The problem being that with the relatively small bombs, and the increasing ability of ships to fight the fires with foam agents, the ships had to be hit multiple times to ensure the fire got out of control. And in some cases dropping the bombs in precise locations would help, such as taking out the quarterdeck.
So being able to hit the three meter by three meter target was not an option, it was a standard. A standard the riders were not meeting.
He saw Joanna coming up from the ship with the small figure of Bast perched merrily on her neck. Only Bast would be crazy enough to ride a dragon without any safety straps. He wondered how she held on.
Then he thought about her leg strength and chuckled. He knew damned well how she held on.
He lined up on the target and nosed the wyvern over, making small corrections. The target wasn't moving in a regular pattern since it was being towed. It jerked forward and then slowed, then jerked, then slowed. He made small corrections on the dragon and then, when he felt he was at the minimum altitude, released his first bomb. He continued below the "floor" however to watch it drop. It hit just forward of the target with a small splash.
He pulled the wyvern back up to where the sergeant was waiting and signaled to her.
"Watch your first drop. Go below floor to watch. Floor on other drops."
She looked at him in incomprehension and signed back. "Watch drop?"
He slid the wyvern over until he was just above her.
"You can watch your first drop and go below the floor for the exercise!" he shouted. "You have to stay above the floor on the others." More signing lessons were clearly in the future.
"Okay!" she shouted.
He watched as she lined up and dropped and could tell she wasn't going to get anywhere near the target. The practice bomb landed more than ten meters to the side and well to the rear.
He waited as she flapped back to altitude and Joanna slid into his wing position.
"Not going so well, is it XO?" Joanna bellowed.
"No," Herzer signed, stooping over and lining up the target again. He tried to correct for its tendency to jerk but even as he dropped his load he was aware he'd missed. As he pulled the dragon up and over he glanced back and, sure enough, it landed behind it. Close, but not on target.
"This is damned near impossible," Herzer signed as he got up to altitude.
"Others do it," Bast signed back with a humorous fillip.
"I'm a lover, not a bomber," Herzer signed, fast so Zora wouldn't catch it.
Joanna turned over and lined up, her wings pulled back so she was correcting with only the tips. She spread them slightly halfway down to catch up to the target then continued on, looking more like some giant arrow than a dragon. When she released, she had her own controls, she didn't even look, just pulled out and used the momentum to carry her up on a controlled climb until she was just at stall speed and started flapping. The bomb hit the center of the target and exploded.
"That was amazing!" Zora yelled.
"Yes," Herzer signed back. "Now we have to figure out how to be amazing!" he added with a yell.
"Herzer," Joanna bellowed as she flapped back up to their position. "Don't start your dive, yet. Spouts to the south."
Herzer looked in the indicated direction and just caught the sight of a plume of breath. They'd had other sightings, but they had all been regular whales. Each sighting, however, had to be checked.
"You and Zora form on me," Joanna continued, winging over to the south.
He laid Lydy over and formed up on Joanna's wing then hooked the reins off and took out his semaphore paddles. He waved to the flagship until he saw a pennant raised with his number then signaled that they had spotted plumes to the south and were investigating. As he looked back he saw the ready dragon lift into the air as another came up from below and one of the Silverdrake dropped off the main-sail crosstree and headed towards the indicated sighting.
He shook his head and signaled for the Silverdrake to go high and give the fleet some cover. The Drakes had a tendency to go haring off after anything that struck their fancy. With the training group gone the fleet was without a reconnaissance cap, not to mention that when they reached the whales they were going to be below the horizon from the carrier. The Drake rider waved his arms in reply and headed upward in a steep climb as the three-dragon patrol continued towards the spouts.
Joanna was slowly climbing with occasional wingflaps and the other two dragons followed her. Herzer was careful to monitor Lydy to make sure she didn't tire; being out in the middle of the ocean when that happened would be bad.
It only took them about twenty minutes to get over the spouts and the black and white patterns showed them, clearly, to be orcas.
"How do you want to handle this, Commander?" Herzer signed.
Joanna continued to watch the orcas for a moment then winged over in a sharp, spiraling, dive. When she was at about five hundred meters she lined out again and spiraled the orcas, turning her head to the side as their shadow passed over the pod.
"I'm gonna let 'em go," Joanna bellowed. "They're naturals."
"You sure?" Herzer signed.
"No," Joanna admitted. "But they didn't bolt when we swept over them. I'd say they're dumb brute animals. And, anyway, they don't. move like Changed. There's just something different with the way that Changed act. I'd say these are nomads, so they're a danger to our selkies and delphinos. But they're not a danger to the fleet. So I say: Leave 'em be."
"Your call, Commander," Herzer yelled. "Besides, we're well away from the task force."
Bast suddenly cocked her head to the side and leaned out on the dragon's neck to yell something.
"You sure?" Joanna bellowed, turning her head around on its long, snakelike neck, to look at the elf.
"No!" Bast yelled. "Closer look!"
"Stay up here," Joanna said, looking at Herzer, and then she dove towards the water.
She lined up behind the pod and passed over it, fast, her wingtips nearly touching the water on either side. The whole time her head was moving from side to side and when she passed the pod she began beating for altitude, hard. As she did the pod made a radical turn to the north and dove.
"Changed!" Joanna bellowed. "I was wr. wr. not right. Herzer, you and Zora head back to the ship. Get another dragon and get up here with some wyverns. I'll shadow these. Signal hostile orca to south as soon as you get in range."
"Will do, Commander," Herzer said, gesturing at Zora.
"Wait," Bast called. She stood up on Joanna's back and began stripping off her clothes. She had left her bow but she was carrying the saber. When she was done she was wearing her baldric and the saber and nothing else. She looked over at Herzer with the bundle of clothes and armor in her hands and then shook her head.
"You'd never catch it," she said, toeing at Joanna.
"Are you crazy?" Herzer yelled. She was balanced on tiptoe on the back-ridge of a flying dragon nearly two thousand meters over the cold waters of the North Atlantis.
"Yes!" she yelled as Joanna lifted up and over Herzer's mount. Bast leapt lightly onto Joanna's wing-root, catching the uplift and then off into midair, landing with feet together on Lydy's back.
The wyvern reacted to the sudden impact by swinging from side to side as she tried to see who was running up her spine and it was all Herzer could do for a moment to keep her in control. Bast handled this much like a rodeo performer or an experienced sailor running out a crosstree, walking up the spine of the dragon, feet in line, until she dropped down on Herzer's back.
"Hold this, will you, lover?" she asked, lightly licking him on his ear.
"You are insane." Herzer chuckled, then pulled up slightly on the reins, getting Lydy above Joanna.
Bast repeated the performance, jumping off of Lydy's wing-root and onto Joanna's back. As soon as she was in place, Joanna dove for the water.
"Head for base," Herzer gestured at Zora.
"Help?" she asked, gesturing down.
"N
o," Herzer waved. "Base."
He passed an outbound flight as he headed for the carrier, his eye fixed on the Silverdrake high above. There were six wyverns, two with riders and four without. He really felt sorry for those poor damned orcas. For that matter, it was an even bet that Bast and Joanna were going to have finished off the pod by the time the rest of them got there.
The carrier had turned northeast, away from the potential threat, and they were already headed into the wind. He let Zora head in first, watching her air control. Experienced wyverns could almost land themselves, but the fleet had neither experienced wyverns nor experienced riders. Thus it was up to the riders to direct the wyverns on landing.
An innovation since his first carrier experience was a set of lines on the landing platform. The idea was for the wyverns to land between the second and third line, squarely in the middle of the landing zone. Another innovation was a net at the rear of the platform. He really hoped he never ended up in it.
After initial carrier development books had been found that, while not textbooks on naval aviation, per se, had many of the techniques that ancient peoples had developed for aircraft carriers. Most of the books were fiction and few of them were good, even to those who could read the ancient and baroque dialect in which they were written. They were loaded with acronyms the definition of which were often lost: SOL, SNAFU, and, frequently, FUBAR. But many of the terms and mythos had infected the naval dragon-riders. The stripes, for example, were referred to as "wires" which confused people that saw them. Landing between the second and third was a "three-wire." Signaling that you were prepared to land was referred to as "calling the ball" even though even Evan had not been able to get a Fresnel lens to work for dragons. The one ability that ancient aviators had that Herzer wished for at moments like this was the ability to fly straight on if they were going to miss their landing. If he tried it he'd smack into a net. And if the net wasn't rigged, he'd smack into a mast, which was worse. Actually, he'd probably plow into pri-fly.
He put that out of his mind, lining Lydy up and keeping his eyes on the paddles in the hands of the landing signal officer. He was pretty clean on the way in, corrected for the dead area behind the ship, got a last minute wave up and then slammed down dead between the two and three wire.
"Report," Skipper Karcher said as soon as he had walked his wyvern down to the maindeck.
"Spotted plumes to the south and went to investigate. Jo. Commander Gramlich thought they were normals at first but when she went down for a close inspection, on Bast's suggestion, she changed her mind. Last I saw, she and Bast were headed down to engage."
"Just the two of them?" Sassan said, aghast.
"Yes, Major," Herzer replied, somewhat tightly. "I've seen both Commander Gramlich and Bast in action in the water. I'm not worried about them, just whether there's anything left for the follow-on flight."
"That good, huh?" Skipper Karcher chuckled.
"Yes, ma'am," Herzer said, tossing the bundle in his hands up and down. "Bast jumped from Joanna to Lydy to give me these. Then jumped back. She's that good."
"What is that?" Sassan asked.
"Her clothes," Herzer said, dryly. "She didn't want to get them wet."
* * *
At a signal from the approaching wyverns that the orca were no longer a threat, Karcher turned the task force south to pick up Joanna and Bast; the returning dragon-riders had stated that when they got there all they found were five orca carcasses floating on the surface.
They were directed to the returning dragon by the cover riders and when they were finally sighted Bast was standing on Joanna's head, swaying from side to side as the dragon snaked through the water. Wyverns swam by using their wings but Joanna was long and thin enough that she found it easier to scull from side to side like a snake, her virtually invulnerable wings wrapped around her body as armor.
As the dragon passed the side of the ship Bast leapt off her head and onto the deck. Joanna had given her a bit of an assist but it should have been impossible for her to not only clear the bulwarks but land near the middle of the deck. When she saw Herzer she trotted over to him and leapt through the air again, landing, stark naked except for her sword, with her legs wrapped around his middle and one hand hooked in his collar.
"That was fun," she said, grinning and swinging back and forth, much like an orangutan hanging on a tree branch. "Let's find some more."
Skipper Karcher looked at her, obviously about to ask a question and then shut her mouth as Joanna climbed over the side of the ship. The starboard rear rail of the maindeck was removable and mats were laid in place for this exact purpose and Joanna slithered up onto the deck without incident.
"What happened, Commander?" Karcher asked.
"Oh, well," Joanna said, spreading her wings and shaking the water off as politely as she could, "they came at us in the same old way and we, you know, beat them in the same old way. What a terrible business."
"That's it?" Sassan asked.
"More or less," Bast said, jumping down from Herzer and taking her clothes. "Wellington and all. They tried to fight, and they couldn't win. And they tried to run, and they weren't fast enough. Felt sorry for them towards the end, really, until I remembered what they were like in the Isles."
"You could go pick them up," Joanna added. "As a wise delphino once quipped: Orca meat. Taste sweet."
"I. don't think so," Skipper Karcher said, shaking her head. "I think we have enough meat in the freezer. I need to get the task force back on course." With that she strode back up onto the quarterdeck.
"Well, I had my fill anyway," Joanna admitted. "Time for a lie-down."
"I don't think so," Herzer said. "I've got some paperwork for you to sign."
"You know how hard it is for me to hold a pen!" Joanna complained as she walked through the hatch. "I really don't get paid enough for this."
Chapter Twenty
"You know, they don't pay me enough for this," Edmund muttered.
The ship was passing through what the meteorologist euphemistically termed "a disturbance." Edmund called it a storm. Shar called it "good sailing" which Edmund had come to realize was the navy version of "good training."
And, as usual, his seasickness, under control in normal seas, was rearing its ugly head.
"Message from the mer, sir," a seaman said, handing him a form.
He unfolded it and frowned. "When did we get this?"
"Just now, sir," the messenger replied.
"What?" Shar asked, looking out at the tossing horizon. "Or can't I know?"
"There's a message tube on the way in," Edmund said. "Only I or. someone else can be the deliveree. I'm the closest."
"Must be hot," Shar commented. "From where?"
"That I can't tell you," Edmund admitted. "Looks like it should be here in about an hour. I'll be below in the meantime, praying to the porcelain god."
* * *
At the repeated knock on his door Edmund finally crawled to his feet and made it to his desk.
"Enter," he shouted over the creaking of the hull. Surely it wasn't supposed to make those groaning noises?
"Message tube, sir," the communications officer said. "Sir, there's a possibility this could be a booby trap. Do you want one of my people to open it? We have procedures."
"No." Edmund sighed, turning the bronze cylinder over in his hands. "I'll take my chances."
Once the officer had left he twisted the knurled top and slid out the paper inside.
"Eyes Only Edmund Talbot, Joel Travante, Sheida Ghorbani.
"Agent M established contact, Paul Bowman's harem. Contact Megan Travante, daughter of Joel Travante."
Edmund laid his head on the desk for a moment and groaned, then looked at the rest of the message.
"Identity positively confirmed by visual recognition and transmission of counter-signs. Subject presented with name 'Travante' on a 'new line' of materials. Responded with words 'Paul is very fatherly to us,' 'material will be given forensic e
xamination' and 'could lead to an inspection.' Terms, while ambiguous, taken together indicate positive contact. Unable to effect any intelligence transfer in first meeting except warning that Paul has intelligence source in UFS at the highest level. Words to effect: 'any passage of information up your corporate chain will (subject's emphasis) get to Paul.' 'Your new line will go nowhere (subject's emphasis) if anyone else is informed.'
"Assume from demeanor subject has further information of similar caliber. Risk to subject if information passed considered high. All communications can be considered monitored. Absent orders will contact subject one week from date of message.
"M"
John Ringo - Council Wars 03 - Against the Tide Page 24
