On the Oceans of Eternity

by S. M. Stirling

  Doreen tapped the wooden handle of her steel-nib pen against the surface of a report. "We have gained time, which is the most precious thing of all," she said. "Remember, the war here in Haiti-land is only one front…"

  The usual translation difficulties stopped them for a while, searching for a word for "sector."

  "… sector, division, part, then, of a larger struggle."

  "So you say," Tudhaliyas said. "We fight Great Achaea, not Tartessos."

  "As a matter of fact," Doreen said, smiling…

  Smugly, Hollard decided. But a nice smug, if you're on her side.

  "… I've got something more concrete to tell you about the news from Tartessos."

  "That was quick work," Marian Alston-Kurlelo said, looking at what was left of the Merrimac.

  It was one of those mild, brilliant Andulusian winter days that gave her occasional daydreams of wangling a posting here after the war. Wind like spun silk caressed her face, and everything from the ship before her to the flamingos cruising like giant pink butterflies in the marshes had a fine-cut clarity.

  "Four weeks and four days from the time we hauled her up on the slipway," the Seahaven supervisor said, wiping her hands on a greasy rag.

  The gesture was one of Ron Leaton's trademarks, and engineers all over the Republic copied it, along with his air of abstracted competence. There were worse role models, and most of the mechanics and engineers had come up through Seahaven or its spin-offs.

  An entirely forgivable foible, Marian Alston-Kurlelo decided, walking through the construction-yard litter of timber, tools, and grinning workers slapping each other on the shoulders to view the craft from all sides.

  The big merchantman had been cut down to the waterline. A sloping three-foot glacis surrounded the hull above that, solid oak beams a yard on a side covered by a bolted carapace of big interlocking steel plates three and a half inches thick. More steel covered the low deck, and a slope-sided central casement at midsection. That had three gunports a side, and a row of them in the cone-sectioned front and rear where a pivot-mounted gun could swivel around. A single thick smokestack rising from an armored collar, a couple of air-scoops and a low octagonal pilothouse with vision slits completed the picture topside, with a big bronze propeller at the stern.

  It didn't give her the stab of pure pleasure a good sailing craft did; in fact, she still felt guilty at murdering something beautiful to make this. But it was… solid workmanship, she thought, taking a deep breath and inhaling the scents of drying paint, varnish, tar, timber, brass, iron, and whale-oil lubricating grease. Satisfying. It'll do the job it's designed for.

  "Well," Gary Trudeau said. "At last I've seen something less seaworthy than my poor Farragut."

  Alston snorted slightly. "Farragut was supposedly designed to handle anything on salt water. This one was not intended for deep-ocean work, Mr. Trudeau," she said.

  Victor Ortiz chuckled. "At least we know she can carry the weight; it came out from Alba in her hold."

  A deep breath. "All right, let's get on with it."

  Bosuns' pipes twittered, the Marine band played, and Swindapa stepped up to hand her a point-bottomed, jug-eared amphora of requisitioned Tartessian wine.

  "I christen thee Eades" she said, and threw the amphora.

  It shattered on the reinforced ram that projected out just beyond the bows of the ironclad. Wine ran down armorplate and oak, red as blood. Everyone cheered; Marian smiled broadly, in a public display of emotion rather rare for her.

  In fact, she was thinking of the original Merrimac, transformed into the ironclad Virginia by the Confederates for its meeting with the Monitor off Hampton Roads. How they'd have hated the thought of black-as-tar Marian Alston commanding something so like her; and how they'd have hated naming her after the engineer who'd designed the Federal gunboat fleets that stormed down the Mississippi and cut the Confederacy in half. Her father would have loved it.

  I hope, somewhere, those bukra ghosts can see this. While they roast in hell.

  Sledgehammers struck at the wedges and chocks. The timbers holding the Eades against the force of gravity gave way, and the steel rollers of the cradle rumbled and squealed as she began to move. The huge weight started slowly, then accelerated with terrifying speed. Waves of muddy water surged up in twin plumes on either side as the stern slid into the bay, then subsided as the ironclad shot out. A dozen thick cables secured to deep-driven tree trunks paid out and then came twanging-taut; the ship rocked and then settled.

  Have to rearrange her ballast a bit, Marian thought, studying her trim with a critical eye.

  "All right, let's get her boilers hot and see how she works," she said aloud.

  "No," Isketerol of Tartessos said.

  "Lord King-

  "Yes, they are destroying us bit by bit," Isketerol said.

  He looked around at the war-captains and wisemen, their faces shocked or blank or calculating, mottled by the light filtering through the canvas of his tent. They were mostly men who'd come to power under him… and hence men he'd rewarded with grants of land and mines. Men with lands and mines in the provinces now being stripped and sacked by the Amurrukan. The tent stank of acrid sweat loaded with anger and fear; his guards were more than ceremonial, and their tension told it.

  He grabbed patience with both hands and ran his finger across the map. "By the time news of their raids comes to us, they are already done," he said. "We used our light-signalers to react faster than the highlanders could. Now the Amurrukan do the same to us."

  "Then we must meet their raiding forces with our own- forces larger than theirs."

  Isketerol nodded. "Tell me how, Lord Miskelefol," he said. "They see us move by night or day, from the air. From the air their scouts report to their commander. And their forces move more quickly than ours." His fist hit the table. "On our own roads! By the time we react to what they are doing, they have finished it and are doing something else in another place. They lead us by the nose, and we take our marching orders from them! If we send out a column, they can avoid it… or bring together enough of their troops to smash it…'

  Everyone winced; that had happened twice. He pointed out through the flap of the tent, to the long ranks of brushwood-and-earth shelters within the earthwork fortifications.

  "We are too many for them to attack us here, and by our presence we guard the lands around Tartessos City. They cannot pass by without fighting this army."

  "Then we should march out and crush them in one great battle!"

  "Arucuttag… give me strength!" he snarled, making himself stop short of asking the Hungry One to eat his supporter. "Their weapons are too much better than ours. If we attack them, they will slaughter us; that's why our invasion failed last year!"

  He sighed. "We can only stand on the defensive; they cannot afford even a costly victory, much less a defeat, and if they attack us, we have the advantage. As long as the forts and cannon and rockets hold them away from this side of the Great River and Tartessos City, we are not defeated, because we have the core of the kingdom. From there, we can slip ships in and out. Time presses them in ways it does not do us. If we hold long enough, we may force them to accept our terms."

  After so long on sailing ships, the little bridge of the Fades was a stifling closeness; stiflingly hot, too, with the boiler heat captured by thick oak timbers and steel-plate sheathing, and a throat-catching reek of sulfur from coal smoke. Engine throb shivered up through her feet with a slow heavy beat, tolling the movements of the big steam cylinders and the massive crankshaft driving the propeller-quieter than a diesel, beating like a great slow heart. The bridge sat like an octagonal lump at the forward edge of the casement; an eight-sided enclosure from her shoulders up, with vision slits at eye level, and an openwork basket where it protruded into the fighting compartment below. That stretched a hundred feet back, a single great slope-sided room, with only the armored sheath of the funnel in the middle and the crouching shapes of the guns to break it.

&n
bsp; Hate to think what all this cost, she thought, peering out through the narrow horizontal opening ahead. The sea was a deep living blue, with an occasional whitecap impossibly pure against it. Sweat wasted, acres of land not cleared, plows and harrows not made, factories not built, kids who didn't get an extra pair of shoes. With any luck they wouldn't have to build anything like this again for a generation or two.

  "Not exactly like old times, eh, Skipper?" Thomas Hiller said.

  "Not exactly," she replied.

  The Eagle's old sailing master had lost his frigate in the Battle of the Pillars, as they were calling it now; that had given him a leg up over the other contestants for the XO's position. And it's some compensation, I suppose, she thought. Hiller had loved the brand-new clipper-frigate, almost as much as Eagle. He'd missed seagoing command, too, enough to leave his family on Nantucket. Scratch crew all 'round… or picked, depending.

  Even the Black Gang were mostly volunteers under the direction of petty officers from Farragut, and she'd had to talk Victor Ortiz out of volunteering for that, with his burns barely healed.

  Men, she thought. Then from a little ironic devil who lurked at the back of her consciousness: Well, you're here, aren't you?

  "You should have delegated this, ma'am," Miller said.

  "You certainly should have," Swindapa said, looking up from the navigator's table.

  "If I'm indispensable, I haven't been doing my job these ten years past," she said dryly. So much for the awestruck obedience due the high commander. "Helm-rudder amidships."

  Swindapa gave an involuntary yawn. And I'd forgotten how much trouble midnight feedings can be, she thought. Her partner caught her eye and winked.

  "She's still answering nicely," Hiller said.

  They both made the instinctive beginnings of a gesture with their left hands-reaching out to touch a backstay and feel the forces channeled down from the rigging.

  Hiller grinned: "Not enough experience in powercraft lately, Commodore. Either of us."

  "How does she steer?" Marian asked the two sailors at the helm.

  "Still just a touch heavy, ma'am," the CPO said. "Got to be careful to remember the lag and not overcorrect. This lady's heavyset."

  Marian took a deep breath. "All right," she said. "Three days' shakedown and nothing new to fix is enough. This campaign has gone on far too long as it is. Let's go."

  Ranger Sue Chau waited tensely; the smell of her own sweat came acrid as it soaked into the leather of her hunting shirt, mixed with the sour scent of old burned things on the gun deck of the ship whose crew had died. Jaditwara came rattling down the companionway, swearing in Fiernan, English, the Sun People language, and bits of the Cloud Shadow tongue picked up over the past year.

  "They're all looking dead. The sails are still drawing and will if the wind doesn't change. Moon Woman receive our souls!"

  "I sympathize," Sue said.

  Jaditwara had some sailing experience; the Indians didn't know a bowline from a buttonhook. They'd towed the ship most of the way with the canoes, but the last approach had to look more natural. Sue squinted out through the gunport at the approaching dock and the enemy fort-town standing on its mound.

  The jetty wasn't meant for seagoing ships; this river wasn't meant for seagoing ships. There were two of the flat-bottomed barges already at it, no place for the captured Tartessian vessel.

  Oh, Jesus, Pete, don't get yourself killed, will you? Or you either, Eddie, even if you are a prick a lot of the time. Spring Indigo, where the hell are you hiding, and can we get you out without anything hurting you or little Jared?

  Bright spring sunlight outside, incongruously cheerful and full of birdsong. The gates swinging open, people pouring down- brightly clad civilians, children…

  "Kakwa," Jaditwara murmured.

  Their eyes met, and they went down the line of cannon, turning the elevating screws up two turns. The near-naked locals at the lanyards looked at them hopefully; once over their initial terror, they'd all immensely enjoyed firing the cannon off into the swamp. One lifted the lanyard enthusiastically and made to pull, to be met with frantic calls of no! no! in five languages; Sue remembered to toss her head instead of shaking it.

  They backed off again; at least they knew enough not to stand behind the guns now. Sue swallowed something acid at the back of her throat. No way to tell now what would happen; she had to play it by ear with entirely too much that could go wrong at any moment. Was Pete's crazy plan too complicated, did it depend on too many things going right?

  The crowd got near enough to notice the bodies in Tartessian uniform or sailor's slops draped about the deck or hanging limp over the rails. The ship drifted in…

  Oh, thank You, Lord Jesus, Sue thought. The captured vessel was nudging in on the north side of the pier, its bow catching and stern swing 'round to ground hard on the mud-broadside still mostly trained on the fort. There was another frantic scramble as the two women ran down the line of guns, heaving at handspikes together; the locals were strong and willing, but they couldn't even talk to the Islanders, much less take directions.

  The cries of alarm grew stronger; several Tartessians went pelting back up to the fort-town. And…

  "Yes!" The gates swung open, and troops appeared there.

  "Now, how long before they twig?" Sue muttered.

  The civilians were milling around-scared of whatever had "killed" the crew, terrified by memories of the brief smallpox outbreak, a few of the bolder ones coming out onto the boards of the wharf. Troops forming up in the gates-

  "Now!" Jaditwara cried and pulled the lanyard on her own gun; the hammer came down, flint sparked, and the twelve-pounder bellowed and leaped backward. At the other end of the line Sue repeated the action. Within a few seconds the Indians on the other four guns had done the same.

  The crowd of civilians screamed and recoiled as the side of the ship shot out its long blades of flame and smoke. Many sensibly threw themselves flat as half a dozen cannonballs screamed by just above head height. Nearly all of them turned and fled pell-mell back up the gently sloping road toward the gates as the "dead" men on deck came alive, leaping over the ship's side with screeching war whoops. More tribesmen poured out of the hatchways, up from where they'd hidden uneasily in the darkness of the hold and orlop decks; an endless flood of stocky brown men in loincloths, waving captured rifles or swords or axes, their own obsidian-headed spears and darts, carved hardwood clubs.

  The two Islander women waited an instant, as the south wind blew the gun smoke upriver. The broadside had struck on or around the gate, smashing lethal clouds of splinters out of the timbers of gate and towers, some of them falling short and going bounding and skipping up the roadway like monstrous lethal bowling balls, a couple whirring right through the packed soldiers at knee height. Sue swore softly at the results, then grabbed up her rifle as the other ranger dashed past.

  The road up to the fort gates was a solid mass of people; surviving soldiers, fleeing farmers and artisans and their families, and the crowd of howling tribesfolk who outnumbered both. Sue hurdled a Tartessian woman curled protectively around a screaming toddler, shoved, cursed, and pushed; she and her companion were about halfway between the vanguard of their Indian allies and the last of them.

  About the safest place to be, she thought, feeling her skin roughen at the thought of the cannon and rockets on the wall ahead. Me, I don't have to prove a damned thing, I just want to win and live.

  The Indians pushed a screen of the townsfolk before them; more a matter of necessity than intent, but the effect was the same. Most of the Tartessians on the wall were civilian militiamen; the professionals among them mostly had family here as well. Reluctance to fire on their own, or to shut the gate in their faces, cost them crucial moments. By the time they tried, it was too late, and the gateway was full of a heaving mass of men who shot and stabbed, clubbed and slashed and throttled each other, trampling the dead and wounded beneath their feet. Those on the gate-towers couldn't shoot
into the melee beneath; brave and foolish, most of them ran down to join it, where an alderwood club was as effective as a single-shot rifle.

  Sue and her fellow ranger went in along the wall of the gate-tunnel, trying to force their way through the packed mass without getting caught up in it, kicking and shoving and using their rifle butts. A Tartessian saw her out of the corner of his eye and whipped his short broad chopping blade around in a reflex cut at someone obviously not of his people. Sue caught it on the stock of her rifle, grunting as the thick-shouldered power of the cut drove her into a half crouch; Jaditwara shot him in the face through the space Sue had vacated.

  The report was deafening in the confined space, even over the snarling brabble of voices, screams of pain, clatter of metal and stone on each other and on wood. Sue dropped the damaged firearm and snatched out her blades, shouldering aside the falling body as she rose; stabbed another Iberian in the groin, and whipped the hammer end of her tomahawk down on a man's arm and felt the bones crack. The muzzle of Jaditwara’s rifle came past her cheek again, and she ducked in reflex.

  The Tartessian soldiers still on their feet held the whole struggling mass of humanity in the gateway like a cork in a bottle. But they were too mixed with their enemies and friends to keep it plugged for long. Like a champagne cork when thumbs have weakened it just enough, this one popped out all of a sudden. It spilled out into the open space that ran just inside the walls-and the Tartessians were suddenly in even more trouble than they had been a minute before. There were four or five Indians for each Iberian, and in the open they could take advantage of it.

  Good, Sue thought, as the tribesmen poured into the fort-town and spread howling through the streets.

  The more trouble they've got, the less attention they'll pay to two Islanders in buckskin. She stooped, picked up a dead man's rifle, and knelt in a corner between two buildings to load it while Jaditwara covered her.

  "Let's go," she said. "Market square."

  They moved out, trotting along the streets pressed as close to one side as they could, where the roofs-hopefully-hid them from the sight of anyone on the walls or defensive towers.