretty abstract to them, but ceremony and ritual were the warp and weft of their lives.

  Commander Victor Ortiz looked a little peaked still as he came to the top of the accommodation ladder, a bandage wound around his head where a falling block had laid it open during the storm, but he moved alertly as he answered the side boy's snapping salute and the Marines' present arms, then turned to salute the national ensign at the stern.

  "Permission to come aboard," he said, his XO waiting behind him.

  "Sir! Permission granted," the OOD said; she led him to Commander Jenkins, and the captain of the Chamberlain to the commodore; they exchanged salutes.

  "Hello, Victor," Alston said. "All in order?"

  "Ready for tomorrow's tide, Commodore," he said, smiling.

  The ritual was repeated as the other captains came aboard; there was a slight variation for the last, a thickset, middle-aged black man in Marine khaki rather than Guard blue. Six bells, six side boys, and:

  "Brigadier McClintock, Second Marine Expeditionary Force!"

  McClintock was moving a little stiffly, legacy of helping put down a panic riot among the auxiliaries when they thought the ship they were on was going to sink in the storm-how they thought rioting would keep them from drowning was a mystery, but such was human psychology.

  She estimated that the Marine officer's glum expression was probably due to McClintock's own personal problems, not the pain of a pulled muscle; his partner and he had split up rather messily over the summer, one reason he'd pushed hard for this position. He'd gotten it because he'd done so well during the Tartessian invasion last spring, of course. Alston felt a certain sympathy for him, but…

  Well, fidelity is hard enough to maintain in a relationship with only one man in it. With two, do Jesus, you might as well expect ducks to tap-dance. One reason among many I'm damned glad to be female and gay.

  No matter, he was a professional-he'd been a Marine DI before the Event-and did his job regardless. If she was any judge, he'd probably go right on doing the job if gut-shot, until the blood pressure dropped too low to keep his brain functioning.

  "Brigadier," she said, shaking his hand. "Your people have been doing a crackerjack job ashore-and they probably saved several of the transports."

  His ship hadn't been the only one with a riot aboard. A rioting mob composed of hysterical Sun People warriors could get… interesting. She was deeply glad there had been Marines aboard all of them.

  "Ma'am, it was a welcome distraction," he said, in a soft North Carolina drawl. "That-theah blow was somethin'."

  The sound gave her a pang of nostalgic pleasure. Not that it was identical with the Sea-Island Gullah that she'd grown up speaking, but it was a lot closer than the flat Yankee twang which had been coming out on top in Nantucket and the out-ports over the past decade. That was the prestige dialect these days, carefully copied by newcomers who wanted to fit in and shine in reflected social status, the way she'd striven to speak General American most of her life.

  Assimilation, she thought.

  The wardroom stewards circulated with glasses of sherry- or a fairly close analogue, ironically imported from Tartessos before the war-until the sun almost touched the horizon. There was a fair crowd; all the Guard's ship captains, their executive officers, McClintock and his chief of staff, the colonels of the Third Marines and First Militia. The conversation and circulating died down as the ship's bugler sounded first call, five minutes to sunset. Glasses went back on trays, and everyone turned to face the national flag. The Marine band struck up the "Star-Spangled Banner"-various proposals to replace that with "Hail To Nantucket" had been shot down by overwhelming votes of the Town Meeting, including her own-and the flag slowly descended, to be folded as the last note died; by then the sun had nearly disappeared, leaving only a band of crimson fading to deep purple across the western horizon. Bonfires blossomed on the beach, and after the band laid down their instruments she could hear retreat sounding on bugles from across the anchorage as the other ships of the fleet went through their less elaborate ritual.

  "Gentlemen, ladies," she said, and led them down the companionway. Set up for a dining-in, the table filled most of the cabin; she made her way to the top of it, flanked by the stern-chasers on either side. Silver gleamed on crisp linen, reflecting the flames of the lanterns; the stern gallery windows were slightly open, bringing in the smell of salt water to mingle with the odors of roasted meat. Stewards wheeled in trays.

  One of the minor benefits of being the first head of the Island's military-the equivalent of head of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense and a Founding Mother, all in one-was that she'd been able to set most of the traditions as she pleased while things were still fluid. Some of that had been very satisfying, in a petty sort of way; for instance getting rid of the old Coast Guard habit of handing out medals and ribbons for everything, starting with breathing and working up to really tough stuff like brushing your teeth regularly. Others had been more important. She'd been a mustang herself, and it had been a minor miracle that she'd ever ended up commanding the Eagle, otherwise known as the Guard's floating recruiting poster. After the Event, she'd made sure that everyone's career path started before the mast.

&nb
sp; Some changes were more aesthetic, like the ones she'd established for military-social affairs such as this.

  She raised her glass in the first toast. "Gentlemen, ladies- the Republic which we serve. A government of laws, not of men."

  A murmur of "The Republic" as wine glistened in the firelight. That had been one custom founded with an eye to the future, when more officers were locals born. Got to get them used to the concept of loyalty to institutions, not just particular people.

  Then she looked at the XO of the Tubman, the junior officer present.

  "Fallen comrades," the young man said.

  "Fallen comrades," everyone replied; perhaps a little more emotionally than usual, with their recent casualties.

  There was a clatter of chairs and rustle of linen as the officers seated themselves. Alston looked down the table three places, to where Swindapa was in animated discussion with the XO of the Douglass; that young man was a Kurlelo, too… although there were thousands in that lineage. They were speaking English, of course; that was the compulsory service language. Swindapa's accent was noticeably lighter than her kinsman's. Hmmm, she thought. None of the captains was Alban-born yet, but three of the XO's were. Coming along there.

  She'd have preferred to have her partner seated beside her, but there was a certain precedence involved. The food came in; boiled lobsters, salads of local greens and pickled vegetables out of barrels put up in Alba, roast suckling pig from the forests inland, fresh bread from field ovens set up ashore. Alston had long ago decided that the Republic's forces wouldn't follow the ancient military tradition of lousy food. There would be plenty of times when they'd all be living on salt cod and dog biscuit, but when the cooks had something better available they'd by-God know what to do with it.

  If I have anything to say in the matter, and I do, she thought, and sipped at a Long Island merlot. Martha Cofflin, nee Stoddard, had given her and Swindapa a palate education over the last decade or so, as wine became available again. Educated Jared as far as she could, too, she thought. The chief had had blue-collar beer-and-whiskey tastes like hers before the Event, and was more set in them. Cooking had been her hobby since her teens, along with the martial arts, and that inevitably meant at least a little exposure to the grape. Leaning back a little she studied the faces of the commanders over the rim of her glass.

  Victor Ortiz was telling a story about an expedition to the Far East, to Sumatra-one of those odd local cultures; in this one everything inland was holy and everything that came from the sea debased. One of his crew on a party sent into the interior swore they had spotted what sounded like an ape-man of some sort…

  And the dawn came up like thunder out of China 'cross the bay, she quoted to herself. She'd never done more than touch on those islands, in the Eagle's early round-the-world survey. She'd read the logs and reports-

  Good bunch, she thought, weighing faces and souls. Hard workers, smart, plenty of guts. This war's different from anything else we've done post-Event, though. We're not skirmishing, or giving some local chief a thrashing for getting nasty with a trader.

  They'd already had a staff briefing, and conversation was more general than shop-everyone here knew the others well. The officer corps of the Republic's miniature military was too small for anything else.

  "I'd like to leave a force here," she said after a while. They'd be leaving the Merrimac and her collier anyway; the big ship was too badly damaged to be allowed anywhere near a fleet action, and her cargo wouldn't be useful until they had a secure base near Tartessos. "Pass those peas, please… Say a platoon of your Marines, Jim." The brigadier nodded thoughtfully.

  "I'd assumed you would, Commodore," he said. "Hmmm. Walking wounded, perhaps?"

  "That would do. And some volunteers from the auxiliaries."

  "I don't think there will be any lack of those who'd rather face solitude than salt water," he said, and the laugh spread around the table. "With a couple of heavy mortars on the tip of the peninsula, we can interdict the entrance to the harbor. For the landward side… yes, sixty or seventy riflemen, a Gatling, and a fieldpiece would do nicely. It won't weaken our land force 'nuff to speak of, ma'am."

  The dessert brought a few exclamations; chocolate cake was a rarity even for the well-to-do these days, and she'd sprung for the ingredients out of her own pocket before the expedition left. Alston hid a smile at the look of unfeigned eager delight on Swindapa's face; that direct childlike openness was one of the things she'd fallen in love with, and it would stay with her partner all her life.

  We American-born could do with a little more of it, she thought. She hoped a dash of that Fiernan trait would survive in the bubbling cultural stew that Nantucket had become.

  "Gentlemen, ladies," she said after the stewards had cleared away plates and cutlery and set out coffee, cocoa, and brandy. She took a deep breath; no sense in trying to sugarcoat it. Everyone here knew the hungry sea in all its moods. "We'll be sailing tomorrow on the morning tide. I don't think there's any point in waiting for the Farragut or her collier any longer."

  Plenty of grim looks at that. She nodded and went on: "We'll have to assume that the Farragut and the Severna Park are lost. With them, we've lost a good proportion of our fighting power."

  "Y algunos hombres buenos," Ortiz murmured.

  Alston inclined her head in acknowledgment.

  "Yes," she said gently. "That too, Commander Ortiz."

  The wounded man raised his bandaged head and his brandy glass. "Gary and I…"

  Yes, she remembered. Trudeau was his protege. And their wives were sisters.

  His mouth quirked, giving his darkly handsome face a raffish expression beneath the head-swathing linen wrappings. "There was that Javanese chief who decided he could hassle the wimpy foreign traders." A chuckle. "We strung up the hijo de puta by the ass-end of his own loincloth, from the gateway in the palisade 'round his village, left him yelling and screeching to the crowd, and then had quite a party…" The brandy swirled in the glass, glinting in the lamplight, and he brought it to his lips. "To fallen comrades."

  "Fallen comrades," everyone murmured again, and there was a moment's silence.

  "We'll miss the Farragut and her crew badly," Alston said when it ended. "However, we still have a number of advantages. This is the only chance we have this year to break the blockade of the Straits of Gibraltar; and we have to do that to support our forces in the Middle East."

  "It's a risk, ma'am," one of the captains said soberly. "The Tartessians lost heavily this spring, but they're not short of timber or shipwrights, and for inshore work they don't need navigators. They'll have been building as fast as they can lay keels and cast guns. A big risk."

  "Indeed it is, Commander Strudwick." She stood, and raised her glass. "Therefore, I give y'all a final toast for the evening. I give you Montrose's toast."

  Silence fell, broken only by the slight creak of the ship moving at her anchors and feet on the deck overhead. Everyone who went through Brandt Point knew those words and their maker.

  "He fears his fate too much-" she began softly.

  Other voices joined her, ringing louder, triumphant:

  "… and his desserts are small.

  Who will not put it to the touch,

  To win or lose it all."

  "Here they come again!" Private Vaukel shouted. Somewhere down the line a man raised another cry:

  "Ten! This is the tenth time!"

  Vaukel could feel the heat from the barrel of his Werder through the wood of the forestock, and his right thumb was scorched where it met the metal as he pushed home another round. The weapon was kicking a lot harder, too, as fouling clogged the barrel. None of that mattered, as the enemy rose up from behind a ledge of rock and the tumbled bodies of their own dead and charged, shrieking. It was as if the dead themselves arose at Barrow Woman's command, or the very earth came up in a wave to bury him. The sun was nearly down, but it lit the metal of their spears and axes blood-red, and gleamed on eyes and teeth.

>   "SsssssSSSSAA! SA! SA! SsssssSSSSAA!"

  "Volley fire present, fire!"

  The rifle kicked into the massive bruise that covered his right shoulder, but the pain seemed to be happening to someone else.

  "Independent fire, rapid fire!"

  His hand scrabbled at the barley sack beside him and came up empty; someone thrust a packet of shells under his hand, and he saw out of the corner of his eye that it was Chaplain Smith with a sack slung around his neck, traveling down the firing line.

  He ripped it with his teeth, spilled the bright brass on the burlap, and thumbed a round home, fired, fired again, again, once every three seconds. Rifles were going off in a continuous rippling crash to either side of him, and along the south face too; ladders went up against the hospital roof and Islanders fought Ringapi along the edge. The ground ahead of him swarmed with dimly seen figures and bright edges, the air filled with yowling war cries and screams of pain. Slingstones and arrows went by overhead in a continuous stream, and flung spears; some of them had bundles of blazing oil-soaked wool wrapped around them. The air he sucked in through parched nose and throat seemed thin and insubstantial, stinking of burned sulfur and shit and blood and burning oil.

  "Watch it!" someone bellowed.

  The Ringapi charge struck the wall of barley sacks, and it rocked under Vaukel's feet. The attackers dropped down into the ditch-not so far this time, there was a three-deep layer of bodies there now-and leaped upward, driving spears into the sacks to stand on, clutching at the bayonets with their bare hands and striking upward with spear and ax and sword. Some stood with their hands braced against the wall and let their fellows climb onto their shoulders. Two places to Vaukel's right a Marine staggered backward with an arrow buried in his eye-socket, wailing loud enough to be overheard even through the enormous din. A Ringapi slid through the space the wounded man vacated, naked body slick with blood and a dagger in each hand, grappled a Marine, and they fell backward off the firing step together.