Icebreaker: A Fantasy Naval Thriller Read online

  “Blue flare, sir,” the sailor reported. “The Stelforma ship has seen us and fired a blue flare.”

  “Understood.”

  The Stelforma and the Republic of the Dales had been competing, clashing, feuding and fighting for over a century. There were protocols for when their ships met each other at sea—and while Coral’s magic would allow her to talk to another Dales ship at a significant distance, there would be no Dalebloods aboard a Stelforma warship.

  So, there was an agreed-upon code of colored flags and flares. Blue meant we should speak. It was basically an offer of truce but not the white flare of surrender.

  It was also not the yellow flare of back off or be fired upon or the red flare of surrender or be destroyed.

  “Presumptuous of them, isn’t that?” Coral murmured. “They’re in our waters.”

  “The storm may have driven them here, sir,” Rompa pointed out quietly.

  “I know that,” she replied. “Signals officer!”

  “Skipper?”

  Despite being locked inside a metal box for several weeks, Lieutenant Hirom Uberti still managed to look perfectly tanned. He was young, he was athletic, and even Coral had to admit he was very pretty. Her type didn’t extend to men, let alone boys, but she could see why the signals officer had been hauled in front of her for inappropriate relations three times.

  And if even one of those incidents had involved a rating or someone under Uberti’s command, she’d have broken the little shit out of the Navy. But they’d all been consensual and at least non-abusive on the surface. Just inappropriate enough that Uberti wasn’t going to make it past Lieutenant until he learned to say no.

  “Find one of your Daleblood ratings,” she ordered the man. Pretty or not, the Seablood would freeze to death if he stepped outside the heated hull. “Green flare.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Uberti saluted and dashed away with commendable enthusiasm.

  Concealing her desire to shake her head at the youth, she turned back to the windows and watched the lighthouse grow closer.

  “Our trawler guide has dropped a floating flare in the water,” Rocchi told her. “It’s a bit farther out than I’d say is safe per the charts, but…they’re the locals.”

  “On the other hand, we know Songwriter’s actual draft,” Coral replied. “Still. Bring us up to their flare and drop the anchors.”

  She could just make out the trawler heading toward what looked like a giant shed. As they drew closer to the shore, she could see that the entirety of where she would expect to see the fishing wharfs was covered by similar structures—and what light and smoke she could see suggested that they were being heated.

  “Interesting,” she said.

  “Skipper?” Rompa asked carefully.

  “The locals have covered docks for all of their ships, even the bigger trawlers,” she pointed out. “And they appear to have heating for them. This kind of storm isn’t new to them.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like it,” her XO admitted.

  “And that, Jimmy, is why we’re going to need to talk to the mayor,” Coral told him, her gaze shifting away from the town to the Stelforma cruiser with its harsh white arc lights.

  “After we find out what the Stelforma are doing here.”

  “Skipper, the launch is having issues getting started.”

  Coral leveled A Look at the Chief Petty Officer responsible for Songwriter’s boats. Justyn Kaloyanov was easily her own age and had served on every type of ship the Navy had. He was, in her considered opinion, one of the most useful Seabloods aboard her ship—and even with two coats wrapped around him, he probably shouldn’t have been on the deck.

  “And?” she asked.

  Behind her, Lieutenant Johanna Calvin was sorting out a landing party of Dales Marines. She was passing out bolt-action carbines and semiautomatic pistols, checking harnesses, and, Coral knew, keeping an eye on the ship’s Captain.

  “The little corn-oil engines aren’t meant for this kind of cold, Skipper,” Kaloyanov told her bluntly. “I managed to get out for a few minutes and check out the engine. There’s nothing wrong with her ’cept that she’s frozen.”

  “Am I rowing over to the Stelforma ship, Chief?”

  The launch’s single rear driver wheel would create drag if it wasn’t turning, but Coral figured her party of Daleblood boatswains and Marines, the only people she’d take into the cold, could make it work by sheer muscle power.

  “You could,” the Chief told her. “Or you could wait a few minutes while the oil lamps and blankets I had the boatswains set up thaw the engine enough to rev her up. Once she fires, she’ll keep herself warm, but it’ll take a bit.”

  “I expected you to have a solution, Chief,” Coral replied with a chuckle. “I’m glad not to be disappointed.”

  “Thank you, Skipper.”

  “And, Chief?” Coral said calmly as Kaloyanov turned away. He paused and turned back to her, questioningly.

  “Do not risk any more sixty-year-old Seabloods out on the decks right now,” she told him softly but pointedly. “Am I clear?”

  “Yes, Skipper.”

  Moments after her conversation with the Chief finished, Calvin was at Coral’s side, extending a belt of waterproof webbing with a blocky semiautomatic and the Captain’s dress sword strapped to it.

  She regarded the gun with scant favor, but she put the belt on. The sword was Dalesteel, and despite its simplistic appearance, it was potentially capable of cutting the face-hardened steel that armored Songwriter.

  In the case of this particular sword, it also predated the Republic’s ability to make face-hardened steel. And the Republic itself, if she trusted family tradition. The art of making Dalesteel was limited to a few swordsmiths scattered through the Dales, but Coral suspected that most Dalebloods could correctly figure the core component.

  The magic of the Dalebloods was literally in the Blood, after all.

  “Party of twelve drawn up, sir,” Calvin told her. “All Daleblood, as requested. Sir…”

  The Marine trailed off and Coral swung a long-suffering gaze on her subordinate.

  “Speak, Lieutenant,” she ordered.

  Calvin snapped to attention, fixing her gaze on the bulkhead behind Coral.

  “Sir, Stelforma prejudices against Dalebloods are well known,” she observed. “My Sergeants believe our cold-weather gear should suffice to allow a party of Seabloods to cross to the Stelforma vessel. That may defuse potential tensions, sir.”

  “It might,” Coral agreed. “But I am disinclined, Lieutenant, to risk our Marines to soothe the mood of a foreign vessel that has no business being in waters this far north at all, let alone in this fjord and moored off the wharf of one of our villages.

  “So, while I could take Seablood Marines and it would not, perhaps, be an unacceptable risk to them…I won’t. Do you understand, Lieutenant Calvin?”

  “Yes, sir!” the younger woman said crisply. “Party is turned out as instructed, Captain!”

  “Then once the Chief tells us the boat has decided to cooperate, we shall be on our way.”

  Chapter 5

  Songwriter’s hull loomed behind them like a steel cliff as the launch hit the water. The boatswains unhooked it from the cranes and then slowly brought the harshly coughing engine up to speed, moving carefully through the water toward the Stelforma ship.

  “I see five guns on this side, all casemated,” Lieutenant Calvin noted—marking that the guns were mounted in an armored section, limiting their flexibility compared to turrets or open mounts. “Assuming she’s got the same on the other side, Songwriter has her outgunned with just the secondaries.”

  “They’re also only ten-centimeter guns,” Coral pointed out as she examined the other ship. “Even at this range, she can’t breach our belt armor. There’s a reason we’re going aboard their ship, Lieutenant.”

  For all that the cruiser was built by their age-old rival, its shared heritage with Songwriter was clear. Modern Stelforma ships were based on ships captured from the Dales over a century-plus of hot and cold war, which meant that the cruiser had basically the exact same hull form as Songwriter.

  At, of course, about sixty percent of the scale. The cruiser—the name Dancer was painted on her bow, Coral realized—was eighty meters long to Songwriter’s hundred and forty. She had the same flared stern with a full-width driver wheel, and her side wheels flanked an upper deck structure that Coral doubted deserved the title citadel.

  Three ten-centimeter guns were visible in single casemate mounts between the side wheels and the bow, with two more in identical mounts between the side and driver wheels. That gave the Stelforma ship a five-gun broadside—but Songwriter had a six-gun broadside from her casemated twelve-centimeter secondaries and had the two dual twenty-centimeter turrets.

  Dancer was utterly outclassed. She was a fifth of Songwriter’s size and completely lacking in the armor that shielded the bigger ship. Her sole chance against a battleship was to be well away from it—and the storm had left the two ships no choice.

  The blue flag that matched Dancer’s flare hung from the signal pole amidships, and Coral waited in calm silence as the senior boatswain brought the launch alongside.

  “Hello, Dancer!” the petty officer yelled up. “Captain and party to come aboard, as requested!”

  For a few seconds, there was no answer. Coral was about to order Lieutenant Calvin to break out the grappling hooks when a voice finally replied.

  “We’re lowering a ladder,” they shouted down. “Tie off the launch to the bollards and bring the crew up too. Ain’t nobody should be out in this cold, no matter what!”

  “Wait here, sir,” Calvin instructed Coral.

  Despite a momentary flash of indignati
on at being ordered around, Coral obeyed. This was the Marines’ territory more than hers, after all.

  Calvin and two of her Marines swarmed up the rope ladder in a blur. From the surprised yelp that Coral heard from the deck, the Stelforma crew hadn’t been expecting Daleblood.

  “All clear, sir,” Calvin shouted down.

  Coral moved instantly and was on the ladder before any of the other Marines or boatswains could get onto it. She wasn’t much slower than the Marines in her ascent, and stepped onto the deck of the cruiser like she owned it.

  Calvin and her Marines didn’t quite have the three heavily swathed Stelforma crew members at gunpoint—but the body language was very clear about the level of threat that was going to be tolerated.

  “I am Captain Coral Amherst,” she told the Stelforma. “I am here to speak to your Captain about just what your ship is doing in Republic waters.”

  “Of…of course, sir,” one of the sailors replied. The three Stelforma appeared to be wearing at least two full sets of cold-weather gear layered over each other, rendering them indistinguishable and anonymous. “Follow me?”

  “Lead on,” Coral ordered.

  As she and her party followed, she glanced around Dancer, taking in the differences between her ship and a Dales warship. The arc lights were the most immediately obvious. There were no oil lamps there—instead the arcane devices behind thick glass panels spilled a harsh white light through the storm.

  Coral suspected that the arc lights and similar so-called common magics of the Stelforma were more engineering than magic, but she had also seen the true High Magics of the Stelforma and had to concede that those were just as real as the power that flowed in her own blood.

  Other than the lights, the ship could have been an old Dales cruiser. Her more-modern Dales peers would have had three turrets with paired twelve-centimeter guns rather than the casemated single ten-centimeter cannon, but Coral had served on cruisers with all casemates.

  It had taken a long time for the Dales to get turret hydraulics down to a size that made cruiser turrets practical, after all.

  The clearest distinction didn’t become truly visible, thanks to the storm, until they reached the entrance to the citadel. Like a Dales ship, the cruiser’s name was painted above the door, but where the Republic Navy would have painted their red chevron on black flag directly on the door, the Stelforma had flanked the door with two symbols.

  To port of the door was a sword on a blue circle, the symbol of the Williams Princedom. The princedom ruled over several of the largest and most industrialized islands in the Southern Archipelago, and the prince’s fleet formed the core of the Stelforma navy.

  On the other side was the half-green, half-blue orb-on-sun of the Stelforma themselves. Technically a church, the Stelforma were omnipresent in the archipelago’s princedoms, kingdoms, and republics—and since they controlled all of the Stelforma’s High Magics and all of the banks…

  The Stelforma pretended to be a loose coalition of nations, but the Republic treated them as a single theocratic nation…and no one from the southern islands ever seemed to find that a problem.

  Inside the citadel, the pretense of being a Williams Princedom ship grew even more threadbare. The orb-on-sun of the Stelforma was everywhere. It was the default decorative element on any part of the warship that had any decoration at all.

  Their hosts ushered the full party into the citadel, away from the brutal chill of the outside storm, and then paused in confusion as they considered the very crowded corridor full of their ancient enemies.

  “Wait here, please?” one of the muffled sailors told them, and then vanished deeper into the ship.

  The other two were sufficiently heavily clothed to form a physical barricade keeping Coral and her companions in the initial corridor. Given that Coral had intentionally brought enough Daleblood Marines to capture the ship, likely without even much difficulty, she wasn’t overly concerned.

  She was getting impatient and considering taking the ship by storm by the time an officer finally appeared along the corridor and gestured the sailors aside. He was a tall, dark-skinned man clad in a knee-length black tunic, a few centimeters taller than Coral herself.

  He met her angry glare calmly and bowed slightly.

  “I had to see for myself,” he told her. “I did not believe that the Dales would be so foolish.”

  “If you think this is a trap, you will be sorely disappointed,” she said. “I am here because you sent up a blue flare. My standing orders require me to respect that rather than sinking this ship for being in our waters.

  “But I suggest you talk quickly.”

  “We do not mean any harm to Keller’s Landing or your vessel,” the officer said swiftly. “But the Priest-Captain cannot speak with one of the Cursed. Her presence is sanctified and cannot be so polluted. You must return to your ship and send one of the untainted to speak with her.”

  Coral smiled at the man. He might even have been so foolish to believe it was a friendly gesture—but from the way even his darkly tanned skin paled, she doubted it.

  “I have done you the favor of boarding your ship myself,” she pointed out. “That is the first and last concession I am prepared to make, officer. Your ‘Priest-Captain’ will either speak to me or she will speak to Songwriter’s guns.

  “I suggest you choose swiftly. We both know that I can order this ship sunk from here…and that my party will survive that.”

  Probably. It wasn’t a theory that Coral really wanted to test—there were enough Dalebloods on Songwriter that she could communicate her orders via the Bloodspeech, but she was far less certain of the ability of even her people to survive the ship being obliterated by the twenty-centimeter guns.

  “I…” The officer trailed off. “I will check with her…”

  “No, officer,” Coral told him. “You will take me and my escort to her. I am out of patience and out of time. One way or another, I am going to speak to the Captain of this ship. How many of your people are going to die before I do?”

  He was silent for at least twenty seconds, until Coral laid her hand on the sword at her waist. That drew his gaze instantly, and he exhaled a long, twisted sigh.

  “Yourself alone,” he demanded.

  “The Captain will bring two bodyguards,” Calvin interrupted instantly. “This is not negotiable.”

  From the Stelforma officer’s expression, that was three more Dalebloods than he wanted to take into the Priest-Captain’s presence—but since Coral knew without even looking that Lieutenant Calvin also had her hands on her weapons, all the man could do was nod his acquiescence.

  Chapter 6

  The designers of the Stelforma cruiser had clearly put at least a passing thought into the need for their vessels to act as diplomats for the disparate parts of the theocracy. Coral and her pair of Marines were escorted into a conference room on the starboard side.

  Coral suspected that the space served double duty as a mess for either the officers or the priests—not fully overlapping categories—but a lot more money had been sunk into decorating it than in the rest of the ship. Pale wood paneling had been installed on the walls to cover the bare steel of the rest of the ship, and there were heavy drapes drawn over what might even be windows on the outer hull.

  Those drapes were decorated with the orb-on-sun of the Stelforma, and the large table in the center of the room had the same symbol inlaid into it. A large painting of the Abduction of the Chosen, the mythical origin of the Stelforma, was mounted on the far wall.

  Even if Coral believed that the myth of the original Stelforma worshippers being stolen from paradise by giant birds to be utter fiction, she had to admit that the artist had done an amazing job with the piece. She suspected that she’d be able to count individual feathers on the immense birds and details of their victims.

  Still, her main focus was on the woman standing behind the table, studying them as they entered. The Stelforma priestess stood next to a brazier giving off light, heat, and scented smoke—though most of the light in the room came from a set of arc lights mounted on the inner wall.

  The woman wore a high-collared cassock that hung down to her shins, tightly cinched around the waist and clearly tailored closely enough to be uncomfortable in multiple areas. Still, Dancer’s Captain seemed unbothered by the garment as her officer approached.