“Authority?” the delphino squealed.
“Mine,” Jason said. “Just mine.”
Tao had had some hard rides before in his life, but this was ridiculous.
The nearest Army base was over a hundred kilometers away, at the falls of the Gem River. It was a major logistics point, but what was more important at the moment was that it had a communications crystal.
The crystal had the ability to contact a wide range of people who still had access to full technology. They were used for critical messaging, only. And Tao was carrying a critical message.
There was no way that he could have made it in any decent time were it not for the fact that there were messenger stations all along the bad road up the river from the base. He changed horses five times, each time dropping off a blown horse and throwing himself into the next one that was saddled. And then kicking that horse into a trot until it was warmed up and then into a canter.
He hadn’t ridden much in a year. And his body was telling him that before he was a third of the way into the ride. What was that joke the cavalry troops told? Ah, “Forty Miles in the Saddle, by Major Assburns.” Well, he had major assburns, that’s for sure. Forty miles was…
By the time he reached the Army base, after ten hours of hard riding, he had figured out the conversion from the antiquated mile measurement and come to the conclusion that he had more than doubled it. Or something like that; arithmetic was not his strong suit. He dropped off another knackered out horse and got directions to the message center. He pounded up to the low stone building and climbed off the horse, nearly dropping to his knees with fatigue. But he was a Blood Lord, damnit, and he straightened up and tried to knock some of the dust off of his dress uniform, before opening the door and waddling bow-legged into the room.
There were a commander and two sergeants inside playing acey-deucy. They looked up at the dust-covered rider and the commander dropped his cards on the table.
“What’s up, Ensign?” he asked.
“Message from General Talbot, sir,” Tao replied. “For Her Majesty, Sheida Ghorbani.”
“They did WHAT?” Admiral Draskovich shouted.
Edmund looked up at that and stopped perusing the reports in his hand. After he had sent everyone off on various errands he had paid a visit to the fleet intelligence shop and picked up some more light reading. He was just about done with it, having read through most of the day, when the latest report came in.
The admiral was no longer elegant. He looked hag-ridden and his hair had started to come undone from his ponytail. It had been a long day, night had fallen more than an hour ago, but he still had enough energy for fury.
“The mer leader, Jason Ranger, sent out an order pulling all the underwater forces back from their positions and sending all of them to protect the whalos,” the petty officer said, looking up from the report in his hand. “There’s a pitched battle taking place in the Granbas area. Merillo is back online and we’re getting fragmentary reports from the fleet. It looks like Reagan, Washuka and Norland are sunk and there are other ships destroyed as well. Bonhomme Richard is damaged but can make some sail. There are wyverns all over the fleet, sir. When they came back they were landing on any ship or ditching. We’ve lost riders as well, some drowned. Some… thrown by their dragons. No total count on dragons, but it doesn’t look good.”
“Get the wyverns reassembled on the remaining carriers,” Draskovich said angrily. “Send a message to the mer to get back in position. We can assemble another supply convoy…”
“Dragons overhead, sir!” a messenger shouted as he pounded through the door.
“Drask,” Edmund said, walking quickly but unhurriedly to the door. “Get your people out of here.”
“What?” the admiral shouted. “Get out of this room!”
“Just going,” Edmund replied. But he stopped and walked to the admiral, grabbing him by the ponytail and pulling his head down to where he could whisper in his ear. “This is a wooden building, damnit. Evacuate.” With that he strode to the door, jerking it open and leaving it open.
He walked steadily to the stairs and then took them two at a time upwards until he reached the top floor. He stopped, panting, for a moment, feeling every year of his age, then strode into the corridor beyond. At that point he heard a thump on the roof and gave up dignity.
“VAN KRIEF!” he bellowed.
“Here, sir,” the ensign said, popping out of a room down the corridor.
“We are leaving,” Edmund yelled and headed for the stairs as the first smell of smoke entered the air.
He didn’t pause as he headed down the stairs and then thought better of it; that ensign was addicted to research. But as he turned he heard the door bang open.
“Sir?” the ensign shouted.
“Run like hell, Ensign,” he replied and took his own command.
By the time they made it out the doors of the headquarters the top floor was fully engaged and liquid fire was cascading down the walls. He bellowed in pain as a drop of napalm hit his arm and quickly yanked his tunic off, wrapping it around the burning droplet.
“Where’s Destrang?” he yelled, looking around at the scurrying figures outside the headquarters. A bucket chain was being formed down to the river but he took one glance at the headquarters, which was lighting up the night, and shook his head.
“They’ll never do it,” he muttered.
“Here I am, sir,” Destrang said, hurrying through the crowd. “It was a dragon raid, sir. One of them was breathing fire and all of them were pitching napalm. It was targeted on headquarters and the shipyard.”
“Good,” Edmund muttered. “They’ve finally done something stupid.”
“Sir?” Van Krief asked.
“The best thing they could do for our Navy is burn that damned place to the ground,” Edmund growled. “With any luck, Draskovich will choose to go down with his ship.”
“If it’s this bad here, sir,” Van Krief said, “I wonder what it’s like at sea.”
“Get back!” the XO shouted as the wyvern lunged forward.
The CO of the ballista frigate Darya Seyit snarled as the wyvern drove back the net party that was trying to get onto the quarterdeck.
The frigate was rolling in light seas, at the play of the winds. The lost, angry and riderless wyvernÑhe wasn’t even sure if it was one of theirs or the enemy’sÑhad dropped out of the sky and landed on the quarterdeck of the ship before anyone had realized its intention.
The damned thing had immediately seized one of the signal midshipman by the thigh, but they had managed to beat it off of him before the quarterdeck crew evacuated the scene of battle.
Unfortunately, the ship’s wheel was up there. As soon as the two quartermasters had jumped over the side of the shipÑby order, there was no way for them to move forward past the enraged dragonÑthe ship had turned with the wind and now drifted helplessly as most of the crew tried to get in rigging while a party set up a jury-rigged rudder control below.
Most of the rest of the crew, including the ballista crews, were trying to get a net or a rope or something on the damned dragon so that the ship could be gotten back under helm.
“Okay, one more try, men,” the XO shouted.
“Ahoy the ship!” a voice shouted from overside. “I need to see the skipper!”