Every human being in Salini—and there must have been thirty thousand of them as refugees poured south as the Shockwave ahead of unstoppable Chosen columns—wanted to board those two ferries. Farr’s guard detachment had used its bayonets already to keep back the crowd. Very soon they would have to fire over the heads of a mob, and even that wouldn’t restrain desperation for long.
“Gentlemen,” Farr said, “the warehouses on Pier Street might as well be on Old Earth for all the chance you’d have of retrieving their contents for your employers. If I landed every man in my squadron, I still couldn’t clear the waterfront for you. And even then what would you do? Wish the merchandise into your holds? There aren’t any stevedores in Salini now. There’s nothing but panic.”
Farr’s guard detachment daubed the forelocks of applicants with paint as they were admitted to the pier. It was the only way in the confusion to prevent refugees from coming through the line again and again, clogging still further an already cumbersome process.
A middle-aged woman with a forehead of superstructure gray leaped atop a table with unexpected agility, then jumped down on the other side despite the attempt of a weary vice-consul to grab her. She sprinted along the pier. Two sailors at the gangway of the nearer ferry stepped out to block her.
With an inarticulate cry, the woman flung herself into the harbor. Oily water spurted. One of the Santander cutters patrolling to intercept swimmers stroked to the spot, but Farr didn’t see her come up again.
“There’s a cool two hundred thousand in tobacco aging in the Pax and Morgan Warehouse,” Cooley said. “Christ knows what all else. Senator Beemody ain’t going to be pleased to hear he waited too long to fetch it over.”
This time he was making an observation, not offering a threat.
Salini’s Long Pier was empty. The two vessels along the East Pier, itself staggeringly rotten, had sunk at their moorings a decade ago.
The wooden-hulled cruiser Imperatora Giulia Moro still floated beside the Navy Pier across the harbor, but she was noticeably down by the stern. The Moro had put out a week before along with the rest of the Imperial Second Fleet under orders from the Ministry in Ciano. The Second Fleet was a motley assortment. Besides poor maintenance and inadequate crewing levels, all the vessels had in common was their relatively shallow draft. That made operation in the Gut less of a risk than it would have been for heavier ships, since the Imperial Navy’s standard of navigation was no higher than that of its gunnery.
The Moro had limped back to her dock six hours later. She hadn’t been out of sight of the harbor before her stern seams had worked so badly that she was in imminent danger of sinking. Now her decks were packed with refugees to whom the illusion of being on shipboard was preferable to waiting on land for Chosen bayonets.
The Mora’s crew had vanished in the ship’s boats, headed across the Gut to Dubuk in Santander. Farr couldn’t really blame them. Those men were likely to be the fleet’s only survivors—unless the other vessels had cut and run also.
A steam launch chuffed toward the McCormick City’s port quarter, opposite the pier. A Sierra flag hung from the jackstaff. Diplomats? At any rate, another complication on a day that had its share already. For the moment, Captain Dundonald’s crew could deal with the matter.
The remaining civilian present on the bridge was the one Farr had sent armed guards to summon: Henry Cargill, Santander’s consul in Salmi and the official whose operations Farr was tasked to support. Turning from the bridge railing—brass at a high polish, warmly comforting in the midst of such chaos—Farr fixed his glare on the haggard-looking consul.
“Mr. Cargill,” Farr said, “if we don’t evacuate this port shortly there will be a riot followed by a massacre. I have no desire to shoot unfortunate Imperial citizens, and I have even less desire to watch those citizens trample naval personnel. When can we be out of here?”
“I don’t know,” the consul said. He shook his head, then repeated angrily, “I’m damned if I know, Commodore, but I know it’ll be sooner if you let me get back to the tables. I’m supposed to be spelling Hoxley now—for an hour. Which is all the sleep he’ll get till midnight tomorrow!”