Icebreaker: A Fantasy Naval Thriller Page 2

  “Jimmy, pass the word to the Chiefs,” she said with a sigh. “Have them pull in everyone we can spare.”

  They’d already cut the exterior crew down significantly. She glanced down at the forward twenty-centimeter turret, its pair of guns currently aligned with the ship’s keel, and sighed internally.

  “Pull the turret crews as well,” she ordered. “The heating in those isn’t up to protecting the Seabloods, and we’ll see an enemy long before we’ll need anyone to fire the damn guns.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, Jimmy?”

  “Sir?”

  “Make sure the Chiefs find something for them to do,” she told him with a soft chuckle. “Storm or no storm, we don’t want the crew getting bored.”

  “I imagine they already have some ideas, sir.”

  The problem that Coral had been concerned about since the moment they had turned away from the storm now manifested itself in full force. The storm was barely seven kilometers north of them, and they only had two and a bit kilometers left south of them.

  As they turned east and powered along the coast, they were no longer running from the storm. Now they were running across the storm front, counting minutes and kilometers as they ran for sheltered waters.

  From the flying bridge, the wind hammered into her. Songwriter’s own thirty-kilometer-an-hour speed would have been harsh enough in this chill, but the storm’s precursors were sweeping the sea as well. The water might not be flash-freezing around them yet, but the sun was already blocked by clouds, and bursts of ice pellets intermittently bombarded the ship’s upper decks.

  The wind was harsh and cold, pulling the already-unmeasurable temperature down even further. Coral could withstand the cold still, but she could feel the edge of fatigue starting to creep in. Reaching inside her uniform jacket, she removed the energy bar she’d stored there for just this need.

  She might not have been as concerned as Dr. Fredericks would have liked, but Coral knew the limits of her magic and how to sustain them. The block of chocolate, stuffed with dried fruit, roasted nuts and pieces of flavored pure sugar, would provide enough calories to keep her going.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Seaman at the range finder shiver suddenly against the cold. She turned to him sharply.

  “Seaman David, report,” she snapped. She needed the younger Daleblood not to collapse.

  “Sorry, sir. Cold is getting to me. I’m… I’m…”

  Coral growled and the youth quailed. Reaching inside her jacket, she pulled out a second energy bar and forced it into the sailor’s hand. It took the rating a moment to realize that she wasn’t angry at him.

  “Eat this and get yourself back inside the hull,” she ordered. “You’re no good to anyone out here if you let your magic run out. Have the Chief send up a replacement, then report to Dr. Fredericks.

  “Understood, Seaman David?”

  He stared blankly at the bar in his hand and she sighed.

  “Miron,” she said, forcing herself to gentle her tone rather than let concern sharpen it. “Get back inside the ship. That is an order.”

  “Yes, sir,” he managed to stammer out, moving slowly toward the door inside.

  She watched him for a moment to make sure he was going to make it, then finished her energy bar as she studied the coastline south of them. They were running out of time, but she trusted Rocchi not to have doomed them.

  Keller’s Fjord had to be nearby. Focusing her vision again, she swept her gaze along the rocky coast, looking for the gap in the cliffs that would mark their safe haven.

  There?

  “There!” the lookout above her—who was hopefully watching her magic better than Seaman David had been, but had to be due for replacement soon—shouted. “I can see the fjord! I make it three klicks farther east—and I see a couple of fishing boats making the same run as us!”

  “Let’s follow them in, Jimmy,” Coral ordered into the speaking pipe. “I’ll be coming in once we’re in the fjord. Someone have the catalog section on Keller’s Landing ready for me.”

  Just because the town was officially part of the Republic didn’t mean the locals were going to appreciate having a fifteen-thousand-ton battleship show up at their fishing wharf!

  Chapter 3

  As Songwriter drew closer to her destination, Coral could easily see why the main chart—the one that showed the whole known world—wouldn’t have shown the fjord. The gap between cliffs that led to the hopefully sheltered inlet was maybe a quarter-kilometer across.

  “Are we sure that the fjord is deep enough to take Songwriter?” she asked the speaking pipe to the bridge.

  “The charts say yes, so long as we stay at the center of the inlet,” Rocchi replied almost instantly. “Soundings are ten years old, from the cruiser Dawn. They should still be good, though I don’t think anyone would mind a local pilot.”

  Coral didn’t bother to reply to that. The likelihood that a Seablood Landing this distant from the main Dales had any Dalebloods in their population was extremely low—and that meant that the locals were huddled into their homes around whatever heating they had.

  Except…

  “Seaman Askes,” she shouted up to the woman in the crow’s nest. “Do you still see those fishing boats?”

  “No, sir,” Askes called down. “They just passed the cliffs into the inlet. I can’t see them anymore.”

  “Damn.” Coral shook her head. There went the hope of asking one of the local boats to guide them in—though she couldn’t blame the Seablood fishers their rush to get out of the killing cold around them. “Keep your eyes peeled for them,” she ordered. “Get a signal ready to ask for navigation help.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  If there were a dozen people left on the battleship’s upper hull, Coral would have to find a third of them and physically throw the idiots into the heated interior of the ship. She could only think of half a dozen posts that had to be crewed no matter what. Anyone beyond that was unnecessarily risking themselves.

  She was well aware that the list of those unnecessarily risking themselves included her, but she had faith in the power of her magic. If nothing else, she had two energy bars left in the inner pocket of her uniform jacket.

  Coral might have underestimated the risk until Fredericks called her on it, but she wasn’t going to let her crew freeze in the storm. She’d ask nothing of them she wouldn’t ask of herself—but her crew had less ability to tell Coral no than Coral herself did.

  Songwriter shifted under her, metal creaking and frigid seawater spraying across the deck as the helmsman turned the ship into the fjord. Engines growled as the steering paddlewheels surged to maximum and opposing power, turning the ship almost ninety degrees inside her own length.

  “Sir!” Askes shouted down. “One of the fishing boats is still in the channel. They’re flashing a lantern at us—standard code for Follow, uncertain waters.”

  “Well.” Coral leaned on the edge of the flying bridge and bestowing a beatific smile on the distant trawler whose crew were risking their lives to guide her ship in. “Someone may just be owed the Thanks of the Republic.”

  She had the authority to give the civilian crew that set of medals, and she would if they guided Songwriter in safely. She’d also make sure there was actually money to go with the official Thanks.

  Medals, after all, were hard to eat or buy corn oil with.

  “Helm, Seaman Askes is going to be calling down from the crow’s nest,” she said into the speaking tube. “We appear to have a volunteer guide and we’re going to follow them in. Carefully.”

  And since they were now inside the inlet and, hopefully, somewhat safe from the storm, it was time for the Captain to come inside and see what was waiting for them in Keller’s Landing.

  First, though…

  She stepped away from the speaking tube and looked back at the storm. It was a lot closer, and she could see chunks of flash-frozen ice at most two kilometers away. She smiled coldly at the black clouds and gave the entire storm a single-fingered gesture older than the Republic of the Dales itself.

  “I don’t know what dark magic conjured you from the night,” she told the storm. “But you were never going to catch my ship!”

  The oil lamps kept the bridge well lit, even as the storm’s darkness wrapped around the ship and smothered the afternoon sun to nothingness. There was a flicker to their light that never went away, but Coral and her crew were used to that.

  Songwriter’s bridge was one of the larger spaces on the battleship, but it contained too much equipment and too many people to be considered spacious. The helm was actually one level lower down in the citadel, but there was a secondary chart table in there, along with the speaking tubes to connect to a dozen separate parts of the ship, and a dozen other stations and paraphernalia required for the battleship’s Captain to command her in action.

  “So far, our local guide is keeping us to about the path the charts would suggest,” Rocchi told her as she stepped up to the chart table.

  There was a thick blue book on the side of the table, with a ribbon bookmark pulled through it. That was the catalog, she knew, and the ribbon probably marked the spot for Keller’s Landing.

  “She’s only making fifteen klicks; we’ve slowed down to stay behind her,” Rompa told her. “Even if she wasn’t guiding us, I wouldn’t want to pass her at full speed. We’d swamp her.”

  Coral looked past her XO, out the window at the storm-lashed cliffs surrounding them. So far, there hadn’t been anything shallow enough to call a beach. She presumed that Keller’s Landing itself was on lower ground, but the mountains around them suggested that veering from their course was a bad idea.

  “I’m not sure we want to be going full speed through
this regardless,” she pointed out. “It seems like a recipe for testing how well our hull stands up to mountains, and I can guess how that test would end.”

  Like every ship in the Dales, Songwriter traced her lineage to the evacuation ships of the Great Fleet. Like them, her bow was designed to crush through ice, which might be very, very useful shortly—but it wasn’t going to help them against a fifty-meter-high wall of rock.

  “What do we have on the Landing?” she asked Rocchi, gesturing to the thick blue book. “I presume they are in the catalog?”

  “Of course, sir,” Rocchi confirmed. “It’s…isolated, sir. According to the catalog, they were one of the last Landings to be found, and governance is still loose.” He shook his head. “Based on the detailed notes, we don’t even collect taxes in Keller’s Landing. A postal ship comes through twice a year, and there’s an annual stop by one of the northern corn-oil tankers. I’d guess they see a tramp freighter or two every year as well, and trade fish oil and whaleskin for machine parts and engines to keep the fishing fleet running.”

  All of which made sense to Coral. It was unlikely that a northerly community like this grew enough crops to both feed themselves and render corn down into fuel for their ships. That was why the northern tankers existed, a handful of ships that made a long circuit across the northern settlements like Keller’s Landing, selling the corn-oil fuel necessary to run their engines.

  That oil was probably the only thing the locals used Republic tender for. Their dealings with the tramp freighters would give them the currency, and they’d turn around and spend most or all of it with the tanker crews. That made collecting taxes difficult enough to not be worth it, Coral figured—and since the northern tankers were taxed, it was unnecessary.

  “Population?” she asked. “Any idea how many boats and trawlers we’re looking at?”

  “The mayor sends a report into Daleheart with the postal ship once a year,” Rocchi said. “Last one said about five thousand people, all Seabloods, and about thirty boats. Only four over a hundred tons.”

  A single ship of the Great Fleet would have landed three thousand people, plus or minus about five hundred. If there were only five thousand of them after two hundred years…

  “Rough place to live,” Coral observed aloud.

  “The ocean is always a hard way to make a living,” Rompa agreed. The XO’s family were fishers in more southerly climes, she recalled. Another reason the Seablood’s rise to his current rank was surprising.

  Impressive, she supposed. He was a credit to his blood.

  “Our trawler friend is slowing,” the watcher reported. “Looks like we’ve got a sharp twist in the inlet coming up.”

  “That’s good for sheltering the harbor,” Coral murmured. “Even if it slows us down. Engines to one-third power. Let’s stay behind the locals and follow them through. They know these waters.”

  She had a great deal of faith in Songwriter’s armor and its ability to shrug off shellfire. But Songwriter’s belly and keel were significantly thinner than her main belt. If the battleship’s entire hull had been fifteen centimeters of face-hardened steel, Coral would be less concerned about running her aground, but even Songwriter’s mighty engines couldn’t have moved that mass at any decent speed.

  “Let’s hope they’re estimating our draft correctly,” Rompa muttered, looking at the windows where ice pellets and snow obscured their view forward. “We run a lot deeper than any trawler ever built.”

  “Unless they’re idiots, they’ll err on the side of caution and take us through the deepest possible channels,” Coral replied. She presumed that back-of-beyond Seablood fishers knew their own waters more than well enough to guide the battleship through safely. She also presumed they were smart enough not to attempt to founder Songwriter intentionally...

  “Coming about the bend,” Rocchi murmured, his gaze flickering between his charts and the windows as he spoke. Unlike Rompa, the Daleblood navigator presumably could make out at least the cliffs through the storm.

  “We’re at twelve klicks and slowing,” the helm rating reported from steerage beneath them. “Turn complete.”

  “Map says we should be about a kilometer from the town now,” the navigator told the senior officers. “If it wasn’t for this mess, we’d be able to see them now. Topography says the cliffs on the west side should be dropping toward a small valley that reaches the water.”

  “Lighthouse at thirty degrees starboard,” the crow’s nest lookout announced. “Someone’s burning a light to guide them all home.”

  Even Coral smiled at the lookout’s poetic commentary—and at the news that they were definitely in the right place.

  “Keep following that trawler,” she ordered. “It’s good to know we’re where we need to be. Are we sheltered yet?”

  “Mercury’s still frozen,” Rompa said grimly. “We’re going to hit ice here in the inlet. The only reason it’s not already solid is that this cold is ridiculously out of season. I wouldn’t expect the fjord to freeze up for another month at least.”

  “If we are sheltered from the storm that is flash-freezing the fucking ocean, we can deal with normal ice,” Coral pointed out acidly.

  “We’ve effectively made two full ninety-degree turns,” Rocchi reported. “There are mountains between us and the sea now, sir. We’re as sheltered as we’re going to get.”

  “Alert! Warship!”

  Every eye on the bridge snapped to the speaking tube linked to the crow’s nest as the lookout’s words echoed through the enclosed room.

  “Report,” Coral barked, crossing the room to the tube before anyone else could move.

  “There’s a cruiser lit up in the bay. Stelforma colors!”

  They were five thousand kilometers from the nearest Stelforma base. That ship had no business being this far north—let alone being anchored at a Republic settlement.

  “Rouse the Daleblood members of the turret crews,” Coral ordered levelly, searching through the storm to find the other ship. “Crew the guns.”

  She could guess how an open-ocean warship had ended up in the fjord—the same reason as Songwriter—but that didn’t mean the Stelforma were going to be sensible.

  After all, the Stelforma believed that all of the Dalebloods were irredeemably cursed by ancient evil.

  Chapter 4

  The storm battering Songwriter was a pale shadow of the monster that had chased them into the fjord, but it was enough to cloud their vision and occasionally jolt the immense mass of the battleship. Their trawler guide couldn’t have been quite as oblivious to the potential problem between the two warships, but she continued to guide the Dale ship in toward the town.

  “We can’t get right up to the town,” Rocchi warned, the navigator’s gaze fixated on the lights of the Stelforma cruiser. “But we should be able to get up to about a hundred meters.”

  “Take us in, navigator,” Coral ordered. “Jimmy, are the guns crewed?”

  “A and B turrets both report crew on hand,” Rompa confirmed. “Coming about to target the Stelforma. Handy of them to light themselves up like that.”

  Coral could only imagine the sound that the turrets’ hydraulics were making while moving their multi-ton weight. They would be warmed by channeled heat from the engines, keeping the fluids liquid, but only so much could be done in these kinds of temperatures.

  “Range,” she demanded.

  “Six hundred meters to the Stelforma ship, about fifty more to the shore,” a sailor reported crisply, listening to a speaking tube from one of the external platforms.

  At that range, even Songwriter’s casemated twelve-centimeter secondary guns would have a basically flat trajectory, let alone the twenty-centimeter main cannon.

  “Sir!”

  Coral turned to face the interrupting sailor and arched one eyebrow at her silently.

  The woman swallowed hard, quailing under her Captain’s gaze.

  “Speak, woman,” Coral barked.