“The Committee has its head up its collective butt,” Jeffrey said.
Gerard’s head swiveled around. Unfair, Jeffrey chided himself. He could say that; the Committee of Public Safety had no jurisdiction over Brigade members, they’d insisted on that from the beginning. Gerard was in high favor after helping to stop Libert’s thrust for the capital in the opening months of the war, but even so the Committee’s name was nothing to take in vain. Chairman Vincen seemed to think that if he made himself into a worse mad bastard than Libert and the Chosen, he could beat Libert and the Chosen. It didn’t necessarily work that way, but desperate men weren’t the best logicians.
Gerard cleared his throat “And it will be even more difficult if they can continue to use Land dirigibles to shift troops and supplies at will behind their lines.”
“They can as long as they can keep our planes from punching through,” Jeffrey said. “Those gasbags are sitting targets for fighters, but we don’t have the numbers or the range to penetrate their own fighter screens.
Gerard’s bulldog face grew longer. “Then they will be able to shift faster than I can—what is that expression you used?”
Jeffrey sighed. “They can get inside your decision curve. I just hope things are going better back home.”
* * *
Admiral Arthur Cunningham was a big, thickset man, with graying blond hair. Right now his face and bull neck were turning red with throttled rage, and he pulled at his walrus mustache as he stared at the ship model in the center of the glossy ebony table.
The hull was a large merchant variety, an eight-thousand-ton bulk carrier of the type used to ferry manganese ore from the Southern Islands under Santander protectorate. The top had been sliced off and replaced with a long flat rectangular surface; the funnels ran up into an island on the port side, and a section had lowered like an elevator to show rows of biplanes in the huge hold below the flight deck.
“Its an abortion,” Cunningham said.
“It’s what we need for scouting,” Maurice Farr corrected.
The rings on his sleeves and the epaulets on his shoulders marked him as a rear admiral, and kept Cunningham superficially respectful. Nobody could mistake his expression, or the meaning in the look he shot John Hosten where he sat beside his father.
“Farr, I’m surprised. I expect politicians to act this way.” From his tone, he also expected them to have sexual intercourse with sheep. “You’re a navy man and the son of a navy man. Why are you doing this?”
“We work for politicians, Cunningham—there’s a little thing called the Constitution that more or less tells us to. And in this instance, the politicians are right. We need aerial scouting if we’re going to match the Land’s fleet; otherwise they’ll be able to lead us around like a bull with a ring in its nose.”
“We need airships with decent open-sea range, not flying toys on this abortion of a so-called ship!” Cunningham said, his voice rising toward a bellow and his fist making the coffee cups rattle.
John spoke: “We’ve tried, Admiral Cunningham. Here.”
He pulled glossy photographs from an envelope and slid them across the table. “You see the results.”
The frame spread across a hillside was just recognizable as a dirigible’s, after the fire.
“The Land is too far ahead of us on the learning curve with lighter-than-air craft. They’ve got the diesels, the hull design, and most of all, plenty of experienced construction teams and crews. We can’t match them, not at acceptable cost, not with everything else we’re trying to do. And land-based aircraft just don’t have the range to give cover and reconnaissance to a fleet at sea. Hence, we need the . . . aircraft carriers, we’re calling them.”
“Your shipyards need the contracts, you mean,” Cunningham said bluntly. “Farr, this is diverting effort from capital ships.”
Farr shook his head. “Look, Arthur, you know very well the bottleneck there is the heavy guns and the armor-rolling capacity.”
Cunningham rose and settled his gold-crusted cap. “If you will excuse, me, sir—” he began.
“Admiral Cunningham, sit down!” Farr barked.