Icebreaker: A Fantasy Naval Thriller Page 4

  “Manuel, please,” she murmured as the man opened his mouth. “I warned you.”

  “They insisted, Your Excellency. I told them the Cursed could not—”

  “She is their Captain and I need to speak to their Captain,” the priestess said sharply. The entire conversation was half-whispered—a waste of effort, given Daleblood hearing. “It is what it must be. Leave us, Commander Fodor.”

  The officer—Commander Manuel Fodor, Coral presumed—laid his hand over his heart and bowed slightly before withdrawing.

  The woman turned her attention back to Coral and her party, and spread her hands slightly. Her face and hands were the only visible skin on the woman, but both were extraordinarily pale to Coral’s eyes. Most of the Stelforma she’d met were even more tanned than the people of the Dales.

  “Welcome aboard Dancer, Captain,” the priestess greeted her at last. “I am Priest-Captain Angelica Carrasco. By the grace of our Chosen Mother and the authority of Prince Francesco Williams, I am the commanding officer and First Cleric of the Williams Princedom cruiser Dancer.”

  “And you have no business in Republic waters,” Coral said sharply.

  “Please, Captain, introduce yourself, sit,” Carrasco asked with a sigh as she settled into her own seat. “Your escorts may sit as well, if they wish. I have wine or tea, if you desire?”

  “No, thank you.” Coral considered the situation for a moment, then sighed herself and took a seat across from the Stelforma woman. “I am Captain Coral Amherst, commander of Songwriter, a battleship of the Northern Squadron.

  “Tasked, I must note, to protect our northern communities from threats and to guard our waters from the Stelforma.”

  “We weren’t in your waters, Captain Amherst,” Carrasco told her. She took a moment to pick up the bottle of wine on the table and fill a ceramic cup—marked, like so much else on the ship, with the Stelforma blazon.

  “We are now,” she conceded after taking a sip. “It was not our plan.”

  “You are currently sitting in the harbor of a Republic settlement. I need more than ‘it was not our plan’ to not regard you as an enemy,” Coral said.

  “If you did not already suspect our situation, Captain Amherst, you would have fired black flares and boarded my ship,” Carrasco pointed out.

  “My mission is…none of your concern,” she continued. “A religious expedition, let us leave it at that. We were almost a thousand kilometers north of here, actively avoiding any Republic settlement or outposts we were aware of, let alone the Dales landmass itself.

  “And then we met the hellfrost storm. We ran ahead of it for four days, Captain Amherst. In truth? My charts of the northern coast of the Dales are insufficient for me to have found this fjord. Only the Divine guided us to Keller’s Landing.”

  “These people are—”

  “The locals have been amazingly welcoming, as any seafarer would be to an injured ship,” Carrasco interrupted Coral. “I have not and will not do them any harm.

  “We did not desire to enter Dales waters, and as soon as the storm passes, we will leave. If you will permit it.”

  Coral regarded the other woman steadily. Carrasco was pale-skinned and severe-featured, the sharp edges of her face only accentuated by the pitch black of her high-collared uniform. It was the silver buttons of the uniform that seemed out of place, not the woman’s ivory-white skin and dark brown hair.

  There was an austere beauty to the priestess, though given her opinion of Dalebloods, that was a pointless assessment on Coral’s part.

  “At least you recognize your position, unlike your officer,” she finally told Carrasco. Coral may have come aboard the Stelforma woman’s ship, but Carrasco was the supplicant there. Dancer was in Republic waters—and regardless of who was in the right, Coral’s ship outmassed Carrasco’s five to one.

  And a very large part of that difference was armor. Even at this range, Dancer would need great luck or help from their Divine to have any chance of damaging Songwriter. The biggest problem that Coral’s crew would have would be fusing their shells correctly to not explode on the other side of the Stelforma ship.

  “Commander Fodor’s job is to protect me and this ship,” Carrasco noted. “Like many of the lay personnel aboard this ship, he regards the protection of the clergy as a higher duty.

  “For my part, the preservation of this ship and her crew is my highest duty, as sworn before the Divine herself. We did not intend to violate your waters, and I beg the ancient compassion of seafarers. You saw the storm.”

  “I did.”

  Coral held her silence for a few moments after that, letting the other woman stew. “You are aware, I assume, of the Northern Doctrine?” she finally said. “Per treaties between the Stelforma and the Republic, you are barred from traveling north of the twentieth parallel. You have effectively confessed to me that your plan was to do so.”

  A thousand kilometers north of Keller’s Fjord wasn’t past that line—but it was a lot closer than any Stelforma ship should have been going.

  “Perhaps,” Carrasco conceded. “But we did not breach the twentieth parallel. We only entered your waters when running before a storm that gave us no choice. The Divine brought us to safety here. We have done no harm to the locals.”

  “I will be verifying that with the mayor,” Coral said coldly. “But…if that is true, then I will permit you to leave safely.”

  Carrasco was not wrong to call on the compassion of seafarers. For the same reason that a Dales ship would rescue the survivors of a Stelforma ship they sank themselves, she could not wreck the foreign ship for finding safe harbor in that storm.

  “Your compassion is appreciated, Captain, and will do you some credit before the Divine,” Carrasco told her. “I…”

  “Need something else, don’t you?” Coral asked.

  She could guess. If Dancer had more than four hundred tons of corn oil aboard, Coral wanted to know what new magic the Stelforma had created. From Carrasco’s description of their flight, they’d run over three thousand kilometers in total to travel a thousand kilometers south and reach Keller’s Landing—and they’d done so at full speed.

  Dancer likely had a range of ten to twelve thousand kilometers, but that was at an economical speed. Not maximum speed. That she’d survived four days at full power spoke well of the Williams Princedom’s engineers, but she must have drained her tanks dry doing it.

  “We need fuel,” Carrasco admitted, exactly as Coral had anticipated. “Our nearest base is almost four thousand kilometers away. I need…” She sighed. “We need a hundred and fifty thousand liters of diesel to make that trip.

  “That’s half of what Keller’s Landing has. But only about a tenth of what I expect Songwriter has at full load.”

  Carrasco was underestimating Songwriter’s fuel tanks, Coral suspected—or pretending to. She was right in that Coral could give the cruiser enough fuel to get home without risking her ability to complete her patrol.

  Except…

  “Neither Keller’s Landing nor Songwriter have…‘diesel’?” she pointed out, carefully pronouncing the word Carrasco had used.

  The Stelforma Captain paused, then took a long swallow of her wine as if she was trying to work out how to phrase something. She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “Corn oil,” she said, failing to hide the exasperation in her voice. “Your corn oil is biodiesel. We boil tar for it; you mix vegetable oil with lye and wood alcohol. End result burns the same. I can run my ship on your corn oil.”

  Coral didn’t know enough of the details of how the corn oil for the Republic was produced to know whether Carrasco was describing its manufacture correctly. She certainly wouldn’t have leapt to put the Stelforma’s “diesel” in her own ship—but if Carrasco was willing to put corn oil in hers, that was up to her.

  “So, we do have fuel, then,” she finally murmured. Regardless of her own knowledge of corn-oil production, the knowledge that the two nation’s fuels were interchangeable—at least in emergencies—was important. She’d pass that up the chain—though she hoped someone in Daleheart already knew about it.

  “I can’t just fuel your ship for you, though,” she continued. “Our nations are not on nearly good enough terms for that.”

  Coral was going to have to explain just letting Dancer go. If she refueled the Stelforma cruiser? She might well end up in front of a Board of Inquiry.

  “I have drafts drawn on the Bank of the Chosen, as well as Chosen-registered gold and aluminum ingots,” Carrasco said instantly. “I was prepared to pay the locals for fuel, but I know they can’t access Chosen drafts and would potentially have issues using Chosen specie as cash.

  “The Navy of the Republic of the Dales, on the other hand…”

  She wasn’t wrong. If nothing else, there was trade between the two countries, and the Navy could cash out drafts with the merchants engaged in that business. The gold and aluminum ingots would be easily converted by anyone in the central Dales.

  Just not by fishers at one of the most distant Landings.

  “I will be speaking with the mayor,” Coral finally said. “If they confirm everything you have said about your time here, my purser will find a price she judges acceptable for our fuel.

  “Cause any difficulties while we are both anchored here, and I will destroy your ship without hesitation.”

  “Captain Amherst, I understand your position and your duty,” Carrasco told her. “I appreciate your patience and your pragmatism. We intend no harm, and I will make certain that my crew cause no trouble.

  “You have my sacred oath as a priestess of the Stelforma.”

  Coral grunted and rose.

  “Frankly, Priest-Captain Carrasco, I trust the guns aimed at your hull more. We’ll make it work. So long as the mayor confirms your assurances about the town.”

  “Whatever it takes for us to pass through the storm unharmed by each other’s fears,” Carrasco said calmly. “These are fine people here, Captain Amherst. I hope you recognize that. We have done them no harm… I must hope that our mere presence doesn’t create issues for them.”

  Coral couldn’t say anything to that. She wasn’t going to blame the locals for selling food to a trapped warship sheltering from a storm…but there might be those who would.

  And the people of Keller’s Landing were probably happier not appearing in Navy dispatches of any kind.

  Chapter 7

  The massive sheds that the locals had built over their docks had doors of assorted size. Despite a momentary urge to demand that the locals open the largest door, the one meant for the trawlers easily ten times her launch’s size, Coral gestured the boatswain to take them to a door only slightly bigger than the launch itself.

  “Do we knock?” Lieutenant Calvin asked, the woman eyeing the metal gate while two of the boatswains hooked an ice floe out of the way of their approach.

  “I expect that they are paying attention—and it appears I am correct,” Coral told her subordinate, gesturing as the gate slowly swung open in front of them. She could just pick out the sound of a motor running inside the building and the sound of chains dragging over a pulley system.

  “Take us in,” she ordered. “And be ready for anything, Lieutenant. These people should be glad to see us, but…”

  The Marine officer snorted and touched the carbine hanging over her shoulder.

  “Against a dozen Daleblood Marines? They will be glad to see us. Or else.”

  There was a reason Coral liked her Marine commander.

  Glancing around her, she spent a moment taking in the interior of the boathouse as the gate closed behind them. It was warmer inside the building. Not warm, but warmer. Above the freezing temperature of seawater, she judged—and she spotted several large furnaces in the corners of the building, burning merrily away to keep it that way.

  The gate swung shut behind them moments after the motor stopped. A clever balancing act, she supposed, and one that drew her gaze to the man standing by the motor.

  Swathed in heavy whaleskin, he gestured for them to head for the shoreline. Coral let the boatswains take care of that while she looked to see who else was in the boathouse.

  It was busy in there. The trawler they’d followed into Keller’s Landing had come in through the big door she’d spotted, and her crew was still disembarking their catch—presumably from before the storm had swept in.

  “I want to talk to those sailors,” Coral murmured. “First, if we can.”

  “You’re the Captain, Skipper,” Calvin replied. “We’ll make it happen.”

  The launch finally swung up to a dock, and the crew tied the boat up.

  “With me, Lieutenant,” Coral ordered, leaping easily from the boat to the dock. From the movement of the small crowd on the shore side of the building, someone was coming to meet her—but as she’d told Calvin, she had her own priorities.

  She reached the shore and immediately turned back onto the dock holding their trawler guide. The fisherfolk only loosely acknowledged her presence as she approached, but she expected no better. They were busy—and the fish they were bringing in might have to sustain the community and their unexpected guests for a while, depending on how the storm went.

  “I need to talk to your captain,” she said loudly.

  “That’s me, sir,” a graying but immense man told her, appearing from behind a pile of netting. He folded his arms and studied her. “Leave me crew be. We are—”

  “Busy landing your catch, I understand,” she said swiftly. “I wanted to thank you and your crew in person, Captain. Your guidance through the fjord saved us time, at the least, and may well have saved us from the storm and rocks alike.

  “On behalf of the Republic Navy, I offer you and your crew the formal Thanks of the Republic.”

  A few backs straightened around her. A formal Thanks wasn’t worth much out there—its main actual value was that it made it easier for an individual or their family to enter the assorted public services and Republic-funded academies in the main Dales—but it still meant something.

  “Our fjord ain’t friendly, Captain,” the trawler captain told her. “We weren’t going to see anyone founder out there, not when all it cost us were a few minutes and a light.”

  “The cost to you, Captain, doesn’t change the value to myself, my crew, and the Republic,” she insisted. “I ask that you provide one of my people with the roll of your crew so they can be properly recorded in the lists of the Republic Navy.”

  “Of course, Captain,” the fisherman said with a sigh. “It shall be as you ask.”

  Coral smiled thinly.

  “And for a more immediate recognition, I offer my thanks,” she told him. As she spoke, she reached inside her uniform jacket and withdrew a folded cloth pouch she’d filled in her quarters before she’d left Songwriter.

  The Republic, as a rule, preferred to find ways other than cash to reward people. Coral Amherst, on the other hand, was wealthy enough to buy and sell the fishing trawler without noticing—and she’d been her father’s least favorite child when he’d written his will.

  “I can’t…”

  She pressed the pouch into the captain’s hand. The aluminum specie inside were probably enough to fuel the trawler for a decade…or potentially buy a new trawler from one of the shipbuilders in the main Dales.

  “For your crew, if nothing else,” she assured him. “I’d rather pay a thousand times than risk that storm once. From myself and my crew, thank you.”

  “We all face the seas of Albion,” the trawler captain finally said. “I will make certain my people receive your gift, Captain. But the mayor is waiting for you,” he pointed out.

  “I have the feeling we will be here for a while, Captain,” Coral noted. “And I will always make it a priority to thank the people who help me.”

  Somewhere in Keller’s Landing, Coral suspected, there was a printing press spitting out a certain type of man. If the mayor wasn’t related to the trawler captain, he certainly looked it. The local was another tall and broad-shouldered man with a graying beard, standing at the end of the dock and waiting patiently for her return.

  “Mayor, I am Captain Coral Amherst,” she introduced herself. “I would prefer to have arrived in Keller’s Landing under better circumstances, but the guidance of your fisherfolk gave us safety we might have struggled with.”

  It cost her nothing to be appreciative, after all.

  “There’s a cruiser full of religious lunatics in my fjord, Captain Amherst,” the mayor told her drily. “I am fucking delighted to see a battleship of the Dales. I am Dr. Suljo Newport, Keller’s Landing’s mayor.” He paused and chuckled. “And our only doctor. I’m working on that, but…”

  He shrugged massively.

  “It’s hard to get a kid from the distant Landings into a medical school in the Dales,” he admitted. “And, well, even harder to get them to come back afterward.”

  Coral was from Daleheart itself, a bustling metropolis of over a million souls. Growing up surrounded by the other central Dales, she could barely imagine what living in one of the distant Landings was like. She could see the problem with getting people to leave that life to come back to fishing in frozen winters.

  “Have the Stelforma been a problem?” Coral asked. “They’ve told me they haven’t been, but I hardly trust their word.”

  “So far, they’ve been decent,” Newport told her. “Would you care to speak somewhere more comfortable, Captain? I’m old enough that standing around gets to my bones.”

  “I suppose,” Coral allowed. Seabloods aged much faster than Dalebloods and took that age harder. She tended to forget that weakness. “Lead on, Mayor.”

  Calvin fell in behind them as the local led the way through the gathered crowd. Coral studied the villagers as they walked, and realized that many of them were clearly sleeping in the big boathouse. It wasn’t exactly warm in there…but it was shelter against the storm sweeping around them.