Admiral Maurice Farr lowered his binoculars. “Well, I told you you’d see some action before this war was over, Artie,” he said to the blond, balding man beside him.
Admiral Arthur Cunningham, commander of BatDivOne, the heavy gun ships, smiled grimly. “All on one throw, eh, Maurice? I nearly choked on a fishbone when you told me. A lot more like something I’d come up with.”
Maurice Farr shook his head. “No, it’s actually subtle,” he replied seriously. “Not just putting our heads down and charging at them.”
“Well, they don’t call me ‘Bull’ for nothing,” he said, scratching at the painful skin rash that splotched his hands. “There’s usually something to be said for the meat-ax approach, in wartime. I’ve got to admit, those carriers are earning their corn.”
The flaming remains of the dirigible were sinking towards the surface, and the darkness returned save for the running lights of the fleet and the landing lights that ran along the flight decks of the carriers.
“We’re going to have more problems with their lighter-than-air once the sun’s up and they can refuel from tanker airships out of our range,” Admiral Farr said. “We can shoot down their airships, but we can’t hide the fact that we’re shooting them down—they can always get off a message before they burn. The enemy will know we’re up to something.”
“But not exactly what,” Cunningham said cheerfully. “The planes can take off easier in daylight, too. I say two days.”
“Three,” Farr said.
An aide saluted. “General Farr to see you, sir.”
Jeffrey Farr climbed up the companionway to the bridge of the flagship. It was big; the Great Republic had been built with the space and communications facilities to run the whole of the Northern Fleet at sea. Even so, he had to thread his way past until he could stand before his father, the brown of his field dress and helmet cover contrasting with the sea-blue of the naval officers.
“Sir. It’s time I rejoined my command.”
Maurice Farr nodded. “Good luck, General,” he said. “The Navy will be where you need it.”
He stepped closer and took his son’s hand. “And good luck, son.”
Jeffrey Farr nodded. “Dad.”
* * *
“Pile the ties together,” the guerilla leader said.
More than half the band were unarmed peasants, men and women who’d slipped away from plantations or the few sharecropped tenancies the Chosen hadn’t yet gotten around to consolidating. They’d brought their working tools with them, though; spades and pickaxes and mattocks thudded at the gravel of the railway roadbed. There was a peculiar pleasure to demolishing the trunk line from Salini westward along the Gut. Thirty thousand Imperial forced laborers had worked for ten years to build it, and it carried half the supplies for the Land armies in the Sierra and the Union.
“Pile them up,” he said. A growing heap of creosote-soaked timbers rose higher than his head. “The rails go across the timber; then we light them. It will be a long time before those rails carry trains again.”
A very long time. There were only two rolling mills in the whole of the Empire, in Ciano and Corona. Most of the work would have to be done in the Land itself, and to carry the wrecked lengths of steel to the plants there, reheat and reroll them, and bring them back . . .
He smiled unpleasantly.
One of his subordinates spoke, unease in his voice: “Will we have time? Their quick reaction force—”
The smile grew into a grin. The guerilla commander pointed eastward, where the railway wound through the low hills of the Gut’s coastal plain. Pillars of smoke were rising, dozens of them.
“They will have much to do today.”
* * *
The Chosen commandant of the town of Monte Sassino cursed and climbed out of bed, blinking against the morning sunlight. She’d had a little too much in the way of banana gin last night, and mixed it with local brandy. Rubbing her bristle-cut head, she reached for the telephone that was ringing so shrilly.
Crack.
She fell forward against the instrument, her body kicking in galvanic reflex and voiding bladder and bowels.